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20VC: Lightspeed Partner, Merci Victoria Grace on The Future of Collaboration Tools, Bundling vs Unbundling, Synchronous vs Asynchronous & What It Means To Productise The S*** Out of Venture

Jun 8, 2020

Merci Victoria Grace, a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and former Head of Growth at Slack, shares her insights on the venture capital landscape. She discusses the importance of productizing venture processes and the internal tech stack at Lightspeed. The conversation dives into the future of collaboration tools, debating bundling versus unbundling and the value of synchronous versus asynchronous communication. Merci also emphasizes the need for diversity in VC and the role of mentorship in her journey, illustrating her unique blend of humor and personal storytelling.

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ANECDOTE

Merci's Path to Venture

Merci Victoria Grace's path to venture capital started with a preempted seed round for her college side project.
This experience sparked her interest in venture, leading her from game design and product management to Slack's Head of Growth and finally, Lightspeed.

INSIGHT

Institutional vs. Angel Investing

The sheer volume of ideas seen as an institutional investor is far greater than as an angel investor.
Institutional VCs have a broader view of the competitive landscape, seeing multiple companies in the same space.

ADVICE

Productizing Venture

Venture capitalists should treat founders as their customers, focusing on evaluating, competing, and adapting.
VCs should continuously improve their understanding of technology, markets, and how to add value to founders.

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Merci Victoria Grace is a Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the valley's leading venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Snapchat, Mulesoft, Affirm, AppDynamics and more. As for Merci, prior to entering the world of venture, Merci spent 3 years at Slack including as Head of Growth where she grew the growth team to over 50 people and drove DAU's from 500K to 5M in under 2 years. Merci is also the Founder of Women In Product a global community of incredible women in product management.

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In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Merci made her way into the world of venture having led the growth team at Slack for close to 3 years?

2.) Merci has been working to productise venture, so what core elements of venture need productising? What systems and tools has Merci put in place to create a product around these processes and methods? What have been the biggest challenge in the attempt to productise VC?

3.) How does the decision-making process look like at Lightspeed? How does Merci use post mortems to help her improve post having lost a deal? How does she structure those post-mortems? What have been some of the core takeaways? What internal tech stack does LSVP run itself on?

4.) How does Merci see the future of the collaboration tools market? Are we entering a period of bundling or unbundling? How does Merci feel about the debate between synchronous and asynchronous? How does Merci determine between those who have grown sustainably vs unsustainably in the time of COVID?

5.) Why do the majority of collaboration tool startups fail? What do they get so wrong in their go-to-market? For those that succeed, what are the commonalities in those that succeed? Why is being good at Twitter a competitive advantage? How does Merci feel about the Superhuman, high touch onboarding style?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Merci’s Fave Book: Never Split The Difference: Negotiate As If Your Life Depended on It

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