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20VC: Biggest Lessons From Opendoor's Scaling Journey, How To Implement Systems for Growth & The Right Way To Structure Customer Discovery Processes with Julia DeWahl, Angel Investor

Jul 3, 2020

Julia DeWahl, a rising star in the Silicon Valley angel investing scene and former Opendoor executive, shares her insights on startup growth. She discusses crucial takeaways from her Opendoor experience that inform her investment strategies. Julia emphasizes the importance of customer discovery and how to select and structure this process for maximum insights. She also elaborates on implementing growth systems, balancing metrics, and navigating the fine line between growth and profitability. Plus, her journey into angel investing is both inspiring and instructive!

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ANECDOTE

Opendoor Beginnings

Julia DeWahl joined Opendoor as the 10th employee, handling all non-technical operations.
This experience exposed her to angel investing through Eric Wu, leading to her first investment in Modern Fertility.

INSIGHT

Founder-Market Fit

Early employees must possess core competencies aligned with the business's needs.
Founder-market fit is crucial for success, aligning founders' skills with core business requirements.

ANECDOTE

Vertical Integration at Opendoor

Opendoor succeeded by owning the entire vertical stack of the home buying and selling process.
This created a smoother, more integrated customer experience compared to the fragmented traditional process.

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Julia DeWahl is one of the rising stars of the Silicon Valley angel investor community with a portfolio including the likes of Linear (Sequoia-backed), Modern Fertility (USV backed) and Primer (Founders Fund backed). Prior to angel investing Julia was one of the first 10 employees at Opendoor seeing their hyper-growth first hand in many different roles from Head of Seller Experience to being General Manager of Pheonix & City Operations. Before Opendoor, Julia spent 3 years as a consultant at Bain. If that was not enough, Julia is also an avid cyclist and is setting up a women's cycling apparel line alongside her investing.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Julia made her way into the world of startups with Opendoor from Bain and how that position at Opendoor led to her angel investing? What were the 1-2 takeaways for Julia from her time at Opendoor that have most impacted how she angel invests today?

2.) Customer Discovery: When is the right time to engage in deep customer discovery work? How does one select the customers to go deep with? How does Julia structure the process? What questions are most revealing? Where do many go wrong? How does one determine the feedback to accept vs which to reject?

3.) How does Julia think about implementing systems for growth? What is the structure of these systems? Where does one start? How does Julia determine the metrics to track and focus on? How does Julia balance between growth vs profitability?

4.) Does Julia believe people can really scale with the company? What are the leading indicators that people are struggling to scale with the company? How does Julia advise generalists to survive and thrive in a scaling organisation? Should they specialise?

5.) What have been some of Julia biggest lessons of what it takes to be successful as an angel today? Who has Julia learned and gained the most from in this new discipline? How does Julia measure her own success as an angel? What are the core challenges?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Julia’s Fave Book: The Courage To Be Disliked: How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness

Julia’s Most Recent Investment: Primer: Homeschool with superpowers

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