This Week in Startups

0:44 Jason shares some thoughts on hard work 1:52 Jason intros Anthemos Georgiades and they discuss how Zumper was launched at TechCrunch 4:02 How did Anthemos wind up as a founder after working in consulting 6:45 What is Zumper's origin story? How many iterations did they go through before coming up with an MVP? 15:34 How did Zumper monetize their marketplace? 18:30 Partnering with Facebook & diversifying revenue 27:12 Anthemos shares thoughts on growth vs. profitability, should Brandless exist? 31:03 Uber vs. Airbnb in terms of EBITDA, thoughts on current state of Airbnb with IPO pending 37:56 Differences between Airbnb and VRBO customers according to Jason 41:00 Airbnb's effect on the rental market 46:15 Thoughts on co-living spaces 48:35 Reactions to Zumper's monthly rent report 51:20 Co-living as a business from a VC perspective 53:02 Jason gives Anthemos some NYC hotel suggestions 54:01 Jason's Hertz car rental story 59:04 Increasing difficulty of building a major team in San Francisco 1:07:38 Jason calls Ben Horowitz & answers a question from a fan

0:36 Jason intros Monique & Wade 8:29 Tech Journalists vs. Founders/VCs 14:48 Is link-baiting press a systemic, societal issue? 19:21 Future of Founders/VCs controlling their own voice via podcasts, email newsletters, etc. 23:59 SpaceX sending passengers into space in late 2021, early 2022 28:02 Kickstarter employees vote to Unionize 41:28 Gray New World - how lucrative is the growing elderly demographic? 49:37 Twitter combatting fake/misleading news with potential new features 58:01 Blue Apron continues to plummet 1:04:13 Lambda School controversy 1:12:42 What is the path for Zapier? What is No-Code's impact on the startup industry?

0:50 Jason intros CRV's George Zachary 2:20 Passing on Google at MDV and coming to peace with the anti-portfolio 5:51 Differences between leadership & management, where Steve Jobs, Larry & Sergey fell on that scale 10:27 Why 1990's VC was sales & marketing-driven instead of product-driven as it is now 12:52 What shifted the philosophy to product-driven businesses? 18:00 Meeting Elon Musk in the 1990's and backing Zip2 21:59 What were Seed investors like in the '90s? Origins of Sand Hill Road 25:48 Elon pitching Zip2 to a conglomerate of venture firms & selling Zip2 for cash 28:07 How VCs can be conceptually right and wrong in the outcome, how X.com merged with Confinity and became PayPal 33:27 Why is it harder to 3x the massive venture funds? How is age a limiting factor in VC? 40:28 "It doesn't make a difference what you pass on. It only takes 1 company to make your career." Positive & negative feedback cycles in VC. 42:54 Battling through multiple portfolio companies dying at once 44:15 What was George's biggest investment hit, both economically & personal fulfillment? 52:37 George describes his recent health scares and how they shifted his investment focus 1:04:06 Reasons the life-expectancy in the US has gone sideways in recent years 1:07:39 Potential health-tech advancements in the near future 1:21:58 Thoughts on CRISPR & "designer babies" 1:30:27 Cell-based fish & meat 1:37:32 Potential coronavirus repercussions - what's real and what's not? 1:55:13 Jason calls for eliminating handshakes

0:56 Jason intros David Heinemeier Hansson (@DHH) and asks about the work-from-home paradigm shift 5:28 Measuring programming success via budgets instead of estimates, quantifying creativity 9:57 Are incentive systems inherently bad? 13:01 How terrible commutes turned the tides for remote work in Silicon Valley, why do executives subject themselves to horrible working conditions? 17:59 What is the optimal amount of work hours per week? 19:58 Benefits of higher minimum wage 23:28 How can America "get to Denmark"? Should we rein in capitalism? 27:19 How do educational stipends work in Denmark? Benefits of state-sponsored education & healthcare 32:27 Is American bureaucracy able to change quickly? 35:52 Are gig workers being exploited? Why or why not? 45:57 Flexibility vs. Security in the gig-economy 51:20 Has the American Dream become false in America? 1:00:26 Are ISA schools (like Lambda School) an innovation or a bandaid on the failing capitalist system? 1:06:30 What do successful numbers look like for ISAs? 1:12:28 Starting Basecamp & raising from Jeff Bezos in the early days 1:19:43 Roasting Jeff Bezos on Twitter, socialism, progressivism in America 1:28:13 Amazon disappointments & how can Bezos save face? 1:36:31 Wealth tax debate 1:43:23 Which major tech companies should be broken up? 1:52:04 Will GDPR-like policies work in America? 1:55:59 What is David doing with Hey.com? Should there be two-sided consent in email read-receipt tracking? 2:03:29 Could there ever be an open-source Twitter or messaging app? Was WhatsApp it before being bought by Facebook? 2:09:34 Thoughts on tech journalism vs. big-tech 2:12:22 Can big-tech regulation fix the competitive landscape?

0:41 Jason intros "Edge" Author Laura Huang 3:00 How do Harvard MBA students compare with Stanford MBA students? 7:17 Why did Laura write "Edge" at this time? 8:55 Overcoming disadvantages based on race, ethnicity & gender 14:56 Laura's experience reading her own audiobook 17:23 What does her research show about structural bias against Female entrepreneurs? 23:33 How can a founder turn adversity into an advantage when asked a question with a negative bias? 28:01 How being underestimated inhibits the opportunity to enrich & provide value? What is an example of delight in p2p interaction? 36:39 How should we look at intent when discussing bias & privilege? 44:35 How to deal with being bitter vs. getting better and controlling emotions while still allowing ourselves to feel? 1:00:17 Laura & Jason share personal stories about bitter vs. better & explain how she converted her energy 1:05:09 What is Laura's hope for the lasting impact "Edge" has on its readers?

0:50 Jason intros Coatue Management's Dan Rose 1:52 Dan takes Jason through getting his internship at Amazon in 1999 and meeting Jeff Bezos 6:55 What was Amazon's core business in 1999? What was it like incubating the Kindle in the mid-2000s? 10:04 How did Bezos grow as a leader and businessman during Dan's tenure at Amazon? 18:21 How does Bezos' ability to turn Amazon around in the eyes of public investors relate to Uber, Lyft and other large & unprofitable companies? How does Bezos inspire so much loyalty? 23:27 What was Amazon's company culture during Dan's tenure? How was AWS developed? 26:08 How did Dan wind up at Facebook as employee ~130? What did he see in a young Mark Zuckerberg? 32:13 Who created the original Facebook News Feed? 35:34 How did they get the ad-network to work at scale? 42:50 Where do Elon, Bezos & Zuckerberg rank in the Pantheon of Entrepreneurs? 44:06 How did the billion-dollar acquisition offer from Yahoo! fall apart? 46:42 Why launching open registration led to the billion-dollar investment by Microsoft 48:30 Insights on the Instagram deal 51:00 How Facebook bounced back from the stock dropping from $31 to $17 shortly after IPO & how Dan's experience at Amazon helped him rally the troops? 58:44 Zuckerberg's response to mistakes 1:03:01 How did Dan wind up at Coatue Management leading a $700M early-stage fund? 1:08:01 What is Coatue's strategy around data science? 1:11:20 Dan had over 100 Angel investments before joining Coatue 1:13:18 What is Coatue's new fund strategy? 1:16:09 How does Dan think of diligence in regards to early-stage companies? 1:20:25 What does Dan want to see in an ideal founder?

0:46 Jason intros Dr. Brian Moore 3:39 What does Orreco do and how do they help elite athletes? 4:46 Do they sample blood? 6:33 What teams do they work with? 7:50 What is a bio-marker? 9:05 Why has inflammation monitoring become so popular? 15:01 Brian demos the Orreco app 22:56 What are the top reasons for elite athletes to use Orreco? 28:06 How did Brian get into this business? 30:34 How does blood differ in elite athletes? Is it regional? 36:25 What does Orreco have the biggest impact on? 43:40 What kinds of performance optimization should or shouldn't be legal in pro sports 51:12 How have they monitored machine learning? 56:47 Importance of glucose monitoring 59:15 Correlation in NBA between minutes per game and years played? 1:01:29 Taking a personal loan out to fund Orreco in the early days 1:15:39 Marc Andreessen asks Jason a question

0:57 Jason intros Alex & Sachin 4:46 When and why did they start Cocoon? 6:40 Why did Facebook keep changing their developer tools platform? 9:22 What is the vision for Cocoon and who is it made for? 14:58 How did they get the cocoon.com domain name and why do strong domain names breed trust? 16:57 What are they doing with customer data and how will they monetize? 20:20 Cocoon demo and Alex takes us through some key features 29:45 How difficult was raising money going up against Facebook, iMessage, etc.? 33:04 Who is their ideal customer? 38:35 Building a company in San Francisco vs. outside of it 41:57 Jason tries to invest in Cocoon live on air 47:45 Growing Cocoon in the crowded app store 51:51 Why do Cocoon founders use Notion? 54:37 Jason calls Ben Horowitz

0:01 Jason intros Season 4 of Angel & Index Ventures' Sarah Cannon 3:22 How did working for the Obama administration lead Sarah into Venture Capital? 4:56 Picking a fight with Larry Summers as an intern 15:42 Choosing Harvard's MBA program over Stanford's 18:26 Getting into VC 20:27 Working at CapitalG 24:09 How was the foundation of Index built by Danny Rimer and what is Sarah's role? 31:42 What does Index focus on during a Series A and what is a partner meeting like at Index? 36:31 Thoughts on gig economy work and is there a better way to categorize freelancers and full-time workers in the gig economy? 44:54 Sarah's proposed solution for categorizing gig economy workers 46:36 Jason's thoughts on politicians evolving their views over time 50:15 Ideas to increase upward mobility in America 1:00:35 What was Sarah's first investment? How did it work out? 1:08:42 Founders getting distracted after raising large rounds of funding 1:11:05 Thoughts on emerging international startup markets like India & Australia 1:13:19 Is France an underrated startup market? 1:17:42 What is Sarah most passionate about investing in?

1:07 Megan pitches Moment AI (facial recognition software that helps drivers) 3:19 Juan pitches DreamOn (wearable and app that help you fall asleep and sleep better) 5:38 Elissa pitches Fumé (marijuana products) 7:46 Feedback & questions for Cohort 3 19:54 Rankings for Cohort 3 23:38 Stewart pitches EVOLUTIONS (marketplace for financial fitness) 25:34 Nadia pitches Keybee (marketplace for short-term rental support services) 29:21 Riana pitches Journey Foods (service that brings metrics and nutrition tools to improve product development) 31:45 Feedback & questions for Cohort 4 42:49 Rankings for Cohort 4 47:43 Jason & Dave rank the best companies from cohorts 1-4