Sand Hill Road

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Didomoi co-founder and CTO Jawad Stouli about building consent management platform Didomi for the perfect privacy wave.   00:00 Intro  00:46 Early days of Didomi  03:29 Fighting a US patent troll  08:14 Building the Didomi MVP  12:18 Developer-centric platform approach  14:46 Early costumers: self-service vs. SDRs  18:22 Didomi data architecture  24:02 Bootstrapping Didomi  27:43 Raising the Series A  30:37 Raising the Series B  33:35 Scaling up  35:55 Competition  41:29 Call to action

00:00 Intro  00:24 Welcome to Miami  01:08 Operators Podcast  03:21 Finding the right guests  06:54 Delian’s founder/operator  08:22 Cohort analysis with Keith at Square  10:30 Nightingale   12:24 Operating experience at Teespring  14:24 Varda Space  17:45 Splitting time between Varda and FF  19:45 Varda Space incubation  23:50 Delian as an investor at Founders Fund  27:07 Faire  30:56 Tiger Global and the rise of crossover funds  35:31 Hyperscaling  36:45 Moving to Miami   39:45 Keeping up with Delian

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Remote.com founder Job van der Voort about building the future of remote work. 0:00 Intro  00:49 The first two years of Remote  02:19 Preparing for the perfect Storm at Gitlab  06:17 Leaving Gitlab  10:47 Business model  14:10 Legal war chest  15:20 Fintech-payment layer  16:20 SaaS layer  17:52 Pricing  19:47 Competitive landscape  24:12 Seed round  25:42 Series A  28:37 Remote best practices  31:52 Enabling random bump ins  34:07 The remote company handbook or “bible”  35:23 Remote company stack  36:20 Asynchronous vs. synchronous work  40:19 Remote for startups

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Sheel Mohnot, co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures about his journey as a founder, angel investor and co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures.   00:00 Intro  01:11 Guest appearance on a Justin Bieber/Ariana Grande music video  03:16 The “pronoia” mindest  03:16 The “pronoia” mindest  05:04 Sheel’s background  07:56 The Pitch  12:12 Investing with founder authority  14:16 500 Startups fintech fund  18:25 Fintech thesis and sector evolution  22:09 Fintech backend  23:43 Better Tommorrow Ventures  29:24 Differentiation  32:52 Reserve capital  34:52 The good, the bad and the ugly investments  37:40 Sheel-defining investment  41:10 …the bad and the ugly

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Reeves Wiedeman, author of "Billion Dollar Loser: the epic rise and fall of WeWork".   00:00 Adam's intro  01:11 Intro  01:38 Adam Neumann  04:11 Adam's art of persuasion  05:41 Book title  08:10 Writing process  13:01 WeWork evolution and business model  16:21 Tech vs. real estate company  19:25 WeWork community  22:01 WeWork funding journey  25:11 JPMorgan round  26:50 Masa and the Softbank round  30:39 Acquisitions and side businesses  33:16 Valuation and comps  36:59 Public persona and IPOs  38:50 WeWork today  40:07 Staying in touch with Reeves

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kyle Lui, Partner at DCM, about the recent IPO roll that DCM has been on. The Menlo Park-based firm has generated a 61x return on investments that have gone public in the past two years. Kuaishou is the standout, with its market cap to entry valuation at 2,000x.   00:00​​ Intro  00:50 Who is Kyle Lui  01:33 Intro to DCM   03:30 DCM IX and the A-Fund   05:36 Differentiation through US-Asia angle  07:45 DCM's Japan strategy  08:48 DCM's recent roll  10:00 Biggest winner Kuaishou  11:07 All three sides of the table  14:01 Choicepass  15:36 First 5 years at DCM  18:52 Docsend investment  21:47 Lime investment  23:57 Him’s and Hers investment  26:05 D2C unit economics  28:13 Keeping up with what Kyle is up to  29:33 Kyle's investment focus areas

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Russ Heddleston, founder of Docsend. The episode was recorded one month before the announcement that DocSend would be acquired by Dropbox for $165m.   00:00​​ Intro  00:37 What is Docsend  01:51 Selling Pursuit to Facebook in a talent acquisition  04:12 Leaving Facebook and starting Docsend  07:03 Product idea  09:00 Fundraising for Pursuit  12:53 Fundraising for Docsend  14:17 Series A  17:34 Docsend product  20:39 Initial startup client segment  22:29 Docsend fundraising network  25:20 Expanding from initial client segment  29:51 Docsend Spaces  33:07 Pricing strategy  37:50 Next steps for Docsend  39:50 Competing with Intralinks  41:00 Scaling up Docsend  42:29 Remote work at Docsend  43:29 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Ali Tamaseb, partner at DCVC, about his recently launched book "Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups".   00:00​​ Intro  01:00 Who is Ali?  03:02 Spark of motivation for the Super Founders book  05:49 Primary data collection  08:13 Data set: timeframe and selection criteria  10:28 The age of super founders  13:04 Optimal number of co-founders  16:12 Founder education  17:45 Did all of them go to Stanford?  19:38 Pre-founding work experience  21:08 Definition of the "super founder"  25:38 Painkiller vs. vitamin products  27:14 Startup competition  29:50 Defensibility factor  31:44 Venture funding vs. bootstrapping  34:41 Capital requirements  35:46 Startup fundraising  37:15 Time to hatch

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Vivek Saraswat, who has been a venture investor at Mayfield at the time of the recording and previously a product leader at Docker/VMware/AWS. Since recording this episode, Vivek has joined Immersa as a founding VP of product.     00:00 Intro  00:56 Who is Vivek?  03:12 Joining Mayfield  05:07 Portfolio companies  07:08 Covid impact on commercial open-source  10:17 Go-to-market (GTM)  14:13 Managing product roadmaps in open-source  17:10 Dedicating to bottoms-up GTM  20:49 Hooks and upsells  24:54 Optimal lines between community and commercial  29:22 Firewalls between community and commercial   31:51 Inculcating community-commercial in the organization

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm about his journey as a mega maker, bootstrapping his podcast hosting and analytics platform to $1m+ in ARR in less than 3 years.   00:00​​​ Intro  01:55​​ Getting Real  04:30​ Business is like surfing  7:43​ Selling ice cream on a busy beach  11:33​ Why your business idea matters  14:17​ The nature of the megamaker  19:46​ Grow slow, grow real  24:53​ Success is gradual, then sudden  31:10​ VC attention to podcasting  38:00​ Podcast hosting and analytics space  44:20​ First version of Transitor.fm  50:45​ Dealing with depression as a solopreneur  54:48​ Finding out more about Justin