Square One: Conversations with the Best in Business

This week I chatted with Jim Feuille, General Partner at Crosslink Capital. Jim joined Crosslink after a successful career in finance, previously serving as Global Head of Technology Investment Banking at UBS. Over the past 15 years in venture, Jim has invested in successful teams at Omniture, Ancestry.com, Coupa and most notably, Pandora. Jim and I covered a number of topics in this one; ranging from Pandora and the state of the consumer internet in 1995 to capital allocation in venture today and what new entrants (i.e Softbank and their $100bn Vision Fund) are thinking. Some of my favorite moments included: how the Crosslink team was able to source Pandora (11:55), why the freemium model was core to Pandora’s rapid growth (18:40) and what he thinks of capital allocation and valuations today (23:20).

Product. Market. Team. Though a significant amount has changed in venture over the past two decades, the focus on these three variables has still remained largely the same when it comes to investing. This week, I chatted with one of the most successful venture capitalists of the past two decades, Brad Jones, Founding Partner at Redpoint.  Brad co-founded Redpoint in 1999 after serving as a General Partner at Brentwood Venture Capital. Over the past 20 years, Brad has served on the boards of over 10 public companies and his team has invested in household names like Stripe, Twilio, Zendesk, Fortinet, Heroku and early on, Netflix.  Brad and I spoke for about an hour and covered a number of topics in this one; we talked about startups, the state of venture capital and where we’re headed. Some of my favorite moments included: why less companies going public is bad for retail investors and broader society (17:20), his observations on how starting and scaling a startup has changed over the past 15 years (21:44), what he thinks of the state of culture in the technology community today given the recent turmoil at Uber (25:46) and ideas for how local and national government can help startups (43:21).

High-growth companies can now start and scale anywhere, not just in a few coastal cities. This is the fundamental premise of Revolution Ventures, the $200M venture capital firm started by AOL, Inc. founder Steve Case. This week, I chatted with David Golden, Managing Partner at Revolution.  David joined Revolution after 18 years with JPMorgan. During his tenure at JPM, David held a number of roles, including Vice Chairman and Director of JPMorgan’s global investment banking practice for Tech, Media & Telecom. Throughout his career, David has served on the boards of a number of successful companies, including Everyday Health, Barnes & Noble Education and Blackbaud.

Bessemer Venture Partners has long been regarded as one of the most successful and influential venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. The firm has invested in a number of winners over the years including: LinkedIn, Yelp, Blue Apron, Periscope, Twitch, Shopify, Twilio and others. In our ninth episode, it was fun to chat with Ed Colloton, Managing Partner and COO over at BVP. Ed has had a very successful career both in PE and VC; he served as COO of JP Morgan’s Private Equity arm before transitioning to Bessemer where he has been recognized on the annual Forbes Midas List as one of the top 100 venture capitalists globally.  Ed and I spoke about a number of topics in this one; namely, what’s the future of VC look like, why less companies are going public, and what makes Silicon Valley special. My favorite moments included: (1) his thoughts on PE vs. venture as an asset class (21:54), what the ramifications of less companies going public are for society and innovation (27:11) and given his experience in Silicon Valley how he thinks about clean sheeting a plan for a city to become an innovation hub (32:31).

There aren’t many companies in the history of the world that have had as much of a global impact as Facebook. That’s why it was especially gratifying to chat with Chris Kelly, Former Chief Privacy Officer and Head of Public Policy at Facebook. Chris had the unique perspective of working at Facebook in the early days as one of the first 25 employees to being a key executive in a 1,000+ employee organization by the time he left in 2009. We had a lot of fun in this one and Chris and I spoke about a whole host of topics: his experience at Facebook, thoughts more broadly on what’s going on in the tech community, and the intersection of government, tech and the future of innovation in the US. Some of my favorite moments included: (1) his reflections on what it was like working with Mark Zuckerberg and how to think about culture (16:20), (2) what he thinks the next wave is in tech and whether its IoT, AR or VR (26:10) and (3) how to think about managing the downsides of emerging technologies, namely fake news (30:30)

It’s no question that AI is going to have an extremely large impact on our society. Like “the cloud” five years back, today machine learning is starting to become a common household word. In our sixth episode, I had the chance to chat with Ben Alden, General Counsel of Betterment and we dove into all things disruptive innovation in the wealth management space. Betterment has raised over $200m and manages more than $7bn assets globally. It is one of the darling stories of fintech (having been previously referred to as the “Apple of Finance”) and has a number of exciting future products in store for a rapidly growing trillion dollar industry. Ben is a native of Cornell University and Stanford Law and practiced as a Litigator at Sullivan & Cromwell amongst other roles prior to serving as GC at Betterment.

Chad Ho is Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Hulu. Chad’s had an interesting career in the entertainment space and has seen the highs (and lows) of multiple startups; he was employee #70 at MySpace and saw the website become the #1 most visited site on the internet and grow to 1,200 employees within a few years only to see it brought right back down to earth as Facebook came in and took over the space. Around that time he moved on and joined a then unknown and unnamed company as its General Counsel — fast forward a decade and that company has become Hulu, a global household name doing $1bn+ revenue annually.

Andrew Yang is Founder and CEO of Venture for America, a fellowship program for enterprising recent college graduates to launch their careers as entrepreneurs and revitalize American cities. Andrew has accomplished a lot with VFA since founding it in the last 6 years and has been a tireless advocate for entrepreneurship. He’s spoken at length on the subject, appearing on CNN, CNBC, Time, and the Wall Street Journal. Andrew was named a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship by the White House and one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business for his work with Venture for America. This conversation was a lot of fun; Andrew really humanized entrepreneurship and how to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. Some of my favorite moments included: (1) why entrepreneurship isn’t a magic trick (3:05), (2) how he sees entrepreneurship shaking out over the next decade (16:55), (3) the consciousness that has emerged from this election cycle (24:06), and finally (4) key takeaways for young professionals (40:01).  Check out Andrew’s awesome book “Smart People Should Build Things.”

Patrick Chung is Founder and General Partner at Xfund, a $50M seed stage venture fund based in Silicon Valley. Patrick is an incredibly sharp guy; he has had an impressive academic career — with three degrees from Harvard University (College, Law School, and Business School) and one from Oxford University — and professional career, having been a consultant at McKinsey, operator at venture backed Zefer, and General Partner both at NEA and xFund.  This conversation was fun and Patrick gave a lot of interesting insight. Some of my favorite moments included: (1) why he thinks liberal arts founders thrive and his fund is a bet on that (6:05), (2) how an influx of capital affects seed stage investing (14:13), (3) why managing uncertainty will be a key strategy in 2017 (20:24), and finally (4) three key takeaways for young professionals (35:22).

David Hornik has a reputation in venture as one of the nicest and sharpest investors out there. He received Deloitte’s 2013 Venture Capitalist of the Year award and has been honored by Forbes Magazine as a member of its Midas List of top Venture Capitalists. This conversation was fun and David gave a lot of interesting insight. Some of our favorite moments included: (1) what he thinks of the current state of venture (11:05), (2) his adamant belief that we are not in a bubble, though things are overheated and overfunded (17:05), (3) the importance of making others successful and being generous (24:01), and (4) focusing on a happy life, not a successful career (30:10). David colored a lot of these insights via personal anecdotes of times with Jerry Yang, DJ Patil, Dick Costolo, Paul Graham, Reid Hoffman, Travis Kalanick and others.