Matt Clifford is co-founder and CEO of Entrepreneur First, Europe's leading pre-seed investment programme for founders of deep technology startups. Founded in 2011, EF backs the world's top technical talent pre-company. EF's startups have raised over $100m in funding and are breaking ground in artificial intelligence, robotics and infrastructure, among other fields. Outside EF, he is co-founder and non-executive director of Code First Girls and non-executive director of Techfortrade. Before starting EF, Matt worked at McKinsey & Co. as a strategy consultant, and studied at the University of Cambridge and at MIT.    In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Matt come to found the world's top technical talent pre-company programme? 2.)  Should everyone be an entrepreneur? How can a founder determine whether this is the right path for them? Can entrepreneurialism be taught or is it an innate skill within? 3.) What does Matt think of the idea and fear of many founders that they are simply not ready? How do we know when one is ready? What are the signs? 4.) How important is mindset for founders? Matt has previously stated the importance of a growth mindset? What does he mean by this and how does he advise founders to approach this? 5.) What is the most common mistake Matt sees entrepreneurs in EF make? How does he help to combat this? 6.) What does the future of work look like? Where will jobs be at this century? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:  Matt's Fave Book: Sapiens (Same as Parker Thompson @ AngelList) Matt's Fave Blog: Marginal Revolution Matt's Most Recent Investment: Cloud NC, Third Eye As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Matt on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!\  

Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner with Precursor Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on first check investments in strong teams developing innovative hardware and software products and services. Prior to founding Precursor, Charles was a Partner with SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Internet and mobile startups. Prior to SoftTech, Hudson spent time at Google,  IronPort Systems, and In-Q-Tel.   In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Charles made his way into VC from working with the CIA? What were Charles biggest takeaways from his operational experience? 2.) Why have we seen the rise of the solo GP fund? What tools and services can be used by solo GPs to make their lives easier? 3.) Chris Sacca said, 'you have to be a moron to launch a solo VC fund'. What does Charles think about this and what was it about Precursor that made him want to leave SoftTech? 4.) How does Charles' market requirements change now as a pre seed investor, a 100m exit is excellent. Do you you still need unicorns? 5.) How does Charles look to differentiate with Precursor in the sea of emerging VC funds? What is the most important thing for him about pr-seed investing? 6.) What is Charles' vision for Precursor? What would success look like for him? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:  Charles' Fave Book: Alec Ross: Industries of The Future Charles' Fave Blog: The Information   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Charles on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Chris Morton the Founder & CEO @ Lyst, the fashion aggregation and discovery app and universal checkout cart that has pulled in more than $60m in funding from the likes of Balderton, Accel and DFJ. Chris was previously in the wonderful world of venture himself as an early stage investor with Balderton Capital where he focused on consumer internet companies. Prior to that Chris worked on various projects from making custard suits to working in renewable energy!    In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Chris come to found one of the hottest fashion startups, Lyst? What was the interview process with Benchmark like? 2.) Why did Chris become a VC first before an entrepreneur? What does being a VC allow you to become a better entrepreneur with? 3.) Chris has said before that we have not scratched the surface of e-commerce, so why have we not? What is the vision and what are the challenges that stand in the way? Question from Harry Briggs: Will we see physical retail stores largely disappear?  4.) Lyst place heavy emphasis on data collection and usage. Why is this? What does it power to Lyst to do? What interesting consumer trends and behaviours have been revealed from the data? 5.) How was the fundraising process for Chris? What did being in VC teach him about the process that he could implement in entrepreneurship? What were the challenges? What would he do differently if he were to raise again?   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Chris on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

Brian O’Malley is a Partner @ Accel Partners, where he spearheads Accel's work with next-generation marketplaces and consumer-focused companies. He led the firm’s investments in Amino, Gametime, HotelTonight and Luma, as well as disruptive software-as-a-services businesses Duetto and Narvar. Brian joined Accel from Battery Ventures, where as a general partner he led investments in companies like Dollar Shave Club, BazaarVoice (public), Coupa, Skullcandy (public) and TradeKing (acquired by Ally). Prior to Battery, Brian led sales efforts and built some of the first web service-based API integrations for Bowstreet, Inc. (acquired by IBM). In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Brian make his way into one of the world's leading VC firms? What were Brian's biggest takeaways from being in the trenches during the bust of the dot com bubble? 2.)  What is the macro economic view to value compression? How should startups being approaching and dealing with this? 3.) How can startups maintain growth as the priority whilst maintaining investor expectations on burn rates? What is Brian's approach to the growth vs retention theory? 4.) What retention metrics would Accel look for indifferent products? How does this vary from category to category? What are the commonalities Brian has seen in products that have insane retentive ability?? 5.) Where does Brian stand on market size and the potential for market transition down the line? Does the market even need to be there today for it to be investable today? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:  Brian’s Fave Book:  Zero To One By Peter Thiel Brian’s Most Recent Investment: Luma: Fast, Reliable Wifi As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Brian on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

Byron Deeter is a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Prior to being a VC, Byron himself was a veteran cloud CEO & Founder returning to venture capital in 2005 to lead Bessemer’s global cloud practice where he has been actively involved with over 100 cloud investments representing a third of the market cap of all public cloud companies. Byron has lead investments in the likes of Box, Twilio, Intercom, Cornerstone On Demand and many many more. Byron's pedigree is recognised globally as he is consistently ranked one of the top global investors across all industries. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Byron make his way into VC from being a veteran cloud CEO and Founder? 2.)  What are the commonalities angst the truly exceptional operators that Byron has worked with? What is it that makes the likes Aaron Levie so special? 3.) We saw a $63bn drop in late stage SaaS valuations, so what does this really mean for the early guys? In these markets should founders be placing greater emphasis on unit economics? 4.) With the increasing importance of customer retention will we see further increased growth in the field of customer success? How important is it really now for startups? 5.) How does Byron define efficient growth, what does cash is king mean? Where does Byron stand on the bottoms up sales approach, is this the new sales method of the 21st century? 6.) What have been the biggest takeaways for Byron of watching Box, Sendgrid, Twilio go into hyper growth mode and scale into the rocketships that they are Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:  Byron’s Fave Book: The Everything Store  Byron's Fave Productivity Tools: Clutter Byron's Fave Blog: Bleacher Report, Techcrunch  Byron’s Most Recent Investment: Rainforest QA As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Byron on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off! 

Mike Mignano is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Anchor, the app that allows you to share and engage with your network via audio, essentially radio for the people. Prior to founding Anchor, Mike was Head of Product @ Aviary, prior to it's acquisition by Adobe. Anchor was one of the hottest products at SXSW this year and has received funding from our good friends at Homebrew, SV Angel, Betaworks, Eniac Ventures, Scott Belsky and many more.   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Mike come to found one of the hottest new audio startups, Anchor? 2.) Why have we seen such a renaissance of podcast listening? Will this continue in the long term future and if so, what will drive the long term future growth? 3.) How did Mike use the beta testing phase to learn and iterate on customer behaviour? Following this, how did he implement this feedback to create a community that could be harnessed on launch? 4.) When examining alongside Sarah Tavel's hierarchy of engagement, how does Mike address retention and the creation of virtuous loops within Anchor? 5.) How does Mike fundamentally attempt to menthes Anchor? At what level of growth can the cash taps be turned on? How can Anchor be made to be revenue generating for both the platform and content creators? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Mike's Fave Blog: The Skimm Mike's Fave Book: Cat's Cradle Sarah Tavel's Hierarchy of Engagement Jakob Nielsen UX Designer   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Mike on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

John Frankel is the founding partner of ff Venture Capital and has been an early-stage investor since 1999. He has served on the boards of more than 35 companies and has led investments in more than 80 companies, including Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD), Indiegogo, Ionic Security, Unikey, Socure, Skycatch, Plated, 500px, Distil Networks, and Bottlenose. Prior to founding ffVC, John worked at Goldman Sachs for 21 years in a variety of roles that involved technology development, reengineering and capital markets. At Goldman Sachs, he worked closely with some of the world’s leading hedge fund managers and developed a keen understanding of emerging technologies and portfolio risk/return management.  In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did John make the move from Oxford grad to NYC venture capitalist? 2.) How has the massive decrease in startup costs affected the seed funding environment? How does David identify the startups he invests in with the plethora that are now available? 3.) How much of an extent is portfolio a branding tool for VCs? In recent years we have seen the rise of the operational VC model with the likes of Andreesen, will this continue as a prominent model in VC? 4.) How as a seed investor does John advise his founders when chasing a valuation that will only lead to a down round? What is John's views on the dreaded down round? 5.) Many companies pivot in the process? Does John like to see pivots? If pivoting what is it important for founders to remember and focus on? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:  John's Fave Book: The Accidental Superpower John's Most Recent Investment: Wade and Wendy As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and John on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

James Wise is a partner at Balderton Capital, one of Europe's leading early stage venture funds with $2.5B in funds. The youngest partner at a Series A fund in Europe, at 29 James has already led on deals including the likes of Crowdcube, SketchFab, 3D Hubs, Sunrise and Workable amongst others. He discusses his unusual background, coming into VC after previously setting up and running a charity, why he thinks geography matters less than every and why he continues to focus on areas in healthtech and edutech as well as many other emerging sectors.    In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) As Europe’s youngest venture partner, is venture capital a viable career going forward? What makes James say this? Has there been a time when you doubted this thesis and why? 2.) So it is a viable career, where do we go from here? Why should we choose venture in Europe over venture in the US? What are the inherent pros and cons? Does James get the itch to head to the Valley? 3.) So VC in Europe is the place to be, so why did James choose Balderton? There are a plethora of great and emerging funds in Europe, what attracted James to Balderton? 4.) What does the next 10 years of VC look like? Where we are heading? Although a viable career now, will this continue to be with increasing power of crowd sourced financing and decreasing startup costs? 5.) What advice would James give a young individual looking to get into the industry? How can an individual show their passion and inherent interest for VC and startups in a tangible way? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: James' Fave Blog: The Morning Paper by Adrian Colyer, Nathan Benaich Newsletter James' Fave Book: Score Takes Care Of Itself: Bill Walsh, Nick Bostrum: Superintelligence James' Most Recent Investment: Magic Pony As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and James on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!    

Nicolas Dessaigne is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Algolia. Algolia are a brilliant case study for the successful pivot, having started off life as an offline search engine for mobiles but really took off by helping companies deliver an intuitive search-as-you-type experience on their websites and mobile apps. They participated in Y Combinator's Winter 2014 batch and raised $18.3M in May 2015 from the likes of Accel Partners, Point Nine Capital, Storm Ventures and many more incredible investors.    In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Jonathan make his way into tech and come to found the likes of Friendster and Nuzzel? What were his biggest lessons from working at Netscape? 2.) How did Algolia go about crafting their company culture and how have they approached maintaining it as they have gone into hyper growth mode? 3.) What des Nicolas think are the most common challenges with regards to the building and maintenance of a company culture? What pitfalls and advice would Nicolas give to an early stage founder looking to build that culture from the offset? How can investors determine the strength and sustainability of the company culture when viewing startups? 4.) How was the fundraising process for Nicolas? How did the rounds differ from round to round? What elements surprised or challenged him? For Algolia, an incredibly hot startup, how did Nicolas go about about selecting which investors to have? 5.) Talking of the highly competitive round and the very excitable startup community, how do you respond to all of this insane hype and positivity. How do you ensure that you do not fall into the trap of drinking your own cool aid and remain grounded and humble? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode: Nicolas' Fave Blog: SaaStr Nicolas’ Fave Book: Creativity Inc As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Nicolas on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Logan Bartlett is an investor @ Battery Ventures, where he focuses on growth investments for B2B software companies. He is currently involved in Battery’s investment in Pendo and StreamSets. Before joining Battery, Logan was in investment banking with Spurrier Capital Partners, a boutique merchant bank focused on the technology sector. There, he sourced application-software deals with a focused on the marketing-automation sector as well as sales force automation, human-capital management, work management/collaboration, front-office analytics and data-services companies. Prior to that, Logan served as an investment banking analyst at Deutsche Bank focusing on financial technology.   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Logan made his way into the wonderful world of venture capital? 2.) So as young chap entering the industry, I would love to hear how you have gone abut trying to build your brand and identity? What are the key personal marketing strategies for you? How important do you think the brand of the VC is? How do you address the juxtaposition of branding and marketing yourself and battery? 3.) How does Logan approach the deal sourcing aspect of the job? What is his approach to this vital thesis? 3.) Moving to more financial matters I want to address both the seed end and the later stage end of the market today. So starting with the seed funding environment, in recent years we have seen a massive drop in the cost of company creation in conjunction with a large rise in seed funding,. What is the effect of this for you as a Series A-B investor, potentially located in what some may call the funding gap? 4.) You are very much located in the B2B space, d I am intrigued wht kind of ARR do you look for at the stage you are investing and what price point per customer do you believe allows for that ARR metric to be hit within a reasonably short amount of time? 5.) Moving to the later stages of the market I have seen in a slide of yours from the past that you stated that more institutional investors have made their way into the private markets and startups are staying private longer. You followed up by staying that this is a win win for all? Why do you think that is? Does it not mean later stage VCs are priced out of rounds due to the inflow of public money? Does it not mean later stage startups attain inflated valuation that will only lead to a down round at follow on or IPO? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Logan's Fave Book: Gang Leader For A Day Logan's Fave Blog Or Newsletter: Dan Primack: Term Sheet As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Logan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Neeraj Agrawal is a general partner at Battery Ventures investing in SaaS and Internet companies across all stages.  He was a founding investor in BladeLogic in 2001 and has invested in several other companies that have gone on to stage IPOs, including Bazaarvoice, Guidewire Software, Marketo, Omniture, RealPage and Wayfair. His current, private investments include AppDynamics, Catchpoint, Chef, Cohesity, Coupa, Glassdoor.com, Nutanix, Optimizely, Pendo, SmarterHQ, Sprinklr, StellaService, Tealium and Yesware. For the last six years, Neeraj has been recognized on the Forbes Midas List, which ranks the top 100 venture capitalists in the world.   Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Neeraj made his way into the world of VC? 2.)Question From Logan Bartlett: 'What is your thought process on what makes a good vs a bad deal? Also, how have you developed your ability to process deals and poke holes in logic?' 3.) How can early stage Saas founders determine the extent to their product market fit?? 4.) What is it like to back rocketships like GlassDoor or Marketo and helping scale operations when you’re in hyper growth mode? Does Neeraj agree with Sheryl Sandberg’s statement, it doesn’t matter where you sit, as long as you have a seat on the rocketship? 5.) Neeraj previously stated in a Nasdaq article that it is all about the team and the market. So I am intrigued what are Neeraj's thoughts on VC founder alignment? Neeraj also places emphasis on the market, so how does Neeraj view the juxtaposition between current and future market? 6.) One hurdle preventing some companies from growth is the ability to attain later rounds of funding so as a largely Series B investor, why is raising a Series B so tough? Is it the embodiment of the funding barbell? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Neeraj's Fave Blog: Brad Feld, Jason Lemkin Neeraj's Most Recent Investment: Pendo.io As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Neeraj on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

Jonathan Abrams is the founder & CEO of the social news service Nuzzel.  Jonathan is also co-founder and Managing Partner of Founders Den, a shared office space and private club for experienced entrepreneurs and their friends. Previously, Jonathan was the founder & CEO of Socializr, Friendster, and HotLinks, and a software engineer at companies such as Netscape and Nortel. Jonathan is a board member at Girls in Tech, an advisor to CodeNow, and has previously been a mentor in Steve Blank's entrepreneurship classes at Stanford and Berkeley, a top-rated mentor at The Founder Institute and a member of the advisory board of the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. Jonathan is also an angel investor in over 50 startups including AngelList, Docker, Front, HelloSign, Instacart, Sapho, Seed, Slideshare, Socialcam, and Vouch.   Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Jonathan make his way into tech and come to found the likes of Friendster and Nuzzel? What were his biggest lessons from working at Netscape? 2.) How can founders determine the customer stickiness and value proposition in the early days of product testing with friends and family? 3.) How does Jonathan view the competitive landscape for news aggregation? Why is consumer app such a competitive space? 4.) Question From Matt Mazzeo: How does Jonathan compare this moment in time to previous points in the innovation curve? 5.) Having worked with both the old and the new guard of VC, how does working with Lowercase, Homebrew and Softtech compare with the old guard of Benchmark and Kleiner Perkins? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jonathan's Fave Book: Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure, Jerry Kaplan As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jonathan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Roy Bahat is the head of Bloomberg Beta, a new venture fund backed by Bloomberg L.P. Prior to Bloomberg, Roy was chairman of OUYA, a new kind of game console, where he was the first investor. Before that Roy spent five years leading News Corporation’s IGN Entertainment, an online media company with a monthly audience of 70 million people, a top 10 YouTube channel, and the leading website in its category in almost every market globally. Roy served on the board of Revision3 (acquired by Discovery) and was a board observer at Flixster (acquired by Warner Bros). Before joining News Corp., Roy was in the public sector in the office of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and at New York’s 2012 Olympic bid.  In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Roy made his way into the world of VC from working alongside Mayor Michael Bloomberg? 2.) What do all these definitions within AI mean? What does artificial intelligence include? What is machine learning? What is deep learning? 3.) When we talk about AI are we talking pure AI , with the likes of Watson and DeepMind or are we talking consumer centric software with elements of AI? 4.) With data playing such a huge role in the efficiency of AI, do large incumbents like Google and Facebook not have a massive advantage? How can startups get access to datasets? Is AI not fundamentally an acquihire industry? 5.) How important has open source in allowing and encouraging the progression of the machine intelligence ecosystem? What more can be done to further it's growth? 6.) With the rise of machine intelligence, what does the future of work look like? How will we live in a world where 47% of white collar jobs will be replaced by machines and AI? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Roy's Fave Book: Watershed Down Roy's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Media ReDefined by Jason Hirschhorn, Asim Azar, the exponential view As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Roy on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Director of Felicis Ventures. An original “super-angel” investor, he was named to Forbes’ 2014 and 2015 Midas List and previously appeared as one of the top 15 tech angels by Businessweek. Aydin is well-known as an early backer of a number of iconic companies including Shopify (NYSE:SHOP), Fitbit (NYSE:FIT), Adyen, Clearslide, Credit Karma, and Rovio. More than 55 Felicis companies such as Brightroll, Climate Corp, Dropcam, Twitch, and Meraki, have been acquired by industry leaders such as Google, Amazon, Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, AT&T, Disney, Yahoo and Ebay.   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Aydin made his way into the world of VC from being a Senior Manager @ Google? 2.) What does Aydin suggest to all those looking to make the move into VC who have potentially, an unconventional background?? 3.) What caused Aylin's shift from angel investor to VC ? What was Aydin's investment strategy look like at the beginning and how has that evolved over time? How does Aydin look to differentiate Felicis from the plethora of seed funds? 4.) How does Felicis' stage agnosticity work in practicality for Aydin and the fund itself? How much of a role does valuation play in Felicis' investment decision making? 5.) Question from Rob Hayes @ First Round: How did the Rovio investment come about? Why do you say you are most proud if it? 6.) Question From Hiten Shah: How do you approach the topic of growing the organisation, whilst still supporting founders with the same time and quality? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Aydin's Fave Book: Anti-Fragile Aylin's Most Recent Investment: Diffbot As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Aydin on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

Gagan Biyani is the CEO and Co-Founder @ Sprig, on a mission to build the world's largest restaurant providing healthy and sustainable food. Sprig has attained funding from the likes of Greylock Partners, Accel and Battery Partners. Prior to Sprig, Gagan was the Interim Head of Marketing @ Lyft, where he wrote the first Lyft new market launch playbook and launched Lyft LA. Before that Gagan, was the Co-Founder and CEO of the world's largest online teaching and learning marketplace with the founding of Udemy.   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) What was the origin story for Sprig? What was the aha moment? 2.) Question from Josh Elman: What lessons have Sprig and Gagan learnt from Chipotle, both in terms of their growth and their food? 3.) What are the coolest things that Gagan has learnt about foods that have learnt and not worked from user and product testing? 4.) On TWIST Gagan stated that the food delivery market is a winner take all market , so what makes Gagan believe that and what will ensure that Sprig is the startup that will be victorious? 5.) How do Sprig address expansion theory? Are they the Uber or the Lyft in terms of aggressive market expansion? How do Sprig choose which new market to enter? Is there a scientific approach? 6.) From having raised 9 rounds of VC and angel funding, what are Gagan's biggest tips and takeaways to anyone entering the VC or funding process? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Gagan's's Fave Book: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Gagan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

Sarah Tavel is a Partner at Greylock Partners. Prior to Greylock, Sarah was a product lead at Pinterest. As one of the first 35 employees, her first order of business was to launch Pinterest internationally and close the Series C financing. Sarah then moved into product, becoming Pinterest’s founding PM for search and discovery, and launching Pinterest’s first search and recommendations features. She also led three acquisitions as she helped the company scale through a period of hyper-growth. Sarah joined Pinterest in 2012 after co-leading the Series A investment while at Bessemer Venture Partners. She spent six years at Bessemer, investing in a wide range of businesses from Quidsi to Cornerstone OnDemand.     In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sarah made her way into the world of VC from selling ads in college? 2.) What is the deal sourcing story behind your sourcing of Pinterest for Bessemer? What made Sarah so excited about the product? At what stage did Sarah realise the huge potential Pinterest did have? 3.) How did Sarah decide Greylock was the right VC to choose over the plethora of other options? 4.) How does Sarah try and appeal to the inner founder? What does she do to make sure she is the first person they call? What forms of communication does Srah like to communicate with? 5.) What is Sarah's attitude to VC's personal brand? How has Sarah seen the personalisation of VC in recent years? Why the shift from blog to Medium? 6.) What is the most important attribute for a consumer product to have? Does it have to be both 10X better and cheaper? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Sarah's's Fave Book: Creating The Kingdom Of Ends Sarah's Fave Blog or Newsletter: A Crowded Space by Josh Breinlinger As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Josh on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Josh Elman is a Partner at Greylock Partners, which he joined the team in 2011 and invests in entrepreneurs building new consumer products and services. Josh specializes in designing, building, and scaling consumer products, having been part of multiple companies that have grown to more than 100 million users. Before joining Greylock, Josh was the product lead for growth and relevance at Twitter, growing Twitter’s active user base by nearly 10x. Prior to Twitter, Josh worked on the platform at Facebook and was an early employee at LinkedIn helping establish models for user growth and launched v1 of LinkedIn Jobs. Josh currently serves on the boards of Medium, Meerkat, Operator, Discord, and Jelly.   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Josh made his move into the VC world from Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook? 2.) What were the biggest takeaways of watching fb, Linkedin and Twitter to hyper growth mode? 3.) Question from Jeff Seibert: What would Josh do with the Twitter product today?? 4.) How would Josh apply his principles of the on boarding process to Twitter? What does he mean when he refers to the ladder of engagement? 5.) How does Josh respond to Fred Wilson's out on the consumer downturn? Is consumer really as hard as Fred makes it out to be? What sort of metrics really get Josh excited when viewing consumer startups? 6.) How has Josh's own investment decision making process been honed and refined since joining Greylock? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Josh's Fave Book: Built To Last: Successful Habits Of Visionary Companies Josh's Most Recent Investment: Discord: Free Voice and Text Chat For Gamers   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Josh on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Baiju Bhatt is the Co-Founder and CEO at RobinHood, the wildly successful stock market trading app with absolutely no commission fees. Since launching RobinHood there have been many amazing milestones including being awarded an Apple Design Award (first Finch company ever to achieve this), funding from the likes of Index, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and even movie star Jared Leto. They were also nominated for best mobile app at The Crunchies by TechCrunch this year. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Baiju made his way into the world of tech and came to found RobinHood? 2.) How did Baiju deal with the regulatory hurdles heading into the fintech and trading world? 3.) How did Baiju go about building the waitlist for RobinHood to 1m people? What were the defining strategies and channels that made the difference? 4.) What is the thesis behind the design of RobinHood? Will this design enable previously untouched markets to tap into the growing trading market? 5.) What are the biggest challenges for Baiju and RobinHood going forward? What keeps Baiju up at night? What is Baiju's biggest piece of advice to a founder scaling their startup? 6.) How can early stage founders really determine whether they have product market fit and what does this look like? What re the metrics required to suggest serious traction? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Baiju's Fave Blog or Newsletter: TechCrunch Baiju's Fave Productivity Tool: Slack Baiju's Fave Book: The Case For Mars As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Baiju on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Paige Craig is a Founder and General Partner of Arena Ventures. He is an experienced angel investor who has invested in over 110 startups in the last seven years, including companies like Lyft, AngelList, Wish, Postmates, Twitter, Styleseat, Zenpayroll, Quizup and more. Paige spent the first half of his career in the Marine Corps and US Intelligence Community and later launched a defense contractor, driving alone into Iraq in 2003 with just $10,000 and expanding operations across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa and Southeast Asia. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Paige made his way into the wonderful world of VC? 2.) What were Paige's biggest takeaways from his previous career in the military? How did this shape his investment thesis? 3.) Arena VC have both the fund and the AngelList syndicate, why did Paige choose this dual model? What have been the drivers of it's success? 4.) What does Paige believe makes a great VC? What aspects of himself would he like to improve upon? Is an inherent fight mode common among VCs? 5.) What advice would Paige give to someone looking to start a syndicate? What would Craig recommend to someone looking to join a syndicate? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode: Paige’s Fave Book: Ender's Game  Paige’s Fave Blog or Newsletter: Mattermark Daily   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Paige on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Satya Patel is a Partner @ Homebrew alongside Hunter Walk. Prior to Homebrew, Satya was VP Product at Twitter, building and leading the Product Management and User Services teams. Before Twitter, Satya was a Partner at Battery Ventures, where he co-led the seed and early stage investing practices. In 2003, Satya joined Google and was responsible for AdSense product management and partnerships. Before heading to Silicon Valley for Google, I worked for DoubleClick, in venture capital and as a strategy consultant. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Satya made his way into the world of tech and came to Partner with Hunter @ Homebrew? 2.) Is hustle the key component of a great VC? What does Satya believes makes a great investor? 4.) How can startups present emotion and depict their narrative to the VC? What are the benefits of doing so? What founder is most 5.) From Satya's experience, what are the most common reasons startups fail at the seed stage? What can they do to maximise their chances of survival? 6.) We always hear that products should focus on a niche but how then do you attract VC money that is looking for a broad opportunity that can return the fund? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Satya’s Fave Blog or Newsletter: CB Insights, Fred Wilson, Brad Feld Satya’s Fave Book: A Fine Balance As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Satya on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Branko Cerny is the Founder and CEO at Immediately, the mobile platform for modern sales professionals whose mission is to elevate sales back to it’s core foundation, a relationship driven craft. Immediately has some of the US’s finest backing in terms of investment with the likes of Naval Ravikant @ AngelList, Ryan Holmes @ Hootsuite, Jonathan Abrams @ Friendster and Nuzzel and previous guest Kate Shillo @ Galvanize. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Branko made his way into the world of tech and came to be CEO @ Immediately? 2.) How does Branko find being one of the youngest enterprise CEO in the business? What are the challenges and what are the benefits? 3.) What can enterprise companies learn from the likes of Tinder and Equinox? How important is brand building for emerging enterprise sales companies? 4.) To what extent will we see the bottoms up sales process continue in enterprise sales? How does this change Immediately approach to UX, UI and brand building? Why did Branko choose to focus on a mobile platform with Immediately? 5.) How did Branko come to meet his stellar lineup of investors? What value add was he looking for when assembling the lineup? Is he concerned by the large number of investors Immediately has at an early stage? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Branko's Fave Blog or Newsletter: First Round Review, Nir Eyal Branko's Fave Productivity Tool: Intercom, Moleskin Notebook (Harry's Productivity Tool too!) Branko's Fave Book: American Gods by Neil Gaiman As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Branko on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? A hundred? A thousand? The answer is too many. But here’s the thing—even though I knew I wanted to do something about it, I didn’t know how. It’s called SaneBox. SaneBox sorts through your email and moves all of the trivial stuff into a different folder so the only messages in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see. Visit sanebox.com/20VC today and they’ll throw in an extra $20 credit on top of the two-week free trial. 

Rebecca Kaden is a Partner at Maveron where she identifies emerging consumer-focused entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Southern California, and New York. Rebecca also plays a leading role in Maveron's seed program, where they partner with emerging consumer companies at their earliest stages. She’s a Board Observer at August, Common, Darby Smart, Dolls Kill, Eargo, Earnest and General Assembly. Her outstanding achievements have been recognised by Forbes who included Rebecca is their annual '30 Under 30'.   As always we would like thank the awesome team at Mattermark for providing us with all the data and analysis for the show today, check out Mattermark search here!   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rebecca made her way into the wonderful world of VC? 2.) Maveron have shown their belief in the consumerisation of IOT. What are Rebecca's thoughts on the space, how it is progressing, barriers that are preventing mass adoption? 3.) What is your take on the integration of messaging and chat with IOT? Whis there a recent broader market positivity towards chat interfaces at the moment? 4.) Maveron have also shown their likeability towards hardware investments so why is this? Why do Maveron not feel the broader VC market concerns of shipping, logistics? Are we seeing a shift in investing patterns in hardware? 5.) How do Rebecca approach the common problem with consumer startups transtioning from an early adopter market to a mass market product?  What does Rebecca feel is the tipping point? What is necessary to make the transition from SF hipster client to everyone? 6.) What are the benefits are of having a narrow investing thesis (only consumer)? How has Rebecca found it? Is it challenging when finding companies you would like to invest in but are outside the mandate? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Rebecca's Fave Book: Pale Fire, Vladamir Nobokov Rebecca's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Sarah Tavel, Brad Feld, Wait But Why Rebecca's Most Recent Investment: Booster Fuels   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Rebecca on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? A hundred? A thousand? The answer is too many. But here’s the thing—even though I knew I wanted to do something about it, I didn’t know how. It’s called SaneBox. SaneBox sorts through your email and moves all of the trivial stuff into a different folder so the only messages in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see. Visit sanebox.com/20VC today and they’ll throw in an extra $20 credit on top of the two-week free trial.   

Rob Hayes is a partner at First Round Capital where he opened up the firm's San Francisco office. Over the past eight years, he has led investments in companies such as Mint.com (acquired by Intuit), Gnip (acquired by Twitter), Square, Uber, eero, and Planet Labs. Prior to joining First Round, Rob became the first venture investor at Omidyar Network, the investment firm started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. While there, he led most of the initial venture capital deals and later built and ran the technology investing group. Before that, Rob worked at Palm, where he product managed Palm OS and started the company's corporate venture fund. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rob made his move into the VC world from working with Palm in the heyday? 2.) Question From David Hornik : How did Rob's seed investment in Uber originate? What made Rob invest? Did Rob realise the potential for Uber when he invested? When did Rob realize it was going to be huge? 3.) Has the investment in Uber changed how Rob views seed investing? Talking of the Uber’s of the world, how do you ensure that you find and decide to invest in the next Uber, when it raises a seed round? 4.) In terms of deal closing, how does Rob approach that element of the deal and what was the competition and closing environment around the Uber deal? 5.) Question from Satya at Homebrew: Stepping back and looking at First Round, what has changed in FRC’s approach as the firm has grown? How does the firm think about managing generational transition? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Rob's Fave Book: Travels with Charley: John Steinbeck Rob's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Dan Primack: Term Sheet Rob's Most Recent Investment: eero: Blanket Your Home In Fast, Reliable Wifi   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Rob on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? A hundred? A thousand? The answer is too many. But here’s the thing—even though I knew I wanted to do something about it, I didn’t know how. It’s called SaneBox. SaneBox sorts through your email and moves all of the trivial stuff into a different folder so the only messages in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see. Visit sanebox.com/20VC today and they’ll throw in an extra $20 credit on top of the two-week free trial.

Puneet Mehta, Founder @ Msg.ai, an artificial intelligence startup for conversational commerce and for an AI founder you don’t get much better than starting your career at IBM's TJ Watson Center, which is exactly what Puneet did. He then went on to build predictive platforms to power large-scale trading systems aka bots on Wall St. It is clearly not joust us who think he is awesome as Advertising Age named Puneet to the Creativity 50 list in 2014, honoring the most creative and innovative thinkers and doers. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Puneet made his way into the world of AI and came to be the founder of YC's latest, Msg.ai? 2.) How has the YC experience been for Msg.ai and for Puneet as a founder? Have YC been able to keep the same quality of mentorship with the largely expanding number in their latest batch?  3.) VC funding is usually very available to YC alums graduating, how will Puneet go about picking his investors? What are the fundamental determinants? 4.) What have been the biggest takeaways for Puneet? What has been the highlight? What has been tough? What was surprising and unexpected? How did Puneet deal with the requirement for 10% weekly growth? 5.) Taking a step back now, Puneet has stated before about building the Turing test for money. So what does he mean by this and how does he look at AI as a key driver for conversational commerce? 6.) What is it about messaging that makes Puneet believe this is the platform of the future? What is it that bots provide that has never been possible before? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Puneet's Fave Book: Peter Thiel: Zero To One, The Power of Now: Eckhart Tolle  Puneet's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Paul Graham: Blog As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Puneet on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   This episode was supported by Wunder Capital, the leading online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in large scale solar projects across the U.S. Wunder’s solar investment funds allow you to earn up to 11% annually, while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. Do well by doing good and sign up for a free account here and join the thousands of people that are already achieving their investment targets.

Ciaran O'Leary is the General Partner at one of Europe's newest funds, BlueYard. A $120m fund located at the early stage, centring around 3 key areas: The decentralisation of markets, the democratisation of capabilities, and the liberation of data. Prior to BlueYard, Ciaran was a Partner at Earlybird with investments in the likes of Peak Games (emerging markets social gaming), 6Wunderkinder (productivity apps), Moped (private messaging), B2X Care Solutions (outsourcing platform), madvertise (mobile targeting network) and simfy (digital music distribution company). Before Earlybird, Ciarán co-founded a startup and gathered operational experience at others. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ciaran made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What is the thesis with BlueYard? What is the preferred cheque size, sector and geography? 3.) With the mass of VCs emerging, how can startups at the early stage determine whether a VC really is early stage? Are there any defining characteristics? 4.) For startup founders out there who always hear from fellow founders that everything is going gangbusters, how should they react to that? How can you determine whether a startup really is doing well? 5.) Say the startup really is going well and they are looking to scale and hire, we always hear we need a world beating, world class X? How can they communicate that hire better to their current team and their board? What should the CEO or Head of Talent be focusing on when viewing talent? Is there anything they should look out for in particular? 6.) Now when a startup really scales, board meetings become a big part of a CEO’s life. So how can CEO’s turn useless board meetings into very useful value added meetings? How can they optimize that time? What should they look for? What should they ask for? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Ciaran's Fave Book: The Road Ciaran's Fave Blog: The Economist Espresso As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Ciaran on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Matt Mazzeo is Managing Director at Lowercase Capital, alongside legendary angel investor, Chris Sacca. At Lowercase Matt leads a seed and series A investment strategy managing a portfolio of over forty investments including Uber, Twitter, Stripe and Optimizely just to name a few. Prior to joining Lowercase Capital, Matt spearheaded many of the digital and venture efforts at Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Matt helped shape the agency’s seed stage investment strategy and played an integral role in the founding of CAA’s incubated start-up companies, including Funny or Die, WhoSay, and Moonshark. Matt has been recognized as an innovative force across technology, entertainment, and advertising for which Fast Company named Matt one of the Most Creative People in Business. In addition to making Forbes Midas Brink List in 2014, Matt has been recognized on both Ad Age’s 40 Under 40 List in 2013, and The Wrap’s Inaugural Innovators List.  In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Matt made the transition from the world of celebrity management to the world of venture capital? 2.) How have we seen the personalisation of VCs in the emerging eco-system? Are VCs themselves brands now? How does Matt look to establish his brand? 3.) What are the required KPI's to make a successful investor? What is Matt pleased with in himself and what would he like to improve? 4.) Why will we see the decentralisation of VC away from the traditional Sand Hill Road? How does being in LA affect the operations and deal flow of Lowercase? 5.) What are Matt's biggest learnings from being partner with Chris? What has Matt founded the most challenging in making the transition from CAA to VC?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Matt's Fave Book: Fooled By Randomness Matt's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Jessica Lessin: The Information Matt's Most Recent Investment: Mobcrush   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Matt on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   This episode was supported by Wunder Capital, the leading online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in large scale solar projects across the U.S. Wunder’s solar investment funds allow you to earn up to 11% annually, while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. Do well by doing good and sign up for a free account here and join the thousands of people that are already achieving their investment targets.  

Niccolo De Masi is the CEO & Chairman @ Glu Mobile, one of the world’s hottest gaming companies with title including the current No 1 Game in the App Store with the Kendall and Kylie Game, Glu is also the maker of the Kim Kardashian game and the likes of Deer Hunter and many more. Prior to Glu, Niccolo was CEO at mobile entertainment company Hands On Mobile and before that Niccolo was the CEO at London listed mobile entertainment company, Monstermob Group Plc. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) What does Niccolo make of the wildly unrealistic pricing applied to early stage startups today? What will result from this incredibly optimistic pricing? 2.) If Niccolo were a VC today, how would he respond to the impending implosion of the early stage startups? What are the best VCs currently doing and what can startups do to preserve as much value as possible? 3.) How central a role does first mover advantage become in a down turning market? Will we see large scale consolidation and if so what will the effects of this be? How can startups position themselves to be the consolidator not the consolidated? 4.) How do Glu pick the celebrities that are featured for their celebrity feature games? What are the KPI's? What are the requirements in terms of existing brand and audience for a celebrity game to be a success? 5.) Why are women better at establishing larger social following than men? What celebrities would Niccolo most like to have on Glu's platform who they currently do not have?   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Niccolo on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Christian Hernandez is the Co-Founder and Partner @ Whitestar Capital in London. Prior to co-founding White Star Capital, Christian worked at Facebook and led the international expansion of the company’s Business Development, Platform and Developer Network groups. He previously held leadership roles in the U.S. and Europe at Google and Microsoft and started his career in technology at MicroStrategy, a startup he joined prior to its 1999 IPO. Christian has worked closely with entrepreneurs and leading VCs and has been an active angel investor and advisor.  He represents White Star on the Boards of KeyMe, Glow Media, Bloglovin’ and Hole 19. Christian also serves as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Christian made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Having worked with the likes of Facebook, Google and Microsoft, how has Christian seen the ecosystem develop; for both the good and the bad? 3.) Moving to White Star specifically now, what is the thesis, investment mandate? Average cheque size, preferred sectors? Geography? Talking of geography, WSC has a transatlantic model with offices in both London and NYC, why is that? What are the benefits of having this spread? 4.) According to Mattermark, White Star have 38% of your portfolio in mobile, so what are Christians views on the evolution of mobile? How does he respond to Fred Wilson’s post about the mobile downtown and the difficulty in attaining and maintaining traction for mobile apps? What are Christian's thoughts on discovery? 5.) Where does Christian stand on the relationship between growth and revenue? Are there any cases where it can be beneficial to focus solely on growth? In today’s environment, with VCs moderating their valuations more, is it possible to raise on pure momentum growth? 6.) Christian recently wrote an article: ‘Hiring For The Future Of Your Company’, so what does he really mean by this? Is it not a little ironic coming from the VC scene, an inherently risky asset class who have a fundamental unwillingness to move away from the old hiring style of investment bank or consultancy, in many cases? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Christian's Fave Book: Physics of the Future Christian's Fave Blog: Medium, Nuzzel Christian's Most Serendipitous Investment: Keyme As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Christian on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Tom Tunguz is a Partner @ Redpoint Ventures, where he has invested in Axial, Dremio, Expensify, Electric Imp, Looker, and ThredUP. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google’s AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. Tom is also the author of the world famous blog and newsletter which can be found at http://tomtunguz.com We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Tom made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What does the huge drop in late stage saas valuations mean for the early guys? Does Tom expect them to hunker down? Take more time? Spend less cash? 3.) In recent years with the likes of Zenefits, we have seen the rise of Free Saas Enabled Marketplaces, why have we seen this rise, what are the benefits of adopting this strategy? Does the lack of predictability and lower (30%) gross margin not generate concern towards the model? 4.) Where does Tom see room for real innovation in SaaS? Is Tom excited about mobile enterprise? 5.) Question from Javier Soltero @ Microsoft: How have you approached developing your 'personal' brand and how that has made an impact in your development as an investor? 6.) Question from Eric ver Ploeg (episode 70) and Tak Lo (Episode 37): Where does Tom generate the ideas for articles and what does the idea creation process look like?’ What does the scheduling look like to churn our such high quality content on a daily occurrence? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Tom's Fave Book: Narcissus and Goldmund Tom's Fave Blog: Saastr, David Skok Tom's Most Recent Investment: Dremio As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Tom on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Hiten Shah is one of the most prominent players in the data marketing industry having co-Founded both KissMetrics (raised $10m+ VC Funding) and Crazy Egg (bootstrapped), both wildly successful businesses serving some of the world's largest companies. Hiten is also an extremely successful angel investor with investments in the likes of Buffer, Mattermark and MessageMe (acquired by Yahoo.) In addition, Hiten is also a serial startup advisor having been an advisor with Linkedin, SlideShare and Wordpress' Automattic. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Hiten made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Why did Hiten decide to take VC funding for on startup and not the other? Did taking VC funding allow for much greater growth or make him less resourceful and creative? 3.) How have Hiten's entrepreneurial endeavours altered his attitude to investing? How does Hiten's large personal brand add to his investing style? 4.) Hiten has said before that he likes to ask founders 'what is their earliest most traumatic memory'? Why is that and what does Hiten learn from that? 5.) Question from Erik Torenberg @ ProductHunt: How does Hiten assess which startups he wants to spend time with as an advisor?  6.) Question from Ryan Hoover @ ProductHunt: What is the most counter-intuitive advice for this starting a company? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode: Hiten’s Fave Book: The War of Art Hiten’s Fave Blog: 731 Users Reveal Why Slack Is So Addictive As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Hiten on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Jim Scheinman is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Maven Ventures, a leading seed stage consumer VC with investments in the likes of AngelList, WealthFront and Altspace. Prior to founding Maven, Jim was a pioneer in the early days of the social media revolution as Head of Business Development and Sales at the first social networking site, Friendster. However, in 2005, Jim left Friendster to join co-founders Michael and Xochi Birch to launch Bebo as the first employee and Board member. Bebo later went on to become a unicorn for Jim, however, that was not his only unicorn as he was also an investor in Tango ($bn valuation) and NBCi (IPOd for 6bn.) We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jim made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What was it like being in the midst of the social media revolution as it was taking place? How does Jim view the social scene today? Why does Jim think there is skepticism to investing in social? 3.) On consumer mobile Fred Wilson stated: ‘doing anything in the consumer mobile space is super hard. i can’t think of many consumer mobile apps that have gained massive traction and sustained it. can you?' So why is the space so hard? Is it not a monopoly play with the dominant incumbents?  4.) How has Jim seen the consumer landscape develop over the last decade with the rise of mobile? How can you tackle the distribution challenges inherent within mobile? Does Jim agree that with mobile consumer product market fit is no longer enough to gain a large user base? 5.) What are the core elements of building a successful consumer business? What are the challenges? Is there a pareto’s principle on this, with 20% determining 80% of the returns? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jim's Fave Book: The Boys In The Boat  Jim's Fave Blog: Mattermark, Strictly VC, TechCrunch Jim's Most Recent Investment: HomeMade As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jim on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Andy McLoughlin is a Partner with SoftTech VC, where he primarily invests in B2B, SaaS, developer tools and mobile applications. Prior to joining SoftTech, Andy was co-founder of London-based Huddle, under Andy’s leadership, Huddle became one of Europe’s most awarded and well-known technology startups, raising over $80M of venture funding to date. Since 2010 Andy has been a prolific angel investor building a portfolio covering 35 startups, mostly in the SaaS / B2B space. Just to name a few of the investments from his incredible portfolio Andy was an angel in the likes of Buffer, Intercom, Pipedrive, Postmates, Secret Escapes, just to name a few. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Andy made his startup as an entrepreneur and then VC? 2.) What was it that made Andy make the move from the world of entrepreneurship to VC? 3.) As a seed stage investor, what does Andy make of the Series A crunch? How prevalent has it been for him as an investor? What is the optimal amount of runway founders should raise for? 4.) What does Andy think of the size and cadence of the first funding rounds that we are seeing now? What does he make of the rise of the second seed or the bridge round? Is it an indication of trouble? 5.) SoftTech are near the closing of Fund V, so what is the thesis and the mission going forward? What themes and spaces is Andy most excited by and why? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Andy's Fave Book: The New York Trilogy, Hatching Twitter Andy's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Medium Newsletter, Mark Suster: Both Sides Of The Table Andy's Most Recent Investment: Captain401   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Andy on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   This episode was supported by Wunder Capital, the leading online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in large scale solar projects across the U.S. Wunder’s solar investment funds allow you to earn up to 11% annually, while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. Do well by doing good and sign up for a free account here and join the thousands of people that are already achieving their investment targets.

Gary Liu is the CEO @ Digg, the incredibly famous platform that allows users to find, read and share the most talked about stories on the internet. Prior to joining Digg, Gary was an early employee at Spotify holding numerous positions including, Head of Spotify Labs and Global Director of Ad Product Strategy. Gary joined Spotify from AOL, where he was the Director of Sales Strategy and Operations at Patch. Before joining AOL, Gary was a business and sales operations leader at Google and Clickable. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Gary made his entry into the world of tech and later became CEO at Digg? 2.) What were Gary's biggest takeaways from his time at Google and being an early employee at Spotfiy? How has he adapted those learnings to his role now at Digg? 3.) What really happened at Digg? What went wrong? Why did Digg not live up to the early hype of being the darling of the internet age? How are Digg evolving to change this? 4.) In the vastly competitive space of content creation and distribution, how do Digg stand out and differentiate themselves from the plethora of options available to consumers? 5.) How do Digg try to engage and unite the community through the commenting process without alienating people through the potential for malicious posts and trolling? 6.) How does a platform like Digg plan to monetize content with the ever disappearing ad dollar? Does it concern Gary or does he see potential in other avenues? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Gary's Fave Book: J.D Salinger, The Catcher and The Rye Gary's Fave Blog: Jon Russell, Asia Tech News Review As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Gary on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Adam Draper is a fourth generation venture capitalist and the Founder & CEO @ Boost VC, a specialised seed stage accelerator that invests in blockchain and virtual reality startups. Before starting Boost, Adam angel invested in 20 companies including Coinbase, Plangrid and Practice Fusion. During his angel investment period, Adam was also the Founder of Xpert Financial in his aim to revolutionise the financial markets for private companies. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Adam made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Why is Adam so bullish on the topics of bitcoin and virtual reality? 3.) What are the fundamental use cases for bitcoin and why have we not seen mass adoption on a global scale so far? What are the barriers to adoption? 4.) What is the investment attitude to the bitcoin and VR space? Does the volatility of the price in bitcoin affect the level of investment going into the sector? 5.) What would Adam like to see more of in the space? What is he most excited for and where does he see the most potential? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Adam's Fave Book: The Name Of The Wind Adam's Fave Blog: Mugglenet Adam's Most Recent Investment: Joystream As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Adam on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Tim Draper is the founding partner of leading venture capital firms Draper Associates and DFJ. Some of his Venture successes include Skype, Baidu, Tesla, Hotmail, Twitch.tv, and hundreds of others. Fun fact about Tim, it was his original suggestion to use viral marketing in web-based email to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail, YahooMail, and Gmail and has been adopted as a standard marketing technique by thousands of businesses. His prominence is evident through his being named 100 most influential Harvard Alumni, and seven on the Forbes Midas List. He was named Always-On #1 top venture capital deal maker. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Tim made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Having founded Draper Associates in 1985, how has Tim seen the investing landscape develop over time? 3.) Draper obviously invests across a variety of stage, but what is Tim's preferred stage? Where does he see the most opportunity for venture returns? Why? 4.) Of all the companies Tim has seen, which was the best pitch? Why? Which founder inspired Tim the most? Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently? 5.) What is DraperU? What are the plans for the future? What is the vision? Why did Tim choose to do a reality show in StartupU? Has it been a very different experience being the lead in a TV show compared to investing in startups? 6.)Why is behind Tim's immense belief in Bitcoin. Why is this? When did Tim realize the potential? How long will adoption take? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Tim's Fave Book: The Startup Game by William Draper, Michael Rothschild: Bionomics Tim's Most Recent Investment: Laurel and Wolf, Favor Delivery As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Tim on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Niccolo De Masi is the CEO & Chairman @ Glu Mobile, one of the world's hottest gaming companies with title including the current No 1 Game in the App Store with the Kendall and Kylie Game, Glu is also the maker of the Kim Kardashian game and the likes of Deer Hunter and many more. Prior to Glu, Niccolo was CEO at mobile entertainment company Hands On Mobile and before that Niccolo was the CEO at London listed mobile entertainment company, Monstermob Group Plc. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Niccolo came to be CEO at one of the world's hottest gaming companies, Glu Mobile? 2.) How did Niccolo make the transition from feature phone business to smartphone business with Glu so successfully? How did Glu's public market status affect the transition? 3.) How important is transparency within organisations as a leader, whether it be Founder or CEO? What are the important elements to communicate with your team and your investors? 4.) Why are private market valuations so misaligned with the public market? What will happen to the plethora of newly made unicorns?  5.) How does Niccolo source potential acquisition targets, what does he look for in, so called 'well valued assets'? What makes them well valued? 6.) What is Niccolo's turnaround strategy for his acquisition targets? How can Glu's platform elevate companies that are in distress? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Niccolo's Fave Book: The Rise and Fall Of The Great Powers  As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Niccolo on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Tyler Willis is probably one of the best angel investors around and has invested in seed stage companies that have gone on to raise from the likes of Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures and others. Some of these investments include the likes of wildly popular ride sharing app Lyft, the incredible Patreon (now delivering 2m a month to creators) and Change.org which now has over 80m users. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here!   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Tyler made it into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Where does Tyler sit on investor specialisation? Is it best to have preferred sectors and round sizes? 3.) What elements are essential for Tyler pre investment and what can be tweaked later down the line? 4.) Question from Arielle Zuckerberg: How does Tyler evaluate customer acquisition so well? What is his approach to this with potential investments and portfolio companies? 5.) Why are people so negative on the future of innovation? Is Founders Fund's 'we expected flying cars and instead got 140 characters' fair? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Tyler's Fave Book: Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen Tyler's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Mattermark Daily As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Tyler on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Arielle Zuckerberg, Partner @ Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Arielle Zuckerberg joined KPCB in 2015 and focuses on early-stage investments in the firm’s digital practice as part of the venture team. Arielle joined Kleiner from Humin, where she led product for the company’s mobile apps. She started her career as a product manager by day and Hackathon host by night at Wildfire Interactive, Inc., which was acquired by Google in 2012. After the acquisition, Arielle worked as a product manager on social ads at Google. Outside of KPCB, Arielle has made several angel investments across the food tech and health sectors in the likes of Partender, Bitty Foods and The Ticket Fairy, just to name a few. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Arielle made it into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What has the move been like from angel to VC? What theories and investment theses are adjustable? How doe the fiduciary responsibility to your LP's adjust your risk profile when investing? 3.) Questions from Tyler Willis: How does Arielle evaluate new products? How does Arielle learn and how does Ariele come down on the learning curve on new things so quickly (new investor to KPCB in ~2 years, for example). 4.) Arielle has now spent her first few months in venture, what have been the biggest surprises? Biggest challenges? What is Arielle's fave part and what is her least fave part? 5.) How does Arielle see the AI space now? Where does she see room for innovation? Is there anything Arielle is concerned about? 6.) Now when doing research for this interview I came across Arielle's New Years Resolution list from 2012! So what are your new years resolutions for 2016? What are the goals you are aiming for? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Arielle's Fave Book: The Symposium by Plato As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Arielle on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Ryan Caldbeck is the Founder & CEO @ CircleUp, the online investing platform that allows you to invest in innovative consumer companies. They have raised funding from some of the best including USV, Maveron and Canaan Partners (all past guests). Before Ryan founded CircleUp, he worked in consumer product and retail-focused private equity at TSG Consumer Partners and Encore Consumer Capital exposing him to many great consumer and retail businesses that were too small to obtain funding through the customary private equity channels. As a result, he decided to make funding available to these promising companies through CircleUp. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ryan made the move from the world of VC to founding his own tech startup? 2.) Why is CircleUp marketplace investing, not crowdfunding? What does Ryan believe are the misnomers around the term crowdfunding? 3.) Where do you see this sector making sense and where does he think it is not so efficient? Why is it wrong for tech companies? 4.) One manjor aspect in the UK that this segment has struggled with is it’s ability to attract institutional investors to the sector. So with CircleUp, how are institutional investors getting into this market and is there anything more Ryan would like to see with this regard? 5.) To what extent does Ryan think this is disrupting private capital formation? Should VCs be concerned? What sector of the funding environment is most vulnerable to being disrupted by the rise of marketplace investing? 6.) How was the funding process for Ryan? CircleUp raised over $30m over several rounds with investors from our friends at USV and Maveron, how that came about and what Ryan would advise founders entering the process? Items Mentioned In Todays Show: Ryan's Fave Blog: AVC, Jeff Jordan, Bill Gurley As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC and Harry on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Dustin Dolginow is the General Partner @ Maiden Lane, the first online venture fund which uses AngelList as it's operating system, serving as the institutional capital partner to the best angel investors in the world. Dustin has made investments in the likes of Getable, PipeDrive, Beepi and many more incredible companies. Dustin is also a venture partner with Accomplice where he serves some of the best entrepreneurs on the planet. Prior to investing, Andy cut his teeth in the operations game with Social Swipe, which allowed merchants to gain more value from their transaction data.   Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Dustin made it into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What were Dustin's major takeaways from his operational experience and how has he applied them to his role investing with Maiden Lane? 3.) Where does Ryan you democratisation of funding going in the next five years? What direction does Dustin believe we are moving in? 4.) Dustin has said that 'capital is a crappy differentiator' so what value add should founders look for in their VCs? How are we seeing the VC value add evolve over time? 4.) How does Dustin sell Maiden Lane in the sea of seed funds that have emerged over the last few years? How important does Dustin think it is for VCs and funds to have personal brands? What is bigger the brand of the VC or the fund? 5.) What is it Dustin looks for in products? Are there any must haves? Any design requirements? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Dustin's Fave Book: Development As Freedom Dustin's Most Recent Investment: AtVenue (Tom Williams)   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Dustin on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Gil Penchina is the Founder @ Flight.vc, a network of AngelList syndicates that covers a wide range of sectors from SaaS to security from Israel to England. Gil also has the title of the largest raise for an AngelList syndicate, essentially turning himself into a one man fund. Some of Gil's investments include the likes of Paypal, Indiegogo, AngelList, Linkedin and many more. Prior to his investing career, Gil cut his teeth with operating roles at numerous companies including Ebay. We would also like to wish Gil the best of luck in his nomination for Angel Investor of The Year at tonight's Crunchies by TechCrunch.  In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Gil made it into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Why did Gil choose numerous syndicate approach over one huge syndicate? What are the benefits of having numerous specialized syndicates? 3.) What is included in Gil's sell of Flight as an investor? What is the driving force behind the success of Flight? What is the biggest challenge within this job as founder? 4.) How does Gil try and convince the startups that the syndicate method of investment is better for them? How does Gil portray his value add to startups? 5.) Does Gil insist on pro-rata rights? Should founders always grant them to early stage investors?Which VCs does Gil like to work with and what makes them a good VC? 6.) Where does Gil see the future of first AngelList? Will it replace the archaic system of VC? What are Gil's plans for his syndicates? Is Gil looking to move into Series A and B rounds? How do you plan to become the Fidelity of this asset class? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Gil's Fave Book: Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged Gil's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Nuzzel Gil's Most Recent Investment: Happn   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Gil on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   This episode was supported by Wunder Capital, the leading online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in large scale solar projects across the U.S. Wunder’s solar investment funds allow you to earn up to 11% annually, while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. Do well by doing good and sign up for a free account here and join the thousands of people that are already achieving their investment targets.

Kelly Peeler is the Founder and CEO of NextGenVest, the College Money Mentor for every student, helping students navigate the financial aid and student loan application process. While at Harvard, Kelly started Business Across Borders, a non profit that helps Iraqi students rebuild their own economy by starting their own companies and the International Women in Business Summit, bringing together top female college leaders. She was selected as one of the eight Kauffman Foundation Global Scholars, named by Goldman Sachs as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, and named a White House #StartTheSpark Ambassador. Her TED Talk is called "How to Change the World as a Millennial - Don't be Stupid with Money" and can be found here.   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:   1.) How Kelly made it into startups and what was the origin story for NextGenVest? 2.) How has the Fintech ecosystem evolved over the last 5 years? What does Kelly mean by Fintech 1.0 and the next phase of Fintech? 3.) How can emerging brands and in particular fintech brands build loyalty with the emerging millennial generation? What is the attention graph for millenials looking like? 4.) What does Kelly mean when she states a shift from financial organisation with Mint to financial efficiency today? 5.) What key determinants that have made Uber so successful can be used within Fintech startups to build the same trust and relationship? 6.) What is Kelly's view of startups taking a platform dependent approach? What are the benefits and what are the concerns? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Kelly's Fave Book: The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Kelly on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Hadley Harris is the Founding General Partner at Eniac Ventures, the first seed stage venture fund focussed exclusively on mobile. Eniac's investments include the likes of Soundcloud, Airbnb, Elevate and many more incredible mobile first companies. Before Eniac, Hadley was a two-time entrepreneur in the mobile space, as an executive at Vlingo, acquired by Nuance Communications for $225m and after Vlingo he became CMO of Thumb, which was acquired by Ypulse. Hadley also worked at Charles River Ventures where he spent time helping with mobile investments while looking for a young startup to join. As if his portfolio does not prove enough of what a seed stage investing legend he is, he was also named by Business Insider as 'New York's Best Early Stage Investor'.   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:  1.) How Hadley made it into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What does an engineering degree provide when investing? Why did Eniac decide to focus solely on mobile? 2.) How has Hadley seen the NY venture and startup scene develop over the last years? Does an ecosystem need anchor companies to be great? Ex-Googlers, and ex-Facebook, ex-LinkedIn, ex-Sun, etc. are so important to the Bay Area ecosystem. What are New York's anchor companies? How has that affected the ecosystem? 3.) What is it like helping companies like Soundcloud and Airbnb scale when in hyper growth mode? At the seed level, how important a role does valuation play when determining whether to invest or not? 5.) Why is raising a Series B so tough? Is it the embodiment of the funding barbell? Has NYC, like London, seen a rise in the second seed round? 6.) What are Hadley's thoughts on VC founder alignment? What are the common characteristics of the best founders that Hadley has worked with and invested in? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Hadley's Fave Book: Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner Hadley's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Nuzzel Hadley's Most Recent Investment: Phhhoto: Instant Moving Pictures   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Hadley on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Martin Mignot is an early stage investor at Index Ventures where he specialises in SaaS, marketplaces and mobile. He is actively looking after Index's investments in Algolia, Blablacar, Capitaine Train, Deliveroo, Drivy, Rad, Swiftkey and TheFamily. He worked on 50+ transactions to date, including Assistly, Auxmoney, BaseCRM, Cloud.com, Codecademy, DimDim, Factual, Farfetch, Flipboard, Funding Circle, Gluster, HouseTrip, Just-Eat, Lookout, Nastygal, Notonthehighstreet, Onefinestay, PeoplePerHour, TrustPilot, Soluto and SoundCloud.  Prior to joining Index, Martin was in the TMT team at UBS Investment Bank and co-founded the beauty subscription business Boudoir Prive (acquired by Joliebox/Birchbox) and a student web radio service (www.rsp.fm).   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) Where did it all start for Martin? What is the Martin Mignot story? 2.) How does Martin view venture as a career vs coming into it later on? Why does Martin think venture is now a viable career from the offset? 3.) Does Martin agree with Sheryl Sandberg’s statement, it doesn’t matter where you sit, as long as you have a seat on the rocketship? How important is valuation for Martin when making the decision? 4.) How Martin goes about sourcing the latest and greatest startups from the European ecosystem? 5.) How does Martin evaluate founders and consider their ability to execute on their plan, prior to making the investment? 6.) Talking of difficulty for startups attaining funding, what are your thoughts on VC founder alignment? You have said to focus before on the business and not the team, unless exceptional cases prevail, this is very strange for me to hear. Why is it you have adopted this stance and why do you feel it is best? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Martin's Fave Book: I Have America Surrounded by Tim Leary Martin's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Ben Evans Newsletter   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Martin on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Jeff Seibert is an experienced serial-entrepreneur and currently Senior Director of Product at Twitter. Previously, Seibert was the CEO of Crashlytics, which he co-founded in 2011 with Wayne Chang. Crashlytics delivered crash analysis tools for iOS and Android apps via an SDK that reached 300 Million mobile devices worldwide. Crashlytics was acquired by Twitter in 2013 for $259m. In 2007, Seibert co-founded Increo and served as its COO and lead architect until its acquisition by Box in August of 2009. He subsequently oversaw the integration of Increo’s document preview and annotation technologies into the company's cloud-based content platform. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:   1.) How Jeff made his move into the wonderful world of tech?  Today we are going to break up your story into 3 chapters: 1.) Acquisition by Box:  What was it like going to Sand Hill Road to raise in 2009? How much runway would Jeff advise for a startup and how can companies know whether a strategic acquisition is optimal or whether they should continue building with a further round? Jeff has spoke before about being overly transparent with this team about the acquisition. What are the problems with being overly transparent and how can you balance the two?  2.) Acquired by Twitter: At what point did Jeff transition to thinking the acquisition by Twitter would be a beneficial and viable and why? A reason for Jeff being favourable to the acquisition was Twitter's agreement of continued investment in the space. How can founders negotiate and ensure that this occurs with their acquisition? One of the mistakes stated about the acquisition by Twitter was the reporting structure. How can founders ensure that they are speaking to the VPs of engineering, CEOs etc and attain the support they need?  3.) Life at Twitter:  How life is following the acquisition? What are Jeff's plans for the future as Senior Director of Product at Twitter?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jeff' Fave Book: How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Jeff's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Daring Fireball   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jeff on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Ellie Wheeler is a Partner at Greycroft Partners where she focuses on investment opportunities in next-generation commerce, consumer mobile, and associated SaaS solutions. Ellie manages several investments for Greycroft, including BaubleBar, Flashpoint Intel, Eloquii, and Plain Vanilla Games (QuizUp). Prior to joining Greycroft, Ellie worked in a similar role evaluating investment opportunities at Lowercase Capital with Chris Sacca. Before working with Lowercase, Ellie worked at Cisco where she was involved in multiple acquisitions and investments, including PostPath, Jabber, Xobni, and Tandberg.  In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ellie made her way into the wonderful world of tech and VC? 2.) What were Ellie's biggest takeaways from working with the legend that is Chris Sacca? 3.) As an investment focus of Ellie's, how does Ellie think the mobile commerce space has changed and how consumer behaviours are changing in the space? 4.) What are Ellie's views on push notifications? What are the Do's and Don'ts? What can be done to make push notifications more effective? 5.) Do wearables change the push notification space? What are Ellie's views on wearables with their investment in BaubleBar? Are consumers ready for them? 6.) Talking of wearables, how does Ellie respond to hardware investments? Typically a space VC shy away from? What are the problems for Ellie? What attracts her with hardware? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Ellie's Fave Book: The Power of One Ellie's Most Recent Investment: Blinkist   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Ellie on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Bryan Johnson is an entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder of OS Fund and Braintree, the latter of which was bought by eBay in 2013 for $800 million in cash. Bryan launched OS Fund in 2014 with $100 million of his personal capital to support inventors and scientists who aim to benefit humanity. His investments include endeavors to extend healthy human life to 100+ (Human Longevity), replicate the human visual cortex (Vicarious), mine an asteroid (Planetary Resources), reinvent transportation (Matternet), and reimagine food (Hampton Creek), among others. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Bryan made his start in the world of tech and how he has come to the OS fund today? 2.) What was the pivotal moment in Bryan's career? When was the turning point? What was was the hardest part of the entrepreneurial journey and how did Bryan conquer it? 3.) What is the main motivation behind the OS fund? Which areas does Bryan most want to solve and where does he see significant market opportunities? 4.) Does the longevity of return to Bryan's exits concern him? Most investments exit with 10 years, human lifespan startups take a little longer! What sort of time frame does Bryan have in mind when investing in these companies? 5.) What does Bryan really perceive synthetic biology to mean? Are we seeing improvements in this sector? 6.) The OS Fund have recently released a white paper detailing extensively their process for investing? Why did Bryan decide on this open source style of investing? 7.) What would Bryan like to see more of? Where does Bryan see a lot of people investing that he thinks is a mistake?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Bryan's Fave Book: Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic Bryan's Most Recent Investment: Ginkgo Bioworks   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Bryan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

James Beshara is the Co-Founder @ Tilt the micro-crowdfunding platform that allows you to receive funding from friends—changing the way collaborative funding works. Tilt has raised $37 million from 3 rounds of funding from the likes of Andreesen, SV Angel, Alexis Ohanian, Naval Ravikant and Sean Parker just to name a few. As for James Before co-founding Tilt, he studied Development Economics as an undergrad and then went on to build dvelo.org, a site for crowdfunding loans and donations to poverty-alleviation organizations in developing countries. In order to vote for who you think will win James and Harry's beer pong match, head over to @twentyminutevc on Twitter and vote using our poll. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:   1.) What were the origins of Tilt? How did James go from a micro loans collector in Africa to founder of one of SF's hottest startups? 2.) What does James make of the current crowdfunding landscape? What will it take for crowdfunding to go mass market? 3.) What are Tilt doing to make crowdfunding more bite sized and consumer friendly? How important is the on boarding process for Tilt? How are Tilt approaching customer retention? What are James' targets for the year ahead with Tilt? 4.) With investors like Andreesen, SV Angel, Naval Ravikant, Sean Parker just to name a few, what the investment journey like? I heard the first funding took 6-8 months and the series A took 6 days with a16z. What changed to turn it around? 5.) On PH LIVE James stated that founding a company is a destination less journey and although admirable I struggle with that from the investors perspective. How did James sell a startup in a pitch with no exit strategy? 6.) What was it that attracted James to the investors that he chose? What value add was James most attracted to? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: James' Fave Book: 100 Years of Solitude, The Power Of Now   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and James on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

James Cameron is an early stage investor at Accel where he focuses on enterprise software, security, fintech and marketplace businesses. Prior to joining Accel, he founded and ran BipSync, a SaaS-based research platform for investment management. James also spent time on the tech banking team at Morgan Stanley and as a corporate lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London, Shanghai and Hong Kong.   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How James made his way into the world of startups and investing? 2.) How does James go about finding the needles in the haystack in the sea of amazing startups? Do James use data to find great companies? Do you think this will be a continuing trend, in terms of algorithmic deal sourcing? 3.) What cool stuff has James been seeing in the enterprise software and security sector? Does James think there are any underhyped or overhyped segments of these markets? 4.) One very dominant eco system for tech in general but specifically security is Israel, how do the UK and Israeli ecosystems differ? Is there anything we can do in the UK to harness the spirit encapsulated by the Israeli ecosystem? 5.) What are the catalysts or drivers of these communities’ growth? Do you agree with Marc Andreesen in saying we shouldn't think about building "The Silicon Valley of X" because the components that make up SV aren't repeatable and areas should instead specialize on specific verticals, like bitcoin or security. What do you think about that concept? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: James' Fave Book: Crossing The Chasm  James' Fave Blog or Newsletter: Adrian Colyer: The Morning Paper James' Most Recent Investment: Doctolib   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and James on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!