startup talks

For many of the young, ambitious founders that we back, starting a company might be the first time they’ve had to manage a team. Yet very quickly they’ll need to not only manage a growing startup, but also transform into leading an organisation that could easily grow from 2 to 200 people in just a few short years.

So for this month’s Academy we invited in Gillian Davis, author of 'First Time Leader' and Director of Leadership Development at ustwo, to talk about how to run your startup like a leader.

Gillian Davis, Author of First Time Leader, on How to Run a Startup As a Leader

In this episode we were joined by Josh Elman, Partner at Greylock Partners.

Josh discussed his background and how he became involved in investing, and the criteria that VCs commonly use to assess whether a startup is ready for their investment.

He joined Greylock Partners in 2011 and invests in entrepreneurs building new consumer products and services. Josh specialises in designing, building, and scaling consumer products, having been part of multiple companies that have grown to more than 100 million users.

Josh Elman, Partner at Greylock Partners

In this edition of the Seedcamp Podcast Series focused on Asia, Carlos Espinal talks with Tytus Michalski, Managing Partner at Fresco Capital about the startup investment ecosystem in Asia. 

Tytus discussed his background, how he became involved in investing, offering his insights on what founders should consider when expanding to this geography, and the risks and challenges of not taking into account the cultural differences. Tytus has been investing, working and living in Asia since 1999. Previously, he was Chief Investment Officer of Equities at PMA Investment Advisors, an institutional hedge fund. He is an active supporter of startup ecosystem in Hong Kong and Asia with an emphasis on mentorship and education.

Tytus Michalski, Managing Partner at Fresco Capital

In this edition of the Seedcamp Podcast Series focused on Asia, Carlos Espinal continues his discussion about the asian investment ecosystem with Bay McLaughlin, co-founder of Brinc.io.

In particular, they focus on the challenges for hardware entrepreneurs in penetrating this geography and what are the best ways to do it successfully.
Bay McLaughlin has supported technology startups for the last decade. Over half of this time was spent at Apple as a founding team member of their global SMB channel. The other half of his career has been spent inside of or founding startups, two of which failed, one of which exited successfully. Most recently, he has co-founded Brinc.io, a hardware investment fund and platform to bring the next wave of connected technologies to retail shelves around the world.

Bay McLaughlin, Co-founder of Brinc.io

In this episode we were joined by Malcolm Bell, Founder & CEO of Mailcloud. 

Malcolm discussed his background, his experience as founder of Zogorra, and growth hacking strategies for startups.

Malcolm setup his first business when he was 15, designing websites for local companies. Years later, he bootstrapped his first e-commerce startup to $40ml in sales within 18 months, selling 1 million products to 600,000 customers around the world. In November 2013 he founded Mailcloud to build smarter email and messaging to help the world work faster on mobile devices.

Malcolm Bell, Founder & CEO of Mailcloud

In this episode we were joined by Bryce Keane, Founder & Director at Albion Drive. He discussed his background, how he created the brand behind 3beards, offering his insights on how to build a compelling brand and communications strategy.

Bryce Keane is an international communications professional with experience managing a wide variety of global campaigns throughout EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions, across a wide variety of sectors. Prior to joining Albion he worked for international WPP flagship agency Cohn & Wolfe. Bryce has a deep fascination with London's booming start-up culture and is known within the scene as one of the of 3beards, a start-up events company that runs a number of regular and iconic start-up events in East London including the weekly Silicon Drinkabout, monthly Don’t Pitch Me, Bro! and quarterly Digital Sizzle.


Bryce Keane, Founder & Director at Albion Drive

In this episode we were joined by Josephine Goube, Director of Partnerships & Communications at Migreat. She discussed her background, how she became involved in making immigration easier for companies, discussing Entrepreneur Visa options available to set up a business in the UK.

Listed as one the top 35 women in Business in Britain in 2015 by Management Today, Joséphine currently heads Migreat, the fastest-growing global platform for migrants to get access to information and immigration support. She previously worked at TechStars London and Rainmaking, co-founded the London School of Economics Business Incubator & graduated from the New Entrepreneurs Foundation.

Josephine Goube, Director of Partnerships & Communications at Migreat

In this episode we were joined by Suranga Chandratillake, General Partner at Balderton. He discussed his background, his experience raising investment for blinkx, growing the business, his latest experience as an investor at Balderton, and some of the lessons he’d tell his younger self.

Suranga joined Balderton as a General Partner in 2014. He was previously an entrepreneur and engineer. He founded blinkx, the intelligent search engine for video and audio content in Cambridge in 2004. He then lead the company for eight years as CEO through its journey of moving to San Francisco, building a profitable business and going public in London where it achieved a peak market capitalisation in excess of $1Bn. Before founding blinkx, Suranga was an early employee at Autonomy Corporation - joining as an engineer in the Cambridge R&D team and ultimately serving as the company's US CTO in San Francisco.

Suranga Chandratillake, General Partner at Balderton

In this episode we were joined by Marc Zornes, Founder at Winnow. He discussed his background, his involvement in the food industry, and his latest experience as founder at Winnow.

Marc Zornes started his career at a large wholesale grocers, and food and sustainability have been his two passions ever since. Recently he started Winnow because he saw a massive opportunity in solving the problem of food waste and he's a strong believer that technology can help us change the way we make food. Before Winnow he co-authored the Global Institute report “Resource Revolution: Meeting the World’s Energy, Materials, Food, and Water Needs.’ whilst working as a consultant at McKinsey.

Marc Zornes, Founder at Winnow

Bill is a managing partner at Connect Ventures. He has 10 years working in venture capital and startups, having worked as an investment manager at Amadeus Capital and in a variety of operational roles at several California based startups.  He is on the boards of Citymapper, Knyttan, Marvel, RetentionGrid, Secretsales, and TOTEMS. 

In this Seedcamp Academy podcast, we talk about Bill’s history and draw on his experience of participating in many board meetings. What are their true purpose? When and how should you be setting up your ideal board? And what are some of the best practices for founders to get the most of them.

Bill Earner, Managing Partner at Connect Ventures

In this episode we were joined by Will Critchlow, Founder and CEO of Distilled. He discussed his background, his experience as a founder, and the fundamentals of search, social and content for a startup company.

Will Critchlow founded Distilled in 2005 with Duncan Morris. Distilled provides online marketing services from offices in London, New York and Seattle, hosts the SearchLove conference series in the US and UK and produces the popular online training platform DistilledU. His academic background is mathematics with a degree from the University of Cambridge (St. John’s College) including a graduate thesis on auction theory. Previous jobs included programmer, strategy consultant in the telecoms industry and floor sweeper.

Will Critchlow, Founder and CEO of Distilled

In this episode we were joined by Joel Gascoigne, Founder and CEO of Buffer. He discussed his background, the story behind Buffer, and the importance of creating a values driven culture from early days and growing the team with a culture fit in mind.

Joel Gascoigne is a co-founder and CEO of Buffer, a web-based platform that helps users share social media content. Prior to Buffer, he co-created OnePage where he learned a vast amount about the realities of running a web startup, worked as a web developer at Priority Research and as a web designer and developer at joelg.co.uk. Joel obtained a degree in computer systems from the University of Warwick.


Joel Gascoigne, Founder and CEO of Buffer

Jon Bradford has played a key role in shaping the European tech ecosystem. Through his involvement in many accelerators (Springboard, Techstars, Ignite 100) and numerous supportive initiatives, he has had a big impact shaping the infrastructure that helps develop and build great startups across many Cities throughout Europe. 

Carlos sits down with Jon in this Seedcamp podcast to talk through his personal journey, share insights into the many lessons learned from accelerating early-stage companies and what the future holds for him next. 

Jon Bradford, Co-Founder of F6S and Tech.EU

In this episode, Carlos was joined by Damian Kimmelmann, Co-Founder and CEO of DueDil, a fintech company that provides accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date private company data. 

After talking through Damian's background as a serial entrepreneur and the idea that built DueDil, we switch focus and talk through sales, looking at how to find and scale a b2b sales team.

Damian Kimmelmann, Co-Founder and CEO, DueDil

Why are people so fired up about a computer winning yet another game? Whether it's checkers, chess, Jeopardy, or the ancient Chinese game of Go, we get excited about the potential for more when we see computers beat humans. But then nothing "big" -- in terms of generalized artificial intelligence -- seems to happen after that burst of excitement.

Now, with the excitement (and other emotions) around Google DeepMind's "AlphaGo" using machine learning and other techniques to beat one of the world's top Go players, Lee Sodol, in Korea ... it's like the dream of the 1990s (and 1980s, and 1970s, and 1960s) is alive in Seoul right now. Is this time different? How do we know?

a16z's head of research and deal team Frank Chen and board partner Steven Sinofsky -- who both suffered through the last “AI winter” -- share how everything old is new again; the triumph of data over algorithms; and the evergreen battle between purist vs. "practical" approaches. Ultimately, it's about how innovation in general plays out, at a scale both grand (cycles and gestation periods) and mundane (sometimes, the only way to make a product work is to hack together the old, the new, and everything in between).

NOTE: The Super Mario World video referenced in this podcast is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44

a16z Podcast: The Dream of AI Is Alive in Go

In this episode of the a16z Podcast sharing more founder stories, Ben Horowitz interviews a16z partner Lars Dalgaard about SuccessFactors, one of the earlier software-as-a-service companies. (It was founded on 2001, IPO'd in 2008, and was acquired by SAP in 2012).

SuccessFactors focused on software for "human capital management" in the enterprise. But what are the success factors in talent, scaling companies, and most importantly, scaling culture? Lars and Ben cover everything from what motivates (the best) founders, the difficulties of entrepreneurship, and team building and building culture. Especially if you have values -- not just an HR offsite exercise -- that mean something, like "no assholes!" .... but then how do you balance a value like that with the desire to succeed (for example, if you have a 10Xer who is an asshole)?? All that and more in this episode. 

a16z Podcast: Scaling Companies and Culture

In this episode, Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, General Partner for leading VC Balderton Capital, joins Carlos to talk through his career working at giants such as Uber and Dropbox, and other players in the mobile landscape. The two discuss his first-hand experience of being acquired and his work in teams that very quickly scaled to include hundreds of employees. Carlos and Lars also look at the three key elements that have built global successes Dropbox, Whatsapp and Uber; the team, simplicity of product and monetization strategy.

Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, General Partner, Balderton Capital

Most investors try to invest in things that don't change and last forever -- Warren Buffett for example loves Heinz ketchup! But VC is about investing in things that do change... a lot. How does this basic mindset challenge much of what people learn in business school or classic leadership training?  Do software-led businesses require different mindsets? What are some of the most common things first-time vs. serial entrepreneurs do?

This Q&A -- with Marc Andreessen interviewed by Don Faul (former U.S. Marine platoon commander and head of operations at Google, Facebook, Pinterest, and now COO at Athos) -- covers these topics, as well as what to consider when working for a big- v. small- (and especially intermediate-) -sized company, what it takes to make a career transition, and how to "go back to kindergarten".

The conversation took place before a group of 25 veterans who participated in the Breakline education and hiring program (one week of which was hosted at Andreessen Horowitz) for veterans shifting into careers in the tech industry.

photo credit: Rene Tate for Breakline

a16z Podcast: Investing in (Business and Career) Change

Stefan Klestil, Partner at Speedinvest, joins Carlos for our latest podcast. Alongside Seedcamp, Speedinvest invested in Holvi (acquired by BBVA) and in Curve, the fintech startup that consolidates all your payment cards into one. In this episode, Stefan and Carlos talk through his career, investments in the FinTech space and how investors can best support their founders. Stefan also gives an insight into what Speedinvest looks for in startups and which geographies are of key interest for new startups working in the FinTech space. 

Stefan Klestil, Partner, Speedinvest

The hallmark of many great technical founder/CEOs is that they envision a better way of doing things, and that's why they're building a company that delivers on that better way, often disrupting the way things have always been done before. But this very mindset can backfire when it comes to sales. Why shouldn't they reinvent the sales process??

On this episode of the a16z Podcast -- with a16z's Mark Cranney (head of our sales and market development team), Lars Dalgaard, and Ben Horowitz -- we cover the why, how, and when of sales: why do we even need sales when "a really good product sells itself"; how to organize the sales function depending on what you're building (especially when what you're selling is continually changing); and when to bring on that first sales hire.

Finally, how do we wrap our heads around sales culture, competition, and commissions in startups? It doesn't help when everyone in the company -- not just sales reps -- are the ones building the very thing you're selling ... so why the special rewards for sales? It isn't fair! Or is it? All this and more in this episode of the pod.

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The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.
 
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startup talks

Marcin Fejfer