…And see other pitchdecks get the teardown treatment from top early-stage investors Charles Hudson (Precursor Ventures), Anu Duggal (Female Founders Fund), and Russ Heddleston (CEO of DocSend). All you have to do is send your deck over to ec_editors@techcrunch.com if you’re attending Disrupt, and you can get feedback directly from them in a workshop setting.
If we use your deck, we’ll also provide you a free ticket to any TechCrunch event of your choosing next year.
This is part of a new project to make Disrupt even more focused on founders. We’re already offering the Extra Crunch stage, where you’ll get lots of time to ask them questions yourselves in addition to hearing their interviews. For this additional project, we’re setting up workshops with experts in our Q&A stage where they’ll be going over the actual founder problems.
These folks have seen everything, so they will have a gut sense for how generalized advice can be applied to your specific team and market — the nuance that can compellingly explain your strengths and weaknesses. Hudson and Duggal have written some of the first checks for some of the most interesting startups today. The Athletic, Clearbanc, Incredible Health, Sudo, Pico are names you may recognize from the Precursor portfolio; Tala, BentoBox, Thrive Global and WayUp are a few of the many on Female Founder Fund’s list.
Heddleston, meanwhile, is a repeat founder who now has some of the best insight into trends in funding through his current company, DocSend . As you may have read on TechCrunch already, the company provides document management for a large portion of startup founders out there, allowing them to share anonymized data with DocSend about how investors are reading their pitch decks. He’ll provide a data-driven founder perspective.
Attendees will be notified via email on how to submit their pitch deck. If you want to participate in this workshop and submit your deck for review, get your pass to the event here.
Please note: the workshop is open to all conference attendees and is officially on the record. Other investors and members of the media may be in the workshop and seeing what you have in your deck, so plan accordingly.
Welcome to this transcribed edition of The Operators. TechCrunch is beginning to publish podcasts from industry experts, with transcriptions available for Extra Crunch members so you can read the conversation wherever you are.
The Operators features insiders from companies like Airbnb, Brex, Docsend, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Carta, Slack, Uber, and WeWork sharing their stories and tips on how to break into fields like marketing and product management. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs on how to hire and manage experts from domains outside their own.
This week’s edition features Airbnb’s Global Product Director of Customer and Community Support Platform Products, Andy Yasutake, and Carta’s Head of Enterprise Relationship Management, Jared Thomas.
Airbnb, one of the most valuable private tech companies in the world, has millions of hosts who trust strangers (guests) to come into their homes and hundreds of millions of guests who trust strangers (hosts) to provide a roof over their head. Carta, a $1 Billion+ company formerly known as eShares, is the leading provider of cap table management and valuation software, with thousands of customers and almost a million individual shareholders as users. Customers and users entrust Carta to manage their investments, a very serious responsibility requiring trust and security.
In this episode, Andy and Jared share with Neil how companies like Airbnb, Carta, and LinkedIn think about customer service, how to get into and succeed in the field and tech generally, and how founders should think about hiring and managing the customer support. With their experiences at two of tech’s trusted companies, Airbnb and Carta, this episode is packed with broad perspectives and deep insights.
Neil Devani and Tim Hsia created The Operators after seeing and hearing too many heady, philosophical podcasts about the future of tech, and not enough attention on the practical day-to-day work that makes it all happen.
Tim is the CEO & Founder of Media Mobilize, a media company and ad network, and a Venture Partner at Digital Garage. Tim is an early-stage investor in Workflow (acquired by Apple), Lime, FabFitFun, Oh My Green, Morning Brew, Girls Night In, The Hustle, Bright Cellars, and others.
Neil is an early-stage investor based in San Francisco with a focus on companies building stuff people need, solutions to very hard problems. Companies he’s invested in include Andela, Clearbit, Kudi, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Solugen, and Vicarious Surgical.
If you’re interested in starting or accelerating your marketing career, or how to hire and manage this function, you can’t miss this episode!
The show:
The Operators brings experts with experience at companies like Airbnb, Brex, Docsend, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Carta, Slack, Uber, WeWork, etc. to share insider tips on how to break into fields like marketing and product management. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs on how to hire and manage experts from domains outside their own.
In this episode:
In Episode 5, we’re talking about customer service. Neil interviews Andy Yasutake, Airbnb’s Global Product Director of Customer and Community Support Platform Products, and Jared Thomas, Carta’s Head of Enterprise Relationship Management.
Neil Devani: Hello and welcome to the Operators, where we talk to entrepreneurs and executives from leading technology companies like Google, Facebook, Airbnb, and Carta about how to break into a new field, how to build a successful career, and how to hire and manage talent beyond your own expertise. We skip over the lofty prognostications from venture capitalists and storytime with founders to dig into the nuts and bolts of how it all works here from the people doing the real day to day work, the people who make it all happen, the people who know what it really takes. The Operators.
Today we are talking to two experts in customer service, one with hundreds of millions of individual paying customers and the other being the industry standard for managing equity investments. I’m your host, Neil Devani, and we’re coming to you today from Digital Garage in downtown San Francisco.
Joining me is Jared Thomas, head of Enterprise Relationship Management at Carta, a $1 billion-plus company after a recent round of financing led by Andreessen Horowitz. Carta, formerly known as eShares, is the leading provider of cap table management and valuation software with thousands of customers and almost a million individual shareholders as users. Customers and users trust Carta to manage their investments, a very serious responsibility requiring trust and security.
Also joining us is Andy Yasutake, the Global Product Director of Customer and Community Support Platform Products at Airbnb, one of the most valuable private tech startups today. Airbnb has millions of hosts who are trusting strangers to come into their homes and hundreds of millions of guests who are trusting someone to provide a roof over their head. The number of cases and types of cases that Andy and his team have to think about and manage boggle the mind. Jared and Andy, thank you for joining us.
Andy Yasutake: Thank you for having us.
Jared Thomas: Thank you so much.
Devani: To start, Andy, can you share your background and how you got to where you are today?
Yasutake: Sure. I’m originally from southern California. I was born and raised in LA. I went to USC for undergrad, University of Southern California, and I actually studied psychology and information systems.
Late-90s, the dot com was going on, I’d always been kind of interested in tech, went into management consulting at interstate consulting that became Accenture, and was in consulting for over 10 years and always worked on large systems of implementation of technology projects around customers. So customer service, sales transformation, anything around CRM, as kind of a foundation, but it was always very technical, but really loved the psychology part of it, the people side.
And so I was always on multiple consulting projects and one of the consulting projects with actually here in the Bay Area. I eventually moved up here 10 years ago and joined eBay, and at eBay I was the director of product for the customer services organization as well. And was there for five years.
I left for Linkedin, so another rocket ship that was growing and was the senior director of technology solutions and operations where I had all the kind of business enabling functions as well as the technology, and now have been at Airbnb for about four months. So I’m back to kind of my, my biggest passion around products and in the customer support and community experience and customer service world.
Welcome to this transcribed edition of The Operators. TechCrunch is beginning to publish podcasts from industry experts, with transcriptions available for Extra Crunch members so you can read the conversation wherever you are.
The Operators features insiders from companies like AirBnB, Brex, Docsend, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Carta, Slack, Uber, and WeWork sharing their stories and tips on how to break into fields like marketing and product management. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs on how to hire and manage experts from domains outside their own.
This week’s edition features Christiana Rattazzi, Head of Technology Marketing at WeWork, the leading coworking company that has raised over $8 billion and has a valuation of $47 billion and a rumored IPO impending. Also joining the show is Elinitsa Staykova, VP of Marketing at Brex, another fast-growing unicorn, recently valued at over $2 billion, that is the leading provider of credit cards to startups and tech companies.
In this episode, Christiana and Elinitsa explain how marketing works, how to get into and succeed in the field of marketing, and how founders should think about hiring and managing the marketing function. With their experiences at two of tech’s biggest and most innovative marketers, WeWork and Brex, this episode is packed with broad perspectives and deep insights.
Image via The Operators
Neil Devani and Tim Hsia created The Operators after seeing and hearing too many heady, philosophical podcasts about the future of tech, and not enough attention on the practical day-to-day work that makes it all happen.
Tim is the CEO & Founder of Media Mobilize, a media company and ad network, and a Venture Partner at Digital Garage. Tim is an early-stage investor in Workflow (acquired by Apple), Lime, FabFitFun, Oh My Green, Morning Brew, Girls Night In, The Hustle, Bright Cellars, and others.
Neil is an early-stage investor based in San Francisco with a focus on companies building stuff people need, solutions to very hard problems. Companies he’s invested in include Andela, Clearbit, Kudi, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Solugen, and Vicarious Surgical.
If you’re interested in starting or accelerating your marketing career, or how to hire and manage this function, you can’t miss this episode!
The show:
The Operators brings experts with experience at companies like AirBnB, Brex, Docsend, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Carta, Slack, Uber, WeWork, etc. to share insider tips on how to break into fields like marketing and product management. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs on how to hire and manage experts from domains outside their own.
Neil Devani: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Operators, where we learn from the people building the companies of tomorrow. We publish every other Monday and you can find us online at www.operators.co. I’m your host, Neil Devani, and we’re coming to you today from Digital Garage here in downtown San Francisco.
Joining me is Eli Staykova, Vice President of Marketing at Brex. Brex is the corporate credit card for start-ups, one of the fastest companies to reach a billion dollar evaluation, having launched barely two years ago, and its customers include Y Combinator, Flexport, SoFi, and many, many other startups.
Also joining us is Christiana Rattazzi, the head of enterprise technology marketing at WeWork. WeWork, with almost 10 billion dollars in financing to date, also counts major corporations and startups among its hundreds of thousands of customers. The firm is reportedly the largest leaseholder in New York, London, and Washington DC and has a footprint in almost a hundred other countries.
Eli and Christiana, thank you for joining us. Just to start, if you can share with our listeners about yourselves, a little bit about where you’re from and how you got into marketing, that’d be great.
Christiana Rattazzi: Happy to lead off. I’m actually from the Bay Area, go Warriors and I was pre-med through college and really thought I was going to go to med school and as I started studying for the MCAT, really discovered that that was what the path was going to be like.
One where you spend a lot of time in the library and maybe you weren’t up for it later and I wasn’t sure I wanted to sign up for that but I wanted to be at a company and being able to speak about a product that I was passionate about. And so that got me into cleantech, as I started my career, actually in cleantech, in marketing because I really loved to write and I love to tell stories.
So that was the beginning of my career and it’s been a great ride since then.
Devani: And what about yourself?
Eli Staykova: I came to the Bay Area in 2006 so I’ve been living here for the past thirteen years, it’s been quite the ride. I came here for the business school at the GSB, Stanford, and I started my career in finance, so I worked for IFC, International Finance Corporation, then for UBS in their LBO group, and I thought that you know after that I would stay in finance.
However, after Stanford I decided to work and live here in San Francisco and it’s so hard to be in the Bay Area not working in tech so I eventually joined the tech world. I work for Apple in their corporate finance team and I recently made the switch back in February at the new company Brex.
Devani: Very cool. These are two very exciting companies, two companies that do a lot of marketing, probably have very sophisticated marketing operations at least that’s what I would assume from the outside.
For the folks who are listening, who maybe don’t know much about marketing, can you help us understand at a very high level, the marking operation in your company. What are the different departments or roles, the different things that are just the nuts and bolts of how it works?
Due to the U.S. Independence Day holiday this week on July 4th, Extra Crunch will not be publishing our normal editorial on Thursday and Friday of this week, nor will we send out this EC Roundup newsletter on Saturday. Normal publishing will resume starting next week on Monday.
Conference Call Today with VC and Coach Jerry Colonna
TechCrunch’s Silicon Valley editor Connie Loizos will be conducting an Extra Crunch exclusive live conference call with noted venture capitalist and long-time executive coach Jerry Colonna today at 2pm EST / 11am PST. Dial-in details have been sent to all subscribers.
For those joining, the two will talk about Colonna’s new book Reboot, his other projects, and of course questions from subscribers.
Interestingly, March comes in third as the best month for decks viewed by investors, with an index value of 89, yet fundraisers don’t seem to send many decks in March, only 67% compared to October.
And while summer is often considered a poor season for fundraising, it’s not as unproductive as you might think. Indeed, in July and August decks are reviewed almost as much as in April, May and June.
In-depth with Freada Kapor Klein
Megan Rose Dickey had the opportunity to sit down with noted diversity and inclusion champion Freada Kapor Klein, who co-founded Kapor Capital and also Project Include. The two talk about a bunch of topics, including the current state of affairs in the tech industry, “the Founders’ Commitment,” and how to approach diversity from a comprehensive angle.
Russ is the cofounder and CEO of DocSend. He was previously a product manager at Facebook, where he arrived via the acquisition of his startup Pursuit.com, and has held roles at Dropbox, Greystripe, and Trulia. Follow him here: @rheddleston and @docsend
One of the top things that keeps a startup CEO up at night is the worry of running out of money. As a second-time founder and CEO of DocSend, I consider raising money and keeping my startup sufficiently funded a primary responsibility.
If “don’t run out of money” is a universally accepted warning, then the next question becomes when should you raise your next round of funding? There’s a lot to consider in coming up with an answer. If you start too soon before you have some wins to share, you might fail. If you wait too long you might put yourself in a bad negotiating position or worse, run out of money altogether!
DocSend has been used by over 20,000 founders and VCs for fundraising, and over the years we have published data-backed findings about pitch deck sharing and viewing. Recently, I contributed an article about the seasonality in fundraising and when VCs actually look at the decks.
The data included in this research came from companies that explicitly opted in to participate by responding to an automated email sent to them. We are incredibly appreciative to these founders for making this research possible. You can read more about our startup opt-in process and other aspects of our methodology here.
In this article, I’ll talk about how to apply some of the key takeaways from this research to inform your fundraising efforts.
There are really only two main fundraising seasons
I’ve often heard these anecdotes: “Don’t raise in August because VCs are on vacation,” and “VCs come back in January looking to do a deal.” But this is the first time there’s ever been data to support or disprove these statements. (See the analysis here).
My first big takeaway is that there are two big spikes during the year when VCs review a ton of pitch decks: October and November, then March. The summer definitely flattens out a bit, but August is not as bad as people think and December is actually way worse than most anticipate.
Sure, you might be the exception to this data and you might have pulled off a fundraise over the summer or in December. But if you have control over your timing, why take that risk?
How to think about runway and when to raise
Image via Getty Images / runeer
A startup’s “runway” is how much time they have until they run out of money. The assumption here is that a startup isn’t profitable yet, and is using VC investment to grow their business more quickly at the expense of short-term profitability.
Often a founder will raise a Series Seed and plan to “burn through” all that money in 18 months either investing in product or growing the team. To raise a round successfully at a good valuation you need to be growing at a crazy high rate (which is what you’re burning money on).
YC says you should be growing 7% a week, although that applies to very early stage pre-funding. Once you’ve gotten a bit of traction, the conventional wisdom is that you need to be on the “triple triple double double” path (see the detailed overview here).
So if you raise a Series Seed or A at $2m in ARR, you need to get to $6m in ARR in twelve months (that’s a 9.6% compounding monthly growth rate). If you’re only on track to double in a year, you are likely not VC-fundable and need to go the bridge round route and steer the business towards profitability.
In other research from DocSend we’ve found that the median time spent to fundraise is about three months. If as a CEO you can’t raise capital at the right price, the responsible thing to do is to leave a bit of buffer so you can either reduce your burn rate to extend your runway or find a buyer for your business. Again, the CEO’s main goal is to not run out of money.
This means that ideally you begin to fundraise no less than six months before you anticipate running out of cash. So if you raise capital for 18 months of runway, you need to be back out in the market a short 12 months after popping the champagne to celebrate your last round.
The Q4 fundraising trap you need to avoid
The fundraising data at the end of each year tells a fascinating tale of hope and then a rising fervor of activity before falling off a cliff in December. The lesson in this is that if you can’t get your round closed by the end of November, you run the risk of losing momentum during the holidays and having to reset your process or deal with worse terms by having fewer potential investors at the table. As a VC, you also run the risk of missing out on a hot deal if you can’t get it closed before the holiday.
The story the data shows is that VC visits start low in August at the end of the summer low season and steadily build to their annual peak in November before falling off sharply in December. Entrepreneurs sending decks starts low and steadily builds to a peak in October, which makes sense because you need to send your decks in advance of VCs being able to view them.
So if you are scrambling to get your deck out to VCs in October, realize that you are behind the ball and are at risk of missing the window which means you might be better off waiting until the new year (if you have that luxury).
The secret window
Another surprising discovery in the data was when pitch decks get the most attention. It’s a time of year when relatively few pitch decks are sent, but the viewing of those pitch decks by VCs is incredibly high. This means if you do go out to fundraise in this window, you’ll get significantly more attention than you would at other times of the year. To see the data deep dive on this as well as the overall monthly sending and viewing stats, check out the deep dive in Extra Crunch.
Smart windows to raise capital
This research highlights the need for CEOs to pay closer attention to timing their fundraising activities. Let’s say you raise your Series Seed round in March. You might assume that you should go out to the market again in 12 months.
However, knowing what we do, it could be more advantageous to start raising money a couple months earlier, in January. You’ll get a whole lot more attention and will beat the entrepreneur rush in March. Plus, you don’t want to be caught fundraising in summer.
If there are four things you should take away from this research, they are:
Peak fundraising times are in October/November and in March.
Don’t spend too much time celebrating after raising; you’ll like need to go out for your next round in just 12 months.
Budget a minimum of 6 months to go out and fundraise and try to time to your advantage.
If you’re raising at the end of the year, you should get started in September at the latest unless you think you’re in a very strong position to raise your round quickly.
Russ is the cofounder and CEO of DocSend. He was previously a product manager at Facebook, where he arrived via the acquisition of his startup Pursuit.com, and has held roles at Dropbox, Greystripe, and Trulia. Follow him here: @rheddleston and @docsend
A compelling pitch deck that quickly and clearly presents your startup as an exceptional investment opportunity is a clear edge when raising a round.
But could fundraising be more effective if you knew when to send your pitch deck – the times of year when it’s more likely to be reviewed and when it’s likely to be viewed more often?
If we all had a magical algorithm that could predict exactly which investors would review your deck and when, we’d be fundraising geniuses — closing our round faster and with far less effort.
No such algorithm exists (at least not yet), but I can share some useful data that offers insights into some of these seasonal fundraising trends, with a few that seem to defy conventional wisdom.
The data included in this research came from companies that explicitly opted in to participate by responding to an automated email sent to them. We are incredibly appreciative to these founders for making this research possible. You can read more about our startup opt-in process and other aspects of our methodology here.
What are the best times of year to share your pitch deck with VCs?
Ray Dalio on the Extra Crunch stage at Disrupt SF 2019
This year at Disrupt SF, we will be hosting a special Extra Crunch stage focused on the issues that confront startup founders in building their companies.
I am pleased to announce that Ray Dalio of Bridgewater fame will be sitting down for a fireside chat on the Extra Crunch stage to discuss his Principles, and how to build a startup culture. Building a strong culture early on is the hallmark of almost all successful startups, and it is great to have such a leading figure to chat on this critical topic.
A chat with Niantic CEO John Hanke on the launch of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
Niantic dominated the mobile gaming world with its Pokémon Go augmented reality game. Now, the company is coming back for round two with the launch of its wizards-and-Hogwarts-themed game, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.
Welcome to this transcribed edition of The Operators. TechCrunch is beginning to publish podcasts from industry experts, with transcriptions available for Extra Crunch members so you can read the conversation wherever you are.
The Operators highlights the experts building the products and companies that drive the tech industry. Speaking from experience at companies like Google, Brex, Slack, Docsend, Facebook, Edmodo, WeWork, Mint, etc., these experts share insider tips on how to break into fields like product management and enterprise sales. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs to hire and manage experts in fields outside their own.
This week’s edition features Whitney Sales, a general partner at Acceleprise, the leading enterprise SaaS accelerator, and Russ Heddleston, founder and CEO of DocSend, a fast-rising document management and sharing product.
Whitney brings sales experience from LoopNet, Meltwater, SpringAhead/Tallie, and People Data Labs, before starting her own sales consultancy aptly named “The Sales Method.” Russ brings experience from founding and selling his first company to Facebook, before becoming the first salesperson of the second company he founded, DocSend.
Neil Devani and Tim Hsia created The Operators after seeing and hearing too many heady, philosophical podcasts about the future of the world and the tech industry, and not enough attention on the practical day-to-day work that makes it all happen.
Tim is a Venture Partner at Digital Garage and the CEO & Founder of Media Mobilize, a media company and ad network. Neil is an early-stage investor based in San Francisco with a focus on companies that solve serious problems, including Andela, Clearbit, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Vicarious Surgical, and Kudi.
If you’ve ever had to convince anyone of anything, or are interested in a career in sales or starting a company where you will have to hire or manage salespeople, you can’t miss this episode.
The show:
The Operators, hosted by Neil Devani and Tim Hsia, highlights the experts building the products and companies that drive the tech industry. Speaking from experience at companies like Google, Brex, Slack, Docsend, Facebook, Edmodo, WeWork, Mint, etc., these experts share insider tips on how to break into fields like product management and enterprise sales. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs to hire and manage experts in fields outside their own.
In this episode:
In Episode 1, we’re talking about sales. Neil interviews Whitney Sales, an investor with Acceleprise, the leading enterprise SaaS accelerator, and Russ Heddleston, founder and CEO of Docsend.
Neil Devani: Hi and welcome to the first episode of The Operators when we talk to the people building the companies of today and tomorrow. We publish every other Monday and you can find us online at operators.co.
Today’s episode is sponsored by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic’s Lion’s Mane Mushroom Coffee has all of coffee’s focusing bark with none of the jittery bite. Lion’s Mane provides productivity, focus, and creativity all while being a healthy alternative to that daily cup of coffee. Go to www.foursigmatic.com/operators-special to try out Four Sigmatic.
I’m your host Neil Devani, and we’re coming to you today from Digital Garage here in sunny San Francisco. Joining me is Russ Heddleston, founder and CEO of DocSend, a popular product for managing and sharing sensitive documents.
Also joining us is Whitney Sales, partner at Acceleprise, the premier SaaS accelerator. Whitney has 10 years of startup sales experience and is the founder of the sales method, a consultancy that helps startups with go-to-market and sales. Whitney and Russ, thank you for joining us. It’s a pleasure to have you. If we could start if just give us a little bit of your background that would be great.
Russ Heddleston: I’ll start. I’m Russ Heddleston, as you said, co-founder and CEO of DocSend. My background is not in sales it’s in software engineering. I was at Stanford for my Bachelor’s and Masters in computer science. And then I worked at a bunch of different tech companies over the years as an intern at Microsoft, as a PM intern, I was the first engineering intern at Trulia, I ran the engineering team in a company called Greystripe for a few years, an early intern at Dropbox.
And then DocSend is actually my second company. I started the first one in 2010 while I was in business school at Harvard, and then ended up being acquired by Facebook. And I started DocSend about six years ago here in San Francisco.
Whitney Sales: Hi, my name is Whitney Sales. I’m a GP, general partner at Acceleprise Ventures. My background is an early stage sales. Before Acceleprise I actually started a sales consultancy called The Sales Method where I worked with founders in getting to $1M in ARR, really in the early stages of the problem solving of sales.
Before that I worked for several startups. LoopNet in the early days, helped launch two products for them. I worked at a company called Meltwater before they were acquired.
And I worked for a company called SpringAhead. They are now Tallie, they were also acquired. Ran sales for a company called People Data Labs. And then I just spun out on my own and started the Sales Method which ended up bringing me to Acceleprise.
Devani: Awesome, really great story. Just to start, I would love to hear from both of you a little bit about your organizations and how you think about sales. And maybe you can give us a little bit of the definitions around different roles that you see in a sales organization, whether it’s your company or other companies you’re investing in or have worked with in the past.
Sales: There’s a lot of different roles in sales. It really depends on the type of organization you’re running, candidly. But traditionally there’s an SDR, sales development rep. I usually recommend that being the first hire in a sales team for a founder, so they can scale up their own time.
Then there’s an account executive within an organization that’s typically doing a direct sale. There may be senior account executives or junior account executives, like a mid-market enterprise executive depending on the type of sales cycle they’re running.
Sales engineers, if you’re dealing with a complex dev tool, traditionally, or a more heavy enterprise implementation tool.
Just about anyone can come up with a good idea. Fewer people can execute on that idea and turn it into a prototype or MVP. But there is still one final challenge for most entrepreneurs that can prove challenging.
How do you secure that initial seed capital and take your idea to the next level?
Kadavy, Heddleston and Hudson can offer a unique perspective on the process of early-stage fundraising.
Kadavy joined Redpoint in 2018 after a four-year stint at Charles River Ventures, where she sourced or led deals with ClassPass, Cratejoy, DoorDash, Lauren & Wolf and Patreon. She’s also spent time within firms like Bain & Company, Warby Parker and Uber Freight. She understands the importance of operational experience, and knows better than most how to take a company from point A to point B.
Heddleston, cofounder and CEO of DocSend, has a completely different perspective. DocSend is used to securely send and track documents, and one of the most prevalent documents on the platform happens to be pitch decks. Heddleston can tell us about what characteristics get (and keep) the attention of investors, as well as what turns them off.
Hudson, managing partner at Precursor Ventures, has been on both sides of the conference room table. He founded Bionic Panda Games, which was acquired by Zynga in 2010. He moved on to SoftTech VC (now Uncork Capital), where he spent eight years working on seed stage investments in the consumer internet space. At Precursor Ventures, he’s continuing to invest in early-stage companies that are tackling problems in new markets.
These three each have their own perspective on how to get the attention of investors and how to turn a conversation into a cap table.
“How To Raise Your First Dollars” is but one of many panels that will take place on the Extra Crunch stage at Disrupt SF. The Extra Crunch stage, much like Extra Crunch on the web, is meant to serve as a resource for aspiring entrepreneurs and VCs, offering practical, step-by-step advice on how to get to where you’re going.
We’re thrilled to have Kadavy, Heddleston and Hudson join us at the show.
This is definitely a weekend read (it’s about 25 mins in length), but here’s a taste:
There’s one more piece to this grander AR vision, and it’s perhaps the biggest and most challenging one.
Your phone knows your location, but current GPS tech is really only accurate within a few feet. Even when it’s at its most accurate, it doesn’t always stay there for long. Ever use Google Maps in a big city and had your marker hop around all over the map? That’s probably from the signals bouncing off buildings, vehicles, and all of the myriad metal things around you.
That’s good enough for basic augmented reality functionality seen in Pokémon GO today. But Niantic wants to get closer and closer to the vision of GO’s original trailer, where hundreds of people can look up to see the same Zapdos flying overhead, synchronized in time and space across all of their devices. Where you can gather in a park with friends to watch massive Pokémon battles play out in real time, or leave a virtual gift on a bench for a friend to walk up to and discover. For this, Niantic will need something more precise and more consistent. Like pretty much everything with Niantic, it all goes back to maps.
More specifically, they’ll need to build a 3D map of the environments where people are playing. It’s easy enough to get relatively accurate 3D data about huge things like buildings, but what about everything around those buildings? The statues, the planters, the trees, the bus stops. John [Hanke, Niantic’s CEO], and others in the space, refer to this map as the “AR Cloud.”
