20 VC 078: BETAWORKS WEEK: Matt Hartman, Director of Seed Investments @ Betaworks
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 12 October 2015
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matt Hartman is director of seed investments at betaworks. Prior to joining betaworks, he was co-founder of ReferBoost, a profitable b2b company in the real estate and social media space, and JustBecause, a mobile app used by Uber, Birchbox, Jackthreads, and other e-commerce companies for customer acquisition. He started his career building the technology platform for Trammell Crow Company (acquired by CBRE) before joining Hot Potato (acquired by Facebook).
In this interview with Matt we talk about one of Betaworks investments in ProductHunt and I would love to direct you all to go check out ProductHunt’s new podcast section, it’s the best way to find new and amazing podcast episodes, check it out!
To win a signed copy of Venture Deals by Brad Feld? All you have to do is leave a review on iTunes and then email [email protected] with the name that you left the review under!
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How you has Matt ended up at the amazing Betaworks, what was his career pre-Betaworks?
2.) How does Matt define betaworks and his role in particular in the Betaworks organisation? What makes this model the most effective and successful in Matt's view?
3.) How does Matt believe the structure of social networks alters user behavior and therefore impacts distribution? How do social networks include habit forming behaviours to ensure user retention on their networks?
4.) What does Matt think makes a strong community? What was it about ProductHunt that signaled to you this was the beginning of a rapidly growing community?
5.) With Betaworks investment in Gimlet Media, how does Matt see the future of podcasting? Does investing in Gimlet not break the rule that it has to be a potentially $bn exit?
6.) Question from Ryan Hoover, Founder at ProductHunt: ‘What product or app has impressed Matt the most in the past year and what really gets Matt excited when trying new products both as an investor and as a user’?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Most Read Blog or Newsletter: Founder's Notebook by David Jaxson
Matt's Favourite Book: The Psychology of Pursuasion by Robert Cialdini
Matt's Fave Productivity Apps: Drafts
Most Recent Investment: Disruptive Multimedia by Ryan Leslie
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC 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!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to the 20-minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings, and this week I'm very excited |
| 0:05.8 | to bring you a very special lineup of interviews as we enter one of the world's most successful |
| 0:11.3 | startup studios. It is, of course, BetaWorks. And joining us today from BetaWorks is the one |
| 0:17.5 | and only Matt Hartman. Matt is director of seed investments at BetaWorks, |
| 0:22.1 | who have invested in the likes of Tumblr, Airbnb, Groupon and Twitter, |
| 0:27.3 | and have internally built startups such as Chart Beat, Bitley and Social Flow. And prior to joining |
| 0:33.7 | the company, he was co-founder of Refer Boost, a profitable B-to-B company in the real estate |
| 0:39.5 | and social media space, and he also founded just because a mobile app used by Uber, Birchbox, |
| 0:46.6 | Jack Threads, and many other e-commerce companies for customer acquisition. He started his career |
| 0:52.1 | building the technology platform for Trammell Crow Company, |
| 0:55.3 | which was acquired by CBRE, before joining Hot Potato, which was acquired by Facebook. |
| 1:01.3 | And in this interview with Matt, we talk about one of BetaWorks' investments in Product Hunt, |
| 1:05.8 | and I'd love to direct you all to go check out Product Hunt's new podcast section. |
| 1:10.7 | It's the best way to discover new and amazing podcast, so to go check out Product Hunt's new podcast section. It's the best way to discover |
| 1:12.2 | new and amazing podcast. So please do check it out and the links can be found in the show notes. |
| 1:17.7 | And as if this episode couldn't get any better, would you like the chance to win a signed |
| 1:21.7 | copy of venture deals by the legend that is Bradfeld? Well, all you have to do is leave a review |
| 1:27.0 | on iTunes and then email Harry at the 20 minute |
| 1:30.4 | VC.com with the name that you left the review under on iTunes. |
| 1:34.8 | But before we delve into today's interview, we often hear of VCs being founder friendly, |
| 1:39.8 | a term I would use to describe the brilliant team at VDAR Law. |
| 1:43.4 | With decades of experience helping |
... |
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