20VC: Behind The Scenes of a $Bn IPO Process, What Startups Can Learn From Teddy Roosevelt's "Five Minute Meetings" and What John Lennon Teaches Founders About Storytelling with Howard Lerman, Founder & CEO @ Yext
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 14 September 2018
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Howard Lerman is the Founder & CEO @ Yext, the company that allows you to control your brand experience across the digital universe. Due in part to Howard's incredible leadership of the firm, Yext went public in April 2017 with an opening price of $11 a share, today the stock price sits at $26.85 and a market cap of $2.65Bn. Prior to the IPO, Yext raised over $117m in VC funding from Insight Venture Partners, IVP, SV Angel and CrunchFund to name a few. As for Howard, Yext is his 4th company and he is also Co-Founder and Chairman of Confide, a leading off-the-record messaging service.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Howard made his way into the world of startups and came to Partner with is co-founders to start the now public company that is Yext?
2.) Why must every founder know about Teddy Roosevelt and his "Five Minute Meetings"? Literally, what is the right way to structure these meetings? What one question is the right question to ask? How can a leader look to retain that startup culture and ethos with scale? Why does Howard believe running a global company is like running a country?
3.) What have Howard's biggest takeaways been from studying "John Lennon's Storytelling Trick"? How can founders use this trick both to inspire their team more effectively internally and then to present a better vision for the company, externally?
4.) Howard has said before "fundraising is not an end in itself". Does Howard believe that company financing should be celebrated? How was the IPO process for Howard? From a literal standpoint, how does the process run? How did Howard choose which banks to work with? How did the 10-day roadshow shape up? How did the pricing decision-making process look the night before IPO?
5.) Why does Howard believe it is fundamentally better being a public company? What does "public" status allow you? How does being public introduce a challenge never before seen to founders? Why must founders always examine the motives of the VC behind whether they are pushing them to remain private or go public?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Howard’s Fave Book: Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get From Good to Great
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Howard on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to The 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings. It would be fantastic to see you on |
| 0:04.3 | Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996 with two bees. There you can suggest both questions and guests |
| 0:10.1 | for future episodes. But speaking of episodes, I've really wanted to do today's interview for a long, |
| 0:14.8 | long time, a phenomenal guest. I think he's one of the most thoughtful strategists and business |
| 0:19.4 | builders that I've had on the show, |
| 0:26.4 | and so with that, I'm so excited to welcome Howard Lerman, found and CEO at Yext. The company that allows you to control your brand experience across the digital universe, due in part to Howard's |
| 0:30.9 | incredible leadership of the firm, Yext went public in April 2018, with an opening price of $11 a share. |
| 0:37.3 | Today, the stock price sits at about $26.85 and a market |
| 0:41.4 | cap of $2.65 billion, so a pretty successful IPO there, Howard. And prior to the IPO, |
| 0:46.6 | Yext raised over $117 million in VC funding from Insight Venture Partners, IVP, SV Angel, |
| 0:53.3 | and Crunch Fund, just to name a few. |
| 0:55.2 | As for Howard, Yaxed is his fourth company, and he's also co-founder and chairman of Confide, |
| 1:00.0 | a leading off-the-record messaging service. |
| 1:02.3 | I do also have to say a huge thank you to the wonderful Mr. Jonah Goodhart at Mote for the intro to Howard's Day. |
| 1:07.8 | I really do so appreciate that. |
| 1:09.8 | But before we dive into our episode with Howard today, thanks to my friends at WePay, |
| 1:13.6 | let me introduce you to a very cool player in the space we love. |
| 1:16.6 | FreshBooks, the leading cloud accounting software for small businesses and self-employed people. |
| 1:21.2 | It provides invoicing, time tracking, project management, payments, and much, much more. |
| 1:25.8 | The platform aims to allow people to focus on their |
| 1:28.2 | business, not on accounting or getting paid. Learn more at freshbooks.com. And to learn how you can grow |
| 1:33.1 | your revenue with integrated payments, just like freshbooks did, visit wepay.com forward slash |
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