20VC: Benchmark’s Chetan Puttagunta on The One Question To Ask When Analysing Market Size, How To Compete in Today’s War for Talent & Why We Have Seen An Over-Rotation In Running Businesses Based on Metrics

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2019

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chetan Puttagunta is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful funds of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Uber, Twitter, Dropbox, WeWork, Snapchat, StitchFix, eBay and many many more. As for Chetan, at Benchmark he has led deals in the likes of Duffel, Sketch and Pachyderm. Before Benchmark, Chetan was a General Partner @ NEA where he led investments in Elastic, MongoDB and Mulesoft to name a few.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Chetan made his way into the wonderful world of venture, came to invest in Mulesoft and Elastic and how that led to becoming a GP with Benchmark today?

2.) How does Chetan feel about the push to run businesses based on metrics and benchmarks relative to other companies? What are the metrics they should hone in on? What are the metrics they should disregard? How does Chetan advise his portfolio on the right way to view competition? What is core to analysing competition effectively?

3.) How does Chetan assess the "war for talent" in terms of startup recruiting today? How do the very best CEOs recruit the best talent to their team? Who has done this best from Chetan's portfolio that comes to mind? How much weight does Chetan place on references? What should one watch out for with references?

4.) With the rise of remote, does Chetan believe that a startup even has to have an office in SF today? How does Chetan think about the "tribal knowledge" that remains within the valley? What does Chetan advise his companies that are not in the valley and contemplating it? What works? What does not?

5.) How does Chetan think about market size today when considering new opportunities? Where does Chetan think most managers go wrong when assessing TAM? How does Chetan think about time allocation across the portfolio? What have been his biggest lessons on managing his time effectively as an investor and board member?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Chetan’s Fave Book: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE

Chetan’s Most Recent Investment: Duffel

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Chetan on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to another week on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and we are revealing
0:03.6	more and more of the process of how we really make the shows behind the scenes on Instagram at
0:07.9	H. Stebbing's 1996 with 2Bs. It would be great to see you there. But to our episode today, and I've
0:13.0	been lucky enough to feature this guest before when he was at his prior fund. He's since become a
0:17.2	friend, and it's just a really wonderful player in our ecosystem. Since our last episode, he's also joined Benchmark and is making his mark there. And so with that, I'm thrilled
0:24.4	to welcome to the show, Chathen Putaginta, general partner at Benchmark, one of the most successful
0:28.9	funds of the last decade, with a portfolio, including the likes of Uber, Twitter, Dropbox,
0:33.8	WeWork, Snapchat, Stitch Fix, eBay, and many, many more incredible companies. As for Chathen,
0:38.9	at Benchmark, he's led deals in the likes of Duffel, Sketch, and I'm going to say this wrong,
0:42.9	but I'm going to try it anyway. Pachyderm. Before benchmark, Chathen was a general partner at
0:46.9	N EA, where he led investments in Elastic, MongoDB, and MuleSoft, just to name a few. I'd also want to say huge thank you to Matt our founder at Heap
0:54.2	for the fantastic intro to Chathan, now made over three years ago. But before we dive into the show
0:58.8	today, we need to talk about Airbase, the ideal cloud-based spend management platform for growing
1:03.3	startups. It's a game changer for finance teams that need to keep up with company growth, and
1:07.7	for me, it's so awesome for three key reasons. One, you can use Airbase to
1:11.5	issue virtual and physical cards for card payments, as well as checks and ACH transfers for invoice payments.
1:17.6	Second, they have an incredible pre-approval system for expense requests, meaning you see expenses
1:22.2	as employees request them instead of only learning about them when the statement comes in at the
1:26.2	end of the month. And finally, because all of the transactions flow through the Airbase system, they can help
1:30.7	automate a lot of the accounting work, like coding expenses, collecting invoices and receipts,
1:35.5	and much, much more. And that's why the likes of Gusto, front, and segment, all love Airbase,
1:40.1	and head over to Airbase.com to book a demo and find out how to get up to 1.5% cashback on your
	...

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