20VC: Bessemer's Byron Deeter on The Commonalities Of Truly Great Founders and Learnings From Investing In Box, Twilio and GainSight

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

🗓️ 2 May 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Byron Deeter is a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Prior to being a VC, Byron himself was a veteran cloud CEO & Founder returning to venture capital in 2005 to lead Bessemer’s global cloud practice where he has been actively involved with over 100 cloud investments representing a third of the market cap of all public cloud companies. Byron has lead investments in the likes of Box, Twilio, Intercom, Cornerstone On Demand and many many more. Byron's pedigree is recognised globally as he is consistently ranked one of the top global investors across all industries.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How did Byron make his way into VC from being a veteran cloud CEO and Founder?

2.) What are the commonalities angst the truly exceptional operators that Byron has worked with? What is it that makes the likes Aaron Levie so special?

3.) We saw a $63bn drop in late stage SaaS valuations, so what does this really mean for the early guys? In these markets should founders be placing greater emphasis on unit economics?

4.) With the increasing importance of customer retention will we see further increased growth in the field of customer success? How important is it really now for startups?

5.) How does Byron define efficient growth, what does cash is king mean? Where does Byron stand on the bottoms up sales approach, is this the new sales method of the 21st century?

6.) What have been the biggest takeaways for Byron of watching Box, Sendgrid, Twilio go into hyper growth mode and scale into the rocketships that they are

Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:

Byron’s Fave Book: The Everything Store

Byron's Fave Productivity Tools: Clutter

Byron's Fave Blog: Bleacher Report, Techcrunch

Byron’s Most Recent Investment: Rainforest QA

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Byron 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!

The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the 20 minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings, and you can find me on Snapchat at H. Stebbings.
0:06.6	That's Stebbings with two Bs.
0:08.6	Now, today's show is pretty heavily centred around not only the wonderful world of venture, but the wonderful world of SaaS too.
0:15.0	Therefore, if you enjoy the show today, then I'd love to hear what you think of our new and exciting project with Jason Lempkin,
0:24.9	the official Sasta podcast. We'd absolutely love to hear your thoughts on that.
0:29.3	But for today's show on the 20-minute VC, I'm delighted to welcome Byron Dieter,
0:32.5	partner at the world-famous Bessemer Venture Partners.
0:36.2	And Byron himself is a veteran cloud CEO and founder,
0:39.3	returning to the venture capital game in 2005 to lead Bessemer's global cloud practice, where he's been actively involved with over 100 cloud
0:45.3	investments, representing one-third of the market cap of all public cloud companies, an incredible stat there.
0:51.3	And he's led the investments in the likes of Box, Twilio, Intercom,
0:56.8	Cornerstone on Demand, and many, many more. And it's not just us who think Byron is awesome,
1:01.7	as he has consistently ranked one of the top global investors across all industries. But before you
1:06.9	jump into the show with Byron today, the 20-minute VC is brought to you by Lisa.
1:11.5	Lisa are like the Tom's or the Warby Parker of the mattress industry. Why? Well, having created an
1:16.8	awesome online end-to-end mattress buying experience, replacing the worst-ever experience of buying and testing
1:22.8	a mattress in a terrible showroom, that still is not enough for them, as they like to give back,
1:28.0	which is why for every 10 mattresses, Lisa sells, they donate one to a shelter.
1:32.4	These mattresses are also not just any mattresses. They're engineered to perfection,
1:36.8	with three unique layers, including two inches of memory foam and two inches of latex light foam,
1:42.3	designed to keep you cool. Not only are they engineered to perfection, but all Lisa mattresses are made in the UK and the US,
1:49.2	and they can be shipped for free to the US, UK and Canada.
	...

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