20VC: Chamath Palihapitiya on Why IPOs and Direct Listings Are Broken, Turning Social Capital Into A Combination of Berkshire Hathaway, Koch Industries and The Red Cross, Why Forecasts Are Worthless, What Creates True Defensibility & Why You Have To Be Pr
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 13 July 2020
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chamath Palihapitiya is Founder & CEO @ Social Capital, the organisation on a mission to transform society by using technology to solve the world’s hardest problems. Social's portfolio includes the likes of Slack, Yammer, Front, Intercom and Carta to name a few. As for Chamath, prior to founding Social, he spent an incredible 4 years at Facebook including as the original exec in charge of FB Platform as well as being responsible for overseeing core growth components and overseeing FB's mobile efforts. If that was not enough, Chamath is also an owner @ The Golden State Warriors & Chairman @ Virgin Galactic.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Chamath made his way into the world of tech and startups, came to be a VC with Mayfield before joining Facebook and then starting Social?
2.) What were Chamath's biggest takeaways from his team building the growth team at Facebook? Why does Chamath believe that forecasts are worthless? What should founders focus on instead? What did Facebook teach Chamath about defensibility and moat building?
3.) What was the realisation moment for Chamath that the venture firm he was building with Social was not what he wanted to build? Why does Chamath believe the biggest mistakes he made were "compensation and partner selection"? How would he do them differently now? What does he look for most in partners today? How does he detect for integrity?
4.) Why has Chamath doubled down on the SPAC model? What are the core benefits both to the founders and investors? What are the core challenges with both direct listings and IPOs? How does Chamath think about scaling his SPAC strategy? What are the core challenges in doing so?
5.) Facing alcoholism and psychological challenges with his parents, how did Chamath deal with becoming a carer sooner than expected? How has becoming a parent changed Chamath's operating mentality today? How does Chamath analyse his relationship to money today?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Chamath’s Fave Book: Liar's Poker: From the author of the Big Short
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, this show I've wanted to do since I started the podcast over five years and 2,000 episodes ago. |
| 0:07.5 | So diving straight in, and it's a huge pleasure to welcome Chimath, Palaeapatia, to the hot seat today. |
| 0:12.3 | Now, Chimath is the founder and CEO at Social Capital, the organisation on a mission to transform society by using technology to solve the world's hardest problems. Social's portfolio |
| 0:22.0 | includes the likes of Slack, Yamma, Front, Intercom and Carter, to name a few incredible companies. As for |
| 0:27.9 | Chimath, prior to founding Social, he spent an incredible four years at Facebook, including as the |
| 0:32.4 | original exec in charge of Facebook platform, as well as being responsible for overseeing core |
| 0:36.8 | growth components and overseeing core growth components |
| 0:37.7 | and overseeing Facebook's mobile efforts. If that wasn't enough, Chimath is also an owner |
| 0:41.9 | at the Golden State Warriors and Chairman at Virgin Galactic. And I do also want to say |
| 0:45.7 | huge thank you to Shaq for some fantastic questions. As always, Shaq, you are the best. |
| 0:50.2 | But before we move into the show today, I'm sure you've heard about it, but my word, this is a product I love, Carter. |
| 0:55.5 | Carter simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, track cap tables, and get valuations. |
| 1:01.0 | Go to carter.com forward slash 20 VC to get 10% off. |
| 1:04.8 | More than 800,000 employees and shareholders. |
| 1:07.6 | Use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity, and Carter now |
| 1:11.3 | offers fund administration, so you can see in real time data in the Carter platform and work |
| 1:16.3 | with Carter's team of experienced fund accountants. Again, go to carter.com forward slash 20VC to get |
| 1:22.1 | 10% off. And speaking of amazing products you've heard about with Carter there, last month I had Jeff |
| 1:27.0 | Seiber and Wayne Chang on the show from Digis. Simply put, they're two of the best founders |
| 1:31.1 | that I've ever met, and they're creating the most intuitive financial software that you've |
| 1:34.8 | ever seen or used, automatically analysing your company's spend and visualising it for you |
| 1:39.9 | as it happens, hone in on recent activity, trends, anomalies, or any question that you have |
... |
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