20VC: Elad Gil on Startup Offense and Defence in a Recession, How The Venture Landscape Has Shifted & All Things Valuations, Secondaries and Layoffs
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2020
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Elad Gil is one of Silicon Valley's most successful and prominent angels of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Stripe, Square, Airbnb, Pinterest, Instacart, Flexport and Brex to name a few. Prior to solely company investing, Elad was an operator as Founder and CEO @ Color Genomics for their first 3 years. Before Color, Elad was a VP of Corporate Strategy @ Twitter following their acquisition of the company he founded, Mixer Labs. Before founding Mixer, Elad spent 3 years at Google where he was involved with 3 acquisition including the Android acquisition.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Elad made his way into the world of startups and how that led to his investing in some of the most prominent companies of the last decade?
2.) How is the venture and startup landscape shifting right now? What does Elad make of the large multi-stage funds re-entering seed? How does Elad advise founders when it comes to taking secondaries?
3.) What are the core elements startups need to assess to fully understand their cash position? What is the optimal runway to have and to raise for today? How can founders stress test their runway models? Where does Elad see the most mistakes when it comes to runway?
4.) Does Elad believe the VC messages of "Open for Business" during COVID? How does Elad advise founders when it comes to valuation sensitivity today? What are the core terms that founders should watch out for when raising? How does Elad see venture fund reserve allocations changing?
5.) What are the core tenets of an effective layoff strategy? How should they determine the right level of aggression with which to make cuts? How can layoffs be done in a way that maintains internal culture and morale? Where does Elad see many going wrong when it comes to layoffs?
6.) Which business will thrive in COVID times? Which will die? What are the leading indicators of each? How does Elad determine in the businesses that are growing immensely during COVID, those that are sustainable growth and those which are purely due to COVID?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Elad’s Fave Book: Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Elad’s Most Recent Investment: Deel
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Elad and 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 | This is the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'm so pleased to bring you today's episode. |
| 0:04.1 | This guest wrote an incredible blog post. |
| 0:05.9 | On defensive and offensive strategies, startups can take in a recession. |
| 0:09.7 | Someone who's been an incredible advisor to me over the years, member of the ecosystem, and just all around a wonderful person. |
| 0:15.0 | I'm so thrilled to welcome back to the show today, Alad Gill, one of Silicon Valley's most successful and prominent angels of the last decade, |
| 0:21.4 | with a portfolio including the lice of check this out, Stripe, Square, Airbnb, Pinterest, Instacart, |
| 0:27.2 | Coinbase, Flexport, and Brex, just to name a few. And prior to solely company investing, |
| 0:32.1 | Alad was an operator, as found and CEO at Color Genomics for their first three years. |
| 0:36.4 | Before Color, Alad was a VP of |
| 0:38.1 | corporate strategy at Twitter following that acquisition of his company that he founded, Mixer Labs. And |
| 0:42.9 | before founding Mixer, Alad spent three years at Google where he was involved with three acquisitions, |
| 0:47.5 | including the acquisition of Android. But before we move into the show today, I wanted to take |
| 0:51.4 | a moment to mention HelloSign, a great example of a company that found success in building a product focused on user experience. HelloSign is an |
| 0:58.5 | effortless e-signature solution used by millions to securely send and request legally valid |
| 1:03.6 | digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of $16 million in funding and recently got |
| 1:08.5 | acquired by Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. |
| 1:12.1 | Check out HelloSign.com forward slash 20VC to join the thousands of companies and founders |
| 1:17.4 | who value fast, secure and simple e-signatures. |
| 1:21.0 | And also everyone knows that building great mobile products is really hard and it takes time. |
| 1:25.4 | With headsbin, product, dev and QA teams know the exact |
| 1:28.7 | behavior and performance of any mobile app running on any device and any network anywhere in the |
| 1:33.8 | world. Headspin began in April 2015 when founders Mani Shumbrun both had painful first-hand experiences |
... |
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