20VC: Gusto Co-Founder, Tomer London on Why Most Founders Approach Fundraising With The Wrong Mindset Today, How To Construct A Values/Motivation Alignment Test To Determine The Right Investors For You & Why Delight Is So Crucial To The Success of Any Con
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2020
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tomer London is the Co-Founder @ Gusto, the people platform for small businesses providing one place to run payroll, manage benefits, and support your team. To date, Tomer and the team have raised over $520M with Gusto from some of the industry's leading investors including General Catalyst, CapitalG, Kleiner Perkins, T Rowe, Fidelity and more and then individuals including Shopify Founder Tobias Luttke, Sam Altman, Max Levchin, Matt Mullenweg, Kevin Hartz and Elad Gil to name a few. Prior to Gusto, Tomer did a PHD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford and before that was Founder and CEO @ Vizmo, mobile self-service technologies for enterprise to try to fix customer care.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Tomer made his way from creating inventory management software for his Father's small business in Israel to Stanford and founding the unicorn that is Gusto?
2.) Why does Tomer believe that most founders approach fundraising with the wrong mindset today? What does he mean when he says, "fundraising = creating change"? What is the "values motivation alignment"? How can founders use it to help them select the right investor for them? Why should you add investors just as you would new team members?
3.) Having raised over $200M in the latest financing, how does Tomer think about when is the right time to pour fuel on the fire and go big? Is it a fundamentally different mindset when you have so much cash thrown on you? What would Tomer advise founders with suddenly expanded budgets? With 111 investors on the Gusto cap table, what would Tomer advise founders when it comes to cap table management?
4.) What have been Tomer's biggest learnings when it comes to building a delightful product at scale across different segments? How important does Tomer feel time to delight from the UX perspective is? How does Tomer think about testing levels of user delight? NPS? Product analytics? How does Tomer think about the balance between product development and going all out for scaling?
5.) How has Tomer seen himself change and evolve as a leader of the last 5 years? What elements has he found super challenging to come to grips with? Where does Tomer believe he has a superpower on the flip side? Question from Laela @ CapitalG, what specifically did you do to create the culture that you did in the early days?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Tomer’s Fave Book: No Room for Small Dreams: Courage, Imagination and the Making of Modern Israel
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Tomer 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 | We are back on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and we'll be in Morocco next week. |
| 0:03.7 | And so if you want to see all things behind the scenes there, you can on Instagram at H. |
| 0:07.6 | Stebbings, 1996 with two bees. |
| 0:09.7 | But to our episode today, and I was lucky enough to have his co-founder at Gusto, the People platform for small businesses, |
| 0:22.5 | providing one place to run payroll, manage benefits and support your team. |
| 0:26.6 | To date, Toma and the team have raised over $520 million with Gusto from some of the industry's leading investors, |
| 0:32.8 | including General Catalyst, Capital G, Klein and Perkins, Tiro, Fidelity and more. And then individuals, including |
| 0:39.0 | Shopify founder Tobias Lutka, Sam Altman, Max Levchin, Matt Mullenweg, Kevin Hartz, and Elad Gill to name a few |
| 0:45.5 | incredible people on the cap table. Prior to Gusto, Toma did a PhD in electrical engineering |
| 0:50.1 | at Stanford, and before that was found and CEO at Vizmo, providing mobile self-service technologies |
| 0:55.1 | for enterprise to try to fix customer care. I'd also want to say huge thank you to Hermont at |
| 0:59.6 | GC and Layla at Capital G for providing some fantastic questions suggestions today. I really do so |
| 1:05.0 | appreciate that. But before we dive into the show today, I'm sure you've heard about it, but my word, |
| 1:09.6 | I just love the Carter product. Carter simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, track cap tables, and get |
| 1:16.2 | valuations. Go to Carter.com forward slash 20VC to get 10% off. More than 800,000 employees |
| 1:22.8 | and shareholders. Now use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity, and Carter now offers |
| 1:28.2 | fund admin, so you can see real-time data in the Carter platform and work with Carter's team |
| 1:33.0 | of experienced fund accountants. Again, go to carter.com forward slash 20 VC to get 10% off. I really |
| 1:39.7 | do so love that product. But to get a deal done, you really need to build that relationship, |
| 1:43.9 | and there's nothing like meeting face-to-face, and there's nothing like Zoom to make that product. But to get a deal done, you really need to build that relationship and there's nothing like |
| 1:44.7 | meeting face to face. |
| 1:45.9 | And there's nothing like Zoom to make that happen. |
... |
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