20VC: How To Build True Human Relationships with VC Pre-Investment, Why Valuation Is Not The Only Term and When To Take Lower Offers & How To Approach Mental Health As A Founder with Jon Dishotsky, Founder & CEO @ Starcity
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2019
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jon Dishotsky is the Founder & CEO @ Starcity, the startup on a mission to make cities more affordable to everyone allowing you to live with great people in the city you love. To date, Jon has raised over $28m in funding for Starcity from the likes of Social Capital, Y Combinator, Bullpen Capital, NEA and Kima Ventures in Paris, just to name a few. Prior to founding Starcity, Jon did over 3M square feet of commercial real estate transactions for clients including Optimizely, Cruise Automation, Weebly, Zenefits and many more. Before that he spent 8 years at the prestigious Cushman & Wakefield. Jon is also an active angel investor with investments in the likes of Remote, Fond and Savvy.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Jon made his way from doing real estate transactions for clients including YC to being one of the hottest prop tech startups making cities affordable with Starcity?
2.) Why did it take so long for the venture ecosystem to get excited by the rise of proptech? What was the catalyst? When advising VCs, how do you advise them to get comfortable investing in these heavy asset, non-lean startup businesses? What are the biggest mistakes investors make when analysing proptech?
3.) What were some of Jon's biggest takeaways from his time at YC? How does Jon advise other founders looking to get into YC today? When it comes to investor selection, in what cases would Jon take a lower valuation against other offers? How does Jon advise founders on investor selection? What questions should they ask? Why is it like hiring? What are the common mistakes that Jon sees founders make when selecting investors?
4.) How does Jon advise founders when it comes to improving the quality of their mental health? Where do Jon struggle? How does Jon engage with social media knowing the psychological effects it has? What have been some major breakthroughs for him? Why does Jon believe having kids has made him a better founder? Why does Jon believe that older entrepreneurs are actually more successful than younger founders?
5.) What is Jon's biggest advice to founders when it comes to building relationships with VCs? Should founders "always be raising"? How transparent should founders be with VCs both in the relationship building process and the fundraise itself?
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jon 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 Founders Friday on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and it'd be awesome to welcome |
| 0:04.1 | you behind the scenes on Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996. Have to admit, it's largely an array of |
| 0:09.6 | Mahito and Jim videos these days, but I would love to see you there. But to our episode today, |
| 0:14.0 | and I'm delighted to welcome a friend and phenomenal founder in the form of John Dysotsky. |
| 0:18.1 | Now, John is the founder and CEO at Star City, the startup on a |
| 0:21.3 | mission to make cities more affordable for everyone, allowing you to live with great people in the |
| 0:26.0 | city you love. And to date, John's raised over $28 million in funding for Star City, from the |
| 0:30.9 | lights of social capital, Y Combinator, bullpen capital, N-EA, and Kima Ventures in Paris, just to name |
| 0:37.0 | a few. And prior to founding Star City, |
| 0:39.0 | John did over 3 million square feet of commercial real estate transactions for clients including |
| 0:43.3 | the lights of optimiz, cruise automation, Weebly, Zenefits and many more. And before that, he spent |
| 0:48.9 | eight years at the prestigious Cushman and Waitfield. And John's also an active angel investor, |
| 0:53.1 | with investments in the likes of remote, fond and savvy, just to name a few. |
| 0:57.0 | I'd also want to say a huge thank you to two fantastic previous guests in the form of Austin |
| 1:01.1 | at Lambda and Jesse at Loomy for the fantastic intro today. |
| 1:04.4 | I really do so appreciate that, and mehido's on me for that. |
| 1:07.5 | But before we dive into the episode today, I'm always focused on scaling my time, |
| 1:11.1 | and I was always crap at travel booking and management. Well, not anymore. Why? Because I now use |
| 1:15.6 | travel perk, the business travel management platform that even I love, it's just so super easy to |
| 1:20.4 | book travel and actually quite fun. And my favorite, no back and forth with travel agents or your |
| 1:25.3 | finance team, but it gives you the best of both worlds. |
| 1:27.6 | Companies don't just get happy travellers, but also easier management and as much as 20% |
... |
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