20VC: How To Drop The BS and Relationship Build With Investors, What Investors Can vs Cannot Help Your Company With & Why When There Is Doubt There Is No Doubt In Hiring
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 4 October 2019
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jason Boehmig is the Founder & CEO @ Ironclad, the startup that provides powerful legal contracting for modern legal teams. To date, Jason has raised over $84m with Ironclad from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Accel, Greylock, Emergence, IA Ventures, Semil Shah's Haystack and Ali Rowghani who led their recent $50m Series C from Y Combinator Continuity Fund. As for Jason, prior to founding Ironclad, he was both a corporate attorney with Fenwick & West and then also an adjunct professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Jason left the world of law and made his way into the world of startups and came to be founder of one of Silicon Valley's hottest startups, Ironclad? How did Jason's experience at Lehmann Brothers impact his operating mentality today as a founder? What were his big lessons on personal conviction from seeing Lehmann unravel?
2.) Ironclad is famed for their customer discovery process, so how does Jason think about product development in the early days? What core questions does Jason ask to understand customer needs and desires? How does Jason determine what to implement and what to prioritise? How does Jason think about the balance between data vs gut in product decision-making? What have been his lessons here?
3.) When it comes to hiring, how does Jason approach keeping top of funnel constantly full? Why does Jason believe that when hiring, "when there is doubt, there is no doubt"? What are the common reasons that Jason does not hire a potentially strong candidate? How does Jason determine between a stretch VP and a stretch too far?
4.) How does Jason think about relationship building with VCs? Where do so many founders make mistakes in this process? What advice does Jason have on successfully negotiating with VCs? What works? What does not? What value-add has Jason realised VCs really can and do provide? Where is there a suggestion that they do but rarely do?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Jason’s Fave Book: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jason 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 | You are listening to The 20 Minute VC and Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings |
| 0:04.2 | 1996 with 2Bs on Instagram, and it'd be great to see you there. But to the show today, and I'd heard |
| 0:09.1 | so many good things about this founder from many of his investors, and this episode could not |
| 0:13.0 | have come at a more perfect time with the announcement of their series C, led by Ali Raugani |
| 0:17.1 | at YC continuity just a fortnight ago. And so with that, I'm delighted to welcome Jason |
| 0:21.6 | Bomig, founder and CEO at Ironclad, the startup that provides powerful legal contracting for |
| 0:26.8 | modern legal teams. To date, Jason has raised over $84 million with Ironclad from some of the |
| 0:31.7 | best in the business, including Sequoia, Excel, Greylock, Emergence, IA Ventures, Semmel Shah's Haystack, and then obviously |
| 0:38.7 | Ali Ragharni, who led their recent 50 million Series C from YC. As for Jason, prior to founding |
| 0:43.7 | Ironclad, he was both a corporate attorney with Fenwick and West, and then also an adjunct |
| 0:47.6 | professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. I'd also want to say a huge thank you, both to |
| 0:51.8 | Jesse at IA and Semmel at Haystack, for providing some fantastic questions suggestions today. |
| 0:56.5 | Mejito's on me for that, chaps. |
| 0:58.0 | But before we dive into the show today, I have to talk about the company that's taken this |
| 1:01.5 | ecosystem by Storm, Brex, the company which built the corporate card for startups, |
| 1:06.0 | and who is the fastest company to reach unicorn status in history. Brex's founders Henrique N. Pedro built a payments |
| 1:11.7 | business in Brazil, but kept getting rejected for a corporate card in the States. So they built |
| 1:16.0 | Brex with no personal liability, up to 20 times higher card limits, and huge rewards like 7x points |
| 1:22.0 | on Uber and Lyft, 4x on Brex travel and 2x on SaaS software. If you're a VC back startup based in the US, see if you |
| 1:29.0 | qualify for a Brex card card card card card card fees waived for life by entering the code Harry during |
| 1:35.0 | sign-up. And before Brex, the consumer experience for corporate cards was broken, and it's the same |
| 1:39.5 | for bookkeeping. I doubt you started a business to track financial statements or make cash flow |
... |
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