20VC: InVision Founder Clark Valberg on Why True Leadership is Like Writing, How To Be Truly Self-Aware & The Fundamental False Premise of Entrepreneurship
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 30 August 2019
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Summary
Clark Valberg is the Founder & CEO @ InVision, the digital product design platform powering the world's best user experiences. To date, Clark has raised over $350m with InVision from some of the world-leading investors including Iconiq, Spark Capital, Accel, Battery Ventures, Tiger Global, FirstMark and even Atlassian. Prior to founding InVision, Clark spent 8 years as the Co-Founder of Epicenter Consulting, a leading web application design business. If that was not enough, Clark is also a leading angel with a portfolio including Algolia, Voiceflow, Unsplash and BentoBox, just to name a few.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Clark made his way from running a successful design agency to fundamentally changing the way designers design products and consumer experience them through InVision?
2.) Why does Clark believe that all aspiring entrepreneurs questions have a false premise? What is the fundamental false premise of entrepreneurship? How does Clark assess the importance of vision and mission over alternate elements? What advice does Clark give to the many aspiring entrepreneurs that ask for his advice?
3.) How does Clark think about market timing today as an entrepreneur? How does Clark think investors should approach and think about market timing? How does Clark look to measure impact not just size of the market? How has angel investing changed Clark's operating mentality as an entrepreneur with InVision?
3.) Why does Clark believe that enlightenment is a daily task? What does Clark do to fundamentally make himself present enough to appreciate those inflection points and moments of enlightenment? How can everyone use note-taking to gain this level of self-consciousness? How are the notes structured? What routine needs to be built around them?
4.) How does Clark think about taking the time to appreciate the milestones that are achieved? Why do we have to make celebrating a ritual? What can be done to ensure these moments of company and personal growth are recognised? What have been Clark's biggest moments of realisation on this theme?
5.) With InVision being an almost fully remote team, what have been Clark's biggest breakthroughs in making it work so well with his marriage and his family? What are "date days"? How does Clark use them to ensure the right balance of work and romance? What has Clark found to be the weirdest thing of operating a 900-person remote firm?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Clark’s Fave Book: Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: The Battle for Your Mind
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Clark 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 | Hello and welcome back to the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings, 1996, with |
| 0:04.8 | two B's on Instagram, and one is one of my favourite Founders Friday episodes we've ever done. |
| 0:09.0 | I know I say episodes are special a lot, but this one was just so real. |
| 0:12.4 | A lot of the conversation was totally off-script, and the guest was just a total rock star, |
| 0:16.1 | to say the least. And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome Clark Valberg, found and CEO at InVision, the digital |
| 0:21.6 | product design platform powering the world's best user experiences. To date, Clark has raised |
| 0:26.4 | over $350 million with InVision from some of the world's leading investors including |
| 0:31.1 | iconic, Spark, Excel, Battery, Tiger, First Mark, and even at Lasian. Prior to founding |
| 0:37.4 | InVision, Clark spent eight years as the co-founder of EpiCenter Consulting, a leading web application design business. And if that wasn't enough, Clark's also a leading angel with a portfolio including the lights of Algolia, Voice Flow, Unsplash and Bento Box, just to name a few. I'd also want to say huge thank you to Megan Quinn, Vassad Excel, Amish at first |
| 0:54.7 | mark, and Master Iconic for some fantastic question suggestions today. I really do so appreciate that. |
| 1:00.3 | But before we dive into the show today, I want to give a big shout out to my friends over |
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