20VC: Jet.com's Marc Lore on How To Assess Human Potential and "The Resume Test", Why Chief People Officer Should be One of Your First Hires and Why We Need a New Type of Venture Capital
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 12 July 2021
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Marc Lore is a serial entrepreneur turned investor who’s started and sold four companies. Most recently Marc was the President and CEO of Walmart eCommerce US following the sale of his company, Jet.com, to Walmart for $3.3 billion in 2016. Prior to that, Marc founded Diapers.com/Quidsi which sold to Amazon in 2011 for $550 million. As an investor, Marc announced his new venture firm, Vision Capital People, with his co-founder, Alex Rodrigues, earlier this year with $50M of Alex and Marc's own money. Fun fact, in 1996 Marc qualified to be in the US national bobsled team.
In Today’s Episode with Marc Lore You Will Learn:
1.) How Marc made his way into the startup world, how he came to found Jet.com and what led to his most recent transition to the world of investing?
2.) How does Marc assess human potential? What does he mean when he says "the resume test"? What are the clearest signals of outperformers? What are signs of lack of performance? Why does Marc not believe in referencing? Does Mark start from a position of trust for it to be lost or with none and for it all to be gained?
3.) How does Marc evaluate his relationship to risk and fear? How has it changed over time? What did Marc's wife say when he left his safe job and put all their savings into his new business? What does Marc mean when he discusses finding "Sixth Gear"? How does Marc balance that intensity and ambition with romance and family life?
4.) Why does Marc believe Chief People Officer should be one of your first hires? What are the commonalities of the best Chief People Officers? What does the optimal relationship between CEO and CPO look like? How does Marc test for his core characteristics in interviews? What questions does he ask every candidate? What are the most revealing?
5.) How does Marc think about portfolio construction with the new fund today? Does Marc believe it is possible to take 40%+ of companies without alienating future investors? Is Marc concerned about over-capitalising companies too early? How does Marc think about reserves strategy and concentrating capital into the best companies?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back. This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'm so excited for our show to stay. |
| 0:03.9 | I've wanted to have this guest on the show for a long, long time, and so I'm thrilled to make it happen. |
| 0:07.8 | And so with that, excited to welcome Mark Lorry, serial entrepreneur, turned investor, who started and sold four companies. |
| 0:14.2 | Most recently, Mark was the president and CEO of Walmart e-commerce US, following the sale of his company, Jet..com to Walmart for $3.3 billion in 2016. |
| 0:23.6 | Prior to that, Mark founded diapers.com slash quidzy, which sold to Amazon in 2011 for $550 million. |
| 0:30.6 | And then as an investor, Mark announced his new venture firm, Vision Capital People, with his co-founder, Alex Rodriguez Rodriguez earlier this year with 50 million dollars of |
| 0:38.8 | Alex and Mark's own money and fun fact Mark has to be the only person who's ever qualified to be in |
| 0:44.3 | their national US bobsled team and also feature on 20 VC so fun fact there from 1996 but before we |
| 0:51.1 | move into the show today I have to say I just love using AngelList fund admin platform to manage my investments. |
| 0:56.9 | The team and the platform at AngelList takes care of all my back office needs so that I can focus on working with great founders. |
| 1:03.2 | Leading fund managers have made over 10,000 investments into 6,000 startups by AngelList, all online and all in one place. |
| 1:10.3 | And with the recently announced |
| 1:11.3 | rolling funds, you can easily find and invest in these top fund managers on angellist.com |
| 1:16.7 | forward slash rolling. And let's face it, this new world of remote work is here to stay. |
| 1:21.0 | And so all of the new headaches that come with running a remote team, though, which is a nightmare. |
| 1:25.3 | Rippling, though, helps fast-growing startups automate |
| 1:27.9 | their HR and their IT, and now they're making it super easy to manage employees and contractors |
| 1:32.9 | anywhere. When you hire people in new states, Ripling can now automatically register your |
| 1:37.5 | startup with each state tax agency and keep you compliant with all the different local labor laws. |
| 1:42.9 | From there, Ripling lets you onboard new hires in literally 90 seconds. You can instantly set up people's payrolls, benefits, |
| 1:49.5 | and all their apps like Slack and GitHub. So if you're looking for an easier way to run your |
| 1:54.1 | startup remotely, or just a better way to manage your HR and IT, visit rippling.com forward |
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