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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Khosla's Keith Rabois on How To Create Sustainability Behind Growth, How To Assess The Potential Of Individuals & Teams & The Biggest Takeaways from LinkedIn, Paypal & Square

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4637 Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2017

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Keith Rabois is an investment partner at Khosla Ventures where he has led investments in Stripe, Thoughtspot, HealthTap and Teespring among many others. He also started OpenDoor, which aims to transform the process of selling a home through technology. Keith's unparalleled operational track record does not stop there as he has forged several of the most important new social and commerce platforms over the last decade holding key roles at LinkedIn, Paypal and being COO at Square. As a board member, Keith guided Yelp [NYSE: YELP] and Xoom [NASDAQ: XOOM] from inception to successful IPOs. Simultaneously, he also invested in other like-minded entrepreneurs with early stakes in YouTube [acquired by GOOG], Yammer [acquired by MSFT], Palantir, Lyft, AirBnB, Eventbrite and Quora.

 

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Keith made the move from key executive at LinkedIn, Paypal and Square to being a VC with Khosla?

2.) Question from Lee Hower: What were the biggest learnings from playing a key role at LinkedIn, Paypal and Square? How do they compare to learning from Slide, a not so successful project? Does one learn more from success or failure?

3.) Question from Jason Lemkin: How can founders assess the potential of their teams? How long is it possible to allow individuals to stretch to their roles? What are the signs that people are either exceeding or falling below expectations?

4.) Eric Yuan @ Zoom has previously illustrated the importance to me of sustainable growth. What is Keith's view of this? Why does he not like this term? What are his thoughts on the key constraints on growth for most startups?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Keith’s Fave Book: The Upside of Stress

Keith's Fave Blog: Stratechery 

Keith’s Most Recent Investment: Forward 

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Keith on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com – and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount!

FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome back to another week in the world of the 20 minute VC with me, your host Harry Stebbings

0:04.1

at H Stebbings with 2Bs on Snapchat. Post-marathon, I'm following the one and only Tim Ferriss slow carb diet

0:09.8

after recommendations from previous guest Tim Chang. So if you want to see behind the scenes on

0:14.2

that and me being incredibly grumpy without my afternoon chocolate, then do add me on Snapchat.

0:18.8

But to the show today, and my word, I've wanted to have this

0:21.1

guest on the show for a long time. One of the individuals that inspired me really to get into

0:24.9

technology. So I'm thrilled to welcome Keith Raboy to the hot seat today. Keith is an investment

0:29.4

partner at Coastal Ventures, where he's led investments in Stripe, Thoughtspot, Health, Tap, and

0:34.5

T-spring, among many others. He also started Open Door, which aims to transform

0:38.6

the process of selling a home through technology. Keith's unparalleled operational track record

0:43.0

does not stop there, as he's forged several of the most important new social and commerce platforms,

0:48.0

including key roles at LinkedIn, PayPal and being C-O at Square. As a board member, Keith guided

0:53.7

Yelp and Zoom from inception to successful

0:56.1

IPOs. Simultaneously, he must have one of the best angel track records ever, having invested

1:01.2

early in YouTube, Yammer, Palantir, Lyft, Airbnb, Eventbright and Cora, just to name a few of

1:07.8

the outstanding companies in his portfolio. I do also want to say a huge

1:10.9

thank you to the man behind my new diet, Tim Chang, for the intro to Keith today, without which

1:15.4

this episode would not have been possible. But before we dive into the show, say, I really want

1:19.2

to talk to you about a company that's really changed the way I sleep and operate. Eight is a

1:23.6

sleep innovation company with their latest product that 8 smart mattress being a bed that

1:28.0

literally tells you how well you slept last night paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures

1:33.2

the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report in order to bring you the best product

...

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