20VC: Lambda School Founder, Austen Allred on Why Unemployment Is An Optimisation Problem That Will Be Solved Over The Next 20 Years, Why The Speed and Quality of Decisions Are Not Mutually Exclusive & The 1 Question All Founders Must Ask Themselves Befor
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2019
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Austen Allred is the Founder & CEO @ Lambda School, a 9 month, immersive program that gives you the tools and training you need to launch your new career—from the comfort of your own home. As a Lambda student, you pay nothing until you’re earning $50k or more. And if you don’t, it’s free. To date, Austen has raised over $48m with Lambda from a personal favourite of mine Bedrock, GGV, GV, Stripe and Ashton Kutcher just to name a few. Prior to founding Lambda, Austen was Senior Manager for Growth @ LendUp and before that co-founded Grasswire.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Austen made his way from being broke, sleeping in a car to founding one of Silicon Valley's hottest startups in the form of Lambda School?
2.) Austen lived in his car for many months in Palo Alto, what did Austen come to learn about himself from that experience? Before Austen has said, "it is not about money", so how would Austen describe his personal relationship to money? Consequently, what does this mean for Austen's relationship to risk?
3.) Austen previously stated he was "determined to never raise VC again before Lambda School". 2 years and $47m later, what changed in his attitude to raising VC? How mus every founder examine their business model before raising VC? What is the one question they must ask pre-raise?
4.) Austen recently raised a $30m Series B round, how did that round come about? What is Austen's biggest advice when it comes to investor selection? How does Austen think about when is the right time to raise big? How does that impact and affect operating mentality? What was it about Geoff Lewis that made Austen take his offer over others?
5.) Question from Geoff @ Bedrock: How does Austen iterate on all aspects of the business so fast? Why does Austen believe that the speed and quality of decisions are not mutually exclusive? Why does Austen believe the faster you ship, the higher quality they will be? How does Austen determine which experiments to stick with vs drop?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Austen’s Fave Book: Les Miserables, The Wright Brothers
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Austen 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 the 20 minute VC and Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings, |
| 0:04.2 | 1996 with 2Bs on Instagram, and it would be great to see you there. |
| 0:07.8 | Now, for the show today, and obviously I love all the companies on the show, but this one's day |
| 0:11.6 | is especially close to my heart. What can I say, I really am a fanboy of this phenomenal founder |
| 0:16.3 | and mission. And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome Austin Allred, founder and CEO at Lambda |
| 0:21.1 | school, a nine-month immersive program that gives you the tools and training you need to |
| 0:25.3 | launch your new career from the comfort of your own home. As a Lambda student, you pay nothing |
| 0:29.5 | until you're earning 50K or more, and if you don't, it's free. To date, Austin has raised over |
| 0:34.2 | $48 million with Lambda from a personal favourite of mine, Bedrock and Jeff |
| 0:38.1 | Lewis, GGV with Jeff from Monday's episode, GV, Stripe and Ashton Coucher, just to name a few. |
| 0:44.1 | Prior to founding Lambda, Austin was senior manager for growth at Lendup, and before that, |
| 0:48.1 | co-founded Grasswire. I do also want to say a huge thank you to Sean at GV, Jeff at Bedrock, John Collison at Stripe, and Jeff at GGV |
| 0:55.1 | for the fantastic questions suggestions today. I really do so appreciate that. But before we |
| 0:59.9 | dive into the show today, a lot of what we do on the 20 minute VC is talk to experts, pick |
| 1:04.2 | the brains of founders and investors who tell us which trends to watch out for, offer tips on |
| 1:08.3 | fundraising, and teach us how to excel at any company stage. |
| 1:11.2 | There's no playbook for building a great business, but we can certainly learn from people who've |
| 1:14.9 | done it before. Beyond listening to this podcast and talking to mentors and advisors in your own |
| 1:19.3 | network, it's important to have resources you can turn to when you're tackling a new challenge. |
| 1:23.7 | Stripe has built those resources for you, whether you'd like to learn how to run a pricing experiment or build a knockout landing page, |
| 1:29.8 | Stripe gives you the information you need to start, run and scale a technology company. |
| 1:34.1 | Their guides are often written by or feature people like Elag Gill, whom we've actually had on this very podcast, |
... |
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