20VC: MongoDB CEO, Dev Ittycheria on Why Sometimes You Have To Be Inefficient To Be Effective, The 2 Different Types of Decisions and How Great Leaders Respond To Each & Why Value To Overhead Ratio Is The Metric To Use When Selecting Investors
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 10 August 2020
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dev Ittycheria is the President and CEO @ MongoDB, recognized as the world's most popular next-generation database and the first database company to go public in over 26 years. Prior to their IPO, MongoDB raised from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, USV and NEA to name a few. As for Dev, before Mongo Dev was Managing Director at OpenView Venture Partners, Venture Partner at Greylock Partners, and CEO/Co-founder of BladeLogic, which was acquired by BMC for $900 million. Dev has also sat on some incredible boards including AppDynamics, athenahealth and BazaarVoice.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Dev made his way into the world of startups? How Dev made his entry into the world of venture? How that led to his joining Mongo as CEO?
2.) How has Dev seen his style of leadership change over the last few years? What are the 3 core benefits of being vulnerable with your investors? Why does Dev believe you sometimes have to be inefficient to be effective? What element/trait would Dev like to improve and develop as a leader?
3.) Where does Dev believe the majority of leaders make mistakes when it comes to scaling their teams and orgs? How does Dev think about the debate of whether to promote internally or hire externally for a role? Why does Dev believe the asymmetry of information there is dangerous?
4.) What has been Dev's biggest lessons when it comes to the speed that information is relayed within orgs? How does this differ between good news and bad news? What can leaders do to create environments where bad news is shared freely? Where do many go wrong here?
5.) How does Dev advise founders on the criteria they should use to determine which investors to work with? What has been so impressive to Dev about working with Sequoia? How would Dev describe Roelof Botha's style of board membership? How can investors crucially build trust with their CEOs?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Dev’s Fave Book: High Output Management
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 20-minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I've long admired the company we're |
| 0:03.4 | featuring today. They've categorized in such a smart way. They've become a poster child for the |
| 0:07.8 | New York tech ecosystem and just so much respect for their leadership. And so it's a huge |
| 0:11.6 | honour today to welcome Dev Ititurria to the hot seat today. Now, Dev is the president and CEO |
| 0:16.5 | MongoDB, recognises the world's most popular next generation database and the first database company |
| 0:22.2 | to go public in over 26 years. Prior to their IPO, Mongo raised from someone the best in the |
| 0:27.1 | business, including Sequoia, USV and NEA, to name a few. As for Dev, before Mongo, he was managing |
| 0:33.0 | director at Open View Venture Partners, he was also a venture partner at Greylock Partners. And before that was CEO and co-founder of Blade Logic, |
| 0:39.9 | which was acquired by BMC for $900 million. |
| 0:42.8 | Dev's also sat on some incredible boards, |
| 0:44.9 | including App Dynamics, Athena Health, and Bazaar Voice, to name a few. |
| 0:48.9 | I'd also want to say a huge thank you to roll off at Sequoia |
| 0:51.3 | and Chip at Flybridge for some fantastic question suggestions today. |
| 0:54.7 | I really do so appreciate that. |
| 0:56.7 | But before we move into the show today, digital hitting new gear in 2020 and companies need the tools that will allow them to flourish in our ever-changing world. |
| 1:04.4 | That's where Amplitude comes in. |
| 1:06.1 | Amplitude helps the top product and growth teams at companies like PayPal, Instacart, Peloton and Atlassian |
| 1:12.1 | build product experiences that convert and retain customers. With their product intelligence platform, |
| 1:17.4 | you and your team will better understand user behavior, ship great product experiences faster, |
| 1:22.2 | and retain more customers. And they've become the gold standard in analytics for teams asking |
| 1:26.5 | what is happening in their |
| 1:27.5 | digital products, why users are converting and what to build next. See for yourself how companies like |
... |
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