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

20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th

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

🗓️ 17 December 2020

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Hsu is the Founder & CEO @ Retool, the company that allows you to build internal tools, remarkably fast. David has raised over $69M with Retool from the very best in startups including Sequoia, YC, Patrick and John @ Stripe, Henrique & Pedro @ Brex, Paul Graham, Nat @ Github, Peter @ Segment, Tomer @ Gusto and Elad Gil to name a few incredible names. Today Retool works with some of the biggest companies in the world from Amazon to Volvo to Mercedes Benz.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How David made his way from studying philosophy at Oxford to creating one of the valley's hottest companies in the form of Retool?

2.) How does David analyse pivots today? How does one balance between vision and persistence vs realism and knowing when is the right time to pivot? How did a conversation with John Collison change the course of Retool? What advice does David have for founders on pivoting?

3.) Why does David believe that YC is useful pre-product-market fit but useless post-product-market fit? What elements are so helpful vs not about YC? Why did David raise his Series A as a split between Sequoia and prominent angels? Why was that transformational for the company?

4.) Why was David sceptical of VCs for a long time? Why does David believe VCs are useless pre-product-market fit and useful post-product-market fit? What have been David's biggest takeaways from working with Bryan Schrier @ Sequoia?

5.) Why does David believe that once you are profitable and growing it is actually quite hard to become unprofitable? How does David advise founders considering raising VC vs bootstrapping? How does David know when to allocate resources more aggressively to a segment? What are the signs?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode

David’s Favourite Book: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

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

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

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The 20 minute VC here, and to our episode today, and I have to say I just so love doing this show.

0:04.3

I have to give an award to my favourite accent ever on the show here with a fellow British twang.

0:08.5

And so with that, I'm very, very excited to welcome David Sue, the founder and CEO, Retool.

0:13.1

The company that allows you to build internal tools remarkably fast. David has raised over $69 million with Retool from some of the very best in startups, including

0:21.6

Sequoia, YC, Patrick and John from Stripe, Henrique and Pedra at Brex, Paul Graham, Nat at GitHub,

0:28.3

Peter at Segment, Toma at Gusto and Elag Guild to name a few incredible names. Today, Retool

0:33.4

works with some of the biggest companies in the world, from Amazon to Volvo to Mercedes-Benz,

0:38.1

and I'd also have to say a huge thank you to Brian at Sequoia and Henrique at Brex for some fantastic

0:42.9

questions suggestions today. They really did make such a difference. But before we move into the show

0:47.4

today, I'm sure you've heard about it on the show before, but my word, I love the product that is

0:51.4

Carter. Carter simplifies how startups and investors manage

0:54.5

equity, track cap tables and get valuations. Go to Carter.com forward slash 20VC to get 10% off.

1:01.7

More than 800,000 employees and shareholders use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of dollars

1:06.8

in equity and Carter now offers fund administration so you can see real-time data in the Carter

1:11.5

platform and work with Carter's team of experienced fund accountants. Go to Carter.com forward

1:16.5

slash 20 VC to get 10% off. And speaking of products like Carter that fundamentally changed

1:22.0

the game, you have to check out Letter. The beautifully designed banking experience made exclusively

1:26.6

for high net worth individuals.

1:28.3

They're building a new private banking platform. Beyond just banking, though, you can get

1:32.3

access to exclusive investment and financial opportunities through their marketplace.

1:36.8

They always go the extra mile, providing more than you expect. Their digital office, a modern

1:41.3

and automated approach to the traditional family office, gives you the same

...

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