20VC: The Pinterest Memo: Bessemer's Jeremy Levine on The Secret To Success within User Generated Content Plays, Where Most Investors Make Mistakes When Analysing Consumer Social and How The Pinterest Deal Wouldn't Have Happened without a Diverse Partners
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2021
⏱️ 44 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jeremy Levine is a Partner @ Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the leading venture firms of the last 2 decades with a portfolio including the likes of Pinterest, Shopify, LinkedIn, Yelp, Twilio and many more. As for Jeremy, five of his early-stage investments—LinkedIn, MindBody, Pinterest, Shopify and Yelp—grew into billion-dollar publicly traded companies. As a result of his incredible portfolio, he has featured on the Forbes Midas List for several years running.
In Today’s Episode with Jeremy Levine You Will Learn:
1.) How Jeremy came to make one great decision and make one big mistake all in one rainy afternoon in Palo Alto? What was the story behind meeting the Pinterest team for the first time? Who was there? How did it go down?
2.) Market: How did Jeremy analyse the market at the time of the investment? What had been some core lessons Jeremy had learned on what made successful user-generated content plays? Where was Jeremy wrong in how he analysed the market? In what way is Jeremy surprised with how the market evolved? How does Jeremy analyse market timing today?
3.) Team: Jeremy has previously called Ben Silberman a "product visionary", what made Jeremy say this about Ben? How did Jeremy get over the concern of many VCs that Pinterest did not have a technical co-founder? Having seen Ben change over the last decade, what have been the biggest changes in Ben's leadership style over the last 10 years?
4.) Traction: When evaluating traction, where does Jeremy think so many investors make mistakes today? How should founders determine what is their core North Star metric? What gave Jeremy the confidence Pinterest could "cross the chasm"? How did the early Pinterest cohorts look both from usage and retention? What elements surprised and impressed?
5.) Pre + Post Mortem: What did Jeremy see as the likely reasons why Pinterest would not work? How did Jeremy think through what it took for UGC platforms to monetise at the time? Where was he wrong here? What did Jeremy see as the upside? What did he believe Pinterest could be if all the stars aligned?
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
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| 0:00.0 | This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and today is my favourite format of the show in any given month. |
| 0:05.0 | Yes, it's the memo. The show where we break down the greatest venture deals of the last 20 years, |
| 0:09.5 | all aligned to the core investment memo written at the time of the investment. And today, |
| 0:13.7 | I couldn't be more thrilled to welcome Jeremy Levine to discuss his $10 million Series A investment into Pinterest back in 2011. |
| 0:22.6 | As for Jeremy, he's a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the leading venture firms the last two decades. And as for Jeremy's |
| 0:27.4 | track, I mean, my word, five of his early stage investments, LinkedIn, MindBody, Pinterest, Shopify, |
| 0:33.3 | and Yelp have grown into billion dollar publicly traded companies. I'd also want to say a huge thank |
| 0:37.9 | you to Sarah Tavill for providing some fantastic questions suggestions today. I really do so appreciate |
| 0:42.9 | that. But before we dive into the show today, let's face it, this new world of remote work is here |
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| 1:32.4 | That's rippling.com forward slash 20VC. |
| 1:35.8 | And speaking of incredible products like Rippling there, Exodus is building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. |
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