20VC: Thumbtack's Marco Zappacosta on The 3 Core Elements To All Board Meetings, Raising $250m from Sequoia and Why You Have To Win Supply Side Acquisition First For Marketplace Success
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2018
⏱️ 28 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Marco Zappacosta is the Founder & CEO @ Thumbtack, the startup that allows you to find local professionals for pretty much anything. To date, Thumbtack has raised over $270m in funding from some of the very best including Sequoia Capital, CapitalG (Google Growth), Ali and Hadi Partovi, Scott and Cyan Banister and Jason Calacanis. Due to Marco's incredible success scaling Thumbtack to helping millions of Americans today, he has been recognized by Forbes as 30 under 30 and Thumbtack was recently acknowledged as one of GlassDoor’s best places to work.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Marco made his way into the world of startups and came to create one of the most prominent marketplaces of the day in Thumbtack?
2.) What does Marco mean when he says "founders must treat board members as employees"? How does Marco view the optimal structure for a board meeting? What are the core elements that founders must takeaway? Where do most first time founders go wrong with board management?
3.) Thumbtack has raised over $250m in VC funding, how can one look to achieve both operational efficiency and capital efficiency with such large injections of capital? What is core to maintaining this sense of frugality despite such large investments? How does Marco think about when is the right time to raise that warchest round?
4.) How does Marco suggest that marketplace founders can entice the supply side in the early days? How has Marco seen his supply-side acquisition change and develop with time? What has worked and what has not? Does Marco agree with Leah Busque that in marketplace, the NPS for one side will always be down?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Marco’s Fave Book: The Wizard and The Prophet
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Marco on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Cooley is a global law firm built around supporting start-ups and the venture capital firms that fund them. Now we have spoken before about their forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, and forming more VC funds than any other law firm in the world but Cooley also represents more than 6,000 high-growth startups across the globe – through the full company life cycle. They are the #1 law firm for VC-backed exits (M&A and IPO) ranked by PitchBook, and since 2014 has represented more companies in their IPOs than any other law firm.  Simply head over to Cooley.com or you can check them out at Cooleygo.com.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back for another instalment on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and for all things |
| 0:04.1 | behind the scenes at the 20 minute VC, which is largely gym routines, protein bars and mehitos |
| 0:08.9 | right now, then I would love to see you on Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996, Stebbings with two bees. |
| 0:14.8 | However, to the show today, and we return for part two of this very special feature week on marketplaces, and who better to join us than |
| 0:21.2 | the founder of a unicorn marketplace? So with that in mind, I'm thrilled to welcome Marco Zappa Costa |
| 0:26.1 | to the hot seat today. Marco is the founder and CEO at Thumbtack, the startup that allows you |
| 0:30.7 | to find local professionals for pretty much anything. To date, Thumbtack has raised over |
| 0:35.3 | $270 million in funding from some of the very best in the |
| 0:39.0 | industry, including Sequoia Capital, Capital G, Google's Growth Arm, Ali and Hady Partovee, Scott and Siam |
| 0:45.2 | Bannister and Jason Calicanus, just to name a few. And due to Marco's incredible success, |
| 0:50.0 | scaling Thumbtack to now helping millions of Americans daily. He's been recognized by Forbes as |
| 0:54.6 | 30 under 30 and Thumbtack was recently acknowledged as one of Glassdoor's best places to work. |
| 0:59.6 | And I do also have to say a huge thank you to longtime friend and wonderful person, Michelle |
| 1:03.4 | Tandler, for the intro to Marco today. I really do so appreciate that. But before we dive into |
| 1:08.0 | the show today, our new sponsor, Ring, first made a splash when they |
| 1:11.3 | were on Shark Tank a few years ago. The concept, genius. If someone rings your doorbell and you |
| 1:16.1 | aren't home or don't want to come to the door, you can respond to the person using just your |
| 1:19.9 | smartphone, adding a level of both security and convenience. Today, over a million people are |
| 1:24.5 | using the Ring video doorbell to help protect their homes. |
| 1:30.7 | And now Ring has a great new product called Ring Floodlight Cam. |
| 1:35.2 | Just like Ring's amazing doorbell, floodlight cam is a motion-activated camera and floodlight with HD video and two-way audio that lets you know the moment anyone steps onto your property. |
| 1:40.3 | And you can see and speak to visitors, even set off a built-in alarm right from your phone. |
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