20VC: Why Serial Entrepreneurship is Overrated, Why You Will Get Fired If You Listen To Your Board & How To Construct Investor Update Emails The Right Way with Joe Fernandez, Founder & CEO @ Joymode
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2018
⏱️ 31 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Joe Fernandez is the Founder & CEO @ JoyMode, the startup that allows you to lend everything you need to have the experiences you want. To date, Joe has raised over $16m in funding for Joymode from friends of the show including Homebrew, Slow Ventures, Founder Collective, Scott Belsky, Collaborative Fund and Lowercase, just to name a few. As for Joe, prior to founding JoyMode, Joe founded Klout, one of the leading social media analytics platforms of the day and raised $40m in funding from Kleiner Perkins, IVP, Venrock, Greycroft and more. Klout was ultimately acquired by Lithium Technologies where Joe sits on the board.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Joe made his way into the world of startups with the founding of Klout? Given his entrepreneurial start, would Joe say he is unemployable?
2.) Question from Craig Shapiro: What was your single greatest lesson from the Klout journey? How has that impacted how you operate JoyMode today? How has Joe approached fundraising fundamentally differently today than with Klout? How is Joe's team building strategy today different to his with Klout?
3.) Why does Joe believe that "serial entrepreneurs are over-rated"? What does Joe mean when he says, "you have to know which hill you are willing to die on"? How does Joe look to accurately ego check today? What innovative methods does Joe employ internally to ensure that his views are validated and not submitted to?
4.) What does Joe mean when he says, "you have to make big bets to win"? How can you implement this risk-taking mentality in larger teams? What is the right way for both the team and investor base to respond? How does Joe use continuous iteration and data-centricity to test and validate these theses?
5.) How does Joe approach investor update emails? Why does Joe look to terrify investors with each update? Does Joe believe that it is right to thanks specific individuals in those emails? Does like like to select individuals and request their help in the emails? How can past updates be used to attain future investors?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Joe’s Fave Book: The Accidental Superpower
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Joe on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back on the 20 minute VC for another special Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings, |
| 0:04.3 | on Instagram at H. Stebbings 1996 with 2Bs, where you can suggest guests and questions for future |
| 0:10.3 | shows. It'd be great to see you there. And joining us in the hot seat today, we have an incredible |
| 0:14.2 | serial entrepreneur who has a lot to say on that very statement, serial entrepreneur. And so with that, |
| 0:19.2 | I'm thrilled to welcome Joe Fernandez. Now, |
| 0:21.3 | Joe is the founder and CEO at Joy Mode, the startup that allows you to lend everything you need |
| 0:26.2 | to have the experiences you want. To date, Joe has raised over $16 million in funding for Joy Mode |
| 0:31.5 | from friends of the show, including Homebrew, Slow Ventures, Founder Collective, Scott Belski, |
| 0:36.2 | Collaborative Fund, and Lowercase, just to name a few. |
| 0:38.8 | As for Joe, prior to founding Joy Mode, Joe founded Cloud, one of the leading social media analytics |
| 0:43.6 | platforms of the day and raised 40 million in funding with Cloud from the likes of Kleiner Perkins, |
| 0:48.5 | IVP, Venrock, Greycroft and more. |
| 0:51.3 | Clout was ultimately acquired by lithium technologies, where Joe sits on the board |
| 0:54.7 | today. And I'd also want to say huge thank you to both Satura at Homebrew and Micah at Founder Collective |
| 0:59.4 | for the intro to Joe's Day really does mean so much. But before we dive into the show today, |
| 1:03.5 | whether you're starting your own small business or getting serious about making your small |
| 1:07.1 | business more efficient, you need to invite FreshBooks to the table. FreshBooks makes cloud accounting software that's so ridiculously easy to use, trust me, even I use it, |
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| 1:27.9 | who's got your back 24-7 and to claim your 30-day unrestricted free trial, go to freshbooks.com |
| 1:34.0 | forward slash VC and enter 20-minute VC in the How Did You Hear About Us section? And who doesn't |
... |
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