20VC: Why Startup Valuations Are Not As Overpriced As You Think, How To Determine Whether An Investor Is Truly Aligned To Your Mission and What 2 Traits Make The Truly Special Board Members with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally

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

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2019

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jason Brown is the Founder & CEO @ Tally, the startup that allows you to pay off your credit card debt faster and save money. To date, Jason has raised over $92m for Tally from the likes of Mamoon @ Kleiner, Angela @ a16z, Nikhil @ Shasta and Aileen @ Cowboy just to name a few. As for Jason, prior to Tally, he spent 5 years as the Founder and CEO Kleiner Perkins backed, Gen110. Before that Jason founded Bask, a company providing both technical support and pro-active maintenance.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Jason came to change the world of consumer finance with Tally having spent 5 years in the solar financing sector and even a year in venture? Given his prior entrepreneurial activities, does Jason agree with Joe Fernande @ JoyMode that "serial entrepreneurship is overrated"?

2.) Does Jason believe that founders should always be raising? What is the right way to truly determine whether an investor is aligned to your mission? What should you look for in how they behave and speak? How does Jason like to build relationships with investors pre-term sheet? Is Jason concerned by the compressed fundraising timelines today?

3.) Why does Jason believe that VC funded companies are largely not over-priced? What elements of the macro-economy does Jason attribute as the reason for the high valuations today? Why does Jason believe that we should not celebrate new fundraising? Is the celebration not good for the morale of the team? What should we celebrate instead?

4.) Why does Jason believe that the target for investors is they provide no value? What are you looking to avoid? What are the core ways an investor can damage the success of a company? What can founders do to truly extract the most from their investor base? Does Jason believe one should focus on the VC partner or the firm? Why?

5.) What does Jason believe makes the best board members? What advice would Jason give to new board members on how they can truly be the best board member? Why does Jason do onboarding sessions for all new board members? What does he look to instil in this process? What behaviour at the board should not be tolerated? How should the founder communicate this to their investor?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Jason’s Fave Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	We are back for Founders Friday here on the 20 minute VC and releasing this one from Helsinki,
0:04.1	and so if you want to see some of our adventures and travels there,
0:06.6	Mahito's will feature, then do check us out on Instagram at H. Debbings 1996 with 2Bs.
0:11.7	I would love to see you there.
0:13.0	But to our episode today, and I've had this guest on before,
0:15.5	but so much has happened since our last episode, including a $50 million series C led by Andresen that I felt we needed a round two.
0:22.4	And so with that I'm thrilled to welcome back, Jason Brown, founder and CEO at Talley,
0:26.6	the startup that allows you to pay off your credit card debt faster and save money.
0:30.7	To date, Jason has raised over $92 million for Talley from the lights of Mamun at Kleiner,
0:35.3	Angela at Andreessen, Nicola Schuster and Eileen
0:38.0	Cowboy, just to name a few. As for Jason, prior to Talley, he spent five years as the founder and
0:42.6	CEO at a Kleiner Perkinsbacked Gen 110. Before that, Jason founded Basque, a company providing
0:48.1	both technical support and proactive maintenance. I'd also want to say that a huge thank you
0:52.3	to Nikola at Shasta, Mamuna Klein and Angela
0:54.8	and Andreessen, they provided some amazing personal and fantastic question suggestions today. I really
0:59.8	do so appreciate that team. So every time you listen to a podcast or go online, you get another
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1:09.4	the deepest, sweetest sleep, the pod by eight sleep,
1:12.3	the first bed to combine dynamic temperature regulation and sleep tracking to ensure you're getting
1:17.0	the best sleep possible. Research shows the deep link between sleep performance and temperature,
1:21.7	so the pod reacts in real time to your body's unique needs, adjusting the temperature to keep
1:26.4	you comfortable and sleeping deeply all night long.
	...

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