20VC: Why the Traditional Seed Fund Model No Longer Works, Why Multi-Stage Funds Investing at Seed Bring Signaling Risk but also Less Pressure, The One Criteria All Potential Sales Hires Need to Have and The Clear Signs of 10x Sales Hires with Jason Lemki
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2022
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jason Lemkin is the Founder and Managing Partner @ SaaStr, a social community of 500,000+ SaaS founders and a $100M venture fund. In the past, Jason has made investments in the likes of Algolia, Talkdesk, Pipedrive, and RevenueCat to name a few. Prior to SaaStr, Jason was the Co-Founder and CEO @ Echosign, backed by Emergence Capital, Echosign was bought by Adobe and is Adobe Sign as we know it today.
In Today’s Episode with Jason Lemkin You Will Learn:
1.) Origins into Venture:
- How Jason made his way into the world of venture having sold EchoSign?
- What were some of Jason's biggest lessons from his first 4 investments being unicorns?
2.) The Importance of Ownership & Multi-Stage Funds
- How does Jason assess the importance of ownership today?
- If companies can be $20BN, does ownership really matter?
- How does Jason advise founders who have offers from multi-stage funds at seed?
- Why does taking multi-stage money at seed result in less pressure for founders?
- Does Jason believe that signaling risk from large funds is real, when investing at seed?
3.) Building Your Sales Team
- Does the founder have to be the one to create the sales playbook? What are the nuances?
- Should you hire a Head of Sales or sales reps first? What should you expect from each?
- What are the one criteria that you must look for when hiring your first sales reps?
- What are the signals that a sales rep or leader is a 10x hire?
- What works when hiring sales reps, 80% of the time?
4.) Boards and VC Value Add:
- Why has Jason changed his mind when it comes to boards? Why are some inefficient and some very efficient?
- How do the best founders manage their board? How do they bring in their exec team?
- What is the right documentation to prepare for board meetings? Why does Jason prefer slide decks over Notion and Coda?
- How can leaders use board meetings to direct and goal set with functional leads?
Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Jason Lemkin
Jason’s Most Recent Investment: Owner
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is 20 VC and oh we are back and what a show we have for you today. It's such an interesting one. |
| 0:04.7 | This show was actually recorded in November 2021, but we had some audio challenges with it and so I'm |
| 0:09.7 | so glad that we managed to salvage it is it's an absolute gem. This is two friends shooting the |
| 0:14.6 | shit, real fly on the wall style, but I'm so glad that we managed to save it. It's incredible to see how much the market's moved in six short months. |
| 0:21.5 | And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome an old friend, Jason Lemkin. |
| 0:24.4 | Jason is the founder and managing partner at Saster, a social community of 500,000 plus SaaS founders, |
| 0:30.3 | and a $100 million venture fund in the past. |
| 0:33.2 | Jason has made investments in the lights of Algolia, Talk Des, pipe drive and revenue cat, to name a few, and Prana Saster. |
| 0:39.8 | Jason was the co-founder and CEO at ECHOSIN, backed by Emergence Capital. |
| 0:43.7 | EchoSign was acquired by Adobe and his Adobe sign, as we know it today. |
| 0:47.7 | But before we move into the show today, alternative data is only as good as its accuracy. |
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| 1:34.0 | Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. |
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... |
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