20VC: Why You Never Want To Fight A Fair Fit For Distribution, Why No Great Company Is Built with 1 Product and When To Release Your Second & What Founders Can Do To Extract The Most From Their Cap Table with Shoaib Makani, Founder & CEO @ KeepTruckin
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2020
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Shoaib Makani is the Co-Founder & CEO @ KeepTruckin, the modern fleet management platform building solutions that make drivers and fleets safer, smarter, and more efficient. To date, Shoaib has raised over $229M from some of the world's leading investors including Index, GV, Greenoaks, IVP & Scale Venture Partners. Pre-founding KeepTruckin, Shoaib was an investor @ Khosla Ventures where he led investments in Instacart, Everlane and Indiegogo to name a few. Before venture with Khosla, Shoaib was on the operations side enjoying roles at both Google and Admob.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Shoaib made his way from the very comfortable world of venture to changing the way trucking fleets are managed today with KeepTruckin? How does Shoaib analyse and assess his own attitude to risk today?
2.) How has Shoaib seen himself change and evolve as a leader over the last few years? How did his time investing impact how he approaches the role of CEO? How does Shoaib think about appropriate market sizing today? What advice does he give to founders on this? What is a reasonable market penetration to assume if successful?
3.) What advice would Shoaib give founders when it comes to successful board management? How does Shoaib ensure investors have the right context at the right time to provide advice? What does that information flow to investors look like? How does Shoaib determine between the advice to accept vs what to reject?
4.) Shoaib thought about distribution and customer acquisition long before he launched the product, why? What did this thought process conclude with? Does Shoaib believe you have to own your own lines of distribution to succeed? How does Shoaib feel when it comes to current CAC's on incumbent platforms?
4.) As a founder, what does Shoaib say is his biggest mistake made in the KeepTrickin journey? How does Shoaib think about what it takes to acquire the very best talent? How does Shoaib advise founders work with recruiters? What can they do to really get the most out of them? When can this function be brought in house?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Shoaib’s Fave Book: Presidents of War
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Shoaib 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 the 20 minute VC and Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings, and I need your help to make the show better. |
| 0:05.1 | I always love to hear your feedback on Instagram at H. Stebbing's 1996 with 2Bs, and it would be awesome to hear |
| 0:10.6 | from you there. But to the founder joining us in the hot seat today, and I'm thrilled to welcome |
| 0:14.2 | Shoib McCarney, co-founder and CEO at Keep Trucking, the modern fleet management platform building solutions that make drivers and fleet safer, |
| 0:22.1 | smarter and more efficient. To date, Shoebe was raised over $229 million from some of the world's |
| 0:27.4 | leading investors, including Index, GV, Green Oaks, IVP and scale venture partners. Pre-founding |
| 0:34.1 | Keep Trucking, Shoebe was an investor at Kostla Ventures, where he led investments in Instacart, |
| 0:38.5 | Everlane and Indiegogo, to name a few. Before venture with Kostler, Shoebe was on the operations side, |
| 0:43.6 | enjoying roles at both Google and Ab-Mob. And I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Somer should |
| 0:48.2 | IVP, Alex at Scale and John at Keep Trucking, for providing some fantastic questions suggestions today. Mahito's on me for that chaps. But before you dive into the show today, I'm sure you've heard |
| 0:57.8 | about it, but my word, I just love the Carter product. Carter simplifies how startups and |
| 1:02.4 | investors manage equity, track cap tables and get valuations. Go to Carter.com forward slash |
| 1:08.1 | 20VC to get 10% off. More than 800,000 employees and shareholders |
| 1:12.7 | now use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity and Carter now offers |
| 1:17.4 | fund admin so you can see real-time data in the Carter platform and work with Carter's team |
| 1:22.2 | of experienced fund accountants. Again, go to Carter.com forward slash 20 VC to get 10% off. I really do so love that product. |
| 1:30.4 | But to get a deal done, you really need to build that relationship and there's nothing like meeting |
| 1:34.1 | face to face. And there's nothing like Zoom to make that happen. Zoom lets you connect and do business |
| 1:39.2 | across town or across the world. Zoom ties together all of your communication needs into one easy platform |
| 1:45.3 | for video conferencing, phone calls, group chat, webinars and your conference rooms. And connect |
| 1:50.4 | easily from anywhere, your mobile phone, your laptop, or conference room. And Zoom is how |
| 1:55.0 | business gets done. Get your free account at zoom.com today. Meet happy with Zoom. Again, that's another one that I couldn't spend |
... |
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