In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Henry Shi, co-founder of super.com an all-in-one savings super app for everyday Americans. Having recently raised a $85m Series C led by Inovia Capital, the company is trusted by over 5 million customers worldwide and has helped them save over $150M to date. Super.com is backed by Tier 1 investors including NBA superstar Steph Curry and has raised over $150M USD and surpassed $1B in sales. 00:00 Intro 01:37 From Chatbot to Super App 03:02 V1 of th...
Jan 07, 2025•27 min
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kshitij Grover, co-Founder and CTO of Orb (www.withorb.com), a billing platform provider that solves usage-based billing needs. The SF based startup has to date raised a total of c. $19.1 million across its Series A ($14 million led by Menlo) and seed ($5.1 million led by Greylock).
Aug 16, 2024•35 min
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Gen Isayama, co-founder and CEO of World Innovation Lab, a Palo Alto and Tokyo based venture firm investing in growth-stage companies and serving as a bridge between startups and Japanese corporations. 00:00 Intro 01:30 World Innovation Lab 04:10 From Japanese lawyer to Silicon Valley VC 09:10 From DCM to WIL 13:55 WIL investment thesis 19:40 Japanese entrepreneurial culture 26:57 Open innovation Models at WIL 31:57 Raising Fund I 37:00 Full spectr...
Apr 06, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 51
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Dan Ahrens, founding partner at Left Lane Capital, a New York based venture capital and early growth equity firm that invests in high-growth internet and consumer technology businesses. 00:00 Intro 02:43 Consumer vs. enterprise tech 05:09 Getting into venture 07:54 Raising Left Lane I 10:35 Investing while fundraising 13:09 The Left Lane Capital playbook 17:09 Due diligence in a hot market 18:52 Scaling Left Lane Capital 21:36 Deployment pace 23:2...
Mar 07, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 50
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Divyang Arora, founder and CEO of Byte Kitchen about cooking up the future of digital food halls with Byte Kitchen founder Divyang Arora. 0:00 Intro 1:24 2 minute elevator pitch 4:27 Going all in 8:07 Business Model 14:52 The Byte Kitchen playbook 18:52 Optimal Partner Restaurant Profile 25:39 End customer benefits 27:25 Raising the Seed Round 30:14 Early traction 31:54 Byte Kitchen's Use of Tech 34:50 Call to Action...
Feb 22, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 49
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Michael Crandell, CEO Bitwarden about scaling open-source password manager Bitwarden. 00:00 Intro 00:50 What is Bitwarden 03:22 From side hustle to venture-backed 06:36 Joining a Bootstrapper at Series A 09:58 Open-source GTM 13:25 Open-source defensibility 15:35 Community vs. enterprise edition 17:37 Revenue traction 19:51 Competition 22:25 Fundraising journey 25:46 Use of funds 28:25 Go-to-market strategy 31:40 Building a remote-first company 35:...
Jan 31, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 48
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kyle Harrison, general partner at Country about everything from the economics of whale hunting, the venture product offering to his recent joining of Contrary. 00:00 Intro 01:11 Way into venture 04:58 Time of reflection 07:24 The under-innovated venture model 10:46 Your fund size is your strategy 16:16 The nature of the general partnership 20:38 Rethinking the org chart 25:13 VC product vs. VC service 28:31 VC product industry practice 31:13 From m...
Jan 13, 2023•48 min•Season 1Ep. 47
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Doug Ludlow, co-founder and CEO of MainStreet, which helps startups and small businesses uncover tax credits. 00:00 Intro 01:05 Hipster 05:09 Happy Home Company 07:10 Starting MainStreet 11:22 The nature of Tax credits 16:03 The Path Act 17:52 The MainStreet Product 19:14 Customer success stories 20:41 Customer profile 22:40 Audit protection / guarantee 24:13 Moats 25:37 Whitespace vs. Switching 26:30 MainStreet traction 27:47 Fundraising 28:17 Pr...
Nov 20, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 46
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kelsey Bishop founder and CEO of Candor, which is a nexgen, authentic social network. 00:00 Intro 01:02 What is Candor 03:25 Single player mode 03:56 Kelsey’s background 06:19 Employee-culture fit 08:31 Getting started 10:31 Migrating from bubble 11:38 Raising the Seed 12:42 Getting pre-empted 13:50 Raising from angels 15:23 Solo founder journey 16:58 Product + traction 21:47 Business model 23:03 Talking to users 24:51 Remote first company 26:25 B...
Nov 07, 2022•28 min•Season 1Ep. 45
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Abhishek Nayak the co-founder and CEO of Appsmith, which is an open-source, low code internal tool builder. 00:00 Intro 03:15 Entrepreneur in Residence at Accel 05:52 Third time at the Rodeo 09:55 Validating a startup idea at his wedding 11:38 Built for Internal facing apps 13:48 The Appsmith Customer Persona 15:06 From Dataset to app 15:42 What Appsmith is replacing 17:07 The Appsmith killer feature 18:29 Getting to the first 100 users 21:40 Cust...
Oct 29, 2022•46 min•Season 1Ep. 44
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Chon Tang, the founding GP of the Skydeck Fund. Chon is an experienced Silicon Valley engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He was formerly founding partner and Managing Director of Junzi Capital Engineering, a leading quantitative hedge fund investing in the commodity space. He has been actively investing in Silicon Valley startups for 12 years, and has personal investments in over 25 deals with multiple IPOs and exits. 00:00 Intro 03:40 Starti...
Sep 06, 2022•47 min•Season 1Ep. 43
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Richard White, the serial entrepreneur behind Uservoice and Fathom.video. Richard is a design engineer and product visionary who has been in the first YC batch with Justin Khan and Emmett Shear for Kiko (YC S05) and most recently came back to the YC W21 to see how startup kids are doing the tricks today. 00:00 Intro 00:51 Who is Richard White 03:40 The power of cold emails 05:09 Kiko (YC S05) 08:53 The UserVoice journey 12:09 Traction and fundin...
Aug 12, 2022•51 min•Season 2Ep. 42
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Shmulik Fishman, founder and CEO of Argyle, about raising the Series A through an investment memo and the firm’s mission of making user-permissioned employment data ubiquitous and reinvent credit decisioning for lenders and consumers. 00:00 Intro 00:56 What does Argyle do? 03:17 Experiencing the pain point 06:48 Raising the Series A with an investment memo 11:41 Automated form population 14:05 Real-time income/employment verification 17:52 Status q...
Jun 06, 2022•45 min•Season 1Ep. 41
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Drew Oetting, founding partner of 8VC, about building a multi-billion venture firm from the ground up with Joe Lonsdale. 00:00 Intro 01:05 Operation Mask 06:33 Resilience 12:54 Views on Venture 20:06 Building 8VC / Addepar 26:30 Raising the maiden fund 30:48 8VC Investment Thesis 40:01 Drew as a VC 50:53 Silicon Hills...
May 22, 2022•55 min
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Seth Sternberg the co-founder and CEO of Honor, which is a managed marketplace for in-home care that has recently announced a USD 370m Series E led by Baillie Gifford. 00:00 Intro 01:19 Elevator pitch 02:19 Original inspiration 05:28 The Meebo experience 08:06 Serial founder problems 09:06 Getting the founder team together 10:52 The Honor MVP and marketplace model 14:52 Marketplace supply side 19:44 Marketplace demand side 21:57 Fundraising journe...
May 01, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 39
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kimberly Shenk of Novi Connect, B2B marketplace to help brands build and manufacture transparent products, which recently announced a $10.3M Series A led by Greylock 00:00 Intro 02:04 Getting started with Naked Poppy 04:09 From Naked Poppy to Novi Connect 05:17 Sustainable Chemicals Market 07:30 Kimberly’s data science background 09:19 The Novi Connect Business Model 11:11 The Novi Connect MVP 12:49 Getting the first Customers 13:42 Growth Metrics ...
Apr 04, 2022•36 min
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Jordan Nof of Tusk Venture Partners, a venture firm that invests in early-stage consumer technology startups operating in heavily regulated markets. 00:00 Intro 01:39 Investment thesis 2022 02:36 Lithic 05:02 Tusk Venture Partners 08:46 Meeting Bradley Tusk 12:52 Regulatory investment thesis 14:58 The role of regulations in startups 16:37 Fanduel / repeal of PAPSA 17:33 Tusk entry stage 19:01 Consumer vs. Enterprise 19:43 Roman - men’s health 21:3...
Feb 19, 2022•42 min
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Casey Fenton, founder of Couchsurfing and Upstock, about the early days for Couchsurfing when Casey was pioneering what has since become known as the “sharing economy” and how is is now bringing the sharing economy to the cap table with Upstock. 00:00 Intro 01:13 The Couchsurfing proof-of-concept 02:46 The first Couchsurfing stay 03:49 501(c)3 non-profit status 06:34 The mechanics of the benchmark Series A 06:34 The mechanics of the benchmark Seri...
Jan 08, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 36
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Andrew Gazdecki, founder of MicroAcquire. The episode was recorded when MicroAcquire was still a fully bootstrapped one person company. A few weeks later MicroAcquire announced that it had raised a $6.3m Seed round led by Bessemer Ventures. 00:00 Intro 01:09 What is MicroAcquire? 02:55 Buying a micro-SaaS as a learning experience 05:15 Andrew’s own founder path 10:40 Key bootstrapper metrics 14:53 Solving the chicken-and-egg problem 19:17 Supply side...
Nov 28, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 35
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Queenly co-founders Trisha Bantigue and Kathy Zhou about building a consumer marketplace and tackling the formalwear industry. 00:00 Intro 00:56 The Queenly Elevator Pitch 01:52 Launching Queenly during lockdown 04:04 The pageant dress market 08:06 Formal wear resale market microstructure 10:16 The Queenly minimum viable product 12:37 Go to market strategy 14:56 Queenly marketplace metrics 16:36 The Queenly fundraising journey 20:40 Raising $6.3m Fro...
Nov 16, 2021•41 min•Season 1Ep. 34
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Didomoi co-founder and CTO Jawad Stouli about building consent management platform Didomi for the perfect privacy wave. 00:00 Intro 00:46 Early days of Didomi 03:29 Fighting a US patent troll 08:14 Building the Didomi MVP 12:18 Developer-centric platform approach 14:46 Early costumers: self-service vs. SDRs 18:22 Didomi data architecture 24:02 Bootstrapping Didomi 27:43 Raising the Series A 30:37 Raising the Series B 33:35 Scaling up 35:55 Competitio...
Oct 06, 2021•44 min
00:00 Intro 00:24 Welcome to Miami 01:08 Operators Podcast 03:21 Finding the right guests 06:54 Delian’s founder/operator 08:22 Cohort analysis with Keith at Square 10:30 Nightingale 12:24 Operating experience at Teespring 14:24 Varda Space 17:45 Splitting time between Varda and FF 19:45 Varda Space incubation 23:50 Delian as an investor at Founders Fund 27:07 Faire 30:56 Tiger Global and the rise of crossover funds 35:31 Hyperscaling 36:45 Moving to Miami 39:45 Keeping up with Delian...
Sep 22, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 32
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Remote.com founder Job van der Voort about building the future of remote work. 0:00 Intro 00:49 The first two years of Remote 02:19 Preparing for the perfect Storm at Gitlab 06:17 Leaving Gitlab 10:47 Business model 14:10 Legal war chest 15:20 Fintech-payment layer 16:20 SaaS layer 17:52 Pricing 19:47 Competitive landscape 24:12 Seed round 25:42 Series A 28:37 Remote best practices 31:52 Enabling random bump ins 34:07 The remote company handbook or “...
Sep 03, 2021•41 min•Season 1Ep. 31
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Sheel Mohnot, co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures about his journey as a founder, angel investor and co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures. 00:00 Intro 01:11 Guest appearance on a Justin Bieber/Ariana Grande music video 03:16 The “pronoia” mindest 03:16 The “pronoia” mindest 05:04 Sheel’s background 07:56 The Pitch 12:12 Investing with founder authority 14:16 500 Startups fintech fund 18:25 Fintech thesis and sector evolution 22:09 Fintech backen...
Aug 23, 2021•44 min•Season 1Ep. 30
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Reeves Wiedeman, author of "Billion Dollar Loser: the epic rise and fall of WeWork". 00:00 Adam's intro 01:11 Intro 01:38 Adam Neumann 04:11 Adam's art of persuasion 05:41 Book title 08:10 Writing process 13:01 WeWork evolution and business model 16:21 Tech vs. real estate company 19:25 WeWork community 22:01 WeWork funding journey 25:11 JPMorgan round 26:50 Masa and the Softbank round 30:39 Acquisitions and side businesses 33:16 Valuation and comps ...
Aug 08, 2021•41 min•Season 1Ep. 29
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kyle Lui, Partner at DCM, about the recent IPO roll that DCM has been on. The Menlo Park-based firm has generated a 61x return on investments that have gone public in the past two years. Kuaishou is the standout, with its market cap to entry valuation at 2,000x. 00:00 Intro 00:50 Who is Kyle Lui 01:33 Intro to DCM 03:30 DCM IX and the A-Fund 05:36 Differentiation through US-Asia angle 07:45 DCM's Japan strategy 08:48 DCM's recent roll 10:00 Bigges...
Jul 28, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 28
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Russ Heddleston, founder of Docsend. The episode was recorded one month before the announcement that DocSend would be acquired by Dropbox for $165m. 00:00 Intro 00:37 What is Docsend 01:51 Selling Pursuit to Facebook in a talent acquisition 04:12 Leaving Facebook and starting Docsend 07:03 Product idea 09:00 Fundraising for Pursuit 12:53 Fundraising for Docsend 14:17 Series A 17:34 Docsend product 20:39 Initial startup client segment 22:29 Docsend...
May 29, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 27
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Ali Tamaseb, partner at DCVC, about his recently launched book "Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups". 00:00 Intro 01:00 Who is Ali? 03:02 Spark of motivation for the Super Founders book 05:49 Primary data collection 08:13 Data set: timeframe and selection criteria 10:28 The age of super founders 13:04 Optimal number of co-founders 16:12 Founder education 17:45 Did all of them go to Stanford? 19:38 Pre-founding work expe...
May 20, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 26
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Vivek Saraswat, who has been a venture investor at Mayfield at the time of the recording and previously a product leader at Docker/VMware/AWS. Since recording this episode, Vivek has joined Immersa as a founding VP of product. 00:00 Intro 00:56 Who is Vivek? 03:12 Joining Mayfield 05:07 Portfolio companies 07:08 Covid impact on commercial open-source 10:17 Go-to-market (GTM) 14:13 Managing product roadmaps in open-source 17:10 Dedicating to bottoms-u...
May 17, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 25
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm about his journey as a mega maker, bootstrapping his podcast hosting and analytics platform to $1m+ in ARR in less than 3 years. 00:00 Intro 01:55 Getting Real 04:30 Business is like surfing 7:43 Selling ice cream on a busy beach 11:33 Why your business idea matters 14:17 The nature of the megamaker 19:46 Grow slow, grow real 24:53 Success is gradual, then sudden 31:10 VC attention to p...
Apr 30, 2021•56 min•Season 1Ep. 24
