20VC Newsletter - June 9th 2024
20VC Newsletter - June 9th 2024
Here are the transcripts and top takeaways from 20VC episodes released this last week!
Monday’s episode of ‘This Week in SaaS’ with Jason Lemkin at SaaStr:
Download the full transcript:
My 6 key takeaways:
Vista Pluralsight Buyout: What Happened?
Vista bought Pluralsight for $3.5BN.
The debt service on $1.5BN was probably too much.
If this is falling apart, it’s going to be a lot harder for founders.
How Did Salesforce Lose $50BN Market Cap in a Day?
It’s not because they missed this quarter.
Salesforce said they are in single digit growth & likely won’t return.
It’s not a growth stock with single digits.
Who Will IPO Next?
Canva, Figma, Stripe, & Plaid will be great IPOs.
They won’t IPO at hundreds of millions of revenue.
Canva will likely IPO at $3BN.
You Should Care Less About Investor Money
Founders shouldn’t worry about losing single digit millions for their VCs.
A 10x fund can survive losing $3M.
I’ve seen too many managers who don’t care if their SPV goes to zero.
There is No Point Selling Before 1 Billion!
There’s not enough impact on your fund.
A 15x sounds great when you start in venture.
Now you have to find fund returners.
We Have Made a Terrible Pact for Public SaaS Companies
The markets told everyone they have to be efficient but now there isn’t money for R&D.
Salesforce won’t have enough money for engineers & sales trying to achieve 40% margins.
I would stay private & invest in the product as long as I could.
Wednesday’s episode with Aravind Srinivas, Co-Founder & CEO of Perplexity:
Download the full transcript:
My 7 key takeaways:
Today vs Tomorrow's Models
Today’s models only give you output.
Tomorrow’s models will start with an output, elicit feedback, and improve with reasoning.
Reasoning will be the next big AI breakthrough.
The Biggest Beneficiaries are Apps
Application layer companies will benefit from foundation models commoditising.
The price of the models will go down.
Those who own users & product experience will harness the power of those models.
Why WhatsApp’s Integration of AI is BS
I don’t open WhatsApp to search for anything.
I open WhatsApp to reply to messages then I’m out.
The user intent behind opening the app matters a lot.
Who Wins: OpenAI or Anthropic
OpenAI has advantage on speed & capital.
Anthropic is algorithmically superior.
It depends if better brains or capital matters more.
We Are Not Competitive with OpenAI, They Are an AGI Lab
Sam Altman is busy building AGI.
Perplexity & ChatGPT are products in a similar space today.
It will look really different two years from now.
What Will Be The Primary Monetisation Tool for Perplexity
It will likely be advertising.
We would need to grow the user base & figure out how to do it really well.
Other options will be subscriptions & enterprise.
Career Advice from Sam Altman
I asked him “How do you naturally identify something you’re naturally good at?”
He said “Whatever comes easy to you, but seems hard to other people.”
It’s a good heuristic to identify what you excel at.
Friday’s episode with Ashley Kelly, VP, Global Sales Development at Rippling:
Download the full transcript:
My 5 key takeaways:
SDR Will Be the Third Pillar Between Sales and Marketing
It is the bridge between marketing and sales at Rippling.
We work with marketing on ABM campaigns & account outreach.
We work with sales on targeting the right accounts.
What is the Right Profile for an SDR
People with six months of experience & don't have to be in sales dev.
My favorite hires were people from recruiting that want to transition to tech sales.
Finding people who’ve already built their confidence and voice over the phone is important.
How to Pay Sales Teams
The finance package depends on geo location & cost of living.
We do 70% salary & 30% variable - usually tied to quota.
Each team has a different quota based on TAM and role type.
Why You Can Hire SDRs Who Have Been SDRs Before
Hiring SDRs with SDR experience used to be a red flag before the pandemic.
They could be harder to retrain & retain.
There’s been massive layoffs & SDRs are usually the first to go.
There is a lot of good talent out there now.
Advice to New SDRs
Find the top performer & shadow them.
Copy everything they do BUT add your own secret sauce to it.
Too many people come in & try to reinvent the wheel.
Let us know what your big takeaways from this week’s shows were in the comments below!
Thank you for reading, and don’t miss the great guests we have next week:
Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn & Inflection AI.
Alexandr Wang, Founder & CEO of Scale AI.
Janie Lee, Head of Product at Loom.
Thank you for reading 20VC.
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