YouSaid · the spoken record

Adena Hefets

lines on the record: 32
first: 2020-03-13
most recent: 2020-03-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I mean, for our company, we have a singular focus, which is 100,000 homes for dibby families. The largest read in the US is about 80,000 homes, so we want to topple that. And our clear path is just create an easier way to move into homeownership for a large percentage of Americans. So 100,000 homes are bust.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they definitely help with their network introductions and generally just being a cheerleader of what you do on a day-to-day basis. What maybe people are surprised, or at least my perception, of what maybe they're not as helpful with is no one's going to know your business as well as you do, especially as the founder or even as like a senior level exec. And so I think you often look to investors to say, hey, I have this problem in my business. How should I solve it? And you end up finding that you know the solution tremendously better than any investor is going to know the solution for your own business. And so I'd say I think investors are really good for helping you get out there and meet people, build out a network that trust your own judgment on the actual company.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think there's a difference between hardest role in the valley to hire four, where I think that a lot of people tend to struggle with like VP sales roles. For Dibby in particular, I think for us, one of the harsh roles, which we recently just hired for, which we're super excited about the person, was a COO role. And the reason why is a COO is such a jack of all trades where they have to be able to do”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say Eric Wu at Open Door has been a tremendous supporter of me. Everything from when I start to go through fundraises or when we're thinking about growth or when I'm worried about an org change we need to do. I go to him and I'm like, Eric, am I doing the complete wrong thing or how should I think about this? And he has shown me so much kindness. It makes me want to be a better founder friend to everyone of my founders because he, I think, invested me personally and just shows so much care in bringing out other successful entrepreneurs in the area.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting because I would say we were incubated by Max Lovechin. We had an incubator called HVF and we were incubated within it and he paid for space for us to be able to ideate. And so I think he's kind of, I guess would be considered the first check into Divi. And it came out of a relationship that my co-founder had with him. And then I joined and we incubated Divi under him. And he has been a tremendous supporter of us. And we would not be where we are today without him.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think like the Obamas or Akamichelle Obama, I think that they've managed to stand for so much more than just being presidents, but symbols of kind of where we want America to go towards. To me, they are the epitome of what great looks like in this world.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have this ability to just kind of push the team really hard, push me really hard, and then as a result as a group, we tend to run through walls. My weakness is definitely patience. I am not the most patient individual, but I think that actually every year it feels like my patience has been increasing slowly. And so I don't know, maybe my internal timeline and clock is starting to slow down a little, which is giving me a little more patience, which is good.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really like evicted by Matthew Desmond. I think really important because it goes through the challenges with renting and housing in America. It always keeps me honest to make sure we're looking at what we don't want to become at DB, but it's an awesome and very well written book.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is this the right way to be thinking about it? And then I think also just having a high level of expectations around how you execute, I think I want to constantly be in an environment where I'm pushed outside of my comfort zone just a little bit, like not a ton, but constantly a little bit outside of that comfort zone and learning. I think we really encourage that at Dibby.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we have a culture at DV where we say we're not yes people. Like we're just not the people who you're going to walk into meeting and be like, here's a proposal and here's how I thought about it. And everyone in the room is going to say like, yes, that's awesome. Instead, we say, okay, have you thought about or how have you thought about X, Y, and Z? And what makes you so comfortable at this point versus something else? And when you looked back at historically how we've done this, does this stay in line and jive with what we've done in the past or how does this deviate? And so the way I think that you push people is by really getting to the root of how they thought through a problem and pushing them to question their assumptions. Again, this goes back to things I've learned in my past, which is at TPG when we would go to investment committee. We always had a red team. It kind of like goes back to journalism when you had someone who said, if you were to take the exact opposite perspective of the argument that's being made by the investment committee teams, they're saying, oh, we should invest in this company because of X, Y, and Z. They said, okay, well, what if we were to turn those on their head? How can we look at it from the opposite perspective? And so I think the way I always push the team is to really be thinking at the forefront. I always question their assumptions.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And make us stronger as a company. And so it's owning it. It's working on those other areas because even though you're not great at some things, you want to still work at yourself and grow through it. And just being really direct and transparent with everyone about who you are.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I would say, you know, my co-founder, he's obviously male, and it's interesting because he's very empathetic and very emotional and more about the culture feelings of the company. And I am, I probably say less empathetic, more numbers driven, highly execution focused. And so in some ways, we have kind of these opposite gender dynamics versus what the stereotype or norm is. I think it can be at times tough that people expect you to have a very caring and outwardly empathetic demeanor as a female. it is not that I am not empathetic or ultimately care about my employees, especially my customers who I'm forever grateful in love, but more that I'm hyper just focused on execution. That is a tough dynamic to balance. However, it kind of goes back to the same thing about micromanaging is you kind of just have to own it and not try to be anyone that's not who you are. And so I think I've worked a lot to get myself to the point of just being so comfortable with like, hey, I know I can be tough at times, but this is to grow us with the best intention.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Years ago, and today, as the market has become more comfortable with the asset class, that having a discussion around what the value proposition is and how this is going to scale and what the loan docs have to look like to set up these facilities, it's been a much easier conversation, but it has taken three years or so to get folks comfortable to get to the stage we are today.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I would say when we started about two and a half, three years ago, I went out to raise an initial debt vehicle and we were so fortunate that we had great investors who supported us because when we went out initially to the investment banks, they were basically, they laughed at us, right? They were like, I don't know if you know this, but we just had like a housing lever session. We're not investing in anything real estate. And especially not a funky tech company that's like trying to do things in a really different way, like basically get out, right? And we went to our board and our board was like, hey, if they don't believe in you, we'll put together a depth facility for you. And so we raised a small debt facility that was actually basically high net worth individuals and put it together. And once we actually put that depth facility together, we were able to prove out our business model enough that after that we were able to raise a first facility that was quite a bit larger. And then we kind of scaled up that facility and went on. And today our last facility that we closed a couple months back was with Goldman Sachs and more capital. So pretty major institutions. I would say that the market was not there.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Debt is tremendously harder than equity. Everyone always says the equity investors always follow credit investors, and I think it's because credit investors, the level of diligence that they do is just beyond detail. So whereas when I go out to raise equity, it's about the vision and long-term strategy, which is definitely important. When you go out with our debt providers, they ask for something called the loan tape or the home tape, where they're going through every single number related to every home that comes onto Debbie's balance sheet. That would be like literally an investor going through, let's say, with Stripe, every contract they have and through every payment that has ever gone through Stripe, it is that level of detail that's being done on a business. And so I always kind of joke whenever I'm talking to anyone, they're like, well, on the equity side and they're like, I'm going to start doing some diligence. And I said, you don't even need to do diligence. I would just reach out for our debt providers, ask them for their investment committee memo and just use that because they doubled down and just go into such good detail on how your performance has been.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's challenging for a lot of people to commit a large sum of money to you if they don't know you at all. So I think if you're fortunate enough that you can just go out, do a really compressed timeline raise in two weeks and not have to have a relationship with an investor. Good for you. That is awesome, less distracting. But I think the more realistic path is that you've got to build out relationships with people over time. It's just a large investment. And truthfully, it's good for you and them, which is while it might be helpful for the actual fundraising portion. It's also, this person is kind of like another spouse, right? They're going to be sitting on your board. You have to see them constantly. You're working in an out day in, day out with them. You want to make sure you like them. And so even if it's just for that reason, I personally am a big proponent of building our relationships with investors early on.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is kind of like an open invitation. It's kind of founder's code. I view it, and at least that's what most of the other founder friends that I have hold ourselves to, which is any other founder comes to you and asks for help. You help support them and you build out more of this founder community. So I'd say reach out to the people you know if anyone wants to reach out to me. I'm always happy to chat, but make sure we're supporting each other.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My advice would be don't do it on your own. None of this fundraising or anything else is new. Everyone's been doing it for a long time. And before you go out there and you're going to do a fundraise, sit down with either your current investors or mentors and build a community of folks who know how to do this and get their support and have them practice your pitch with you and spend time mentoring you to get you prepared. A perfect example is before I go out for any fundraise, I'll sit down with other founders in the industry and I'll just be like, here's what my pitch is. Tear me apart. tell me how I should be doing this better. And not only do we work through that, then the other founders have my back as I'm going out and fundraising. And what I mean is that it's not just Adina going out and going on random pitches and coffee chats. It's, for example, Eric Wu at Openedor pinging his investors and being like, I just heard the Divi pitch. It is amazing. Adina is awesome. Let me put you in touch because you guys should make sure you get it on this round. And that's the level of community and support that I think is most helpful.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and don't worry, it's not being blunt. I know I'm a female founder, so we're all good. For me, I've been really fortunate where we've had a pretty easy fundraise process in the past. And I feel really fortunate for that. I have amazing support from my investors. I call them a My Cheerleading Squad and Max and Nelly Lovechin, Ray Tonsing, Alex Rampel, the folks at GIC, so Vinay and Jeremy Krantz. And so I have awesome support that have prepared me really well. And I feel really fortunate. And in some ways, I feel overly lucky in that I've surrounded myself with the right people who have invested to make me successful. And I feel unusually lucky because of that.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or 20% in order to drive some incremental growth. But this goes back to the unit economics point, which is staying disciplined and knowing that there is a value to your product and that you are serving so much value that it is worth that price. It's challenging when you're faced on pressures of grow faster.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yet, we're going to be thoughtful about coming up with a playbook that between you and I we feel like is actually successful and we've measured it and it's replicable and then we'll go out and we'll hire and add to your team in order to really scale this up. But until we do that, just adding more bodies isn't going to solve the equation, right? And so there's this constant pressure as a founder from, I think, mostly your team, but then also just externally to constantly be hiring. One of my pet peeves is when I meet someone and they say, oh, how's Divi doing? And I say, great. And they go, really, how many employees have you hired? And I go, how many employees do I hire? Like, isn't the best case scenario that I've hired no employees and my revenue has 10x? Like, why is the mark of a growing and successful company the number of employees they have? Which to me seems rather off. And then I'd say the last addiction is probably lowering your prices. It is so easy to not be disciplined and to decide, you know, I'm going to lower my prices by 10%.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so there's actually three addictions that I've noticed as a founder of a company that have at least presented themselves in my experience. And I think they're consistent amongst most of the other founders I talk to. First one, Kandra just touched you on what we said is paid marketing. It is really easy to just say, you know, this month I need to drive another X number of customers. So I'm going to spend Y amount on Facebook this month to hit those growth numbers versus saying I'm truly actually going to do on-the-ground grassroots efforts to try to get an increase in my user base. And so paid marketing is like one of the core addictions, I think, of most companies because it's so easy to dial up and dial back down and to see the direct correlation between who clicks on your ad and then ultimately ends up signing up. Second addiction is overhiring. And so most employees when they come and they join your company, they're really excited and they really want to hire right away and build out a team. It's actually so challenging to have to look at an employee and say, actually, we're not going to hire just.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the way you adjust that is by finding a proprietary distribution channel that really lets you scale up with lower costs.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think that there is a level of you can deploy too much capital at one point in time and thinking about what is the optimal level of spend to get the maximum number of users or customers out there. And I think where companies tend to go wrong is where they say, wow, it's going to cost me an incremental X dollars to acquire the next customer. And when that starts to go up pretty significantly, that's where they run into channels. Now, ultimately, we're talking about paid CAC here versus blended CAC, where blended CAC would take into account other distribution channels. There's two ways that you can get your CAC to come down and what Divi has specifically focused on is really building out these other channels of distribution. And so today we get almost half our customers who close on a home. We get them through real estate agent referrals. So that's a completely organic distribution channel. And that is what is so core towards ultimately bringing down what our blended KEC ends up being. So I'd say paid is hard because I think that there's definitely diminishing return.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think that my approach has always been be more measured, grow thoughtfully. But it seems like that's maybe coming in vogue today a little bit more than it was at least two years ago. But when we started two years ago, all these companies were kind of a let's spend a couple million dollars and do like entire city level takeovers where we just spend money to get marketing in your name out there, which I think could be effective for getting your name out there, but I don't think is sort of long-term sustainable for a company.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's a perfect one for one relationship, but they definitely are slightly in contrast. Look, anyone who's starting a company in order to be able to grow, you need to let people know that you exist, right? That's like marketing, right? Let people know that your product exists in the world. And in order to do that, it takes spending money and getting your name out. And in some ways, that can seem reckless because there's diminishing returns to how much you spend on marketing. Where if you're deploying a ton of money really rapidly, you can actually find yourself at skyrocketing CAX, where you actually need to deploy and grow in a more thoughtful and measured manner. If you look back also, I think that we forget that there have been really large companies that have been built slowly and steadily. If you look at Amazon during the 2000s, they grew by 20 to 30 percent a year, right? Which in today's world we'd all be like, that's not enough growth for an early stage tech company. They were just able to do it consistently when that compounds over 20 years stop creates a tremendous business.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In those perspectives when you're in an environment where massive growth is heavily rewarded in terms of valuations and where that's kind of the norm for the industry. And so I think I've stayed very rooted in making sure that at Divi, we build a really scalable model with positive union economics for every home that we end up bringing onto our portfolio. But it's definitely feels a little contrary given the industry today.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I started out my career earlier on in finance and private equity. And I worked at a firm called TPG, which is run by Jim Coulter. Jim Coulter is a fundamental value investor, and he taught me everything that I think kind of laid the foundation for how I think about what makes a good company. And ultimately, what kind of defined that were two parts. One, the company's ability to cash flow, so generate cash, and two, the actual unit economics of whatever product they're putting out. And it's a pretty simple formula. You need to make more than you spend on each customer or user on your product, right? Make more money in is greater than money going out. And I think that that was just drilled so deeply in my head that I always actually found venture kind of uncomfortable in some ways. There's a recklessness about a lot of founders that I find I don't have, which is for me, I fundamentally would never want to create a product that I ultimately didn't think was super long-term sustainable and producing positive unit economics. It's quite hard to stay ground.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's almost like being a cook, but never have tasted the food, you know? So you'd be a much better chef if you actually tasted the food. And so being an operator right now, I understand when someone says growth is challenging that, you know, it might be the case that they need to think about distribution channels and what is actually developing a distribution channel mean. Or when someone says we're having a hard time prioritizing what product builds we have, well, that sounds simple and you're like, I get it to truly understand the level of depth. You had to have been there and prioritizing between these different items and then worked out a solution to be able to say, hey, here is how I thought about it when I was going through this. And this is the approach that worked for me. Here are the five other ways that I thought about different prioritizations. And this is what led me to go down the path of one. It's just a level of understanding what it takes to build a company and what can go right and what sometimes are the bumps in the road.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I would actually say I don't think that investing impacted me as much being an operator, more so now being an operator would in the future impact how I think about investing. So I think overall operating has led me, and specifically starting a company has led me to realize just how little I knew as an investor. To me perspective is everything. It's a pretty powerful tool. My time at Square really let me see what it's like to be an employee in a company that was growing super fast and was going to be many billions of dollars in valuation. My time as an investor, let me see kind of the forest and the picture of the entire landscape. But my time being a founder now has really given me just tremendous perspective on the persistence, the hustle, the hunger that's needed to actually scale up a company. And in fact, I think today I'd be a much better investor having started Divi and been an operator than I would have otherwise.”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably a multi billion dollar business within Square itself. And so it was this really great first entry point. And so when I started thinking about what was the next thing I wanted to work on at Elda Company, it was a couple of years later and I went back and I looked at the world of FinTech and I was really disappointed to see that I just didn't think there was as much innovation being made as I would have liked to see. A lot of companies were still focusing on unsecured lending. And when I started to think about what industries within financial services were going to change the most, I kept coming back to real estate and in my head real estate was this one massive industry, but two. Everyone always says, look for these inflection points in the market, which is when you should be innovating. And I thought, wow, what better inflection point than the largest housing level recession? So I kind of dove in. I started looking at mortgages. I realized that mortgages were really hard to get, lending requirements have tightened quite a bit. And I thought, what if we can make an alternative that can provide access to home ownership to a larger percent of the population?”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I probably, I don't even know at this point, maybe 10 years ago, I was working in private equity. And in working private equity, they typically want you to go off to business school right afterwards. And I just thought, you know, it's been really hard to be an investor and telling all these operators how to do their job when I hadn't done it before. And so I actually did this, what was a very weird path at the time, but ended up going to around a 300-person startup at the time called Square, which now is a really big public company. But I went to Square. And while I was there, I was fortunate enough to have the experience of working on Square Capital. So a group of us together kind of started Square Capital, which is their lending platform within Square's broader business. And I had what I would probably call like a magical experience, people I worked with were insanely smart and talented and just really dedicated to the mission and the goal. We were extremely successful at first go, which is not the typical path when you're starting something new. And we had tremendous internal support from Square Overall. Today, Square Capital is”
2020-03-13 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source