YouSaid · the spoken record

Ali Partovi

lines on the record: 33
first: 2022-01-21
most recent: 2022-01-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Investment in mine that I'm super excited about. And I don't know if this will ever be a household name because it's a B2B type business, but it's a company called Coprocure. I think it has a potential to be, it could be the largest female-led company of all time, I think. It's a founder, Mari Reed is amazing and the CTO is amazing. And they are disrupting a $2 trillion market, which is the boring, lame market of government procurement, but they're doing it in a incredibly innovative way that is spreading virally, and I'm super excited about them.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I'm of the old school that letting your existing investors invest more is the best way to build a company, not just to serve your old investors. It signals to everybody else what a great relationship you have and makes other people want to invest. But I would say you should always have competitive valuation. So you should have a sense of what you could get from new investors and price accordingly. So the existing investor should pay the fair market value.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was one thing I would change, it's the us versus them attitude between founders NVCs. I touched on this just earlier. I think it's just false. It's an unhealthy false implication that these are two different species or that the goal of raising a company is to defeat the VCs. The VC is the partner in building an incredible company and serving customers. And there's a shared goal is much bigger.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'd say my biggest strength is, well, helping recruit and inspiring others to take more risk, inspiring others to dream bigger, to reach for higher goals and often to join startups or to start startups or to take bigger risks with their startups. Biggest weakness, I have too many. Timeliness is something I struggle with, but also delegating. I'm not too much of a micromanager and I need to be better at learning how to let go.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The book Sapiens. I know it's probably everybody's, you know, this is several years old. My friend Erica Drazen bought me a copy and my brother Hadi raved about it and I think it's a wonderful book.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone realize that investors aren't some kind of evil species or different species. They are just a different life stage of the same species. We all believe, we're all in the same game of building amazing companies. We're just playing different roles in the ecosystem.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think I agree with you for a few reasons. First of all, I can barely do one thing well, let alone do multiple things well. I'm deeply skeptical of somebody who is a CEO of a startup being able to also run anything else. Now, there are obviously some very inspiring exceptions. Elon Musk is, you know, simultaneously running multiple companies or Jack Dorsey, but not counting these superhumans. Generally, I would say do one thing really well. And if you're the CEO of a company, don't also start a fund. So on both sides, right? Like to be a VC is hard work. And lastly, I would say if you are a great angel investor as a founder, you can probably make more money just in Angel investing. Why would you want to dilute your possibilities by taking on other money? I would agree with you. I don't think it makes sense. I think founders angel investing is really great. One aspect of it that I do like is that I've always thought of it as a life cycle, that today's founders are tomorrow's investors. I think it's nice to help.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All in and bet big on it. Yeah, in terms of biting off more than you can shoot, if you've chosen to be a founder, you've chosen the life of risk. You've chosen the life of taking incredibly audacious, ambitious swings. And I'd say I would never hold yourself back because something is too audacious or too ambitious. But I would trim back if what you're doing is diversifying prematurely.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's interesting. I think in poker you talk about playing tights and aggressive. Don't bet on too many hands, but when you bet, bet big. And I'd say the same thing applies both as an investor and as a founder, how it applies as a founder is focused. Don't do too many things. Don't diversify. Pick one thing and go all in on it. I think that there's a natural tendency as a CEO to want to do many things, either because of fear, like, oh, I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket. I want to have multiple products or multiple revenue streams or so on. And I'd say fuck that. Put all your eggs in one basket. If you are a CEO, diversification should not be at all what you do. You should be 100% concentrated on one thing. Or it could be out of curiosity and creativity CEOs are often very, you know, founders are so creative. They're always thinking of new ideas and want to pursue them. Again, you need to resist that and stay focused. So I guess I would say don't spread wide, but pick the thing you're going to do and go.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, I think just one of the, I'd say across whatever your role is on whatever the stage is, one of the hardest things in business is overcoming fear. You know, fear is such a natural human sentiment, whether it's the fear of investing in something and losing my money, or if the fear of missing out, as we talked about earlier, or if you're a founder, the fear that something you've built could fall apart. I'm not saying you should do stupid things to hurt what you've built, but very often people feel this fear of uncertainty. It's not danger, but just I don't know the outcome. It could be good, it could be bad, and I'm afraid. And I think you generally need to learn to face that fear and go forward with it. You know, I've actually tried to convince myself to always choose the most terrifying path because it's usually the path that is the best path. And somewhere in my heart, I know it. But, you know, there's like these fears that prevent you from taking it.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Matter how terrified you are. And I think sometimes you have to go all in, even if you feel you have a losing hand. The path that I would say I took a lot as a founder back then and I see a lot of young founders taking it these days is to look for ways to de-risk or look for ways to live another day. Obviously very human natural inclination, but I think unfortunately if you're a founder, you've chosen the path of risk and you have to kind of stay strong and not shy away from fear and from risk.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Longer than the Bible because the song had a bunch of biblical references in it. So the response from fans was amazing. And then we got a call from Universal Music from Jimmy Ivan saying we have to take it down. We had 24 hours or else they would sue us and also remove all their music from our service. I have relived this story quite a few times as well because I wish we had not folded. I wish we had stayed strong, basically told them to go fuck themselves. That would have risked our entire company. One of our board members shared my view. The other ones didn't, and my co-founders and I argued late into the night. And we ultimately decide for this half-flinch where we kept the video up, but we removed the music recording part, which was the wonderful part of it. So it ended up being an interview with Bono that then stopped when the music began. You know, that choice enabled us to survive as a company. And it was, you know, to keep going for two more years. But the big learning for me is that I think success in tech requires maintaining courage.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're jockeying to figure out in the new internet era who owns the digital rights. And so U2 was one of Jimmy's largest bands, presumably partners, but they were also actually kind of in a war as to who has the rights to their digital presence. We were on the side of helping the band. And as a result, we became the front in this war. You too posted an amazing video on our service that was the release of a new song and was kind of the tip of the spear for a new album launch. This video was very personal for me because it was a video I recorded when I met Bono and, you know, pitched him on this idea of releasing videos via the internet as a way of promoting their music. And all of this was innovative at the time. And what happened, this video had an immense, amazing fan reaction within a day, thousands of comments were posted. In fact, we printed them out and sent this ream of paper to the band to say, hey, the response to your song is.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so first of all, I also love Bono, truly one of the most wonderful humans, I think, in history. He was the hero of the story in that he came and sort of helped save me from. Essentially, I bungled negotiation with one of the most powerful people in the music industry, which was my startup was in the music industry. And one part that I'm proud of with this story is that I've always been on the side of creators, whether it's my first company was about helping small businesses, the second company I like was about helping musicians. In some ways, I would say in what I do at Neo today is helping founders. In this negotiation, Jimmy Iovine, you know, the music industry was very much with its back against the wall in 2007, 2008 era, and they were like a wounded tiger lashing out at anyone. Not only was it outright war between the music industry and the tech companies, but also there was a cold war going on between the music industry and their own bands because bands who had signed record contracts decades ago”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Business plan, how are they possibly going to beat the search engine greats like Yahoo? And yeah, so I didn't invest in that. I didn't invest in Airbnb the first time I met Brian. Brian was hustling because Airbnb was, this was pretty early on. I was at lunch with somebody else. I was having lunch with a Wall Street Journal reporter, Rob Guth, and Brian was at the table next to us. And Brian was like, I'm sorry, did I hear you say you're an angel investor and sort of like jumped into our conversation? Let me tell you about my startup, Airbnb. And I was kind of annoyed like, dude, I'm trying to talk to somebody else here. This is an important conversation with a journalist. But I was really impressed with him. I thought he was smart. I love the concept, but I didn't follow up, you know, missed out on an early, early stage Airbnb investment. I did correct by mistake. Brian and Gang were very generous to let me invest later on at a much, much higher valuation.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was one miss, and same time frame, one of my smartest friends from Harvard, Craig Silverstein, was probably the top guy in our CS program. He and my brother and I were probably always vying for which of us is the best coder in the Harvard class of 94 in computer science. And it was probably Craig. After, I think in 1999, he was leaving his Stanford PhD program to join a new startup. And I felt like I am so much ahead of this guy. Like while he's been languishing in academia, I have built a startup and sold it and I'm the most successful person from our class now. Clearly, I'm better. And what is this startup he's joining as CTO and first employee of this new Google startup with his PhD friends? It's surely not going to make it. And so I didn't engage when I learned about this company. That one was definitely a big miss. Clearly remember having this hubris, you know, that like this guy who I knew was a genius. I had this feeling, oh, they don't have a”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I have so many. So, I mean, some of the seminal ones, I would say, where I truly knew the person and I knew they are a genius. And so these are stupidest misses. So at my first startup Link Exchange, we had this brilliant contractor who was younger than us. So I was 25. Max Levchin was 22. And when we sold our company, he left to start PayPal. We all knew Max was like just a whole next level brilliant. I mean, when he walked into the office, people would speak in hushed tones. Oh my gosh, it's Max Levschin. And the original PayPal idea, actually I think it was called Confinity or some other weird name. It was almost a joke. It was this app for Pompilots to zap money using infrared. It almost felt like an episode of Silicon Valley. Like, that's not a business. Come on. Who's going to be zapping money via infrared from one Palm Pilot device to the other? In hindsight, though, investing in PayPal was not about the original business idea. It was about investing in Mac.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will say, I was myself when I used the word hubris, I'm thinking of myself when I was 26. So, you know, I don't mean to make it seem like I'm better than anyone else. It's that some of my biggest misses had to do with cases where I knew the person was brilliant, but I thought I was smarter. And so I didn't invest in something that in hindsight I should have invested in.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Manufacture false information or false implications as to what else. If I had said to Steve merely, we wouldn't take a deal less than 150. That would have been just as strong without having the implication of something untrue. The other element I'd say though is humility, which is you can be strong while also showing humility. That, again, requires a lot of nuance, but I think that one of the things I find that young founders who are trying to have leverage, like you said, also are trying to make the other party feel like they are the weaker or the loser or to try to make it explicitly feel like a defeat.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would agree that you should bring leverage and strength to a deal. And this applies not just to selling your company. Obviously, it applies to fundraising if you're raising your next round. You should be strong. But there's a big difference between being strong and being misleading. One thing I learned, and I've passed on to other founders, is you can show strength without implying anything that's not true, especially if you're negotiating with somebody who has more experience. If you overplay your hand, they will know it. In my case, I don't know how many deals I had done at that point, but certainly not as many as Steve Jobs. And most founders have not gone through as many fundraisings as the VC has, obviously, right? As a VC, we see whatever, multiple deals a week. And so you can tell when somebody's overplaying their hand. Now, to be strong without misleading, all you need to do is to say, I won't accept that. You don't need to say why you don't need to make implications for I have a better offer or I don't. If you simply say we won't do it for less than X, that's strength. You can say that.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Might may be talking about. And so I asked Steve before you leave what range are you thinking? And he threw out a number that was way below what we had hoped for. Basically, we had raised money two years earlier for $50 million, and he offered to acquire the company for $50 million. So basically, no change in valuation since our pre-launch fundraise. And so my heart sank and I was trying to figure out how to move this up. So I said to him, Steve, I think we're worth three times that. And then I made the ultimate mistake, which is I changed my posture and I said, Steve, actually, I know we're worth three times that. And at that moment, I was definitely trying to posture that we had another offer, whether it was in the language I used or the tone of voice. He totally saw it. He stared at me and called me out on my bullshit and did so fairly harshly. He was like, you're lying. I don't remember all the details, but he left the room. It took a few more weeks for the deal to completely fall apart, but it was very clear to me that at that instant, with that one.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like so you know we're putting up a good fight or a good front and so after a year of relationship building Apple finally expressed interest in acquiring us and my contact there was Eddie Qu who I think is a wonderful man he was the champion for the deal we gave a terrific presentation to Steve and Steve Jobs was someone that all three of my co-founders and I idolized. I mean a chance to meet with him was like a lifetime you know achievement So this was somebody I had worshipped since I was in middle school. It went extremely well He said, I like you guys, I like what you've built. I like how you are arguing back. I like how you talk and how you think about things. We want to acquire you guys. I'll leave the details to Eddie here. Right then, my mistake was impatience again. You know, I keep thinking, Magnet, if I had just done nothing, things would probably have been fine. Being the CEO, I felt like, oh, my job is to, you know, negotiate a really great deal here. I was too eager to find out what type of”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, this story has been one of the most, I'd say, traumatic things that I have clung to in my life. For starters, our startup was struggling. I like in 2008 was we had built amazing technology. We had great adoption, but there were some major strategic headwinds or obstacles. We were getting screwed on one side by the record labels, and on the other side by the Facebook platform that we had built, all our features on top of. And so we were fairly desperate. And I think what I would say is we were trying to hide that in hopes that we could sell the company. And I'd say the underlying thing that I'm ashamed of was how much essentially it was intentional deceit that we didn't want the world to know how many weaknesses we had. We were hoping somebody would buy the company before they realized what we knew, which was that we were fucked. And anyway, so we were pretty good at doing PR and showing the positives. We had engagement from consumers. We had a lot of celebrities involved with it.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe it's not that big a loss to us either. Maybe they don't actually need that help. It could often mean they don't realize how hard hiring is. And if somebody hasn't reached that realization yet, they might not actually be as strong a founder. And when they do, we might get a second bite at the Apple.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's interesting. Yeah, FOMO can really be a misleading thing, right? It can be both a reason to make good decisions or a reason to make mistakes. I have generally tried as much as I can as an investor to try to find my own compass, to try not to focus on who else is doing what and what if I miss out, and rather in terms of whether it's a good investment, find my own reasons, and also in terms of convincing them to take our money, try to win based on our merits. I should start by saying I'm extremely confident about what Neo brings to the table. When we invest in a company, we don't just invest capital. We help build the company. And by that I mean we help build their engineering team, which is the engine that creates everything. And for most of our successful controller companies, we sourced something like half their early engineers. In some cases, more than half, because I have that confidence, I don't tend to get as worried about losing deals. And if there's, I certainly do lose deals, but I often feel like, you know what, if they didn't see the value in what we offer,”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would agree. Do not drink when you're having major business discussions. It's interesting because I've asked myself some level I would have done the same. Like I think that the exuberance I had seeing something wonderful and talking about it, I never want to become such a cynic that I suppress that. But I think what I would perhaps say, the common theme of all of my mistakes, I'd say in business are impatience. In hindsight, I could have waited three or four days and then tell Jerry what I really thought after our deal was closed. And by the way, it might not have made a difference. The accounting thing might have been the real reason. But I think one of the things as a younger, both as a founder and probably as an investor has been one of my flaws has been impatience. So that's perhaps one learning. But I would say that the other learning that I was 100% right on was the evaluating of these people. These people truly were geniuses. And obviously with what Paul and Gang have accomplished since, if anything, I would say it was Yahoo's loss not to keep them long.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A total mistake. We'd had some drinks at the time, and I probably was not filtering myself well enough because of the alcohol. ViaWeb's people are incredible. And I said, they're better than our people. Far better. I don't remember exactly, but I was really vehemently arguing for how brilliant these guys like Paul and Trevor and RDM at Via Web were. And a couple days later, we learned that Yahoo was no longer acquiring us. There was an accounting problem, and that was, you know, the statement was like, hey, we can't use this accounting method that we had hoped to use. But I kept wondering, could it be because of what I said to Jerry over drinks? And then I immediately called back Paul Graham to be like, okay, let's go back to the other deal, you know, make sure that hadn't fallen through. And then Paul started ghosting me. He's not responding for weeks. And then we read in the press that Yahoo had acquired VOB, which was, you know, amazing. I was like, oh.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then we received a term sheet from Yahoo for them to acquire my company. It was a $125 million acquisition, which was enough to make me, you know, as a 25-year-old very wealthy, it's much more money than I had ever expected in my life. But more importantly to make many of our employees very wealthy. So we accepted the term sheet. We started ghosting the via web guys, which, you know, Paul Graham was writing saying, so what's the next step? And because we were underexclusivity with Yahoo, I couldn't respond to him and say, what's going on? And then on the eve of the acquisition, I had drinks with Jerry Yang, you know, in my mind, this deal is done. What's next? I was telling him as soon as Yahoo finishes acquiring us, together what we need to do together is go acquire this other company via Web, which was amazing. And Jerry, I remember clearly saying, oh, Via Web, the company in Boston, we looked at them and our guys said there were some issues. Their people aren't that great. And I said, Jerry, you're making.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so this is a story that I just tweeted about last month after almost 20 years. I was 25. It's very interesting because the timeframe we're talking about was exactly the time that I was realizing as a 25-year-old that betting on startups is all about betting on people. And I had told myself I want to develop this super skill. And so as a head of BizDev for our company, I was trying to find other startups, not just based on their technology, but trying to evaluate their people, finding other startups for us to partner with. I found this incredible startup with just truly what felt like magic, this company Via Web, whose CEO Paul Graham, I could tell from within the first conversation was brilliant, and his other folks were also brilliant. And I really wanted to partner with them. And then at the same time, Yahoo wanted to partner with us. And we'd reached sort of a handshake, rough handshake agreement, like we had, you know, it wasn't a solid agreement, but we had reached an understanding, yeah, we could do this.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Companies like Venta, Call She, CoProcure, I think not a single person they hired was without a phone call at least from me to help convince them to join the company. In the first 10 or so people they hired. So that is still part of what I'd say is my job, even if I'm not sourcing the candidates.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This ability to evaluate people. And Mike would often within 15 minutes develop a strong opinion about candidates that I'd spend an hour and really have kind of no clue. And I started realizing there were other people older than myself who had this instinct almost like, you know, it wasn't what questions they asked. They were just in 10 or 15 minutes develop a sense of that person's great we should hire them. And I just felt like there was some occult magic that I lacked. At that point, I decided I wanted to dedicate my life to acquiring that skill. And I would very much say that my whole arc and Neo has been in pursuit of this ability of finding, identifying brilliant people, trying to surround myself with people smarter than myself. And it stemmed from them. I guess to your question about VCs, it's not just sourcing candidates. It's also helping you evaluate candidates, younger founders in particular can need help with that. And lastly, helping close candidates. In almost all my portfolio companies, if I didn't source their early recruits, I certainly helped close them.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll say one of the things that for me was a truly formative point in my career was when I was a 24 year old founder, we were struggling with how to evaluate candidates. And in particular, candidates older than ourselves. We were trying to hire a VP of sales and a VP of engineering. And we were 24 and we'd get a candidate who was 34 and their resume just looked intimidating. We'd have five candidates and they all looked great. We had really, you know, we just weren't sophisticated about how do you tell whether someone's better than someone else. And our lead investor was Sequoia and Mike Moritz was on our board and would come multiple times a week to our office and join us in these interviews. So I'd interview the candidate and Tony would interview the candidate and then Mike would interview the candidate and then we would debrief afterwards. And I learned so much from Mike. He would eviscerate these candidates where I'd be like, yeah, they seemed good. And he'd be like, absolutely not. And I realized there was a skill that I didn't possess.”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an interesting question to post to me. So I would say it is my fucking job. So I am happy to be leaned on for that. But I would agree at the same time most VCs are not good at that. And regardless, I don't want anyone, including myself, to be a crutch. I think of it more as augment teaching founders best practices, you know, so that they become independently strong at it. And the best companies, you know, pick up, build their own muscles, need less and less help over time. any investor or mentor or advisor is going to have some sort of exponential decay in how helpful they can be because hopefully the founders and their executive team over time become greater than we are. And I would say for me as an investor and as a mentor, the true joy of being a mentor and an investor is to see somebody younger than yourself grow to be stronger than you and bigger than you and more successful than you. And I've had the extreme pleasure and privilege of having seen that multiple times with many companies like some of the ones I just”
2022-01-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How I Lost a $125M Deal with Yahoo by Being Too Honest, The M&A Meeting with Steve Jobs That Did Not Go Well and How U2's Bono Saved The Day For One Tech Startup with Ali Partovi, CEO @ Neo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source