YouSaid · the spoken record

Anthony Zhang

lines on the record
58
first
2021-12-10
most recent
2021-12-10
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

  1. “I would say I've been very fortunate to have some incredible investors, but probably the biggest surprise is that the brand name really does not matter as much as the person you're partnering with. You take a firm like Andreessen Horowitz, right? It's one of the most famous BC funds in the country, probably in the world. But the person that you talk to, the person that you bring on your board is more important than the brand name, right? That's something that I didn't really realize. And then when I was looking for BCs, I was like, I just want a top tier VC. That means I'll get the best help. I'll get the most attention. But you realize that especially with a lot of these bigger funds, especially in a seed round of Series A round, even if they lead your entire round, they take the whole allocation at a such a small drop in the bucket for their entire fund size that it's hard for them to justify the resources and the time that they're putting into it when on”

    2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Very difficult. So I just felt very strongly that there needed to be some more accountability and transparency on both sides of the table, not just everyone's kind of holding a lot of these investors to almost like a god status tier or literally hold the keys to your company's success or not with that funding. I just thought there should be some more balance to the ecosystem. And given the social climate, Low up the way that it did, but I just felt so strongly that this needed to exist in the world that thankfully me and my co-founders, we were able to get it out at just the right time.”

    2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “So, know your VC is essentially a Yelp or a glass door for rating both venture capital firms, individual partners within those firms, as well as angel investors. I started this in 2017, which if you can recall, in Hollywood was when the whole Harvey Weinstein scandal was moving and really catching a lot of steam. And in Silicon Valley, there was a very similar movement of a lot of brave women and minority entrepreneurs coming out into the spotlight and sharing some horrible stories about how these VCs had either sexually discriminated against them, racially harassed them. And it was just a lot of the same power dynamics that I saw in Hollywood. And for me, being in a very fortunate position to be backed by Peter Thiel, you know, being male, I had a lot easier of a time fundraising than those minority and female founders, even though fundraising is already.”

    2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “They knew after classes they were going to hit the library, but they wanted a Chipotle burrito beforehand. They knew that there were a lot of other students that probably wanted that exact same thing. So by just swinging by Chipotle A, getting six burritos instead of one, you pretty much have your dinner covered for you. And it was just really friendly and fun way for the community to be able to help each other out and get closer as well. So for us, that was really what the funding went into. And it was an amazing experience. As you mentioned, we sold the company about four years after founding to a company called Joyrun, which is now owned by Walmart.”

    2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “So for the $100,000 grant, I put it all into the business. Thankfully, right after I've gotten the Teal Fellowship, I went out and fundraised. So we raised a million and a half dollars and I just put that $100K on top of that, right? It's a grant I could technically do whatever I wanted with it, but the best use of money was to grow the business. And for us, it was just expanding to more markets. We were college focused, so it was tier two, tier three cities where the big grub hubs and door dash of the world just didn't have scale. And we thought that by capturing these markets where there's a lot of density around college campuses, really cheap labor because all of our delivery people were students. And also that extra sort of X factor, which was the community. You had to have an EDU address to be able to even get service, even open up the app. And students who say were 6 p.m.”

    2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Where's my community? Where's my tribe going to be? And thankfully, I was able to make some really amazing friends of other young, sharp founders who were building world-changing ideas and were able to stick it through the thick and thins of building a business together and building very different businesses as well.”

    2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Of meeting a lot of other teal fellows through the application process. A lot of the fellow prospective applicants and candidates and even talking to Peter Teal himself really gave me that belief and confidence that I don't need to wait another eight, nine years maybe to start my business and realize my dream. I'm doing this right now, running a business out of college. And if someone like him could take a chance on me and give me both the confidence as well as the resources to be able to support myself dropping out of school and pursuing my business, that's not an opportunity I can pass up ever. So Teal Fellowship was extremely rewarding for me having that community of other college high school dropouts because when you're 18, 19 years old, your friends are everything, right? You're in the dorms. Social life is bigger than school life. And when I dropped out, that was one of the things I was really afraid of is that like.”

    2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “So, for those of you who are not familiar with the Teal Fellowship, it is a program where Peter Thiel gives students or prospective students $100,000 to essentially drop out of college, drop out of high school, and pursue their business ideas. And the whole thesis behind it is that some great ideas just can't wait. And when I got accepted to the Teal Fellowship program, I was running my business out of college. It was a food delivery app called Envoy Now and I had always subscribed to the belief that to be able to start a business, which was always my end goal, you needed a four-year degree at a great college. You needed some great work experience, maybe at an investment bank or a consulting company. And then you go back with that work experience and you get your MBA, right, from a top program. And then after that, maybe you're ready to start that business. And having the experience”

    2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT