YouSaid · the spoken record

Arif Janmohamed

lines on the record: 21
first: 2019-10-21
most recent: 2019-10-21
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

“Outright fraud and delivered not only compliance but also better usage of travel and expense budgets inside companies. And they're now expanding that into invoicing and contracting. As I said, I heard so many wonderful things from literally every member of your team, quite literally. So it's been such a pleasure to have you on the show today. And thank you so much for joining me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Travel management company ever. They now manage over a billion dollars in corporate travel. They're growing 15 to 20% month over month. This is a company I've been privileged and humble to have worked with from the very, very beginning days at the Steed and then the Series A and then through the Series B. And so although it's something we publicly announced recently, a recent round, it's an incredible company that has a long, long way to go. Another company I'm super excited about is called Appzen. This is a company we announced late last fall. It's using AI and ML in a very practical and applicable way specifically they go after today expenses and invoices and look at companies' expense reports and find fraud. This is something that almost every company in the world has. There's obviously salespeople that go out and do expense things they should be expensing. There's rank and file that make mistakes on a daily basis on their expense reports. These guys automatically using deep learning machine learning plus a workflow and orchestration engine can find those mistakes or find that”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What would I change in the world of enterprise? That's an interesting question. I'd say that to go back to something we talked about earlier, go to market motion is art and science. And sometimes it's very obvious to us that a product is a necessary product, but it takes time to convince many, many stakeholders that that product should be bought. And so that comes down to the sales cycles of the enterprise world, the buying cycles, the procurement cycles of enterprise buyers. But the exciting part is once it tips, it tips in a very, very big way. And the prize is a rep size. So even though it's something I'd love to change, it's hard to change. It's hard to change human behavior. It's something that I understand and can coach founders through. Tell me, final one, what's the most recent publicly announced investment and why did you get so excited? There's a couple. So we most recently announced a very big round in trip actions. This is a company in the corporate travel space. They're building and they have built the fastest growing online corporate.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Questioning some of your intuitions, your judgments, your decisions, and learning from those, but keeping in mind that the feedback cycle is a very, very long feedback cycle.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's an interesting one because I've been passionate about joining the venture capital industry for many, many years. I was driven to join this industry. Once I got in, the thing that surprised me the most was really the long cycles of venture capital and the long, long feedback cycles. And the challenge is for someone who comes from industry who's operational, the feedback in an operational world is very, very quick. In an operational world, you need to go and build a product. You need to go and sell X amount of dollars of product in a quarter. So the feedback loop is extremely fast. In the venture capital world, the feedback loop is slow. You can improve that you can win deals, but it takes time to really learn whether you're good at winning the right deals. In many cases, it can take five, maybe 10 years to know if your judgment is right, to know if your intuition is right, to know if your gut is right. So it's one of those industries where you have to be long-term focused. You need to be very, very patient. You need to be iterative of yourself at understanding really on a daily basis.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I absolutely love my job. And the job is incredible one, but it's one in which there's a lot of context switching. As venture capitalists, we're working with a number of portfolio companies. We're looking at new potential investments. We're thinking strategically about how to go globally, grow globally, for example, and grow our platforms. So I'd say the challenge is really it's a little bit like an air traffic controller keeping everything straight in our head and staying very, very organized and prioritizing where our time needs to be spent, where my time needs to be spent, and why, and then making sure that I'm spending the right amount of time and giving the right amount of energy to the portfolio companies that I work with, as well as to potentially interesting new companies that can become outliers. And then, of course, working with my partners here inside the firm to help think through strategically where we're going as a firm.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the folks that we work very closely with here at Lightspeed is a gentleman named John Thompson. John Thompson was the CEO of Symantec for about 10 years. He took that company from $600 million to $6 billion in revenue. He's now the chairman of Microsoft. And in between, he ran a company called Virtual Instruments, which we actually invested in. And John is a veteran of the enterprise space. He's incredibly insightful. He understands the go-to-market motion. He understands what it means to do company design. And he truly understands what great people, great management, look like.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of the things that we as a society have done from a dietary perspective and how that diet is affecting not deterministically, but potentially our outcomes as human beings. And so I read that book. I don't follow it to the T, but it's certainly affected the way that I go about my life, and it's certainly affected my diet.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I should probably read more than I admit to also. I've got two, I don't have necessarily a favorite book, but there are two books that I've recently read. One I read a dozen years ago, the one I read, the other one I read more recently. The one I read a dozen years ago really changed my outlook on how I go about my life. And it's called Stumbling on Happiness, and it really exposes how your brain can fill in blanks, either in memory or in the way that you fore-project, and how those blanks can actually affect outcomes and your reaction to those outcomes. And that affects happiness, that affects investment decisions, that affects how you act in your daily life. It's actually a really insightful book, and I'd encourage anybody who's interested in understanding their own psychology to read that book because it'll shine a better light on how our brain can play tricks on us. And then the other book I read much more recently is a book called How Not to Die. The name of the book hits you in the face, but if you're interested in wellness and longevity, then I'd strongly recommend you read this book because it shines a light on”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's both in art and a science. So depending on the company stage, if it's a series A, then you look at their prior history. You look at what has that team done before? What have they achieved in their past lives? Because that's in many cases a good proxy for what they can achieve going forward. If it's a company that's at the later stages, Call it Series Beer Beyond, then you've got some data. Then you can really understand how did they land, what is their strategy, where are they landing, and you can talk to some of these customers, either directly or through back channels, to really understand how they sold, what their ability to execute on selling was, and why they bought. Sometimes it's just hard to dispute great product market fit. And so companies that find product market fit, find lightning in the bottle, those are the ones you just want to get behind in a big, big way. I totally agree in terms of the lightning in the model ones. I do want to move their ARF into one of my favorite elements of the show, which is the quick fire round. So I say a short statement and you hit me with your immediate thoughts. How does that sound? Sounds good. All right, hit me up.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And do some strategic acquisitions. So they're starting to look like one of the incumbents in the security space. If you look at a company like Squunk, which is a dominant player in the data space, that was a venture-backed company. That was a company that went public that a lot of people had written off due to questions around market size. And the executive team there is executed almost flawlessly to a $20 billion valuation. And now they're doing their own platform acquisitions and extending their product reach. So there are multiple companies that are starting to show that they can become the new platforms. In the software space, you see companies like Workday and ServiceNow each worth about $50 billion that are now nipping at the heels of the best-known story, Salesforce.com, in the new world of enterprise.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See incumbents. How do you think about consolidation in the enterprise market moving forward from today over the next kind of three to five years? I think the legacy vendors, they're smart, right? They're looking at this changing landscape. They're looking at the new technologies that companies are adopting. They're looking at the massive trends that I talked about, cloud and data and AI plus ML. And they're saying we need to stay relevant. We need to keep being relevant to our customers. So they will make offers to premium companies. And then it really depends on the leadership teams of those companies that are upending the status quo and their confidence in their product and their determination to continue to stay private in order to create outsized legacy companies. You're already seeing a little bit of the shift in status quo. You've got companies like Palo Alto Networks, which is north of $20 billion. That's become a platform company that has now demonstrated an ability to innovate, continue to build on their platform.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dollars from one pocket to another, from legacy to new. If you're trying to evangelize a market and then underwrite that market size, that can become very, very challenging. You're right. Some great teams will figure it out. They'll pivot once, twice, three times, and there are great stories of those companies that have really pivoted into great markets. The most interesting one being Slack, which pivoted from a gaming company to almost an enterprise messaging company. So great teams can figure it out, but if you're going to pay an outsized valuation behind a team, then at least in your underwriting model that needs to be part of your mental model. Yeah, and listen, I do agree with you very much in terms of if you're paying up for that price specifically. I do want to dig in on another thing that you said that was really interesting, which was the upending the legacy companies that we have today. Because we've seen a lot of the qualities, the duos, the app dynamics, the mule softs, which incredible companies and standalone companies could be in their own right, absolutely. But did then end up being acquired by existing legacy?”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Worth investing or taking on the risk. However, if it's a team that has shown ability to execute that has clarity of vision, that has an incredible product or product vision and can execute in a very, very large market, it's not worth trying to optimize on the edges for valuation. I'm super sorry to dive in there. You said there about the market risk, and I totally understand what I hear, and actually what I've done before myself in the past is, you know what the team is so good, they'll figure it out along the way, given that they have enough runway to make that happen, but they'll figure it out along the way and they'll find the right insertion point, the right adjacent market. Is that a fair argument or team? That's potentially lazy thinking and actually market should be central to when you are making the investment. There are many, many different types of venture investors, and some investors will underwrite that. I prefer to have a very strong point of view around market. And markets can be new markets, but you've got to believe that those markets will be very, very large and outsized, or markets can be existing markets where there's shift in.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do agree with you on the exceptions. I do have to ask when you're self-reflective on how you think about investing today, have you seen your price sensitivity change over time with the lessons and maybe learnings from saying no to companies because of price and them going on to be great successes or maybe having paid up for companies and being thrilled that you did pay up? Have there been any changes in how you view price sensitivity yourself as an investor? Absolutely. You know, I think more and more about what the outcome can be and about the team's ability to execute. And so with those two core factors, what is the prize? If the prize can justify the entering price, which then helps you underwrite the risk, then it's worth it. Because, you know, as venture capitalists, we take team risk, we take product risk, we take market risk. And I think market risk is the most dangerous risk to underwrite, even if with the greatest teams, teams can't fight market. Market always wins. And so if the market doesn't justify a potentially outsized return, an outlier return, then it's potentially not”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Valuation always matters, in my opinion, but you can be less price sensitive on premium companies with premium markets. And what I mean by that is teams that are exceptional that have a very, very strong point of view of thought and ability to execute and potentially have already demonstrated ability to execute will get premium valuations. Now, Series A valuation doesn't matter is a very general point of view. Can you do a series A at a billion dollars? Perhaps, but then you'd have to underwrite to at least a $10 to $20 billion outcome. I'd say what we're seeing in Series A is absolutely prices have drifted up. When I entered the venture market, Series A's were done anywhere between $5 and $10 million pre-money valuation. Now you're seeing them get into 20 to $50 to $60. But if the market size plus the team can justify an outsized return, then it's potentially worth the risk. And so it does matter, but you can make exceptions for the great, great companies.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Helping founders think through company design, think through company building, and taking an active lead position. That was super attractive to me, even though there's high risk with early stage investing. And then finally, they took a global perspective even back in 2008.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Science of transactions. I worked in the corporate development group, the Merges and Acquisitions Group at Cisco, worked on five amazing deals, the largest being WebEx and a number of others that were smaller scale. And in 2008, I met the founders of Lightspeed. Spent two years at Cisco, met the founders of Lightspeed, Robbie, Berry, Chris, Peter, a couple of conversations later. It was clear to me that this was a firm that I really wanted to make my home. And the reason for that was fewfold. Lightspeed back in 2008 was a smaller platform, but it was a very ambitious platform. We continue to be an incredibly ambitious platform. In 2008, they had a strong point of view that enterprise would be one of the largest market opportunities. And this was almost a contrarian point of view back in 2008, not a lot of people were looking at very closely at enterprise. And given my highly technical background in video and storage and networking and security, this was a place where I really wanted to get involved and spend my time. And then the other things that really attracted me to Lightspeed were this ethos of early stage company building, thought partnership with founders.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who are on the board and learned about the ardent science of funding companies, helping them succeed, helping them grow, and then really playing both a thought partnership and capital partnership role to companies. And that was around the time that I decided I really wanted to make my career really in 2003, but it took another five years for me to enter venture capital. So 2003 Andes was acquired by Sun Microsystems, a large company that got gobbled up by Oracle a few years ago. I had an incredible time working in the CTO office at Sun, but I really wanted to fuel this desire to get an adventure, so I went to business school. I spent two years at the Wharton School. I got Wharton Ventures off the ground back then in 2005 and landed a summer internship in venture capital at a firm that's no longer around, but that was my foot in the door. I had the choice. Do I go into venture capital directly or do I continue my education? And I chose to continue my education. I went to Cisco Systems, which is and was one of the most acquisitive companies in the valley. I really wanted to learn the art and”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where I wanted to make my home, and it had a little bit to do with the weather, you know, coming from Montreal. We're in the winter, it's minus 30, and here in the winter it's about plus 30, I'm blocking Celsius, and also with the fact that there's just a lot of nerds who are extremely, extremely driven, ambitious, and a place where you can actually create household names. And so for the last 20 years, I've made Silicon Valley my home post Microsoft, if you remember, I was acquired into Microsoft through WebTV. I realized that I wasn't a big company guy. I really got addicted to the early stage high that you get from building. And so I joined another company in 2000. This company was funded in March 2000. If you remember, March 2000 was pretty much the peak of the last.com bubble. But we got funded and that was a good thing. It was a company called Andis Networks. It was in the networking security space. I was an early employee there. I was a chip designer. Built some bulk encryption engines. And then over a period of three years, moved from engineer into product management. But along the way, I got to know the venture capitalists.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's a lot of luck. It's a little bit of zigzagging, and it's a little bit of making my own luck. So if you hear an accent, Harriet, it's because I'm Canadian, so I grew up in Montreal, Canada. I studied computer engineering in the 90s. And in the mid-90s, I started to hear about this place called Silicon Valley. Back then, it wasn't necessarily the standard path for people from the University of Waterloo or other places in Canada to make their way out to California. California was viewed as a place filled with people who eat kale and do a lot of yoga, but not necessarily a technology mecca. But what was happening in the mid-90s was magical and I decided I really wanted to go see what was happening. And so I made my way out here. My first job was literally in a garage 13 people at a small company called Nomadic, and we were building robots. It was the most fun I've had until then in my career. We were soldering and building boards and building robotics back in 1997. And then I became a chip designer later on at a company called WebTV, which was eventually acquired by Microsoft. At that point in time, I decided this.”
2019-10-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source