YouSaid · the spoken record

Basti Lehmann

lines on the record
73
first
2024-04-08
most recent
2024-04-08
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. “Yeah, absolutely. And I had a great belief that we could continue as a standalone company, but ultimately, I think I put the ego a little aside. And it's not easy. I wanted to be CEO of a publicly traded company. I was looking forward to that. And I think I would do a great job at it and I may get another shot at it. But here's another thing that I think people don't fully understand. We negotiated the deal so well. There was no color on the deal. By the time the deal closed, it was almost five billion dollars. Which is amazing.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Move the company, we believed it was best as part of something bigger because the market needed to consolidate at some point.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “No, no. Look, I actually love sort of defending the legacy here a little bit. You know, sometimes when you fight giants, you know, the war can get nasty and info war is definitely part of that. So first of all, let's just look at the facts. It's very easy. Uber obviously had to file an S4 at the time that they purchased Postmates. And you can look it up. We had just under $100 million left in cash. And our negative gross profit margin was, I think, single digits. Two or three quarters later we were profitable as a company. positive cash flow. So we were in a position that we didn't have to sell. As a matter of fact, we were planning to go public and would have probably been one of the last companies to do so before the world ended. And we were excited about it. But when we looked at everything that was on the table, we had done the best job we could for ten years to grow an amazing company. I think it was the first that we could have.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It was during COVID we met at Alta Plaza Park. I think it's a mean point between where we both lived at the time. A year and a half earlier, there were some preliminary discussions with the Uber team. So there was some familiarity. But ultimately,”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Dara called me and he said, do you want to discuss merging the companies? And I said, yeah, let's do it. Fits in a tweet. That's how easy it was.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Back then it meant a lot to us that we had a known company as the lead investor, and I do believe that it sets up a signal, but I think a good signal can save a bad company. And it'll come down at the end of the day to your execution. A lot of times, even the great VCs and a lot of hype can't really change the outcome of a company.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “No, I think Tony and I knew from the start that this is a tremendous business. If you can scale it and every market that you had at scale was profitable for us and I know that the same thing was also true for DoorDash. It is a misconception of that space in general. Look, it is a tough business. It's a lot tougher than a SaaS company where you just press a button and then you go get a coffee and you made a million dollars in revenues. We're moving about bits and bytes, moving things in the real world, right? You're programmed people. There's a million things that can go wrong. All of the things that you said are right, but it's important to realize the moment in time that I'm talking about. I'm talking about the moment in time when there was enough evidence, maybe around the serious B or starting going into Sirius C that people that had the insights and looked at the numbers, we could clearly articulate how we would get there. When Postmate started out, this thing sounded so crazy that the only people that wanted to give us money were Brian Singham and Peter Teal. And I think the only reason they gave us money”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Where the gross margins need to be. All three companies, I think, have people that could execute very well against the goals. So that is a moment in time when you should raise a lot of money.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Well, I think it entirely depends on the situation. In our case, I think what happened is that we opened up this market of on-demand delivery and by the time competitors came along and by the time competitors had their first funding round, and by the time everybody saw the potential, there was an inflection point in the market when the only thing that mattered was more capital to do more advertising. You have to understand that this was, I think, the largest consumer battleground for five to six years. Billions of dollars deployed in advertising, in marketing, in grabbing market share. But, and this is something that from the outside was hard to understand, but it is the reason why ultimately almost every recei firm invested in one of the players, the fundamentals of the companies. I know this for us, but I have some insight in the other players. They were all pretty sound. And by that I mean there was a clear path to profitability. There was a clear understanding of the unit economics, how they were.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “It was rough for a while when competitors raised bigger and bigger funding rounds. And look, we raised quite a bit of money. I think we raised around 900 million. So by no means small change, but it was really scary at times when you see the pace of which competitors raised money and did so very successfully”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Oh, I think Abila's right, but I want to say I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it tremendously because I really do believe that you have to measure yourself in life. And I think this journey of running that company for ten years absolutely did that. The wartime was defined by us being so focused and so determined to create a successful company. You have to understand, I truly believe that everybody who worked at Postmates loved that company from the bottom of their heart. It was a group of people you couldn't drive us apart with whatever came at us. NEVC funding a competitor, Uber, threats, rumors. We were so focused on our mission. We were so focused because we loved the company. I woke up 10 years in a row and every day I couldn't believe it. I'm like, I can't believe that I get to do this and that I can be with these people.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “You probably got to suffer a little bit to be resilient. So it probably has to do with that. One morning I woke up, and I must have been around fourteen, and my mom wasn't there. It was early in the morning, and I waited for her that she came back and she told me that she had to do another job in the morning to help clean a building somewhere because we just didn't have enough money at the time. And I couldn't believe it because you have to understand that when I say that we grew up modest, I'm not talking about a level that it was apparent to me every day. Things were limited, but I wouldn't walk around and feeling poor. But I think I didn't realize how tight things were until we talked about that and until she told me that. I remember that I said, you know, I will make so much money that my mom can have whatever she wants. And it was incredibly important to me to make sure that she has whatever she needs as soon as I could do that.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I had a pretty perfect life up to that point. After that, it got a lot more complicated. We wanted to be with my mom. She has been there for us. And she's a person I love the most in my life. And she was just a remarkably strong woman. Never talk bad about my dad, even though there were a lot of things that he did that would have made it easy for her to discuss them with us. She just plowed on, and I think he gave literally the next 18 years of her life to make sure that we are grow up to be too capable boys, right?”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Provide, or we would so you would call a toll-free number from AT&T in Germany, you would punch in the calling cart number, you would punch in the pin code, you would then unplug the phone, plug in the modem, dial the number from your internet provider, and you would surf. So in a way, my career probably has started embezzling T or MCI in San Francisco.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Open, but this guy was a complete nerd, and he taught me literally what I had to do is I had to get a phone book from the US somehow. And then I had to call people in the US and had to tell them that I would be a service agent from MCI or from AT&T and that there was a problem with their account and that I needed to verify their calling card number and their pin code. This is a true story. So at some point my parents were divorced and here's the one good thing my dad did for me. He got me a phone book from San Francisco, a Pacific Bell phone book from San Francisco. And me and a friend of mine, we would hit the phone and we would call people in San Francisco and practice our American accent to sound like we're from MCI Worldcom or from AT&T depending on the phone number. We would ask for their calling card number and at some point after weeks of effort someone also gave us the pin code without being too suspicious. So then what we would do, we would have that calling card number and the pin code, we would call our dial up pro.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Extend content was available, and this person his name was Annie Mello. He came online or that was his name, and we started talking. He's like, well, what's your setup? And he had, I'm like, well, you know, just, I think I had a 14 4K modem. And I said, like, you know, I don't really know much about the internet or anything. And I also can't be connected to the internet because it costs a lot of money. And he said, you don't know how to serve in the internet for free. And I'm like, no, I don't know. And he said, well, you need to get a US calling card. Because how it works, he said, in the US, you have like AT&T or they have MCI Worldcom for long distance calls and collect calls or calls abroad. In the US, they punch in this calling card number in a pin code, and then they can use a telephone boost for free or they can call when they're abroad and it gets charged to their account. So a week later he wanted to come by and obviously I never met this person. And it turns out he was like 40 something and my mom was very, very skeptical of this person. She's like, you leave the door.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Definitely moving to the US was a huge part, and I think it's important to understand, I wanted to be in the US almost all my entire life. I remember very vividly, this is actually a great story. So what happened is that I was obsessed with computers pretty much as long as I can remember. And I love the idea that I can just hack things and something comes back. So when we first got internet access, I incured these builds of like ridiculous amounts of money. And I grew up in a fairly modest house. My mom had sometimes three jobs, so we didn't have a lot of money. Back then, if you remember it's a dial-up, so you pay per minute or you pay per hour, depending on your plan. After a while, I decided that I could run a BBS, like a little software that allowed other people to connect to my computer. So you run this bulletin board and you designed it and I don't even know what you had on there. You had probably photos of Claudia Schiffer.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I don't really believe in luck much, but I also don't have a definite answer. I think I believe in determination and grit and hard work.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Well, first of all, in 1977, that's when I was born, 1980 in Germany, you have to understand everything was still black and white. But what would they say? Probably a very curious child. You know, I like to play a lot. I think it was always onto something. As a matter of fact, I think I was out of the house most of the time. I think as soon as I could get out of the house, I would just be somewhere, play in the forest or run around, you know, had a group of friends. We did exhibitions and, you know, that sort of stuff.”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Manage and pay employees from around the world all from one easy to use self-serve platform. Plus, you can streamline global employee management and cut HR costs with remote free HRIS. And hey, even if you are not looking for full-time employees, Remote has you covered with contractor management ensuring compliant contracts and on-time payments for global contractors. There's a reason companies like GitLab and DoorDash trust remote to handle their employees worldwide go to remote. com now to get started and use the promo code 20vc to get 20 off during your first year remote opportunity is wherever you are”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Secure frame empowers businesses to build trust with customers by simplifying information security and compliance through AI and automation. Thousands of fast grown businesses including Nasdaq, AngelList, Doodle and Coda, Trust Secure Frame, to expedite their compliance journey for global security and privacy standards such as SOC2, ISO 2701, HIPAA GDPR and more, backed by top tier investors and corporations such as Google, Kleiner Perkins, the company is among the Forbes list of top 100 startup employers for 2023 and business insiders list of the 34 most promising AI startups of 2023. Learn more today at secureframe.com. It really is a must. And finally, a company is nothing without its people. And that's why you need remote.com. Remote is the best choice for companies, expanding their global footprint where they don't already have legal entities. So you can effortlessly hide”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “I shouldn't be this static asset, it should be a dynamic part of your strategy that really drives conversions. That's marketing one hundred one, but here's a number for you. fifty four percent of leaders say web updates take too long that's over half of you listening right now and that's where webflow comes in their visual first platform allows you to build launch and manage web experiences fast that means you can set ambitious marketing goals and your site can rise to the challenge plus webflow allows your marketing team to scale without relying on engineering freeing your dev team to focus on more fulfilling work learn why teams like dropbox ideo and orange theory trust webflow to achieve their most ambitious goals today at webflow dot com speaking of incredible products that allows your team to do more we need to talk about secure frame secure frame provides incredible levels of trust to your customers through”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Here's another thing that I think people don't fully understand. We negotiated the deal so well there was no color on the deal. By the time the deal closed it was almost five billion dollars. We had just under one hundred million dollars left in cash and our negative gross profit margin was, I think, single digits, two or three quarters later we were profitable as a company. Most companies fail because the founders give up. And that's it. We refuse to give up. This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings. I'm more to show we have for you today postmates. What an incredible journey. It was acquired for $2.65 billion. But no, it actually turned out to be five billion dollars with the stock price of Uber rising. The story of the acquisition how it went down with all the details Basti Lehman, Postmates found and former CEO in the hot seat today to reveal all. But before we dive into the show today, we're all trying to grow our businesses here. So let's be real for a second. We all know that your website”

    2024-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Postmates Founder Basti Lehmann on How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN, Why Great VCs Add No Value and VC Value Add is BS Marketing & Why The Biggest Companies in History Will be Born Today and Replace Incumbents · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source