YouSaid · the spoken record

Brian Wong

lines on the record: 37
first: 2015-10-23
most recent: 2015-10-23
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

“A lot. As maybe an IPO, maybe more, you know, there's just a lot that could be in Horizon. We've been obviously tackling the connected device space. We released our loyalty platform a few months ago with MasterCard as our lead client, and we've got a bunch more announcements in the coming month. And just there's just a lot of exciting things. I mean, especially with two major forces guiding the industry today, one being the ad blocking is now at an absolute fever pitch. And we are right at the center of being the ones that can actually help it. And then the other force is working on our favor is, you know, everyone looking for this ability to understand app data and usage data. And, of course, we have been sitting on a lot of that over the past five years. So just a lot of really good things are working in our favor right now.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is Tinder Oh my gosh, it was awesome. It's game changing. Other must-have apps are for productivity as much as there's been a lot of, well, actually a couple of hotels for your badass with the Fabris card discount. Like, my gosh, it's a lifesaver when you're in cities like New York when things are blowing up. And then, of course, Evernote. But one that's actually kind of not gotten a lot of love is box. Yeah, storage service. Mobile app is pretty Pretty awesome. It's super slick and it allows you to share files. Faster than Dropbox And I use it to store all my decks. And basically, if anyone's meeting, they're like, send me your sales. I can send it to them in like two seconds. It's pretty great.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is basically sort of a preventative health care type of app that the whole premise of it is you have a league of people that help basically maintain your health level as the best you could possibly have them at, which is folks like nutritionists, toxicologists, physiotherapists, pretty much all those folks that you can now bring around you, folks that can access that typically was only around people who were, you know, worth as much as him. But now everyone... Has the ability to access it. So I really like just again, he doesn't care about attention, and he's actually literally a rocket scientist. He worked at NASA. When he graduated as a rocket scientist. So there's only a few people like that in the world. And Mike's a pretty cool dude.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I always like to say I don't necessarily want to follow or emulate someone because what worked for them may not work for me. What I do do though is I get sort of inspired and energized by some of these people and just what they've been able to accomplish. And so the classics like the Elons and then now there's Elizabeth Holmes of the world. But one thing that really strikes me are founders that are just really not as loud but are there to really solve big problems. So one actually just recently spent a lot of time with, I was actually at a road hockey tournament, a charity road hockey tournament with him over the weekend was the guy, a fellow named Mike Serbinas. He's actually one of our investors. And he actually recently started a new company called League.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I'm pretty proud of the fact that we're generating eight figures of revenue. We're 60 employees. I'm still CEO five years later. Pretty, pretty darn proud of what we've accomplished as a whole team.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's probably a good feeling. That was pretty highlighting. But I think, you know, the... The ability to make it this long.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jason, you know. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But yeah, he, uh, And the reason I like them is because they had to echo some of the things that I think about sometimes. And I'm like, yeah, maybe this is what they're trying to do. And then he kind of writes this massively long essay about it. And so I think it's an interesting newsletter.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Funnily enough, just top of mind, as I found some of Calcanus' hugely long rambling email newsletters, pretty interesting. As much as I don't want to like them, Why did you?”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Predictively irrational. And the reason is because that was the big inspiration for the company and some of the mechanics behind our gamification tactics.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Making sure that you have some bandwidth as a CEO to keep your head above the water, to sort of see what's going on and really understand what you could try doing and knowing that it is part of your job to go out there and think of very strategic ideas that people can then look at and then think of their own ideas and actually helping you execute. Your job isn't to do the whole thing and implement the new technology, it's to jog people's thinking into kind of looking at what you're building and then go, hmm, that's really cool. Maybe we should actually build this into a full product line. That's kind of been my methodology to it, and I think we've done a pretty good job at it so far.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that There's a lot of cool tech, and there's always a need to be on top of those new. Technologies and obviously connected devices is one. And we caught on to it quite early and we ended up integrating Keep into Connected Device companies like connected cars and most recently connected breathalizer, which is hysterical of an example. But we kind of learned about this area and started dabbling in it. And the whole point is...”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That require a lot of heavy decision making. It's just a place for people to convene once those decisions have pretty much already been passed along everyone else. And then we kind of convened it to talk about it as a coherent whole.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, there's still a lot to learn, especially because this is a different animal of a company now. And this is what makes it always exciting. But the board should always be like an extension, should be your team, it should be your champions. You should be open to them challenging you, but not in front of everyone else. If they do want to challenge you, challenge me privately, and then we'll have an open discussion about what you challenged me about that I now know that you're about to challenge me about in front of everyone else. You know what I mean? That's kind of important for everyone to realize is that there's no, the board meeting is really kind of a review of everything that's already been talked about. It's not supposed to be a place where you talk about brand new things.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Truly manage a board. It was not only by them, but also other founders that they introduced to me. And that's why the founders of cancer are so helpful, because I got to talk to a lot of other founders that were, again, similar stages that had raised just enough that they could tell me, hey, when you do have a board that gets to about three or four people, here's how you manage the board. And that's how I learned everything I needed to learn. So, well, not everything, but obviously enough to be able to run these meetings and run the board for now almost four years”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We usually once every two to three months And it depends on whether or not there's a financing or if we're a little nervous about something. The board has very much so been like just an additional set of folks that can be my extension, my team in many ways. Things like if we need to hire someone, they go out and source people for me. If we need to sort of find a specific type of customer or get another advisor, they'll find those people for me. We need advice on analytically how to go after a certain problem and whether or not it's worth it. They'll sort of do the analysis and give their two cents. So in many ways, it's kind of how you set up your relationship with them, right? I got trained extremely well, thank God, by the true venturous folks in the beginning, on how to”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not just saying this because this is a public thing, but I've been very fortunate to have a great board. And they've been extremely supportive. It's always been very lean. We only have about four people on the board right now.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Down to the core of it, which is like, can this strategic investor, A, provide me with enough assets and data and new customer connections and whatever it might be to help me grow the business? I don't care that they have sexy companies that they've invested in or they helped in the biotech space. I care that they've helped scale out mobile infrastructure SEK related businesses, you know, stuff like that. What I mean by all this.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I see, yes, yes. So, I mean, then it became very industry related, right? And customer relevant. Because in the beginning, it's like it's kind of like college, right? In the first year. You kind of want to handle everyone, and you kind of meet everyone from all different faculties and different subjects and whatever, and you become good friends. And then later on, you just spend more time in small groups with the people that are in your subject, or even when you get your master's and your PhD, same thing. Same thing goes with this and that later on everything becomes more subject matter focused. RBCs are related to what we do, right? Our investors are related to what we do. And I care less about investors that are generally cool, right? And I care more about investors that can help us Generate more revenue. It's so...”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Traditional VCs, traditional growth capital investors will take that approach. But where we found a lot of success is actually finding our customers to invest in us, a lot of Verizons and the Amexes of the world. Because their mentality is very different. They're not there to dump money into unicorns. They're there to find strategic businesses that they can partner and learn from that can help them grow really quickly too. So they want a little bit of you to rub off out of them and a little bit of them to rub off out of you. So I would say pretty much most of the new capital we've raised from new funds in our latter rounds have been pretty much only strategic corporate VCs.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really hard to raise growth capital, especially off of revenues, primarily because especially in this environment. And the reason is because as much as it sounds if tons of growth money being thrown out there, like the $100 million plus round, those are concentrated into companies that are at growth rates that are at 100, 200% plus year over year. When you're a solid sort of double-digit growth rate company, it's actually really hard because when you think about it, growth is relative, right? And when other companies have shown growth that are in triple digit percentage. Rates, then you don't look that great compared to them. And it also depends on the types of investors, though. So this is where the sort of silver lining.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that was, you know, I would say though that when I was raising, and this is why people when I talk to them like, you should not use my reference point at all because that was five years ago, things have changed massively. When I was starting around, there was no Kickstarter. The Jobs Act hadn't even been proposed. There was no way to sort of raise really other than from angels and from C Brown investors. And everything was a lot more rigid, is what I would say. Now things are a lot more fluid and anything goes and there's a lot more millionaires now that have liquidity than there was in 2010. Now, Chris's question is. very near and dear because it's relatively recent is”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's what I'm true was kind of there. And they had just raised the fund and $300,000 is not exactly a massive amount of money compared to the $215 million, I think, was in their fund. So, you know, it made a lot of sense. And then, of course, at the time, I had now some references that Dig at least was execution-oriented enough that I had projects that could show for my work. And the idea was spot on in a space that was growing extremely quickly, which was mobile and mobile apps and games and then advertising. So, you know, all those things had nothing to do with my age. It just happened to do with me, my co-founders, and then the idea and the industry we were in. So it was relatively smooth. So company was incorporated. July, and we closed the first round in September, which was exciting.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's two very interesting questions there. So, from an early stage standpoint, I would say at the time I was, again, a lot of right place right time, which, you know, a lot of preparation leads to lock and all that fun stuff. But I ended up being able to raise $300,000 in our seed round. If you recall in 2010, it was kind of like the financial crisis of 2008 was just recent memory and a lot of really smart investors were starting to really think about seed investing again.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The helped me understand how to structure teams, think about products, and really at a period of time in the company where there was a lot of uncertainty. So really knowing how to give people direction and how to communicate, it was really, really important. So it's really interesting to see companies doing the not so great days. And being inside the belly of the beast during that is unbelievably important in the fact that I was able to just see the way that people got through it. And then how people reacted and just how people and even employees were sort of handling the whole situation. So that's really one of the bigger takeaways that I had from my experience there.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then there was sort of this head of product cable to side that Kevin hired. And there was a head of design, Jeffrey Kamakoff, who was also sort of ahead of product at the time, but that Jay had hired. So not going to go into too many details. But basically, during that period of time, I learned about sort of where founders reclaimed their territory is kind of a good way to express that. And we're rightfully so, in the way that the company kind of lost its way, not that Jay didn't do a great job, but there was also sort of this need for a founder to come in and reinstate their sort of the reasons why the company was started in the first place and kind of bring things to this original vision. And so there's just a lot of things that I...”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I learned quite a bit with that dynamic between Kevin and Jay, right? Because as you know, Jay was brought in. Kevin was the founder. But at the time that I was there was kind of during this transition period because I mean, there's a lot of turmoil at the time, right? Jay had left Kevin was back in and then as CEO and then they were finding a new CEO with Matt Williams who came in right when I got laid off.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Existence because you know we just didn't have enough people to need to rationalize getting our own space and co-working spaces at the time a la the wee works of the world did not exist. It was great to be there in the beginning.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Creating services and an ecosystem of the community of other founders that support you personally and then support you in building the company. And so this involved things like their founders camps, which is, again, a very sort of well-known program that they've created where all the founders that came in in certain batches and even other batches can come in and we gather for these camp days. And of course, there's a great time to just learn from others that are basically the exact same stage as you, but in a totally different space so you don't feel competitive. The company formed to even simple things like we had bunked out of their offices for the first three months of the company.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, practically speaking, it not gobbling up so much of the company in the first chunk that you have zero incentives to stick around the founder. I mean, let's just be very blunt. That's one. And the second is...”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do we find how do we be the most founder friendly VC? Which I believe they were the ones that kind of started that movement. Everyone else kind of follow them afterwards. Now everyone's a friend of VC. Yeah, and then even now there's not that many founder friends. What does it really mean?”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chris Yeah, so transmedia capital as well. They're just not our lead VCs, but Chris, I respect quite a bit and have known for a very long time. Then Verizon Ventures as well with Mark Smith over there. So, those have kind of been our main VCs. And then, of course, we have the folks that have just been very involved. Including Chris, and then Harshall Sangi over at At American Express Ventures. And so, you know It's just those folks, I've been very lucky. To just bring a great crew of people that I've now spent enough time to realize that they're actually truly good people that want to help you succeed. And I think the philosophy was actually thanks to true. Given to me because of their philosophy, which was seeking founder-friendly Venture capitalists. And that was really kind of their”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Alex Alex Baker, but Kevin Talbot is on my board. And then as Lars Lecky from Hummer Windblad. And then Phil Black from TrueVentures and Adam D'Ageli over there.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, because this is the whole topic of this discussion is around venture capitalists as well, is I think... It's been so noisy The past five years since I've started doing this. It's been five years now. That it's almost so hard to know if a VC is truly someone you want to look up to or respect until you actually know them. You read a lot. There's a lot out there. There's people who love blogging and people who have a great persona. But until you truly know them. That's really, really hard. So, the folks that I truly know, because I've literally been married to them, Almost five years now are my VCs. My main VCs are true ventures. Hammerlin Blad, Relay Ventures,”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Foursquare and he did Tumblr, and so that was relatively famous startups that at the time I was like, it'd be really cool to meet the guy that funded those companies. So that's what led me to him.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Honestly, it was the only guy that I had heard about enough in the VC world that was in New York that I figured it'd be interesting to meet. You know, most of the time, the folks that do happen to get a lot of attention on them happened to solicit a lot of sort of in-bound requests from aspiring entrepreneurs. And so Fred was one of them.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. And then I was there for all six months and got laid off because the company started to tank. And then that's when I started my own company. And now I'm the founder and CEO of Keep, and we're now 60 employees across the country. And we've raised now almost 30 million BC and we're changing the world of mobile advertising.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But not too long an origin story, thank gosh, I've been only 24. But I grew up in Vancouver in Canada, and I was very typical Canadian childhood, played ice hockey, did the whole nine yards, ended up going to school in Vancouver as well. I also graduated college four years early because I skipped two grades at elementary school, two grades in high school, and then I ended up moving down to Silicon Valley to work for another company called Dig Digg.com.”
2015-10-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 018: Brian Wong, Founder @ Kiip on Raising $30m in VC Funding by 24 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source