YouSaid · the spoken record

Darian Shirazi

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34
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2018-04-06
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2018-04-06
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  1. “You know, I don't know yet. We're obviously building a great company. We're adding great customers. I think that there will be a lot of new markets that emerge over the next couple of years that I will be interested in, curious about. So I can't say definitively what the plan is for me, but I can say that I'm deeply engaged in radius. I believe in the thesis. I believe in the business.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Automated out of a job as well. And so I think that's really the advice I have, whether it's getting involved in your local community, whether it is starting a company, whether it is building something that you believe will improve the world, whether it's getting into research to prevent cancer or extend human life. Those are all things that are really interesting. Those are things that you can look back on at the end of your life and say, I tried to make the world better. And that was my responsibility in conjunction with all the other things that I did. And that's, I think, what I would advise graduates on.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah, my advice would definitely be take risks and fail early. Those are really things you're going to hear from everybody. But also I think don't go take a desk job that is the easy way out. You know, I saw so many people in a cal. It was one of the reasons I dropped out of Cal was because I saw so many people that were just content with getting that desk job. I think everyone in the world has a responsibility to make the world better. And the only way we do that is if we build and progress. And if everyone just sort of takes the easy way and just goes and gets a desk job somewhere, we'll never improve. We'll improve at a slower pace. And so it's super important that people think about that. Think about how they could make the world better no matter how it is. And we're starting to see the workforce really change with automation. And if people don't do this, if people don't think progressively in how they can improve the economy, improve the world, improve social society, take risks, things like that, then they're going to be automatic.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Clip the deer the way that I did, I probably would have died. And that collection point made me realize that there are random events that happen. There are things that you can't control. But, you know, you should always be mindful of your life, how short it is. You should be mindful of what you work on and what you really care about. And sort of I saw that I really care about commitment. I care about loyalty. I care about doing what's right. I also care about building great things and doing the best that I can in every situation. But that really served as an inflection point for me. And I remember it. I know that it may seem silly, but for me, it was a very big day and I was very saddened that I killed that deer. So yeah.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “This may seem a little silly, but in 2009 we were working on a startup and our office flooded. And it was a very stressful time. Everybody in the office didn't know what to do. It was just, there was a lot of stress around a few things that happened on that day. And I remember that I didn't have a place to sleep because our office was actually also our apartment. And so the whole apartment had flooded and gotten my car and I wasn't really thinking about anything. I was just thinking about got to make the company successful, got to make the startup work, all these other things. And I was in the car to go stay at my parents' house in Palo Alto. And I was driving on 280. And I hit a deer, a 400-pound deer in the left-hand lane of 280 at about 85 miles an hour. It was devastating. It was devastating for me and sort of saw my life flash before my eyes. It was right near Woodside. And I think that had I not swerved in the right way and sort of”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Oh, totally, many times. And I think that that's where you learn is that you learn quickly by making those mistakes. And that's part of life, is that life is about a series of challenges and learning from those challenges and going after those challenges head on as well.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Sapiens, I think you should definitely be reading. It's a fantastic book. It's about how humans and homo sapiens are so geared to rally around themes, rally around theses and how Neanderthals didn't do that, the evolution of the human and how that has like played into the modern economy and how we think and how we all work together. It's a fantastic book to really understand humankind and our evolution. So really, really love sapiens.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “And so that is really going to be the only competitor to Bitcoin. But right now, I'm definitely long Bitcoin, and it's been a fantastic way to learn about new technologies and also to take advantage of growth in the market.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Quite a while ago. So I'm a Bitcoin maximalist. Definitely believe in Ethereum. I also think that iCos are super interesting. They're going to get regulated, but it's a great way to raise capital, and we need to have better methods by which to regulate them such that people can raise capital. I also think that there needs to be more work done around these white papers and what they mean, and investors need to have more disclaimers around it. But I think it's a fantastic way for these new ideas to raise money. Now, I will say also that on crypto, I think that there's a high probability that the company that will really succeed in crypto will be Facebook. And the reason is that for them to launch their own coin and for them to distribute that coin and allow developers to build on top of it would instantly be the largest ICO and instantly be the largest cryptocurrency. The ability to move money from user to user on Facebook through a crypto proxy is just going to be, I think, the way that this space goes.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, so I do believe in the long term thesis of crypto. I am what most people call a Bitcoin maximalist. So I think that Bitcoin, because it has such strong network effects already, it's definitely on pace to be the leader. I do believe also that the challenges in the world today make Bitcoin really interesting. With you are a middle class individual in China or Russia and you want to get your money out. It's a perfect way to do it rather than carrying gold bars over the border. And I think that that right there is of strong, strong value. I think Ethereum is super interesting. I actually didn't believe in it when some of my early Cal classmates were getting involved in it. And I thought it was kind of a joke. And then sort of I saw it pick up and the value of the technology and I still believe that it is very interesting, but it has a lot of founder risk right now. One of the reasons I think Bitcoin is here to stay is because it has no founder risk and likely the founder passed away.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Check in themes, it makes sense. But as an angel, you're really looking for the next Pinterest or you're looking for the next big play that's going to be in a market that no one's really talking about yet. Yeah, no, trend chasing. I think timing is an enemy of most investing, so I couldn't agree with you more there. On the early stage side, for sure. But, you know, there's also been a lot of things that one theme I'd say across all investments has really been network effects, and that's because I saw the power of that at Facebook.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Founders, one went to go found Sprigg. That ended up being, it seemed a good opportunity initially, but then sort of didn't after the Uber Eats competition that came about. And then the second was carbon health, which is started by the last CEO of Udemy, which is reinventing how primary care visits. And that seems to be doing very well. So you see this sort of network build of founders that you trust and technologies you trust, and that leads you to other businesses, like the founder of Sprigg before he started Sprigg, he worked with Lyft. And so that got me interested in the Lyft. And so these are really the ways in which I sort of think about angel investing. I don't have a specific portfolio strategy because I frankly think that that leads to trend chasing, which is very, very challenging. And I think trend chasing and angel investing is tough. It's not so tough if you're writing larger checks. If you're writing larger checks and you have something that is already in a developed market and it's showing growth, writing a larger”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Thoughts on maybe investing mechanics? Yeah, so it's pretty simple for me. It's really are there other investors that I trust that have evaluated this that are in my friend network? And then second is, do I believe that this business can raise additional capital? And is it in a massive market? Those are the three first qualifiers. And then the fourth one is really, does the founder exhibit the qualities I talked about earlier in the interview? And those are pretty quick to suss out. So, you know, you can eliminate deals pretty quickly if they aren't from your network or you don't know anyone else that you trust that's going to invest in the business. The second, you can eliminate pretty quickly as well. And same with the third. So, you know, that's sort of what I look for. And that's led me to a lot of really great deals that have been great companies and also met great founders. And you also see a lot of founders leave companies that have been really successful and go start other products or companies. So one of those, for example, is a Udemy.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “In, I probably will invest as well. So that's really how I sort of think about it. And that's what's not really cost me a lot of time on this. If I did take more time on it, I don't know if I would necessarily be able to do everything else. And I think that as long as it is from your network and as long as it's a very minimal amount of time, it ends up being not that distracting at all. So I would disagree with that. I think that there are a lot of top tier investors that encourage their founders to do this. I mean, Sequoia has their scout program, which I think is pretty popular. So I would say that it's definitely good to give founders perspective. You also never know when might learn something from another founder. You might learn something from an investment that you've made that may help your business as well. No, absolutely. I couldn't agree more in terms of that cross-functional learning, so to speak. I am intrigued though. When you decided to open up the bowels of the checkbook, so to speak, was there a strategy in place? Was there a thought on portfolio construction? How did you think about kind of check size consistency? What was your”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “The VC community that I speak to, and you're a founder and you're also an angel. I'm intrigued. Many VCs suggest that this is wrong as you're maybe not as committed as someone who doesn't Angel Invest. Tell me why are these investors wrong, do you think? It doesn't take that much time to manage these investments or to evaluate investments. And most of the investments that I'll do are from network introductions and I'll maybe take one meeting and then make a decision pretty quickly. It keeps your mind fresh. I think that having perspective is very important as a founder and I think also that it just doesn't take that much time to evaluate some of these investments. I'd say that I get three to four inquiries a week from people that are either following up or that are new or that are from some other part of the world that want me to take a look at an investment. are evaluated by my personal friend network that I trust and that really doesn't take any time because if those individuals are”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, well, it was funny. I asked Mark Pincus about this when he was raising money for Zynga early on. I don't know if he remembers this, but I certainly do. And he basically used a line with one of the investors he was trying to court or get into the company. And he said, like, if you want to do it, just do it. And it was over dinner. And that sort of drawing a line in the sand and saying it that way really worked because it really drove an outcome. And that's the case with any deal is that you want to drive an outcome quickly because the longer it takes, the more people sort of want to back away or they lose interest or they feel as though you're losing interest. It's just frankly a waste of time. The sooner that you can get to an answer is really key. And I think a lot of founders that I see, some that I've funded, they're so worried about getting a no when getting a no is actually better because then you can just move on. No, I absolutely agree. Fundraising for a fund, I completely know what you mean. But I do want to finish today on a topic that seems slightly controversial actually amongst”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “That we got a ton of people to say no in our early days, but there were a number of top tier investors as well that said yes, and it was because we created that urgency early on.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, and you know, it's driving urgency is really important for the sake of your business, raising money quickly is very important. And the longer it drags out, the more that it's distracting. And distractions are really the enemy of the founder because as things get more complex and as the business gets larger, you'll spend more time on these distractions, which are fundraising or team retention or things like that rather than actually focusing on the business itself. And so if you can minimize those distractions by accelerating your fundraise, that's very key. And what I mean by that is getting to know quickly, getting to know quickly from investors that are not interested and being able to read whether investors are interested early on and creating a sense of urgency for you and for them. Investors don't like to say no because they don't like closing the door on potentially good opportunities. So it's really hard to know whether you're in the no camp or the yes camp because you'll kind of get a maybe unless you push for a no. And we found”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah, I mean, empathy is important. Being a founder is really tough. It has great days and terrible days. I think also network is very important, especially in our business. Our business is driven by large enterprise customers. And, you know, for example, the AVC team introduced us to Comcast, and that's now our largest customer. So it gives you a sense of the network is very, very important as we continue to grow. We want more investors that can bring that network.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “We're willing to take that risk and really understood okay, we want to put money into this company so they can really build out the market and also shape the market and lead the market. And those investors that are not ones that look for that sustainable growth really early on, they look for can they lead the market and can they start to get great customers? And we've really done that. You know, we've got customers like Allstate and MetLife and Amex and First Data and Comcast. We have these large logos that pay us a ton of money that really have validated that we're leading the market. And the investors that we picked, whether it's Joan Drew at AVC or whether it's Founders Fund, these are the investors that take risks on these new big markets because”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Yeah, so I think that one of the things was we wanted to build a new market. We wanted to build a new market. The founders and I wanted to. We believed that this was the way to drive data and intelligence to CRM. It was going to be a new sort of wave for CRM. And if you think about, actually, I wrote an article about this five or six years ago now, which is this future of CRM will automatically recommend opportunities to you. And it was published in Forbes and got a ton of traffic to the article. And that was really the basis for our vision, which is can we make CRM smart with data and intelligence? And it's something that Benny Offit, Salesforce has been doing for a long time. And that was a new market category. We also wanted to get our customers to provide us their data in order to build a better data set for all customers that leverage our platform. And that network effect was something that we also wanted to do. These were very, very new innovative ideas. Someone had never done this before. And so we wanted to find a series of investors that”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Lot of marketing requires you to really spend money to build and create that category. But businesses like Lobb that are an established categories that are new innovative technologies. I sort of think about Lob the same way I think about Twilio innovating in the SMS space versus the direct mail space or in the transactional mail space. Those are businesses that can afford to do sort of sustainable growth over time. And I will say that it really depends on your business to determine when the right time is to either start with sustainable growth or to start building that category and take the risk to really shape a new market.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “So we definitely have had to take a hard look at that in the past few quarters is that how do we get more capital efficient? And it's super important because now investors and the market are asking for capital efficiency with SaaS businesses. Eighteen months ago, that didn't really matter. But if you look at things like Okta, you know, you look at companies like Nutanix, et cetera, these IPOs, investors are expecting operational efficiency out of these SaaS businesses. Salesforce has pushed towards profitability. Even in the larger SaaS companies, that's been the case. And so sustainable growth mindset from the early stages is one way to cut it. I think it really depends on your business, right? Like if your business is one that is a brand new product that is in a new category and you need to create a new category, which is radius, for example, because we're creating the category of data intelligence and hopefully Gartner will be releasing the report within the next couple months. But building a category is very expensive requires a lot of”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “The startup community has focused more on these huge rounds of funding at high valuations that ultimately need to be able to go public. And as we saw today with Dropbox, the IPO priced below the last round valuation. So these kinds of dynamics make it really hard for founders to succeed and they have to be good at the macro and the micro at the same time.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “It's really difficult. That's something I don't know how to answer. I can tell you that it has a lot to do with market dynamics and for founders to be able to read those market dynamics. And, you know, markets change very, very rapidly. I think we've seen a bunch of companies that are going through big challenges in the startup community today even is that they raised on large valuations and they're in the process of restructuring their business, whether it's benefits and that entire space or whether it's software as a service in certain sectors. companies like Clearside, et cetera, that really had high-lying valuations that are now in the process of having to read the market and switch their operating model, be more diligent about how they think about the business and running the business and getting to the next phase. So I really do believe that founders have to be able to read the market, and that's hard to do. Sometimes you can't do it. Sometimes you can't be perfect at it because markets change so rapidly. And they've especially changed with how”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “You're wrong, but the key thing is that that is a unique personality type that most people don't have. And I remember making a bad decision not to advise or invest in box or join box because I just thought that the business was so young and so early and it was basically when it was just three people. And I also made a mistake on ways too. And, you know, I met the Waze team when they were coming out from Israel and I just never thought that anyone would use the app. But they were relentless and they were just never gave up. And that's something that I see in myself as well and I see in all these founders is that that relentlessness and the emotional connection to the mission is irreplaceable. And I think that it's super, super important to look for that as an investor, look for that when you're going for a job trying to find someone to join or a company to join is that that's the most important attribute about the founding team and that those founders will be successful at one point or another in their lives even if the thing that they're working on at the time.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “There are, but I can tell you that those characteristics exist amongst entrepreneurs that have failed as well. So I can tell you that Adora Chung at HomeJoy, who's now a partner at Y Combinator, she exhibited the same behaviors as the other successful entrepreneurs that I mentioned. And there are many others as well. You know, Gaganbiani, who recently shut down Sprigg, but also founded Udemy. And these are friends of mine, actually Gagan I knew from when I was 15 years old. We debated against each other in high school. And the interesting thing amongst all these founders is that they really don't know how to give up. They don't know how to lose and they're competitive. And they are emotionally attached to their mission. Those are things that are irreplaceable. It's something that Mike Moritz at Sequoia calls the code of the founder. And that really is true. And I think that one of those things is that as an angel investor or a VC, is that if you bet on that personality type, you're going to be right more than...”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Been an amazing experience, and I carry every day that I worked at Facebook and other startups with me every day and use that to apply.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Something great, we will have more progression in society. And so I'd say that that was my biggest takeaway is that really taking smart risks, working hard, understanding that startups are a constant struggle and embracing ambiguity that comes with the day-to-day operation. And that's really what I learned there. I would love to say that I learned a bunch of things on the technical side, which I did, but it was more important to see and have that experience. And that didn't really flip a switch in my mind until I had gone and started at my own companies or got involved at the Udemy guys really early when they were three people or worked on radius from the beginning or saw box when Aaron and Dylan were in a shack behind their uncle's house in Berkeley. These are all companies where I didn't realize until I had seen a few cases of these transition from the early stages until to a really big company and what that really meant. And it all sort of clicked for me when I was about 25.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Hard on a bunch of different projects at the time. And what I learned there was that startups are hard. They are just a constant struggle and there's always a new challenge and you have to embrace the challenges. As an embracing challenges is really key, is that they're going to be catastrophic events. There are going to be challenges that constantly pop up. And you have to embrace ambiguity. You have to embrace the chaos. Another thing that I really learned from that experience was that Mark actually carved into the wall in his apartment Fortune favors the bold, which is really, really an important phrase. It's from the Aeneid and it's a fantastic phrase because it means that taking risks usually pays off. And I think we spend too much time in the United States training our people in the workforce to not take risks, not take smart risks, and really are people sort of shy away from risk. And risk is what's allowed us to build new things. It's allowed us to build new technologies. And if we have more people that are willing to take risks to build...”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Yeah, that's a really good question. You know, when I got there, I really was not an amazing engineer yet. I sort of developed my skills. I was only 17 at the time and really worked on a bunch of different projects. And all of us there were kind of junior engineers. We were all really young. We sort of had this belief that Facebook was a good idea and had the potential to be really big. MySpace was 80 million users. We were just shy of two, maybe actually less than 2 million at the time. And it was this belief that we were onto something big and that social networking would be a large space and that there would be a winner take all in the market. But, you know, also at the time, I was so young that I didn't really have the awareness as to how hard startups are. And I just remember pulling many, many all-nighters working on various projects. There was actually a video right before the IPO that CNN aired, and I happened to have a few second segment, and it's me as like a teenager, basically barely able to stay awake because we were working so hard.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Happens to be the one that I spend $150 of my time on right now, but I'm sure that over the course of my life I'll work on many, many more ideas that hopefully will be as big as the ones that I've been involved in.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “That's a good question. I definitely enjoy big markets, and I also love network effects. I've always been intrigued by the internet and the growth of the internet. And building things has really been my main sort of interest. And I remember when I was a kid, I'm an only child. So one of the unique things about that is you have to keep yourself busy because you just don't have any siblings. And I used to preoccupy myself with building large structures with Legos and also really just focusing always on building. I always wanted to build things. I had an obsession with building my own ski resort at one point. And as a kid, that was really my interest. And the best way to build something as you become older is to build a company. And that was actually something that Market Facebook had we had in common. It's just that the best way to build something and really have an idea go from zero to something huge is to build a company. And I've been fortunate to be involved in a lot of different big markets and a lot of big companies.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Appreciate it. I'm really excited for this too. I've been a fan of the show for a while and a lot of friends have been on it, Lior, Avidar from Lob and Emily Choi from LinkedIn and now Coinbase, as well as Drew and the other investors that we have at Radio. So I'm very excited too.”

    2018-04-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Facebook Will Be The Company To Succeed in Crypto, Why Founders Should Be Actively Angel Investing & Commonalities of Great Leadership From Mark Zuckerberg to Mark Pincus with Darian Shirazi, Founder & CEO @ Radius · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source