YouSaid · the spoken record

David Hsu

lines on the record: 39
first: 2020-12-17
most recent: 2020-12-17
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

“Very, very, very Goal is to be the way software is built. And today zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one bips of software is built and retooled today.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What challenges we'll have in six months and a year's time have been incredibly accurate. It's funny, if I could tell myself a year ago or something, I'd probably say something along the lines like trust.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That to be pushed to think bigger, or sometimes I may be too rational. Sometimes where I think the head of engineering position, which is filled as quickly as possible, and the profiles we're getting are pretty good already, whereas other people”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we talked about before let's say someone like Enrique or like John has that I think really is necessary in order to build a really great company I do feel”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of your startup, and I think has led to better decisions Retool. That said, do you think that there is this kind of building?”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the biggest strength is that I am fairly realistic, and I think that's actually the biggest weakness as well, because we've talked about already, I think it's important to be fairly realistic.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But also that I think the culture. Quite insular to some extent. can sort of bring you into the fold to sort of get you connected very quickly into the text scene but I do wish as someone who to some extent was outside of the Silicon Valley tech scene at least when we first started I do wish sort of there were Less gate Open Excited to talk about tech than they're not.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Claim Valley, Texas is quite insular. It's funny you ask this because to some extent I could serve the Texing of the UK. Texting of the UK is definitely smaller, but it's actually, I think, much more positive and uplifting to some extent. I think the rest of British culture, maybe not, but the text actually is, because when you run into someone who is attack in London, it's so exciting. You're sort of so pleased to see them and you can always sort of connect or bond about something, right? And you want to talk with them. Whereas in San Francisco or in Silicon Valley, you know, everyone works in tech and so it's not special to work in tech. If anything, all my friends are telling me they don't want to have more tech friends. They want to find non-tech friends. And I think that's a little bit sad, I think, that sort of tech has got us a bad way.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably favorite is Girdle Esherbach. It's a philosophy kind of compsai kind of book. It's actually what got me into philosophy, computer science, and led me to study and sort of led me down this path. Without it, I don't think I would have studied philosophy nor computer science. It's a very difficult book to read, but so rewarding when you do actually read it and work through every part of it.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something that was really sweet for during the interview process, but this is not always the case. I think the early days we certainly made many mistakes. Either the wrong person or medical chaffer we had to part ways.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think the hardest one has been hiring for us. I think in the end, most problems that we've had at retool, I think most problems are businesses, is to some extent a people problem, right? I think engineering problems can be solved with the right people. Sales problems can solve the right people, marketing problems with the right people, et cetera. And so really at this point, the challenge for reachable head of us is finding the right people to really help us build the company. And most of the mistakes we've made have been regarding hiring, not hiring the right people, sometimes hiring the wrong people, and then sort of having to crack those mistakes as quickly as possible. I think a lot of them have to do with sort of cultural misalignment. And so for a while, I, as a technical founder, I think sort of underweighted culture where I thought culture is the sort of fluffy thing that doesn't actually really matter very much. But I think now it's absolutely critical. It may be sort of one of the three defining features of retool if we succeed, culture may actually be one of the three reasons why we did say. And today it's become incredibly important.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks for admitting that. I think they lose It's not that frequent. I part of it also is a SaaS company that's just fairly stable in the sense that nothing really goes that wrong. For us? Hmm. Yeah, I'm trying to think of a better answer for this. We might want to cut this one. I'll think about it for a while. Bit longer, maybe we can return at the end of the episode or something where I can try to give you a better answer. That's interesting, yeah. So instead of having, let's say, a part Sort of very acute feeling of”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Substantially harder than that. If anything, it may be harder than engineering to really do sales properly. And so I think you sort of gained a lot of respect and knowledge, which then helps you hire for those. Rules later down the line as a company becomes more successful. So that's one second order effect that we've already Talked about is if you can get the profitability very early. Again, you can keep your growth Up. You're just in such a great position. Your business is just so healthy, since that's very hard to ever. unprofitable and raising money becomes so easy if you do decide to raise money what you decide not to raise money and become like a zapier as well which is also a great episode that is probably the two lessons i would say from growing a little bit slower in the early”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the other one is, as we've been talking about already, I think it is hiring slowly and sort of building the fundamentals. I think if you look at Retool, you know, I think the company is, what, three and a half years old, by all sort of means, it doesn't look like it was that slow. We've reached a billion valuation at least at 3.5. And yet, if you look at the first year and a half, the team was less than, I think, three people, something, myself included. It was a tiny team for the first year and a half. And it was only until year one and a half, year two, something when we really started sort of pedal to metal, really started higher. That has a lot of effects or second order effects that you might not think about. So one, I think, by doing everything yourselves, you actually learn a tremendous amount about all areas of business. I think I now have much more respect for, let's say, sales and marketing all the good-to-market functions, which I think are incredibly critical to the company. Whereas before, I might have been like, hey, you know, sales is really easy. Call some people, right? And deals close. In reality, of course, it's”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Billion dollar unicorn in Silicon Valley to come be our head of engineering. And John says something along the lines of this one of the most exciting jobs in Silicon Valley right now. This is a huge opportunity for anyone to come in and really run the engineering team at Retool. And to me, that I think is a good example of sort of the boldness that I'm talking about where I would have been like, there's no fucking way. There's no chance we could possibly get someone so eminent to come from engineering and retool. And yet, you know, that has really sort of motivated and inspired me to go find really candidates for this position, right? And so I think that's one lesson I've taken away is just be bold. I think Henrique certainly is extremely bold. I think I'm sure you know the Flunder is a history. If you talk to him, I think it's...”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so this actually came up recently we're looking for a head of engineering now. And our head of engineering profile, we've been looking for it for maybe six months or something. And the profile has shifted a little bit as retool engineering team has grown a little bit, as we've gotten more successful, et cetera. The profile has shifted a little bit. And what's interesting about if you look at, let's say, both Enrique and John is that they're both incredibly bold. And so this kind of goes against what I was saying a little bit a minute ago or so, regarding sort of being fairly measured, sort of being fairly realistic with yourself, etc. They both actually sort of dream incredibly big. And so, for example, John told me once when we're sort of thinking about head of engineering profile, he's like, you know, all these candidates are not good. You should be going after something more like this. And then he named someone who is the CEO, I think, of a maybe 10 billion dollar company right now in Silicon Valley. And he was like, there's a 10% chance you get this person as your head of engineer. And I was like, wow, that was like, no way what I've ever thought I get the CEO of a”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Realistic with themselves. I think many are maybe, let's say, quite optimistic when talking to the press, talking to investors or whatever else. I think that's an important quality as well. But I think incredibly critical that you are, a very critical or self-critical or very honest yourself about what is and what isn't working.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is an interesting personality trainer. So, I think I'm always, I think overall I'm fairly realistic. Maybe I'm too realistic actually. That's problematic sometimes. I think up until maybe three, maybe four million dollars in ARR, I don't think even up to three or four million dollars in AR. I was fairly convinced we did not have product. I was thinking that, you know, every customer we sell, you know, this guy must be really weird. I can't believe he's using Retool. It doesn't make any sense, but he's buying a retool. Let's celebrate, but we don't have run-on muff of it yet. And it was only maybe, I think we hit, I'm trying to remember, maybe a few hundred, maybe a thousand, you know, a few thousand, something like that customers, where it was fairly clear that probably we do have product market, probably. And so I think to answer your question, I think sort of being fairly pessimistic or being sort of fairly realistic about things is quite helpful in doing a startup. I think of most of these sort of really great founders I know, almost all of them are at least”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sort of nagging thought in the back of your mind that if everything goes to shit, I can always move to Hawaii and we have a business that's profitable and life can't be that bad, right? To some extent, raising money does some extent close that off, right? You're now sort of, for me actually, the pressure doesn't come from the VCs actually more from the team that we've recruited and everything and from our customers, but you now do have”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think in our case, we want to be profitable. We have a basic business that's going pretty well, right? And then by having this business that's sort of fundamentally working, we can then try new things and we can afford to take more risks because we know even the risks don't pay off. We still have the fundamental businesses growing many multiples year on year today. And so for us, that's the reason why we raised is if we had not raised, theoretically, we could have been more like Zapier or something. And I think Zapier is now at maybe 50, 80, 100 millionaire or something like that. And to my knowledge, they've never raised around after this seat. Having raised in this Series A, I think did, well, I'm trying to think whether it actually made us grow faster or not. I mean, when we raised the series B, I think we've spent a million dollars of the series X. I guess we haven't really deployed the capital very much. That said, I do think it really upped our ambition. And I think this is one thing that VSA's going to help a lot with, because if you build Strap, there's kind of always a...”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As opposed to needing VCT accelerated growth, I think that's a pretty critical distinction. And if you play your cards right, I think you can sort of consistently raise on extremely good terms while having a very healthy business.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Point here too is once you become once you set yourself up for profitability in the early days, it's actually quite hard to ever become unprofitable, actually. And so if you do the math, right, you not say we're a million dollars for people next year, let's say we grow four accident, let's say $4 million and 16 people, the next year after that, let's say grow another 4x, let's say 16 mil, and what is it, 64 people or something. It's actually, if your revenue is growing quickly, it's actually quite hard to grow headcount faster than revenue. And so if you sort of hire very slowly in the early days and build your way up to profitability, I actually becomes quite difficult to ever become unprofitable because let's say you know you grow from 16 to 64 in one year. That's actually pretty hard. It's sort of hard to keep the talent bar high, hire all the right people, et cetera. And it's maybe actually possible to grow much faster than that, actually. And so I think it really by sort of planning to bootstrap and then raising VC not as sort of a backup option, but sort of raising VC to accelerate your”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think really interesting is sort of the divide between bootstrapping and raising VC. I think there's actually less of a divide than many people think. And so in our case, we could have, we did raise, as you can see, and we also could have not raised, actually. At that point, there were four people. I think we would raise maybe one point, 1.4, something like that in the seed. And so I think when we were raising our A, I think we'd burn maybe 100K, 1.4 or something like that, you know, for people doing a meal at ARR or a software company already profitable. So we didn't need to raise it all. But the fact that we didn't need to raise and could bootstrap actually then caused us to be able to raise a lot because VCs, I think, are quite excited by businesses that are actually working as most of the ones that need VC money to work and may or may not work. And so in our case, and this has to date still been true, is if that if you sort of are on the precipice or are already profitable, raising money actually becomes substantially easier. And I think one key.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who really believed after I showed them Retool, who really believed that Retool should become something like a BI tool, but specifically one that you could use on iOS and Android so you can sort of check your dashboards on the gos. And I was like, what the fuck, right? What did she just say to me, kind of? That's not at all what Ritool does. But of course, for this person, this was kind of there. They had an exec previously at a large company and this is one of their sort of problems they had was they could have viewed dashboards on their phone. Looker maybe doesn't work on them. We will devise something and say they really want to push in this direction. And this device is totally useless. I know my market much better than they know their market. I know our customers much better than they know our customers. That's not what our customers want, you know, and that's not the value we deliver. And so that's an example I think of maybe potentially misguided VC advice. That stuff is just not that helpful, I think. But once you have brought a market, it's great.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“or so, Sequoia, for example, kept on pushing us to go higher more leaders for the company, and I was very sceptical of this. I was thinking to myself, the company's going pretty well, sales is going well, engineering's going well. What could lead us possibly do to us? It's not really going to do anything. And of course, today, we've hired many leaders and they've been tremendously empowering the company. And I think these are the kind of corners that Sequoia can help you see around. Or as a first-time founder had never really encountered the value or the value add you would get from a really great, let's say, head of sales or head of marketing, head of recruiting or whatever else basically. So I think VCs help you see around many of those corners. I think pre-proto market fit, I hope you know your market better than your VC does. If you don't, you probably have some problems. It's got other issues. And so in that case, I really don't think the advice that a VC offers you is going to be that helpful. You know, if AVC says, actually, I remember, here's a funny anecdote. There was one VC.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so Ritual's not always been going that well, right? We certainly sort of had struggles in the early days, right? And during those days, I would say what VCs did for us did not necessarily make that big of a difference. I think, you know, it is true that when companies are not doing well, they'll sort of ask for more help, ask for more advice or whatever else. But I think in the end, it doesn't actually make that much difference. You may sort of spend more time with the company, but that doesn't actually sort of translate into more results or anything, or does it translate into sort of value creation or whatever else? That's one thought there. On the pre and post-product market fit, yeah, it's interesting because it's the opposite of YC, where I think these seems where they can add a lot of value was not really sort of telling you what to build typically or how to build it. It really is, you know, something's working already. How can we scale this thing up? How can we grow faster? How can we sort of see around the corners that you might not see? And in that case, Sequoia has been tremendously helpful. So I remember maybe a year and a half.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe two or three people. In our case, of the five angels that co led the A, we've been very close of maybe two or three of them or something, and that has been quite helpful. And some would agree in the sense that 40 angels, I don't think it's going to help you very much, but if you raise from, let's say, five and a particular deep with three, I think they can actually be quite helpful.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Companies that you have is probably greater than 25%, and so you'd probably much rather help sort of company that's doing incredibly well rather than the company that is doing probably quite a bit less well, or you own, let's say, 25% more or something. So that's a brief thought on the ownership thing. On the Angels thing, I think it's true that Angels are busy and aren't likely to help out that much. That said, I think if you're able to build a very deep relationship with, let's say, two or three angels, I think it is quite helpful. And so in our case, actually, we raise what maybe called a party route or something, where we raise from a bunch of founders, and these are the founders of, for example, Brexit, Stripe, PagerDuty, Gusto, and a few others. And I probably don't talk with them. I don't think I've talked with any of them, actually, in the past. Besides, maybe three specific ones I've talked in quite a few, there is very much a sort of, you must invest a lot to get a lot, and you can only invest a lot.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think when it comes to, let's say, so on the first point, sort of regarding ownership percentages, I think this is mostly not true. I was going to say bullshit. I think it's mostly not true. I think. I think there's obviously some truth to it, obviously. If Euphra is owned 2% of a company, certainly less incentivized than you own 10% or something. In our case, I think Sequoia probably owns, I think it's either 15% or 17%, something like that, or in the Series A at least they own something like that. And 15 or 17 is not radically different from 20 or whatever it is, 25 or whatever the typical series A, but it's not radically different. And so I think ultimately, and I think this is probably true for you as well, if one of your companies does extremely well, you want to help out. You're not doing the math in your head about, okay, well, you know, actually this company's doing well, but only own 15% of 17% or 20%. Therefore, sort of on a per hour basis, I'm, you know, my time is better spent in this company that owns where I own 20%. The delta between sort of”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investors who now have sort of them very close to us and them sort of very able and willing to give advice very frequently. And that, I think, that advice is actually, it's not necessarily better or worse than sequoias, but it's definitely different. I think having multiple viewpoints of the issue sounds tremendously over the past year and a half since the series A. And so anyhow, I think YC really optimizes for free product market, but also for giving probably correct advice to probably good companies. But if you are, let's say, a I don't want to say this in a sort of recognition, if you think you're a very, very good company, I think sometimes you can ignore the advice by C gives you, and sometimes you're actually correct because they sort of tailor the device to, if I were too specifically regarding your one company or giving you advice, they really think about, you know, well, assuming this is an average YC company, what should they do, basically? And, you know, oftentimes that is correct, but sometimes it actually is incorrect. In that case, I'm glad to have ignored their advice.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really, I need to be talking to anybody who's just kind of heads down and just executing, just writing code, talking to customers for as many hours a day as you can, really. And so once that does happen, Worse doesn't really add any particular value at that point in time, at least in our experience. In fact, I think they may actually sometimes give some optimal advice, actually. And so there was one time when, this is when we were raising our Series A, we had a slightly strange structure for the Series A where we raised a split round. It was split between five angel investors as well as Sequoia. And I remember asking YC partners about this, and I think most YC partners thought it was a terrible idea. They said, you know, if you look at sort of every successful Silicon Valley company, all they raised traditional Series A's. And so you should just go raise the traditional Series A, just raise the whole thing from Sequoia, just Bouvont, basically. And in retrospect, I think that's actually been one of our maybe top three decisions we've made in the maybe last three years of retool, because by raising from these five eights.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the most surprising thing about YC is actually that there's nothing really surprising about it. You actually don't learn anything new. Going to sort of all the dinners or even demo day or whatever else. Almost everything YC tells you is available online. If you just read every PGSA, you could probably become a YC partner, basically, if you read every essay and just say, maybe that's a little bit uncharitable. But I think you could sort of get most, maybe 95% of the advice you get from YC just by reading the essays. That said, I think the advice is not particularly helpful, but the networks that you build, I think, are quite helpful, but those networks really are useful pre-product market fit when you're trying to get, let's say, advice from potential customers. Trying to figure out what the product should look like, all that kind of important sort of early day stuff. And that's the kind of stuff that it's helpful to have sort of other people next to you where you can sort of bounce ideas off of them, get their thoughts on, et cetera, stuff like that. Once you have problem hocket fit, you”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will sort of be unprofitable for a little bit, but then we'll raise money or whatever, things will work out in the end. I remember at one point John Cullison from Stripe was offering some office hours to YC companies. And this must have been maybe March, maybe...”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You look at all the other sort of major companies like Airbnb, Stripe, et cetera, I think all those sort of very conviction based. That said, I think when you have conviction, you also have to be fairly open-minded regarding what is and what isn't going well. And so it's funny you mentioned this because it brings me to a story when we were working on the sort of Vemo clone for the UK. I think I would say we were fairly sort of hard-headed and fairly convicted that it was going to work, right? And, you know, despite sort of the fact that we're losing boatloads of money every day, we were still fairly convinced that, you know, hey, you kn”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think conviction is very important. And so I think when choosing ideas, I think conviction probably is sort of highest order that you have to care about, basically. So you actually get convicted about the idea. I have a bunch of friends now, and I'm sure you have Benny too, and maybe sort of seen many of these as investments, where people don't really know what to work on. And so what they do is they just sort of throw 10 ideas against the wall. They go build 10 landing pages, and then they go buy ad words for 10 of them and sort of see what does best. I very rarely works. The only case where I know this might potentially have worked was, I think it was Palo AltoDelivery.com or something, which then became DoorDash. I think it's the only sort of recorded case of this ever actually working.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stuff like that. So every time someone signs up, you have to sort of verify they are what they say, they are by KYC things. When they send money, you have to do some AML kind of things. People are withdrawing large amounts of money. You have to sort of really be careful when you send money out of the system. And so we had a lot of fraud tools, et cetera. So anyhow, we've built a lot of internal tools, and we were like, there maybe should be a faster way of building all this stuff instead of building it every time from scratch. And that's where the idea was of a detour, but that's how we end up in retour.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it actually got a bunch of users and we actually got into YC doing that. But then it turns out it's actually a terrible business in the sense that every time someone sends money, we were losing money. And so the faster we grew, the more money we actually lost, which was a tremendously scary, scary thought for us, given that we hadn't really raised much money. We had raised what, the 120k from YC, and then we had some money from previous tech internships or something. That was like maybe 30K or something. And so 150K in total. And I think we're burning something like 1 or 2K a day, which meant that we had something like 70 days of runway left. And it was quite scary. We were always kind of living life on the edge, basically. Then we were like, okay, you know, this seems like a pretty bad business. Maybe it's time we should consider pivoting. And what's interesting, I think, is this is got quite lucky with is that when you work on a sort of P2P payments app, you yourself have to go build a lot of internal tools, probably 60 to 70 percent of our time actually, was spent developing internal tools for regulatory purposes for fraud purposes.”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, okay, so that's kind of a long story at this point. It's a bit of a detour. So, what happened was when I was in Oxford, I was American, and so one of the major, I was working on a bunch of side projects, basically, and one of the major side projects that we ended up working on was basically something like a clone of Venmo, basically, for the UK. Because as you know, in the UK, you send money via faster payments, probably you use an account number, use a sort code, and I'm Rebecca, you know, when I was an undergrad there, this must have been twenty thirteen or so, 2014, something like that. The mobile apps were actually pretty bad. And so if you use, let's say, Centendere or Barclays or whatever else, it was actually quite difficult to send money back for it. And so to me, this seemed enormously stupid, clearly this is something that tech, you know, it's not that hard to solve. It's changing sort of a number in a database and moving some money back and forth. How hard could that be? And so we decided to start working on basically a clone of Venmo, basically. That actually reasonably...”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's funny. So I actually grew up in Palo Alto actually. But during high school, somehow I got the idea in me that I wanted to study philosophy. And so my parents weren't really a big fan of philosophy, and so they recommended that maybe I pair that with something else, perhaps, you know, computer science or something like that, basically. And then I was like, oh, computer science sounds kind of interesting. Let's go take a look and see what's out there. And then I actually found it sort of a degree, actually, in the UK at Oxford that is both philosophy and computer science together, and it's actually one degree, which is really interesting. And that is pretty much the only reason why I ended up in the UK for three years for undergrad. But it was so much fun”
2020-12-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source