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Glenn Solomon

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2018-05-29
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2018-05-29
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  1. “Yes, I announced leading the Series B in unraveled data, which is an application performance management company that's focused on big data infrastructure. Real simply, love the team. They have very unique technology and are absolute experts in this field. They have a number of very happy early large customers and a super compelling value proposition. And the more folks I spoke about this challenge with who aren't yet customers but could be prospects, the more I realize that this is a really broadly felt problem. That's what led me to invest in Unravel and so far so good. Really, really very exciting story.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Often go pretty late into the night, and that's 8 a.m. Tuesday morning in China. So it's not terribly convenient for either side, but it works well because it's compromised. We also travel like quite a bit. I'm in China four to six, sometimes even more times per year, and my partner's from China are always in the US as well. And there's really nothing that replaces that in-person in the same room kind of trust that can get built. And so those are really important elements, I think, of increasing the partnership dynamic.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “At GGV, we have a lot of trust and respect for each other, and we are willing to compromise on a collective basis to succeed. I remember a fun story. I was talking to a very well-known VC at a very well-known partnership that shall go nameless not too long ago about China. And at the time, this firm had a China operation like we do. And I remember asking this person, hey, when do you have your partner meetings? And he looked at me kind of funny and said, well, what do you mean? Of course, we have them at 9 a.m. on Mondays. And I asked, hey, do you know when time that is in China? And he looked at me kind of curiously and said, no, I actually don't know what time that is. You know, that's midnight or 1 a.m., depending on time of year in China. And so this firm was having their partner meetings and asking their partners in China without even realizing it to have their meetings at midnight or 1 a.m. And usually they go several hours. If you look at GGV, we have our partner meetings at 5 p.m. on Mondays here.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “The number one thing that keeps me up at night is my, well, apart from my teenage daughters who sometimes play music loudly or pose vexing challenges to a parent late at night are that my company's running out of cash. That's really what can kill a startup, a venture-backed company is running out of capital. So that is the number one thing, and I'm always thinking about how companies are using their cash and where they're going to get their next slug of cash if they need it.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I think the entire application infrastructure stack is currently being rewritten. It's up for grabs. This is a result of cloud computing and the growth and rise of things like continuous delivery of software and containerization. But it's really exciting to me because I think the world is about to see who becomes the next VMware, who becomes the next Akamai, the next Palo Alto networks. There is 100 billion of market cap up for grabs at least. And this is not something I've seen a lot written about, but I really think it's happening.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Woman named Irena Semler who saved thousands of young Jewish children in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II, gave a very good perspective on World War II and some of the horrors of World War II, but also the greatness of humanity as well.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I like to read those who read my blog know that I put out an annual reading list, and I know that some of my favorite books that have been mentioned on episodes of your show, like sapiens and the hard thing about hard things are great. I'll give you three provocative titles that are good reads that are kind of about people. One is Shoe Dog, which was written by Phil Knights in autobiography of the founder of Nike. And I've been a Nike shareholder for 25 years, but this book, I learned so much from this book. I thought I knew everything about Nike. This is a great book. It's entertaining to read and the highs and lows are dramatic and stark, great for any entrepreneur. Two others that I've mentioned that are both compelling stories that are important, I think, for founders and VCs just to have a little bit more perspective on the world. One is a fun book that I read recently called Born a Crime, which is written by Trevor Noah. It's about his life. And it's both hilarious and profound. And another book I read not too long ago was called Irena's Children, which is a story of”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Money at increasing prices can't have a down round. Down rounds are very difficult to recover from. And that's what I mean by being a momentum manager. Just being really thoughtful and smart about creating momentum and having it build so that you can control it and not overreaching and risk losing it.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, you know, and I think Eric and Keith and JD and Ian have done a great job at Open Door with momentum management. Startups are really, really hard. No one in the world really wants you to win except for a very small cadre of people who you either have working for you or invested in you. And so you need to build momentum across kind of every dimension of your business so people will just care and maybe give you the benefit of the doubt. And when I talk about dimensions, I mean financings. I mean financial results. I mean news and PR, I mean customers, I mean partners, even the types of employees you're able to attract and retain. You need to continually step up and to the right along all of these dimensions to be successful. And if you skip a step if for example you raise too much money at too big a price too soon you introduce quite a bit of risk into that equation. In fact, I heard a recent interview you did with Sam Altman and my recollection Sam mentioned the same thing. You mentioned startups need to keep rates.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “About it. We like skepticism. Give us another example wish, which is a company that Hans invested in, which had quite a bit of skepticism around it. And like Wish, with Open Door, this is really a Middle America play. This is not a play that necessarily resonates in markets where there's a lot of liquidity in residential real estate like San Francisco, Bay Area, and New York, where there also are a lot of ECs. You know, this is a value problem.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Great. Well, yes, at surface, Open Door is a consumer deal and therefore doesn't fit into my portfolio. It's a bit anomalous. But I got to Open Door because I was investing a lot of time looking into the real estate market, believing that software was primed to eat that market, if you will, and knowing that there should be opportunity emerging. I met with lots and lots of companies and entrepreneurs in and around that space. And ultimately got very excited when I heard about the launching of Open Door and I asked Keith Raboy who gave a great interview with you on your show not too long ago for an intro to Eric Wu, the founder. I met with Eric when the company was just a couple of people. He's got some great co-founders in Ian Wong and JD. And JD was super helpful in helping explain the company to me. What happened was I was tracking the company and really appreciated what I was saying was quite early, but we decided to preempt the B because the value proposition just really resonated with me. And yes, there is a lot of skepticism.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Correct. And we have a lot of respect and great relationships at those big companies, frequently have good conversations with them. My partner, Jishun, was an early investor in Baidu. Hans, as you know, was an investor in Xiaomi. We as a firm were an early investor in Alibaba, and we know that all the folks at Tencent. And so those relationships are deep. But everybody is in it for themselves. And so we need to make sure that we do the right things for our funds and for our portfolio companies. And getting in early is a big part of our strategy.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “That both Alibaba and Tencent will come into the same company. And if one backs a company, then you could expect that the other will back a competing company in the space. So it's important to play that game right. You don't want to take an investment until you're strong enough to deal with that type of partner. They can be very powerful once they invest. They have lots of capital. And so it can really help. But controlling your own destiny then becomes an issue as well because oftentimes if Alibaba or Tencent sinks their teeth into a startup they can exact quite a bit of control. And so the stronger you are before you take investment is important.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Definitely one difference tangible difference between the US venture market and the China venture market is exactly what you mentioned. The bigger players in China, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, increasingly others now like Xiaomi and Tochiao and other companies that are emerging play a very meaningful role in the China landscape. And if you're a startup, you need to know what your strategy is with respect to the Baidus and Alibaba's in 10 cents of the world. What I see happening more recently is not that those companies are copycatting and trying to kill startups. They're trying to identify the startups that have breakout potential and get money into them and invest in them as soon as possible. And so if you're a founder in China or a VC in China, you need to figure out how that game is going to play out, who the best partner is, and how to make sure you make the right decisions because it is a very important decision as to who you are backer is going to be. It's unlikely, for example,”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I think we begin to see more of this. More founders and CEOs are realizing that when they go to China, they can do things like see capital because they're a big capital partners in China who are looking to now invest outside the walls of China. They're looking for partnerships with local companies in China. In some cases, this is still fairly modest but growing. They're looking at China as an end market. I'd mention Airbnb, one of our portfolio companies as an example, where my partner Hans and I done a lot of work to try to help position Airbnb in China and it's a very important market for them.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “That's a great question. The best founders in the US and Europe are getting a lot more curious about what's going on in China. As an example, in the past three months, we've had no less than six founders from the US, GGV company founders visit China in the past three months. This is really a new theme. This is not something we saw happening even two or three years ago. But I think the entrepreneurial community outside of China in the US and Europe primarily has realized that that black box is actually more approachable and there's important reasons to try to open it. On the one hand, many entrepreneurs now are going to China asking me if they can tag along on a trip to China because they just want to learn. They know that really innovative things are happening in China, that big companies are getting built despite what you hear in the popular press. I think the smart entrepreneur now realizes that China's not a copycat market anymore that real innovation is happening there and they just want to learn.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “If you look at our history, we've been in China since day one, since 2000. Today, half our team is in China, half and over half our investment team, over 50% of our investments have been made in the China market. The returns from our investments in China have been stellar. China is just a very important part of our strategy, and our reason for being there is that it's really worked very well. I would say that our strategy has evolved in China when we got started and really when I joined 12 plus years ago, China was a way to diversify our portfolio and our limited partners appreciated that. These days, as the world has gotten flatter as we discussed earlier, there's just much more interplay between the two markets. And so being in both has really helped us a lot, both from a diversification standpoint, but importantly from a strategic standpoint as well.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “A couple of key topics to discuss since everybody walks in with quite a bit of knowledge on the business. Those topics can be deep and meaningful and important and we can get to some real conclusions. Josh also, and one of the reasons”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Josh is a wonderful founder and CEO, and I really enjoy spending time with him. So anytime with Josh is a great time. But I'd say Domo in particular is an interesting case because Domo, the product, is a platform that sucks in real-time data and helps execs run their businesses on their phone with great KPIs and metrics and charting. And the company DOMO runs itself on the product domo. And the board has access to that product. So the result of that is the board meetings of DOMO are not about reporting numbers. We all have them prior to the board meeting. We have them in very granular detail. It's more about discussing the implications of the trends that the data suggests and even the predicted future trends that the data suggests. It feels like in the case of DOMO, we've moved from plain checkers to plain chess at the board level as a result. And Josh does a good job, therefore, of setting the board meeting up around just”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Certainly by your series A, you'll have established a board, and it can be a small board. In fact, I think small boards for the first several years of a company are a good practice because there's a lot to do. Founders don't and shouldn't be wasting their time educating too many people on the intricacies of their business. But having a few people who really know the business well, who've been able to invest the time in order to be valuable is important. And that's certainly true by Series A. And I've even seen Seed Stage companies with valuable boards, even if they're fairly informal in how they meet when they meet. It's still a good practice for companies to start developing, harvesting, curating a board early on.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I think being a board member is a full contact sport, especially as you invest earlier and join boards that are of young companies. You need to be there. You need to be available and really ready to listen, offer advice, roll up your sleeves and help wherever it's necessary and wherever possible. Now, one aspect of the modern VC market is that Silicon Valley is losing its premises for startups. You're seeing great startups getting going in lots of regions throughout the US and throughout the world. I've been on boards in China in my life. These days I'm on a board in Boston. I'm on aboard in New York. I'm on aboard in Utah. If you want to be impactful as a VC, I think you need to be ready to travel. That's a change from, let's say, over the last five to ten years. So that's a big thing that I've seen change. And I think those VCs who are really good at what they do are there. And the entrepreneurs feel very close and know they can pick up the phone and know they can have a meeting whenever they need one and know that they're VC.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “And I've seen other really smart VCs write on this topic as well. I think it's a crutch to use valuation as a reason to walk from deals typically. It usually feels uncomfortable when you're doing a deal that turns out to be great for a variety of reasons, valuation being one. I can't think of a cheap deal I've ever done in my life that turned out great.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I think that pricing is a delicate element of the VC industry, and I've seen in my own firm, in my own career, I've walked from deals where I felt like pricing had gotten too aggressive. And in general, those have been mistakes. You make your money, as I mentioned earlier in this business, on your winners. In the case where you have a winner, there is almost no price that's too high to pay relative to where outcomes can be. And as I mentioned earlier, when computing paradigm shifts happen and incumbents get disrupted, new entrants replace those incumbents and tend to get more valuable than the companies they replace. It's very difficult for the human brain to get and understand well how big companies can be. And where I've made my biggest mistakes in my career, it's not realizing how big the upside was in fantastic companies. And therefore, getting too caught up in missing a deal for X or Y amount in valuation tends to be problematic.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, so one thing I learned early on in the VC industry is that you make all your money on the winners that can run. Honestly, you don't want to get too involved and mess things up, but you want to try to help put an environment in place where the winners can continue to run. Conversely, with companies that aren't doing as well, you have to give it your best shot to try to help them achieve their goals. But ultimately, if things aren't going to go as you originally planned, then turning the page is important. It's important for the entrepreneur and it's important for the investor because the most valuable asset we all have is our time. And so trying to find a good home for a company, land the plane with dignity, and move on is also an important skill. I don't know exactly how that time balances out. It's more fun to spend time with winners, for sure, but it is also more difficult when companies aren't doing well. And many VCs get very focused on companies that need their projects that need turnarounds, and that's awfully tough in technology.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Create a lot of content. As you know, I blog actively at goinglongblog.com, and I try to connect with my audience, build out my network in these areas so that I can assist companies with introductions to execs and other folks who can help. And I've really tried to get cross stage earlier in my career. I did a lot in the Series C, Series D area. But as I've gotten more focused, I've gotten more comfortable investing early. So many of my investments today are C, Series A, and Series B.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “It's a great question. And I would say that as this industry has industrialized and it is industrializing, it's incumbent upon the actors to get more focused. And you see that at the firm level, but you also see that at the partner level, when people are doing well, I would argue in large part it's because they've learned how to focus. And I've gotten much more focused as an investor myself. If you look at what I've done over the last decade, 99% of my activity has been in and around application level software, applications that solve really modern business problems brought about by cloud and mobile. And I'd point to companies like Slack and Domo as examples. And then focusing on the infrastructure that helps support these cloud-based applications, companies in the security area and the DevOps automation space in application performance and monitoring, that's a big part of my change in methodology, I'd say, is staying focused. It's more than just where you invest. It's how you spend your time.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “So, ELAD is a very smart guy, and I've seen his writings on this topic. So, I agree with him that paradigm shifts as I learned from John Dorr back in the day are extremely important for VC. Where I disagree with Elad is I think we're already in a very important second act of the paradigm shifts around cloud and mobile. And so I disagree that we're waiting for anything. I think, in fact, I'd argue that these trends have created a sandbox that VCs and founders are playing and that's bigger than ever. And I think these trends are global. That's one thing that many firms with just the Silicon Valley presence miss. These are global trends and really for the first time are flattening technology markets so that the interplay between China and the US, where we're focused and other markets as well is as vibrant as it's ever been. And that's where I think some of the folks who are very, very smart and have good views, but maybe Silicon Valley centric views.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “A decade past those years. These two shifts, the mobile computing and cloud computing shifts, have been massive. They're interrelated. They're probably the two biggest paradigm shifts I'll see in my life. And they're giving birth to some of the most important network effect businesses and protocols we've really ever seen. You can think about really the second and most important leg of Facebook's growth being mobile 10 cents WeChat was created on mobile and it's probably the most valuable digital asset in the world today. Xiaomi, Airbnb, Slack, I've got to plug a few GGV companies in there. These are all companies that are benefiting from these trends. And these trends are also giving birth to brand new industries. I would argue that IoT and the growth in practical use cases of AI and machine learning are really a result of both mobile and cloud computing.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “That's a great question. I'm reminded of a talk that I heard actually at Stanford Business School back in 1996 by John Doore. And he told the parable of computing paradigm shifts at that time. He was really talking about the shift from mainframe to client-server. And his contention was that when you have these paradigm shifts, incumbents get disrupted by new entrants and these new entrants become more valuable than the incumbents they replace. If you look at network-based computing, which was happening at that time, that was really a huge shift. It led to the rise of the internet, and you saw companies created like Yahoo, then Google, and Facebook more recently. But I think if I think about the last decade plus, the six most important letters that I've seen are IOS, which ushered in really the era of mobile computing, which Apple's iPhone came out in 2007, and AWS, where Amazon really ushered in the ear of cloud computing. And that happened in 2006. So those were really important years. And now we're just grading.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “And so I was lucky enough to land a job in VC right out of business school at a firm called Partec International where I spent about eight years and then joined GGV about 12 and a half years ago.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Harry, thanks for making me feel old right off the bat. I actually grew up in a suburb of New York City, came to Stanford actually on a tennis scholarship for undergrad and had a great experience at Stanford, but at some point realized that pro tennis wasn't in the cards for me. And so after graduating Stanford, I went to Wall Street and worked at Goldman Sachs for a couple years. Really found that work interesting and got intrigued by investing. And then I spent the next two years working for an investment partnership out in the Bay Area, came back to the Bay Area. And after that, found myself at the GSB Stanford's Business School and saw the internet for the first time in 1994-95. And it was rudimentary, but I could see that there were big opportunities from the internet. So I really went to business school to try to figure out how to combine a burgeoning interest that I had in technology with a love of investing. And it was during those two years that I discovered there was this thing called venture capital and decided that that's what I wanted to try to do.”

    2018-05-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Lessons From Slack and Opendoor on Price Sensitivity, Why The Best CEOs Are Able To Manage Momentum and Why Being A Board Member is a "Full Contact Sport" with Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source