YouSaid · the spoken record

Jana Messerschmidt

lines on the record: 111
first: 2019-11-20
most recent: 2019-11-20
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

“Yes, from her, you know, nine years or whatever it's been at Twitter. And so even though she hadn't personally invested in the company, she's like, let me jump on the phone with them. Let me share some best practices, like all these things, you know, kind of that we've learned along the way. So that's the real value of the group is you get to tap into all six of us and we really do try to help out each other's portfolio companies, even if not everyone is invested”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But really incredible platform, but they had an instance where some right wing kind of like Nazi trolls hijacked Brett Farve and had him saying some really terrible kind of coded language in cameo.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, you know what? Sean Hayes is a friend of mine. He's on Will and Grace, and he did it by himself, and I didn't pay a dime for it. He had him say hello, then the guy who plays Will said hello, and then Deborah Messing was like, who's Kara Swisher? And that was my favorite thing. So that was my entire cameo that I got. Thank you, Sean Hayes, for that.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First and foremost, it really is about founders. So even if I've backed a company, so I'll give a good example, I backed a company called Cameo, which is a really interesting platform. It's a marketplace that matches celebrities with people who want personalized video shoutouts from them. They're growing like crazy. It's super interesting. It's the new digital self”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there are probably, I'd have to look at the data, maybe like eight companies where all six of us have invested out of that 100-ish that we've done. And then there's another tranche or maybe four or five of us have invested. And then there's stuff like somebody together.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, on average, 25K per person into a deal, sometimes we go larger, sometimes we go smaller, also depends on round dynamics of how much capital you can get into companies because a lot of, there's a lot of capital, as I'm sure you've heard. So a lot of rounds get oversubscribed really quickly. But the way that we would typically work is one of us would hear about an opportunity. We would ask the founder, hey, you know, as you probably know, I'm part of hashtag angels. Do you mind if I share the deal flow with the other five women in the group? Like 99% of the time, they're like, absolutely, like, I want all of that operating experience. So we'd bring it back to the group and say, hey, like, I'm going to invest. Like, here's why. And then some folks would say, like, yes, I want to invest. Some would say no. Someone would just be really busy because we're all operators. And then we would end up making investments. So a little bit different than being part of a venture fund where you're writing much larger checks. You're getting partnership consensus. You're taking board seats. It's just a very different type of investing.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and so you end up having just a disproportionate amount of attention kind of going to a handful of companies. They're super competitive. You see crazy valuations that are happening in the industry because there is a lot of groupthink.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you've done. And so in lieu of feedback, people look for other signals. And so whether it's pattern matching of who's been successful before, okay, I'm going to back this type of person to answer some of your earlier questions or sometimes, and I see this a lot in the industry, it's who else is looking at this deal. Who else is on the cap table? Who else is investing? So there's a lot of groupthink in the industry where it's like, you know, if people hear that light speed is looking at something, it's like, everyone takes notice. We should go look at that too. Or if Sequoia is looking at something.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think one of the hardest things about investing, and granted, I've been doing it for like five years, so I'm still early in my investing career”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And of course, historically, it's been almost all predominantly male that's obviously starting to shift. And you're starting to see more female founders getting funded.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you end up having to come to like personal conviction and personal excitement about companies. And so not to generalize, but is a man maybe going to be as excited about a company that a woman has started, maybe it's a woman-specific product. You know, he just may not feel that same level of excitement or conviction.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's one of the interesting things that I've realized since coming into Venture is, I mean, it's so subjective, right? Especially when you're doing like preseed seed, series A, some series B, like there's just not much data to evaluate. No, they make them.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We saw it as an opportunity, and I will say we see a lot of female founder deal flow because we all happen to be women and people have noticed that about the group. So I think that definitely helps in terms of like how many companies that we're able to back because the deal flow is we see a lot of female founder deals.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, definitely the six of us happen to be women. And we realized that not a lot of female founders were getting funding. And so we definitely thought.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. So we basically said, like, we're going to be the best investors possible, and we'll share any diversity statistics with you once we have those numbers. And so now I can say almost five years later, we've invested in more than 100 companies and 40% of our companies have a female founder or female CEO.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was kind of interesting. So, a lot of folks in the media reached out and they're like, oh my gosh, like you're all women. Are you going to only invest in women? It's unusual.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We would 6x discussion on deals, but most importantly, we'd 6x the value to our entrepreneurs that we. And that's all you need to do in Silicon Valley.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really thought that I would stay in operating. And so it was in 2015 that a few of us over drinks as these things often happen. It was post Twitter IPO. We were starting to see just different folks from our network at Twitter starting companies. And so we were starting to get pings around, hey, like, do you want to Angel Invest? Right. And we were starting to make a few small bets here and there, but we decided like if we banded together and it ended up being six of us, we all worked at Twitter. We were all in different exec roles there, that we would 6x our deal flow”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, they're really different products. I mean, as I'm sure you know, in terms of the value and the use that you get out of them. And I think that's probably one of the early mistakes was like, we did a lot of the same metrics as Facebook. So then we were always measured and compared against Facebook, even though the products and the value that it brought to consumers was really different.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is again showing how long I've been in the industry. But back then, iOS was a completely closed operating system. And so you had to do kind of these unique integrations with Apple to be able to do just basic things like tweeting and sharing from different apps across the phone. And so it was this huge kind of like monumental moment in Twitter's putting us on the map. Apple actually did the partnership with Twitter before they did the one with Facebook. So it was kind of like this huge, you know,”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At that point, we were focused on just growth, growth, growth. So we were doing lots of interesting deals with mobile companies around trying to get Twitter distributed broadly through carriers, through operating system partners, and through OEMs. So one of the first deals that I worked on there was actually getting Twitter integrated into the Apple iOS 5, which”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I loved the Netflix. Like, still one of the most used apps on my phone. And so anyway, so I just like, you know what? I'll go in. I'll meet the founders. I'll meet, you know, kind of some of the early team and just try to understand like what could Twitter become. And after those first few conversations, I was absolutely hooked on the broad vision, which is like anybody in the world can have a voice and anybody in the world can communicate with each other in real time, in public. That is such a powerful idea and powerful concept. And so after a series of conversations and negotiations, I decided to join. Right.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, actually, when I first met him, he was still the COO. And he's like, you've got to come in and talk to us. It would be great to get you on board. And I remember kind of hesitating because I used the product a little bit But I didn't love the consumer product yet. I mostly used it to check traffic driving down to low Scottos. Okay, all right. That makes sense.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a deal with a consumer electronics company to get streaming built into products. And I was like, oh wow, like I'm completely responsible. I'm completely autonomous. Like there's no checks. And it really encouraged people to do their best work. So Netflix's whole philosophy is like give people context. Give them like the broad goals of like what we're trying to accomplish, what metrics we need to hit and get out of their way. Right. And that like really helps with retention of top talent, attracting top talent. Because at the end of the day, people just want to do their best work.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think like real true empowerment. So I've used this example before, but I just joined the company. I'd only been there for a few months. I was working on this first deal. I was ready to get it signed. But I was not a C-level at the company. And so I remember going to one of my colleagues and being like, who can sign this deal that I've just done? And he looked at me and he's like, well, you can, of course. And I was like, well, what do you mean? He's like, do you stand by what's there? Do you stand by your work?”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, Patty is incredible. Both she and Reed had worked together at Reed's prior company. And so, you know, they were kind of like in their second company and really decided from the very early stages to put a lot of focus on culture. And that manifested in so many ways. You know, I think first there was such an attention to bringing in great talent, but also maintaining a really high talent bar and then setting up an organization that didn't have a bunch of bureaucracy, it didn't have a bunch of like unnecessary process.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, definitely. You know, I mean, I was not looking at leaving Netflix. I'm sure you've read a bunch about the Netflix culture. Yeah.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Other things to it. Yeah, the other thing that I did, kind of going back to where I grew up and nearby Peoria, Illinois, is there's this thing it's called if it plays in Peoria. And Piori is like a test market of just like will things resonate broadly across Middle America. And so my litmus test kind of unjoining any consumer company has been talk to friends and family back home. So I sent my dad a Roku player and I'm like, hey, like check this out. Like, can you get this hooked up and get it all activated And he called me back like five minutes after he got the Roku. And he's like, this is amazing.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay Remember when you used to have cues? Well, I go back a little further, guys. Streaming, I remember Real Networks had started doing streaming very early. And I was just with someone talking about that recently from progressive networks who was called progressive networks. And they at the time, when they did audio to start with, and then when they did video, Rob Glazier, who was the CEO and founder, had hired Jewel, as I was noting, because she didn't move that much. And so one of the issues was jerkiness because of the slowness. And so Jewel just sat there and strummed during his jewelry. I have become the broadcaster.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the first thing that I ever streamed was actually the doors And or not the doors, the talking heads documentary. And it had been in my Netflix queue. Remember when you used to have queues? Sure. And there would always be like content that would take five months to get because they didn't have enough DVDs. And it took a long time to get it. And it was one of those first pieces of content that was available on Netflix.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what were you attracted in the idea? Because it was early. And I remember Jeff Bukis called it like Latvia or some, he compared it. He's not worried about the Latvian army or something, you know. And I remember saying, you're an idiot if you don't understand this is where it's going.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think a lot of companies would have been like, oh, we have this new product, let's charge more for it. Bere's like, this is the future of the business. Why would we add a hurdle to people trying this out and like seeing the value of streaming? So it was incredible consumer value prop.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I mean, I give him huge credit. It's like you potentially cannibalize your existing business on the future. And I think he always saw that streaming was going to be the way forward. And one of the things that's so interesting is actually when he first launched streaming, we included it at no additional cost to consumers. It was just still like $7.99 or $8.99, whatever the price was.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, what was your thinking at the time? Because this was, again, it was a big jump into the future, and the people did not at the time were worried about because Reid had changed the pricing, there was controversy around that. He'd apologize for a number of different things. But streaming really was, he put all the eggs in the basket.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he's the chief business officer, he's still there. He was another person who came out of Divix. And so there were probably five or six of us that ended up kind of being in that early team building out Netflix streaming.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And of course, that is morphed over time to Netflix now producing their own content, which is kind of like, I would say Netflix version three in terms of the type of company that they've become. But back in those early days, it was just a huge, huge win for consumers to be able to access great content cheaply.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. And so Netflix started small with their streaming library, but quickly was able to do a bunch of really interesting content deals, licensing third-party content. Yes.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely. And I think that Netflix did an amazing job of timing the market right. So, enough people had broadband in homes, enough people could afford devices that allowed you to stream this content. So you probably remember the original Roku player came out as $99 and it allowed you just to stream Netflix content. Like before that came out, any of the devices that were in the connected living room or connected TV space were like $300 or $400. So that's a big jump to get a consumer to spend that on a device and then not have great content yet.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. A few years after hanging out CDs, that was his business initially. I had actually read Hastings to a Sundance panel very early on in Netflix's career. And they thought of them as the CD company. And he and I kept saying it's going to be something else. It's going to be streaming. And they couldn't, and it's going to be critically important. The crowd at Sundance, which was obviously the big film festival, could not understand what he was saying. I had him there, the head of Hulu, Jason Kylar. Yep. And Chad Hurley, the head of YouTube. And we kept saying this to this group. And it was really interesting because directly that was right where it was going. It was just the CDs were the bridge technology.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were directionally correct. And that actually leads to Netflix. So Netflix started to get really serious about streaming a few years after Netflix.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think the long term plan for the company was that we wanted to connect the home, we wanted to connect the living room. And unfortunately, for a variety of reasons. And I think the big one was timing, even though people were starting to download media off the internet, it still was not in a place that it was really easy.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And where did you think it would go? Because this was a technology that's a transition. There's technology that are transitions and then technologies that are here to stay. Do you know what I mean? Like I remember thinking a lot of these things. There were a bunch of things like Divix that were, it's on its way to something that everyone's just going to have.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you went from there, joined that company. The company actually IPO'd, which it IPO'd in 2006, which is kind of the dark days of tech with very few, you know, kind of tech IPOs. And we created a real business model out of it. And this kind of ties back into computer engineering, we were out working with chip companies, with hardware OEMs, with mobile phone providers to license them the technology so that you could play content back on those different devices.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, love the product as a consumer. And I was a big believer in internet videos going to take off. And this is kind of that first step. And eventually everyone will be consuming video content over the internet. And you'll be consuming it in real time on demand. Like you won't have to wait for the windows that are kind of the traditional, you know, TV windows that you watch content. Sure. Okay.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's correct. So I remember in undergrad, I could not afford HBO, right? The $10 a month was way too much for my blood. And so I used to download sopranos and sex in the city over a dial-up modem using the Diffix code.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes Used it. So there was another guy who saw this codec taking off, you know, kind of in the internet world. His name was Jordan Greenhall. He was the former CEO of MP3.com. And he had seen what had happened with audio. He's like the next wave is going to be video. Right. So he tracked Jez down and he was based in a small town in France, got him to come to San Diego and actually start this company, Divx.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there was a guy who was a hacker. His name was Judge Rota, and he created a codec that just was very popular in the early days of the internet. He called it Divix Winky Face, which was basically like a joke on the failed circuit city format. Right.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So bad ended. It was a bad ending, wasn't it? Actually, no. Okay, I don't remember. That name just pops into my head. See, I forgot. So, Divix was originally the failed circuit city kind of like erasing DVD format. Oh, yeah, that's right that never took off. That's not the Divix I worked for. Okay. So there was a guy.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think that I realized it until I got there. So I want to say my major was maybe like two or three percent female when I was there. So I often was the only woman in the room. And I'll never forget like I showed up at this class. It was ECE 340, which was a class on designing solid state electronic devices. Of course. I took that one myself. I walk in and the professor says, oh, you know, Miss, I think you're in the wrong class. And I was like, no, I think I'm in the right one. He's like, oh, no, no, no. Like, this is like an ECE class. I think you're done in liberal arts. And I was like, no, actually, this is my class. Right. So they're definitely were a lot of moments like that where feeling like you didn't quite belong. So you did consulting for a while. How did you get to Netflix in”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I ended up doing that. But you didn't think you needed a major tech job right away. Just that you thought it was important to move around? Yeah, I kind of wanted exposure to a lot of different things. And that actually opened up my eyes to, wow, like you can do a lot with the technical background. It doesn't have to be that you go and code day in and day out or design chips day in and day out. You can go into product management. You can go into marketing. You can go into sales. You can go into BizDev. And then that's kind of what started my trajectory into more of the business side of tech. Were you cognizant of the fact there weren't many women in hardware or software design, really? Maybe you should move into that.”
2019-11-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jana Messerschmidt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source