YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeff Housenbold

lines on the record: 75
first: 2021-03-29
most recent: 2021-03-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“So, in the Vision Fund one, we had six limited partners. One was SoftBank itself. So Softbank's a big operating company spits off a lot of free cash flow. The second was the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia called PIF. The third was the sovereign wealth fund in the UAE called Mubadala. And then we have investments from Qualcomm.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wash today and data. And so you really have to use it in an intelligent and competitive way. And so for me, it was how to use data, machine learning, artificial intelligence and technology in a much more consumer-friendly way, both for enterprise and consumer companies, to be able to get faster adoption. And how do you use the differentiation of large pools of capital, but combining that with connections and counsels so that you're providing more than a check to your entrepreneurs? So at the Vision Fund, I've had the pleasure to take, I've done 18 investments, 17 of which we were the largest shareholder, and we take in my group because many of us are ex-operators in the 15-person group I've created, eight of which are women. Many of us have come out of Facebook or Airbnb or Google or Uber or Shutterfly or eBay or Amazon. We take much more hands-on roles in advising coaching and being part of the growth of those companies.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Taste and the nutritional density without having to slaughter an animal, without having any of the disease and the risks of parasites, without having the impact on global warming or the use of water or grain. And so I've done that with Memphis Meats with Plenty, the promise of cheaper, better affordable housing with Katerra. So not all my investments have met that high bar of sustainability and greater impact, but many have. And so that was one of the things that we saw eye to eye to. For me, I think artificial intelligence is important, but I think about it more in this world, the data. And as I said, I create an amazing data group at Alta Vista brought them to eBay, brought that team back to Shutterfly. And now it's part and parcel of great companies of having strong access and use of data. And you got to go from data to analysis, analysis to insight, insight to recommendation, recommendation to action because we're a”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To create a competitive moat. For me, one of the things that I talked about with MASA, and he agreed and was a big reason why I accepted, I said, I am a capitalist with a capital C, but I also have altruism where if we can help enable companies that are going to do good in the world while we do well as investors, that's a win-win. And MASA had a similar ethos. He called it bringing more smiles and happiness to the world. And so I've been able to use our amazing platform to find and invest and be part of some amazing companies like Memphis Meats, which is growing protein, chicken, pork, beef, duck, in a lab by taking a small quarter-size biopsy from the back of an animal and letting those cells reproduce. So you create a chicken cutlet that has the same mouth feel and the sinew and the fiber and the texture and the”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“MASA has done really well in his career by seeing where the world was going as it relates to technology adoption. Remember, I talked about understanding and knowing where the customer is going to go. And that's one of my strong suits is anticipating where consumers are going to go. MASA has had an uncanny ability to think about where technology adoption is going. So he saw the first wave of PC and he started selling productivity software and SoftBank's roots was software bank and that's where SoftBank comes and so he saw the PC and then he saw the internet then he saw broadband then he saw mobile and his next vision was artificial intelligence was going to be the next big adoptive technology that's going to be disruptive and so we want to find that next generation of companies using AI as an underpinning”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You don't like it in two or three years, we'll just buy something and let you run it. It'll be fine. And so I stepped back and I was reflecting. I said, okay, what's my downside? I get to be part of the founding team of growing something that's never been done before, just like all our portfolio companies are disintermediating the establishment. They're truly changing their industries or they're forging new ways. The vision fund in many ways did that to venture capital. And I got to be part of the journeys of some amazing entrepreneurs and part of their success. And now as I'm reflecting back, being an operator makes me a much better investor and being an investor makes me a much better operator. It's kind of like I always encourage my executives reporting to me with sit on one or two outside boards because when you're sitting on the other side of the table, you gain better perspective on what the expectations of a board and outside investors are.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could get excited about Southeast Asia as well as Latin America. And so for me, I love the intellectual diversity of thinking about multiple things. And for me, it wasn't as bright line between operator and investor because, as I said, it's Shutterfly. I used the balance sheet. I did 17 acquisitions. And so thinking about that combination of investing and organic growth. And I actually, when I left Shutterfly, I took a little bit of time off and I was headed to be an operator. And I went to meet Masa Yoshi-San because I heard he was raising this $100 billion vision fund. And I was about to start a new job. And we needed to raise capital. And when I went to meet him, we had a lovely discussion. He says, but why would you want to put all your eggs in one basket? Come be a founding managing partner. Help me grow this thing on a global basis. You'll get to look at every single fast-growing company.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So throughout my career, I've been really fortunate to be able to do both. So I've run M&A in three Fortune 500 companies. I've bought 46 companies and sold five as an operator. I got to do minority equity investment. So, for example, at eBay, I led the investment in Makata Libre. I led the investment in many of our seller tools and our ecosystem. When I was at Winstar, we started $100 million internal corporate venture arm to invest in the first wave of internet companies. I've been an angel investor and an LP in a number of funds. So I've been in around investing and I was an advisor to KKR and Kleiner Perkins and an EIR at Sutter Hill helped out TPG a lot. And so for me, it wasn't as a hard a transition. And I don't think about, I'm kind of an AND guy. Many people are or people. I'm an AND guy. I could get excited about fashion, about ed tech, about food. I could get excited about enterprise software.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Best and brightest have focus on doing a few things great, know who your core customer is, iterate rapidly, and move to profitability as quickly as possible.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a young company, and then just keep executing. The other thing was the ethos because we weren't in such buoyant capital markets that raising capital was really hard. And so because I grew up in welfare and food stamps, I learned never to depend on anyone else. When I got to the company, I said, we are going to get cash flow positive in 12 months. And everyone laughed at me. We were losing money on every transaction. So within six weeks, we went from losing money on the first transaction to actually making money from every customer. In six months, we got to EBITDA positive. And in 14 months, we got to free cash flow. And so that I never had to depend on anyone else. And when I tell my entrepreneurs, the best form of venture capital is free cash flow. You just reinvest in yourselves and you don't get diluted. So some lessons there, Ted, is, first of all, know where you're going, break it down into manageable chunks.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“didn't let men into Shutterfly, which represented about 22% of customers. But literally, when I got there, I changed the font, the color, the positioning, the tone, the voice, the services, the way we go to market. Our marketing communications, all to be around women and particularly moms, because I understood that moms were the chief memory officer. She happens to be the chief culinary officer, the chief education officer, the chief medical officer. Mom's control not only the household, but 93% of discretionary spending in America. And so I was going to focus my company on my core customer and then understanding how to rapidly iterate. And a lot of companies don't kill things that aren't working fast enough. You got to take it out in the woodshed and bury it nine feet deep because if employees are still working on things that are not ringing the cash register, you're diluting what is one of your precious commodities and assets.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“External terabyte storage devices to cloud? And how do I manage that? And so anticipating where the world's going to go and understanding what those adoption curves can look like and if it's flatter or steeper than you think, what are your backup plans? So have a long range goal 10 years out and then break it down into chunks of what am I going to do in the next two to three years and what are the people process and technology I need to have to be able to achieve those key milestones and how am I differentiating against the competitors and how am I identifying my core customer and what are the features she needs versus the features that are nice to have and I see a lot of companies a try to do way too much I think focus focus focus matters and then you get the permissionability to kind of extend into adjacent markets and additional services I think understanding who your customer is and serving them incredibly well that doesn't mean I”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An entrepreneur's heart, right? You go through the depths of despair to the heights of jubilation, and sometimes those feelings occur in the same day, the same week, or the same month. And what I encourage people to do is set a long-range goal, envision what success looks like, and then break them down into manageable chunks. So if you say, look, in 10 years, I believe everyone will have a digital camera in their pocket. Either the thing will keep shrinking or they'll be in a device called an iPhone, but everyone will have a digital camera in their pocket. And the total number of images we're going to take are going to go up logarithmically. And therefore, that's going to create problems. How do I manage those photos? How do I sort them? How do I store them? How do I make output from them? How do I tag them? How do I access them as we go from three and a half inch floppy disk to CD-ROMs to hard drives?”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About owning and operating manufacturing and being vertically integrated, expanding globally. And it was an amazing 11-year run. And it gives me so much more perspective, authenticity, and empathy as I'm talking to entrepreneurs today when they're seeking to raise capital.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when I joined, we had 1% of the market. And when I left, we had 77% in the market. And I went on to buy 17 of my competitors, including Yahoo Photos and Kodak, American Greening, Sony, Fuji, et cetera. And so I learned a lot about using the balance sheet and organic growth. I learned about building executive team and how you need different teams at different stages. I learned about taking a company public, which I did 14 months after joining. I was 34 years old and got to take a company public, which was a highlight. I learned about the ups and downs that you never as good as they say nor as bad. I had to manage through the 2008 financial crisis. I had to deal when Apple announced they were competing and my stock went down 30% in two minutes. I had to then deal when Instagram was bought by Facebook and the markets didn't understand that one was monetizing through advertising. I was monetizing through physical production.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cameras. And so for me, it felt right. I was though the fourth CEO in three years. So people thought it was crazy leaving a safe job. My wife was pregnant when I was second child. I was taking a big risk. But she was incredibly encouraging and she was at Bain& Company. And so she was the stable money. And I got to kind of go to the next entrepreneurial endeavor. And through that experience, I learned how hard it is to be a CEO. When you're an executive, you kind of know, but you don't know until everything reports to you and the buck stops at your desk. I learned about making sure you have the right team in place. So I think about the right person at the right time with the right skills and the right seat with the right attitude. I thought about strategy and how I was competing with companies like Walmart, Walgreens, CBS, Costco, AOL, Yahoo, Kodak, Fuji, Sony, American Greetings, just to name a few, plus 1,100 other venture-backed companies.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they were looking for a new CEO. And I happened to be my high school, college, and graduate school yearbook photographer. Photography was a passion of mine. I knew a lot about e-commerce, and I was ready to kind of spread my wings. And people thought I was crazy leaving a really well-paying, high-profile executive job at the time eBay was the killer company. Amazon was much smaller. Google was still smaller. And for me, it just felt absolutely right. I had a clear vision of how to take the company from 103 people with less than 50 million in revenue with about 8 million in the bank losing 25 and where the world was going to go in online photography, in the use of digital cameras and how can people tell their stories and to preserve their memories and to increase the joy and the connectiveness with one another through the power of this emerging technology called digital.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ran Alta Vista and competed with them, they were starting to monetize their search. And I became the first customer in that really changed the trajectory for both Google and for eBIN. It became an innovator in online marketing, built the largest affiliate program in the world, and went on to do over 100 business development deals with the likes of Disney and Home Depot and Dell and Lexmark and others. And then I went on to oversee the charity and the mobile and international efforts. And it was just a fantastic ride. And I really came of age as a executive in that role. And at the end of four years, I was kind of itching to go run my own thing. Meg wasn't going anywhere and Jeff wasn't going anywhere and Pike was ready at 33. Or so I thought to go be a CEO. And I got a call from Jim Clark, who, founder of Netscape, Silicon Graphics, WebMD, and he owned 52% of Sherflop.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Retention, internet marketing, business development. And one of the things that I did, I brought my statistician team over from when I was running AltaVista to eBay. Now we call those big data groups. And that was so important as I look back in using data and analysis. And because we were so big and the velocity of the marketplace, we had tremendous amount of data to really inform decisions and to go from A, B testing to experimental design for rapid innovation and product market fit. And that became the underpinning of this fact-based culture that was supported by some of the amazing execs there like Jeff Jordan and Meg Whitman who came out of BCG and Bain and I came out of strategy consulting. So it was an incredible environment that we had so many super smart people and we got to run our own little businesses and we got a lot of autonomy to do that. In that role, I also became Google's first customer in the world.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Company, how to use people, process technology, how do you outthink the competition, how do you iterate on the product and the service, how do you make sure that you're finding that balance in a marketplace between demand and supply learned a lot about pricing. And I held a number of different roles. I ran mergers and acquisitions. I then started the business to consumer group where I went out and got large companies to sell on the platform, creating, back then we called it middleware. Today we call them APIs so that we could connect into their ERP and their supply chain. So if Walmart's sitting on 500 million units of last year's Palm Pilot at the time, they would be able to sell them onto the platform instead of defacing them and selling them to a liquidator and getting 10 cents on the dollar. They could realize 50 cents on the platform and that would increase supply and the ecosystem. I then went on to run customer acquisition.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when I joined eBay, it was pretty early on. The company had just gone public and it was the original.com boom in 1999 to 2002. I joined eBay in 2001. And we were really creating an entire new industry. There were some e-commerce, but it was at a fixed price. And we were taking what was often just reserved for the Sothebies and the Christies and the Butterfields of the world and auction format and bringing it to the masses. We were also creating a platform which was leveling the playing field for the mom and pop that they can sell on the same platform with the largest companies in the world and have the same access to customers because eBay as a marketplace was aggregating the demand and giving them the tools to sell their products and services. And what I learned there was how to hyperscale.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reading a lot, getting exposed to my friend's parents as a teenager, I didn't know what a lawyer versus an accountant versus an executive versus a scientist really did. That was some exposure, obviously going to college expands that perceptual map and the opportunity set. And I really wanted to run a business. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. It was the Horatio Algar story, right? Rags to riches and being in control of your own destiny. And I remember watching the movie Wall Street when I was coming of age. And there's a line in there where it says, do you want to make $400,000 a year or do you really want to be somebody? And I was like, wait a second, someone can make $400,000. My dad made $18,000. And that really changed my mind. That's why I learned about investment banking and strategy consulting and being an executive and technology. And I started out my career on Wall Street and then moved into strategy consulting.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lifeguard packing trucks at UPS, working at Burger King and McDonald's. And that work ethic and that ethos and the ability to resonate and be able to connect with everyone from the janitor to the chairwoman has been really instrumental in my worldview. And I think my business success.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think we're all products of our experiences. And I was born into a family of five in Brooklyn, New York. My dad had a seventh grade education. He could barely read and couldn't keep a job. And when he had a job, he was a truck driver in and out of jail when I was growing up. And so that kind of had a large impact, as you can imagine on me. And one of the things that my mom did was really emphasize get a good education. And so I worked hard at school and got into college first generation to go to college. And that really changed my lot in life. I went from the bottom 10% to the top 1%. And what I tell my kids is they could take your job. They could never take your education and never, ever let them take your self-worth. And so that humble beginnings gives me perspective because I've done some jobs from literally working in the laundry room at an old age home, being a life.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My guest on today's show is Jeff Hausenbold, a managing director for the last four years at Softbank Investment Advisors, where he led one of the six investment teams that deployed the $100 billion Softbank Vision Fund. Prior to joining Softbank, Jeff worked at 16 companies, including 11 years as CEO of Shutterfly, four years in the early days of eBay, four as a special industry advisor to KKR, and one as entrepreneur in residence at Sutter Hill Ventures. He's also served on the boards of dozens of companies, including Caesars Entertainment, Memphis Meets, DoorDash, Compass, Open Door, Wag, and Groupon. Our conversation starts with Jeff's true rags to riches story and then turns to a whirlwind of lessons learned as an operator at eBay during its hypergrowth and shutterfly overseeing a successful turnaround.”
2021-03-29 · Capital Allocators · Jeff Housenbold – Inside Softbank Vision Fund (Capital Allocators, EP.186) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source