YouSaid · the spoken record

Joel Gascoigne

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13
first
2019-03-29
most recent
2019-03-29
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “Kind of a short term horizon so that we can become more self owned over time and really keep control of our destiny so we can keep experimenting and seeing where that takes us. Joel, as I said, I've been a big fan of the writing for a long time. This has been so much fun. So thank you so much for joining me on the show today. Yeah, thanks so much, Harry. It's been a real pleasure.”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Silicon Valley for a few years earlier in the journey, it really felt there wasn't a lot of diversity. I think that would help a lot with some of the challenges that seem to come out of companies that are VC funded. Tell me the final one, the next five years for you and for Buffer. What does that roadmap look like? Yeah, I see us being more diversified in our products and our revenue streams more sustainable. And we need to become more differentiated in the market. It's become a little bit commoditized over time and just continue to grow at a solid clip while being profitable. That's something that we're committed to now. And then I think over time we'll be able to create this situation where everyone in the company can really benefit from the great work that we're doing together. So I think that'll lead to the possibility of dividends and increasing the profit share we've been doing, profit sharing for two years in a row now. We want to keep going more in those directions and helping investors get liquidity when they're more interested in”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I struggle to think of one single one. So I'm going to just quickly share a few. I think when I was 15 years old, I sold my first, I got my first website development product for commercial client. That was an inflection point for me of realizing I could make money from something that I previously thought was a hobby. In college, I had the inflection point of shifting from service revenue to product revenue and escaping that hourly kind of wage. And then in the last few years, there's been a big inflection point that we've talked about of this sustainability mentality for the company of can we create a company that we never want to sell and create a company that can keep going for 20, 30 years more versus this kind of exit mentality. What would you most like to change about Silicon Valley today, Joel? Two things. One is fundraising, which I think really needs to be more of a spectrum of options there rather than just the VC approach. And I think the other thing would be diversity from my experience of being in”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Really interesting for me. What is the key to making remote teams work successfully? I would say just to take a remote first attitude, whether or not you're fully remote or partially remote, just really try hard to make information, data, ideas and decisions flow freely regardless of where someone is and really just try to avoid having any sense of a second class citizen within the organization, usually someone that's not in the office. What motto or quote you frequently revert back to? The current key one that I've been referring back to for a few years now is Sir Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, which is do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. So really just questioning things is something that I'm really a big fan of. I love that one. I saw it in your email subject line and thought it was brilliant. I do want to ask what moment in your life has served as an inflection point and change the way you think.”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “And things like that. And I think just sharing more openly with them really takes a lot of the weight of yourself as well and just spreads it amongst the team. And I think that's been just a really, really healthy thing for us at Buffer. Absolutely. And I think it's so important in terms of kind of engendering a sense of ownership within everyone within the organization. I do want to though dive into my favorite element of any episode, Joel, which is the quick firearound. So I say a short statement and then you give me your immediate thoughts in about 60 seconds or less, are you ready to dive in? Yes, let's do it. So your favorite book and why? A book called Joy at Work by Dennis Backe and the reason is because it's really a tale of someone building a very substantial company, a public company, and the challenges of staying true to the values that they've put in place and kind of placing values above growth in order to gain long-term sustainability of the culture and performance.”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “It is a hard thing. I think it almost goes maybe against human nature in a way. I think we like to hold our cards close to our chest sometimes and things. So I think that's where it is this thing that you have to push yourself through and be disciplined about. And I think one of the things that for me an additional component of it that I've realized is as a founder or founders, you often have so much on your shoulders. It's such a pressurized situation to be in. And I found by sharing, especially in the tough times, sharing more openly with the team, they really are excited to help figure it out together. And I think sometimes as leaders, we almost treat our team as children or something, you know, they can't handle those details or that truth or something. And I think that's just really a disservice to everyone that you've brought on board.”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yeah, and I think he went on one of the reboot boot camps and had really great things to say. So I need to make that connection. As I said, if someone can make my cold British heart cry, then clearly... I do want to finish though today, Joel, by discussing a little bit about the team, because when we chatted before, you said about the element of transparency and the element that really struck me was it's always better to lean into transparency. Can I ask, what did you mean by this? And maybe are there any limitations to leaning into transparency? Yeah, when I think about leaning into transparency, I mean really just challenging yourself with can you share more with your team? Can you be more open with them about what the goals are and about the numbers, the revenue numbers, how much cash is in the bank, the real state of the business, the growth rates, the way the markets changing, just being open, laying it all out there? And I think I believe that that is always a better state to strive for.”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “It's when things get a bit tougher that could really change and the fact that the tables have turned there a little bit could dramatically impact them. Another aspect is the concept of the cost of capital. It's something that I think in Silicon Valley a lot of people just aren't really thinking about. It's really this mentality of ways the funding, spend it, get a certain amount of growth as long as you're keeping your growth rate high enough, you can keep raising those rounds of funding. And you're kind of thinking, okay, IPO is a great goal to aim for.”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, there's a few different things for me that go into that that I've learned in my journey with Buffer, which is just over eight years now that I've been doing this and we've raised two rounds of funding and had a lot of testing ups and downs with all of that. I think there's a couple of key things. One is that when you're fundraising, a lot of people don't realize that there's a point along the way in fundraising where you are no longer the boss anymore. And I think a lot of people start companies or become entrepreneurs because they really like having that freedom and that autonomy and controlling their destiny in that way. And I think at some point along the way, maybe it's series A, Series B, the board usually flips over to be controlled by investors. And I think that is something that I realized that founders often don't realize that is happening even in the moment that is happening when they get that next round of funding and it has flipped over because they're still the CEO at that point and the investors likely believe in them and things.”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Started to schedule using TweetDeck and Hoot Suite at the time, but you had to choose a very specific date and time every time you were scheduling something. And all I really cared about was spacing out the tweets there. So that was the aha moment was, oh, I know how I could build something where the schedule is something you just set once a daily schedule and then it's done. And then you don't have to choose the exact date and time when you're scheduling those tweets. And that was kind of really where WebBuffer started from. We've evolved a lot along the way the markets changed a lot. That's where it all began.”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Then kind of fast forward a little further. So I had one startup before, but further was not very successful, but I learned a ton. And that was right after graduating from college. And then after that, that's when I had the idea for Buffer. And the initial aha moment for Buffer was that I found that if I shared content on Twitter, if I shared my thoughts or articles I was reading and finding interesting, it was just a great way to meet other people and network. And sometimes I meet those people in person. Once I discovered this, I wanted to do it more and more. And for along I was reading blogs. I was using Google Reader at the time and really being an avid subscriber to several different blogs, sharing those. But I found that if I was doing a reading session where I'd read maybe 15 or 20 articles, I didn't want to be sharing all of those at once on Twitter and flooding my stream with those things within the space of 15 minutes or something. So I started looking, okay, how can I space these out?”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “And so, I've always been into computers and was lucky enough to fall into learning to code quite early when I was 11, 12 years old. I kind of got into it from online gaming and then get involved with some teams there and then building a website for one of those teams that was one of my first website. And then since then it's just been progressing further. I've always enjoyed building things and then I've always enjoyed being fairly broad on things so very quickly I started dabbling with doing design and quickly became a full stack web designer, web developer. And then I started trying out building applications and building actual products. And then I went to the University of Warwick in the UK and I did computer science there. And by that point I kind of knew I wanted to build a company, a startup. I discovered tech crunch around that time. Just got fascinated by people building these companies pretty much just sitting at your computer, which seemed like a whole new possibility in the world at that point.”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, thanks so much, Howie. It's a real pleasure to be on the podcast. You've been doing this such a long time now. I've been really impressed and you've had such a wide range of different guests on here. So it's always really interesting for me.”

    2019-03-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source