YouSaid · the spoken record

Kevin Thau

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34
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2018-01-03
most recent
2018-01-03
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1
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  1. “Yeah, brain machine interfaces. So I worked with Thomas Rearden earlier in my career. He was a superstar that came out of Microsoft and then I worked with him at OpenWave, just one of the most brilliant technologist visionaries and getting to work with him again was definitely a huge factor of why I said yes, but also I do believe that computing is moving from trapped in these little boxes, either a phone or a computer, and computing's moving to everywhere. It's everywhere around us, whether it's your Amazon Echo or different displays around your home and who knows what's going to happen with AR and VR that I think the interface for that world doesn't exist. And I think someone should build it. That's what they want to do.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “The one that I think just got announced was Control Labs that just got written up. There was a Wired article kind of announcing what they were doing.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Diversity. I love the whole current topic of making all of these venture capital firms, boards, executive teams, employee-based diverse. I think that is the best trend that could possibly happen to the whole ecosystem.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Overthinking. That was on the list of that tweet I retweeted. Overthinking for sure, I think we can agonize ourselves and just do and get analysis paralysis by if you take information and you go through and you analyze it and then you come to what you believe instinctually is a good decision around that information, I think you should just go and eat whatever direction that takes you. Sometimes you can revisit and revisit and revisit and change and change your mind and I don't think that's productive”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, I think the biggest contrarian I go back, I'm such a John McFarlane fanboy. I worked for him for like eight years when I was in my early to mid-20s. I think if you put yourself back in his mindset in the early days of when the internet was being created, he was very, very much, you know, there were all these big, powerful companies trying to create these standards, internet standards and make them as proprietary as possible. And he was just a total contrarian at the time, the world kind of evolved this way in being a huge proponent of open standards and really believing that these interchange of technologies across services would like grow the whole market a lot faster than if they were to be siloed and seeing the walls break down around SMS and stuff was that now it seems obvious, but at the time that wasn't obvious.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I think people who spout all these things that are commonly accepted principles that it's lazy, it's just lazy thinking, I kind of really appreciate the contrarians who...”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I don't believe in the over obsession of where someone goes to school, that this brand association of where people go to college or in education is that important. I think people get too wrapped up in obsessed with that parents' kids. And I just don't think it matters that much.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “My favorite book is Michael Lewis Money Ball. Why? Just because I think it was fascinating story on how there's so much dogma in certain industries and people think a certain way and it takes someone that challenges that to kind of fundamentally change the game. And I think that could be applied to everything from venture to companies to sports. I mean, that's one of my favorite books and a good movie, too.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I don't feel that way. I mean, I see even the few companies that I've invested in in a space. I don't feel like their CAC is out of control. I think they can manage it and get so much combination of paid versus organic. And, you know, just back to the Instagram thing, building these Instagram audiences and whether you're paying, but growing them organically is this incredible marketing channel.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I do think there's going to be this next gen of incredibly sustaining next gen brands. I do think they will emerge. I think there's too many factors that you and I are just chatting about right now that are going to be so important that will help create these new brands. I mean, everything from, we just talked about Amazon, Instagram, Facebook. This just seems like such an important moment in time that things have changed, that distribution and the marketing avenues have changed so drastically that it's hard for me to believe that there won't be sustaining next gen brands.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “To me, it's more looking at the likes or followers or something, even though, I mean, that's interesting. I think it's more to me, it's like how they're trying to craft this image. And it's like, you know, what is the content? What are they displaying? Why? What are the word, what's the language are they using to describe it and whether it resonates with me or not. Just kind of, you know, like back to Lola, they do a fantastic job on their Instagram. When you look at it, I feel like if you look at Lola's Instagram, you get a very clear picture of what this company is trying to do in terms of building a brand for women.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “No question. That's actually probably one of the greatest tools we've ever seen to build a brand. It's unbelievable to me. It's become my kind of go-to when I'm learning about a consumer product company. I go to their Instagram and I feel like you get the best sense of what this brand is all about.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Well, I mean, it's a distribution channel that, unlike we've probably ever seen, it's fantastic channel for a lot of these companies to sell their products. I don't know that I believe that Amazon does a great job of helping build brands. Like, I don't see brands getting built on top of Amazon. I think it's a great accelerator.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I do. I think brands, I mean, we can think of brands that have stood the test of time and have added to their, it's hard, but it would be hard to say that Nike's brand isn't part of their sustainability. They also make great products. They also have great design and aesthetic and stay with the trends. I mean, so it's hard to say it's one thing, but it's definitely an ingredient that I think has made these companies last for as long as they do.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I mean, I don't really, all of it seems hard to me. I mean, we're basically the business adventure to me as we're trying to find these rare, extraordinary companies. And that's just fundamentally hard to me. I don't, I can't think of an area where it's easy to find that company, but consumer electronics, anything in consumer is very, very hard because you're betting on a big market adoption versus, say, a big”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “It's still cooler. I mean, I think GoPro is a famous example of this, right? I mean, it is a consumer electronic video camera with the first versions didn't even have an interface where you could see what you were taking pictures of. So if you were to describe that descriptively, you would have zero interest in buying that product. But creating a brand around action, camera, and this extreme sports lifestyle, everyone who sees the little displays is like, I gotta, I gotta have that. I can make those. It's really interesting.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “But it's incredible. I mean, it is a cooler, but it is created this cult following and brand because people are just obsessed with the product. And at the end of the day, it just keeps your drinks cold, right?”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, I totally agree with what you said. I think people's personalities are multifaceted and people have a lot of different characteristics that create their personality. And I think what to me, what I look for, there's kind of two things I think that are really important. I really admire the companies that are good at finding a different way to talk about a product or service that is unique to them and that no one had really done before. Some good examples of that would be like the Yeti coolers. I don't know if you've seen the Yeti coolers, but the Yeti.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah, I think it's really interesting, this concept of brand that I think people are waking up to a little bit more, which is exciting. And I think the core tenants are, for me, fundamentally, it's not one or five things. It's like a thousand little things that make your brand everything from the descriptive language to the aesthetics and the colors and all the little design details make your brand, the imagery, the product experience.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “I mean, there's no way around unless you have an answer for me, I'd love to hear it on how you avoid being somewhat reactionary. I mean, I get lots of introductions and I love it and I want to take all those introductions whenever they come my way. And I try to balance that with being proactive. I like the idea of hunting quite a bit, you know, reading or consuming information about where there might be new interesting startups and then digging in and then just reaching out, you know, cold calling those entrepreneurs is something I like to do as well because I feel like it gives me a little bit more control over what I'm going to talk to and talk about.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Yeah, I agree. I mean, meeting as many interesting companies as possible is not a bad way to go. I think how you decide which companies to meet with is also part of the process.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “I agree. That's great, but sometimes you can fill your days meeting as many people and might not give you the time to do some serious thinking and research about an area.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, I think the biggest challenge to me is if you spent 20 plus years working at startups, like I have, you wake up every morning and you go move the ball forward on your thing, whatever that, you know, you work at a company and you have some plan and you go execute that plan or evolve the plan. And it's very clear how you can spend all of your time working to make that thing better. As a venture capitalist, I think the biggest challenge for me is just how do you spend your time? I mean, we're in the business of manufacturing serendipity. And that's very unclear to me how you do that. There's a lot of... So you wake up in the morning, you're like, I could read a bunch of stuff. I could listen to these things. I could talk to these people. I could go to this conference. And it's unclear which one's going to be the most productive. That's a huge challenge.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Do I love this product? Do I love using this product? If I wasn't working as a venture capitalist, would I work for this company? And third, do I think other people will love it? I mean, is it just me or do I think other people will love it? And I think that's kind of a great framework for how I look at things too.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yeah, I mean, I think there were so many different ways to be successful as a venture capitalist. And before I got into it, I was talking to folks like Bijan and folks like Fred Wilson and hearing their different approaches. And I think it comes down to you can either be a very thesis driven venture capitalist like Fred, or you can be a very founder-driven venture capitalist like Bijan. And I think what fits better for my personality and the way I see things is being a founder driven venture capitalist. I kind of pride myself on being an excellent judge of people and talent over my years as an operator. And so I think that I rely on that quite a bit. Pijan had a good thing for me when I was first getting into the business. I said, how do you do this job? And he said, I have three questions I ask myself. And whenever I stray from any one of those three, I tend to make mistakes. But if I stick to them, then the three were number one.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yeah, I mean, my approach is based on the fact that I think I'm pretty fortunate to be a well-rounded exec at the startups that I worked at. So I ran engineering teams, product design teams, and marketing partnership teams. So I've seen all the kind of the critical bits of inside the startups and had to make all those decisions around how we organize and how we hire and how we plan and prioritize. And so I think my approach usually since what I have to go on is that experience, I try to think of myself as an extension of their team. Think of myself as an embedded resource that's helping them think through all these decisions just like I did when I was an operator.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I think because if you're a believer in an early market, you have to give people the whole product, right? Like here's the full manifestation of that product. And so that they can use it in its entirety without having to do any of the work of like integrating different parts and pieces together to make it work. You have to literally give them out of the box. And then if you just want to play out the open way of mobile internet case, we were selling a mobile browser that was very reliant on hardware manufacturers to build good phones that were easy to use so that you could then use the browser on that phone to access the mobile internet and get value out of it. Whereas a peer at the time was research in motion, you know, BlackBerry, and they basically had a similar vision. They said, yeah, mobile internet's going to be a thing. People are going to use their phones for something other than talking on it. We're going to build a single purpose email device. And we're going to help people answer emails.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think timing is a tricky thing, it's a tricky needle to thread where you want to be ahead of the trend, but not too far ahead of the trend, right? So for example, you know, the company I worked at earlier in my career was OpenWave, and we created the first mobile browser, and really were selling the promise of the mobile internet. Well, that was a company that got a lot of hype at the time, but the market for truly mobile data and mobile internet didn't come till much, much later. It came like 10 years later. And OpenWave had already boomed and busted by the time the market was there. So the ability to sustain and ride with the wave of innovation is really critical. One thing I've noticed on that front, just real quick, is I always think back the companies that do a vertically integrated product when the market's early seem to have a better chance, in my opinion, than trying to be one piece of technology.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Yeah, I mean, I think I have been really fortunate to work with some great, great product thinkers, everyone from earlier in my career, I worked for a guy named John McFarlane at software.com and OpenWave. This was in the late 90s. And then he went on to found Sonos. And I think he's a perfect example of someone who sees a pain in a market segment and opportunity and creates a product well before the market was there. So he founded Sonos in 2003, for example, way before Spotify had taken hold. Digital music, streaming music was not a thing in 2003, but building a polished, well-designed internet connected speaker and then having the streaming services follow was very visionary and well ahead of its time. I think the best”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Yeah, the funny thing about tech and building great companies is there's no one way to do all these things. People have different perspectives and different methodologies and they're always no one's right or wrong. It's whatever fits best. I personally gravitate towards the product, roadmap, style of a long arc. I like thinking less in the balancing like the immediate term, here's all the function features, functionality we need right now versus where are we trying to go with this product over a three five year timeline and not having that sketched out perfectly but at least directionally where is it going? Where are the market trends going and where is our product going to go over this long arc? I love when entrepreneurs think that way.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Well, if we just had more engineers, we could do more things. And then you end up not doing as many of those things as well as you should if you were constrained more.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Yeah, I mean, my time at Twitter was incredible. I mean, it's like the opportunity of a lifetime to be part of something like that that really changes the way information is distributed and consumed around the world. And it's amazing to me that over all these years, they still own that use case. No one's even come close to disrupting them for the Twitter use case. I think one of the challenges of hyperscaling company, especially Twitter, when you have a product that is used by so many people in so many different ways, focus and prioritization becomes a big challenge. And I think when you grow very quickly and you are fortunate enough to raise a lot of capital, it can sometimes make you lazy in how you make those hard decisions. When if you're constrained more, you'd say, well, we can literally only do one or two things. But when you are growing fast and you have so many resources, it's easy to say.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “No bubble yet. It was all just promise and opportunity. So how I got into venture, so I've been aware of it, and then I had been part of a company called Buzzwire that was one of Spark's first investments in Bijan Sab ⁇ was our investor and on the board. And so I got to know him. So that was my introduction to Spark. And then after that, I working at Twitter in 2008 till late 2013. I also spent a lot of time with the Spark folks. So developed a longstanding relationship with them. And when they were looking to expand their partnership and have more of a presence in San Francisco, it was kind of a no-brainer for me. Everything about that team and their reputation fit perfect for what I wanted to do.”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Yeah, I grew up in Silicon Valley. My father was an entrepreneur, started some venture-backed software companies, so I grew up around startups, raising money from VCs, the whole thing was just incredibly fascinating to me as a child that I knew when I graduated from college I was going to want to do startups. It just was the timeframe was also $1995 when I graduated from college. So it was a perfect time to be jumping in right in the middle of Netscape and internet and the web. And I had”

    2018-01-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source