YouSaid · the spoken record

Kirsten Green

lines on the record: 132
first: 2020-01-20
most recent: 2020-01-20
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

“Thanks for having me and talking to you. At Foreign Adventures.com. Okay. On Twitter at a Kirsten A Green and I'm a little bit on Instagram at Kirsten Green.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in an effort to be a disciplined investor, I've really tried to kind of stick to my knitting and push it forward in concentric circles, and we haven't branched out as a team internationally. But as a person who's interested, who's thinking about the world and what's going on in the world, it's hard not to be fascinated about China, to be fascinated and scared about what's happening in China. I mean, they are at the forefront of so many things. They're probably at the forefront of more things than anybody else. And to think about where they're dabbling in like”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think you can afford to operate in a microcosm of this environment. You've got to pull your head out and think about how dynamic and different this country is that's been revealed to us in many ugly ways over the last couple of years in particular and how small the world is getting with how dependent people are on each other or how power is shifting in different ways. I think that's incredibly important. And I think it makes this job More challenging for sure, but it also makes it more interesting.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, that was going to be my answer, which is like, I really look for areas where we can have an advantage. I think there's probably merit in investing in any sector because everything could be better than it is or there's a new version of it. But I think to be successful in that space, you benefit greatly when you have a research approach, when you have a unique perspective, when you can really take the time to learn and understand the players in the ecosystem, what it takes to be different, what it takes to have a better business model. And so, you know, I think that at Forerunner, we've been disciplined in really kind of trying to maximize the edge we had in commerce while being very deliberate about how we've pushed the thinking forward, indulged our curiosities, and started to work into other categories. And that's what we're going to continue to challenge ourselves to do. I think it's going to keep the job interesting for us, and I think it's going to put us in the best position to invest in”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Yeah. And when you think about where you wouldn't want to invest, I always ask this for all venture people, what is the most area you just wouldn't invest? Ben Horrid said social networks and search because of Facebook and Google. I just wouldn't do it. E-commerce too. He's like, eh, I don't have an advantage.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We won't get the best of what we can be unless we just keep pushing things forward in more and different ways. And so I think ironically the person in me who started out being a risk-adfirst person who wanted a job where they knew a paycheck is now operating in a business that's pushing me to think more calculated about risk, but to continue to push the envelope forward. Don't fund another version of another D2C company. Think about what's next. Where are things going? Who hasn't invented? Who hasn't been there? And think about doing it judiciously. I mean, we're fiduciaries to our investors. We have their capital. We have to be responsible for. I can't just throw it all in one place and hopes it works out. I can continue to invest in a company if they're... Showing that they're yeah, yeah, yeah”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we have to stay nimble in our thinking. I think we have to continue to cultivate original thinking. We have to continue to take risks on funding new ideas. We can't all keep chasing the same three themes and then everybody dog piling into the top three companies in those spaces because”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Capital as a moat or as an advantage. And I think that so far that's been proven to not be true, to not be a real, and to not be a real big advantage. And I think if you're an investor, you have to look at that very seriously and think if just plowing more money things is not an advantage, then what am I doing with my big piles of money to be differentiated in this market or to Invest in companies that have really good prospects. So”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the incredible amount of influx of capital has happened over the last decade. Every year it's gone up more and more and more different types of investors have come into the private market ecosystem. Part of that is because there isn't the small and mid cap market in the public markets anymore that used to be in decades past. And the market's gotten more mature. And now you can't be a small hedge fund and be as successful. You have to be a big money manager. I think that the stock market and everything that works around that ecosystem has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. And I think venture has been going through a lot of change as more money has been coming to the ecosystem. Part of that big money has played into this thesis of kind of”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, all raised too. And I think it's about. I wish off the top of my head I could reference studies. I know they're out there that have said that diverse teams make better decisions. And we've thought about that as foreigner. I've been operating in the spectrum kind of like in that startup mode, which is you're under-resourced relative to your ambitions. You have to make sure that everything you do is a one plus one equals three. And the highest impact way we can do that is think about our team. I can't afford to hire two people that look and think the same because we're not going to get an exponential impact from that. So every time we've been able to hire a new person, which has been like one person a year kind of thing, we've really thought about who could we bring into the mix that would add to this conversation, that would add to this dynamic, that would push the thinking or see something new. And I think that's then reflected in a team that has kind of half males, half females, some people in their 40s, some people in their 30s, some people in their 20s, people that grew up in different places, people from different races, people who had different past education. And I feel like that is part of our winning.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our challenge, I think, is as venture investors is to find those things that might be able to be part of those bigger conglomerates, but still big enough in their own right?”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They've got to move into adjacent areas. It's really hard. It's one of the challenges of business. I bet you if you look back 100 years ago and thought about like who were the juggernaut companies in that area, people felt similarly about that. There were conglomerates. There were companies that were reaching kind of continually beyond their boundaries. At some point, you get so big that you can't do that in the same way and that you need to look outside for some of that new energy or those new ideas.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As opposed to whole opportunities. So I want to finish up talking about because you're getting to an idea about innovation and where it comes from because a lot of your companies had been innovative in the retail space particularly. I'm thinking about writing it about it this week because I'm really sort of someone, I was at an event yesterday and they asked me, where does innovation come from? And I was like, you know, there hasn't been a lot of innovation. It doesn't feel like there's a lot of innovation. And especially because there's these big companies in your space, Amazon, for example, or it's Google or it seems to me Facebook, Google, and Amazon are the three that are sort of in the way of innovation at the same time they kind of have to grow so they have to reach out to big areas I mean Sonos just sued Amazon and Google today for example for stealing their speaker ideas and and how do you get innovative companies with these massive companies that also have the need to grow and eat everything like the borg that they are but I also don't fault them they've got to move into adjacent areas it's really hard”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe is to think kind of thematically about these categories of opportunity, how those ecosystems are changing, and then how can we create a diverse group of companies in the context of that ecosystem. So other people maybe spend time thinking about machine learning or AI. I think we think those things, we have to learn about those. They're incredibly critical. But they're parts of those businesses as opposed to whole opportunities on their own.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And our team is really passionate about sustainability. And when we get again to stick with the Gen Z and think about the consumer coming down the pike and what's important to them and where their mindset is, I think this is not going to be an option for business to not start thinking about sustainability, right? And what does that mean? So that's maybe less of a front end business as much as it's or more thinking about the back end of business. But this is, I think, what we've tried to do that's unique at Forerunner.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you've got a workplace that's changing. You've got a generation of people who have already been maybe through their primary education who need to think about how they learn and get new skills. There's a lot of opportunity and need in there. And I think as consumers, like in healthcare and are getting more informed, no, we've been working hard on that space. And so we've got two that we funded that aren't announced yet, but we're going to look into healthcare education.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's a category where kind of in the lower school primary education, you could argue it's really been falling short. Our status in the world has continued to go down. Higher education has become more and more expensive. At the same time, the schools have become more and more impacted. It's harder for people to get in. I've got a fourth grader that's worrying about it. It's just wrong. And the worrying? And the workplace is changing. I know I told him not to worry about it. But I guess it picks it up in school. You've got...”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whatever the case was, they could make a mark on that. The vision for that company has always been to bring a broader base of products to consumers at life, healthcare relate. Like, let's go direct to consumer on healthcare. Let's bring the doctor to them. Let's not make people take time out of their work day to go to the doctor or maybe not go to the doctor because they're embarrassed or uncomfortable to ask. Let's come to them. I mean, we have to figure out how to do that and uphold all the standards and do it with the highest degree of integrity and respect for the process. But we can do that now digitally. Right, right. So healthcare, what else? So healthcare, education.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, again, like condoms. I actually think it's kind of fun to think about, I keep talking about this French thing, and it really applies to everything. So hymns and hers is wedge into the market was E-Dobactal Dysfunction and hair loss. Right. Because kind of like razors, that was a category where everybody kind of understood what the issues or the challenges or”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The product thing. Now, if you kind of flip it the other way and think about the consumer putting themselves a little bit more in the driver's seat in this situation, and they have more agency over what they, you know, they have more expectation of what they can get. And if you have a platform like Hymns and Hers that's making it more accessible to consumers.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you still can remember a few names because they're attached to silly issues or whatever. But for the most part, I don't think consumers hold on to the messages they hear there. They just know enough to know that, oh, restless Lake Syndrome is a thing. I should ask my doctor about it. But that marketing that the drug companies have done have really been more about the doctors. It's been more about resonating with them and connecting with them. And so, you know, the consumer goes into the doctor, asks about restless leg syndrome, and then they make the...”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a space I wrote about that. It's an incredibly important space. And I'm excited about investing in companies that matter in areas that are important worth of change really needs to happen. But here's a consumer at the center again. They have access to information. They're learning more about their own well-being, what it means to be a healthy person, more about their bodies. And at the same time, there's a healthcare system that has let people down. If you need an NPS on healthcare, I'm sure it'd be very low. So, the consumer has become more proactive with how they're going to approach this, which has really made healthcare bleed into wellness, which has opened up the category in a big way to new products.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, you fall apart, right? I think anybody who was smart and ambitious that wanted to work at Foreigner would feel the same way. So what we have always been thinking about laying the groundwork for is like, how do we take how we've looked at this ecosystem, how we've sort of parsed it apart and thought about how the consumer is pushing change, and think about that in the context of other ecosystems. And I think what I'm so excited about now is that we've identified a handful of those. Can you tell which one? Yeah, so probably the next thing that we've been spending a lot of time on as a team is healthcare.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the things I love about being investor get back to our early thing is the variety and the constant opportunity to learn. If I had to spend my whole career thinking about retail, I would be bored. And I think when you get bored,”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was the thing I knew. It was a thing I could speak with. I knew how to look at that ecosystem. And we put together what I think are a dynamic group of companies that were addressing that opportunity. There's B2B companies, there's product companies, there's service companies, the D2C companies, the direct-to-consumer companies have gotten a lot of attention because they're brand and they're in the press, but the portfolio actually has a lot more dynamics to it.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the goal was to build a first class investment firm and was to do it on a playbook that we were developing, 750 million under management. And we're about midway through investing out of our fourth core fund. And when we went to market in 2012, I thought of the commerce angle as the wedge”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Walmart. Walmart. Stadium goods sold to Farfetch. Right. We've had a number of smaller ones. And I think we have a host of companies that I feel like are very promising. I don't know that these billion dollar valuations are judges of things. So what is the market?”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Quite What do you think about the context of Forerunner? So, if the goal was, and the goal was at the beginning was to be a great investor and to build a firm that mattered, that could generate top tier.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So when you look at something, I'll get away from away for you, no problem, but When you think about these things, where next is what I think is the difficulty for someone? Like, would you sell it? Do you keep getting bigger? How do you then determine that? Because obviously you've shown incredible success at figuring out the right that's really quite good. But getting to the next level, what is the challenge you face now as you move? What do you think about the context of Forerunner? Yeah”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's the day and age we live in. Consumers and employees are going to hold everybody accountable. I actually feel pretty good about that.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most of the companies. Well, I think, okay, so a lot of what was reported in that story was a 2018. And the path forward, yes, excuse me, sorry, was really about we need to build out the senior team. Like we've had incredible people that have thrown themselves into building this company, but we need to bring in experience. We need to bring in senior leaders. We need to create more process. And that's what this last year has really been about for the company. So the timing of the article not to get into it too much, but was like ironic and unfortunate because it was a lookback. Right.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is execution? Which is execution. So, what do you do when you have that? When you have something that's very clearly a product success and you have difficulty in that way, you're going to see that in most of the companies. Most of the company.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's really tough. I think that to their credit, they had an incredible three, four years of growth and were very much 2019 was about building the executive team up. They added eight to nine C-suite SVP VP type people. And we're in the process of kind of making sure that they were ready for the next leg of growth, which is excellent.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And to do that under the microscope, under the pressure that maybe you've invited or created for yourself by all the attention that's been given, but nonetheless, it's pressure and it's real. And under the microscope of a world that sort of... Does like to as much as I like to think we like to celebrate successes, we also like to kind of rubber neck at the disasters, right?”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nobody involved with the company replaced the CEO. That was a team led decision. And I think back to this idea of like, you know, startups are a messy journey. I think most people by and large are trying to do their best to navigate through that. They're trying to figure out how to be leaders while they build companies and grow companies.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Come out and make them better. Sure. There's tons of situations like that where you have a product that fits the market really well. There's obviously massive competitors just lying in wait. You know, when I searched away on, you know, I think I interviewed them and they're talking about not being on Amazon because they just steal their data, essentially. But, you know, you search on Amazon for a way and you get a bag that looks like their stuff. And then they're facing all these.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we kind of talk about the importance of staying nimble. You want to make that be your advantage. You want to be able to kind of take learnings quickly and put them back into the machine and come out and make them better. But while you're doing that, you're building a team and you're trying to get processes in place. And it's actually impossible to get everything to line up. There are peaks and valleys in every startup. And I don't care if you have a startup that looks like on the outside it goes straight up and to the right. It's just the line that means to that because there's tons of situations like that.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they've done an incredible job executing on that. I think they've really inspired people to think about travel different and to feel like I have a suitcase, I'm part of that club, and the business has been on fire. The business of startups is messy. I think that there's no plate, nobody has a playbook. If you are building something truly new and different and you're trying to do it that way, you don't have a playbook. You're making it up as you go along.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ironically, or not ironically, there was a couple of suitcase companies pitching. And it always stood out to Yuri and I at the time who were working closely together on that, was that those two came in and they didn't pitch a suitcase company. They pitched a generation of people who were more adventurous than ever. They wanted to travel. They were getting up and going. They were, you know, out on the move learning and exploring. And they wanted to create a brand that resonated with that group. And the go-to-market for that brand was a suitcase.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Another layer or another avenue, Amazon. And they accelerate even faster. Right, and unlocking the right change. Because DTC has really seen so many people in this now. And you're seeing struggles like it away. You're not at a way, are you?”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To keep the journey moving forward. The third one is a company that has a plan, goes to market, hits the plan, and everybody feels optimistic that it's working, like the initial ideal looks like it was good and the market looks like it was ready for it and things are kind of moving in the right direction solidly. And then the fourth type of company has that same setup, but I think they have a priority around kind of what type of culture they're building, what type of people they're hiring, how they're building teams, and how they're empowering people. And they get those people on board, and they're able to unlock the best versions of themselves or their contributions, and they start uncovering like another opportunity or another layer or another avenue. And they accelerate even faster, you know, and I think that I guess if you're asking me what the difference in the breakout is, it's like beyond just having the right idea at the right time, it's getting the right people on board. Right.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Either the timing was wrong or the value prop that you were leading with was wrong, or your approach on entering the market didn't fly, and it just doesn't go where anybody wanted it to go. Number two is you. Enter the market with the same set of things, and some of them are right, and some of them aren't quite clicking. And so you're kind of on a choppy path to try to figure out what is the right combination of things where you can get some traction. But you have enough insight and enough. Things that are working that you can kind of keep clicking them to start.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I kind of think about, I'm going to talk in generalities and then four types of kind of startups in the early days. Assume everybody starts with a big market opportunity that's going through transition or that's new to the market and they have a novel idea of how they're going to approach it, whatever the product. You go to market and your hypothesis was wrong.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I feel very fortunate to work with a whole group of dynamic, amazing founders who are all showing up every day and trying their hardest. Some of them have more stars aligned than others and really have big breakouts. And I feel incredibly grateful to have a good number of those in our portfolio. Have 80 some companies. Know there's a lot of them that have been harder. What's that we would have expected?”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It means something where you went, ah, that was not the right. Where was your instinct off? Because you seem to have an unerring instinct for a lot of these companies, when to sell, went to invest in them.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think one of the also encouraging things that are happening is people are becoming idea focused. They want to be part of ideas, they want to be part of movements, they want to stand for things. And they want to find different ways to express that and connect with that. And companies have always been a way to do that. But today, because you can interact with them on Instagram or you can interact with them in a store or all these different multidimensionals. There's a lot of, it's a deeper connection that you can form 100%.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so customers don't want to live their whole life online. The good news is I think people are moving back to the middle. We had an analog world. We moved to a digital world and now people are realizing that they want to have relationships. They want to be in person. They want to touch and feel. They want to convene with each other. And they're moving back to the middle. And I think to have a big business that reaches a lot of people, that satisfies a lot of dimensions, you have to learn how to operate on all of them. So I don't even think about e-commerce anymore. I don't even think about D2C anymore. I just think about building a business in 2020 and all of the different kinds of ways that you need to have a touchstone to your customer. Actually, more than anything, kind of the different opportunities to have a connection to your customer.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“open there but I've kind of always believed this, that I think that the best companies, the opportunity, if not the demand today, is to meet the customer where they want it, when they want it, how they want it.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what is that relationship to store to the online company? Because you see there's a block in DC that Glasia is not there, but I'm waiting for Glossi to open there. But there's a bonobos, there's like, there's one of each. There's a Warby Parker. There are all these online things that have then become real, real boys, I guess, or girls, boys and girls”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a collective. Yeah. Right. And I think that you have a spokes bottle? No, no, we don't. You don't. We don't. And we don't even use the same set of models. We've moved models over time. And I think Emily is very conscious about the balance that she plays in terms of being a figurehead for the company, but not being the face of the company. Right.”
2020-01-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Kirsten Green · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT