YouSaid · the spoken record

Kyle Lui

lines on the record
21
first
2015-02-23
most recent
2015-02-23
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

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  1. “Think about why you're really starting a company. Don't do it just because it's the cool thing to do now. Really think about what your motivations are.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I would build an iPhone app to help people do one thing better, whether that's building a skill or connecting with their family or something that increases their convenience. I think there's tremendous value there.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Municipalities. So I think that you have to make a call on where you see regulation going and specific to your question, I think that there is increased acceptance that medical marijuana is something that should be legal, not just in certain states, but potentially federally. And I think that we as a DCM, as a fund, really saw that regulations were shifting in a way that we hadn't seen in the last couple decades. And so this led to real market opportunity for innovators. And I think YEAS is certainly one of them.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Yeah, no, I think that's a great question. On the regulation side, I think that VCs generally have to take a bit of regulation risk, right? You either make a call that regulation is going in the direction that's favorable towards the potential investments you're looking at or they're not. And it's not specific to marijuana if you look at anywhere. things like the drone space, for example, in the FAA just recently coming up with regulations which largely have seen to be positive towards the development of commercial drone space or if you look at education as another example or a number of other industries even like Uber when they first started was technically illegal and a ton of”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “The team is always the most important because you can't build a company without a strong team. So, the team is always the most important team. Yeah, I mean, the team is absolutely the most important because with a good team, you can accomplish most things and fix most solvable problems. But if you have a bad team, it's going to be, or not a bad team, but if you have a lower performing team or you have teams that sort of lack a certain skill set that would be required to be successful in that market, then it's an uphill battle from the beginning.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Software given my prior experience. And so when you're kind of diving deep into specific industries, you can really provide tremendous value. And I'm sure other VCs say this, but capital is a commodity. There's so many different sources of capital now that you need to really provide things that are different. And I think that having that industry knowledge is quite important. And then the third area is metrics. So there needs to be some way to measure the current success of a company and how it's tracking. And for every company, there's some metric, no matter how emerging the industry. And so we look at those on the mobile consumer side. They tend to be around engagement and user growth. How engaged are the users?”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “The other two elements is the market as a whole that the company is looking at. And that, I think, is important for a few reasons. You have a few different types of VCs. You have some VCs that are generalists where they've done a ton of different deals across different industries and different markets. And then you have VCs that are very focused. And I think that the value of being very focused on specific industries is that you really build deep knowledge in those industries. So you have VCs that focus just on FinTech, for example. Me personally, I've been looking a ton into mobile enabled services, so sort of the on-demand space. I've also been actively looking at drones and the drone space and AI, which is quickly emerging. And as you and also obviously enterprise.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “No, we didn't. We actually met through a friend when we were traveling in Morocco, but that's an entirely different story”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And I don't think it's necessary, but if they didn't go to college, if they didn't graduate from college, I think they must have been doing something extremely exciting. They started their first company or they've done something that sort of replaces that because I think that for the majority of people, that's generally the path.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, when I evaluate startups, I'm really looking at kind of three major areas. The first is the team and who's the co-founding team or what's the background of the sole founder and how do they interact complement each other and how committed are they to this startup. There's no replacing in-person meetings here. I mean, you really have to meet the person. Sometimes we meet entrepreneurs, you know, maybe a dozen times to talk about everything from strategy, go to market, product, vision, hiring before we make an investment. And I think the people element really can't be underestimated.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Well, I mean, I've always had this thesis that your people are your most valuable resource and there's no other place where that's more true than in the valley where talent really has a number of different options that they can go to. And so I really believe that having the right culture and having the right incentives and rewards is critical for the success of a company. And I felt that there was a lot of unfinished work with ChoicePath and with work.com and then now having moved into venture. And so I've kept in close touch with the NIPERC team and I think that they've done a really good job of executing, of delighting their customers. And I think they're well positioned to really own this market.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Business rather than the clientele that was coming from daily deal sites. And so that ultimately led us to create the first version of ChoicePass, which is a corporate perks platform, which then evolved into focusing more on employee reward, which is actually the side of the business that was most appealing for Salesforce and what we focused on at Salesforce.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, I think that's a great question. So our original idea for Choice Pass was a mobile membership platform for local merchants. So back in 2011, 2012, your group on Living Socials were the king of the world and we wanted a way for local merchants to be able to cheaply bring back those customers. And we actually raised our seed round based on that. As the months went by, the data was showing that it wasn't working. And so we had to pivot. And so my co-founder and I, you know, we locked ourselves in a room, we had an all-day, several day strategy session where we were talking about what are the problems we can solve and then that ultimately led us to choice paths because a lot of the local merchants that we were talking about talking to really wanted more corporate business and they really wanted more regular”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “It was definitely an adjustment in the beginning because you're moving from there were 10 of us that we see every day and the tech and product team, there was five of us. And so from that to A massive organization where No one really, there's no way you can know everybody. It's quite a difference. And, you know, frankly, Salesforce was the largest company I've worked for by several auras of magnitudes. And so that was actually really exciting. We had our own, you know, we were essentially our own division. And so went from that. And then eventually I transitioned into Sales Cloud, which is the large multi-billion dollar entity. And I think if that were to happen from the beginning, I don't think I would have enjoyed myself as much. So it was actually a good transition.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Well, no, not necessarily, but what they were offering was pretty appealing, so it was because they were building a new HR cloud and our visions really aligned, I spoke to a number of execs at Salesforce and including the co-founders of Ripple who had just sold their company. To Salesforce a few months prior. And it was really about continuation of the vision and building something bigger and building the next billion dollar business for Salesforce. And that was really exciting for me and my team.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “This sort of talked about the roller coaster and our good times and just talked about how exciting it was to be part of Salesforce. But part of me again was sad because you always feel like you can build something bigger. And so there was always that aspect of it.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I think it was a little bit of both, but I think it was definitely a lot more excitement, especially sort of with the team. Everybody was really excited about Salesforce as a company, and when we started, we sort of looked at companies that we admire, companies that we'd like to partner with, potentially get investments from or potentially be acquired by. And Salesforce is definitely at the top of the list. And so the whole acquisition happened pretty quickly. They were pretty motivated and it was pretty strategic to a new... Division that Salesforce was launching, which is now called work.com, but prior to that was just sort of the generic kind of HR cloud that Mark Benioff was super excited about back in 2012. And we all went out to a very nice dinner, you know, the entire team.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, definitely online is the easiest way and learn an easier language. So at ChoicePass we use Python. And so there's an excellent course called Learn Python the Hard Way, which is an online course. And it just walks you through assuming you know pretty much nothing to being able to build kind of simple applications. And so just going through that process, I think is really helpful in working directly with developers, which I had to do both at my time at ChoicePass as well at Salesforce.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “No, no. I had taken some computer science classes in college, but I never really used it since my career. Before that was in finance. And since then, I've learned to code. I think it's important. But it isn't sort of a core part of what I did at ChoicePath. I was definitely the business co-founder, but you really have to learn much more about technology. And I was very humbling in the beginning. And it was a great learning experience for me.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, absolutely. So I actually started my career in finance. So after I graduated from college, I did a two-year private equity analyst program similar to the banks and was promoted straight through and thought I would sort of stay in that area for most of my career, even spent a few years in Asia. And it wasn't until I got to Harvard Business School that I started exploring technology. So when you get an MBA, it's a great time to sort of reassess what you'd like to do. And I took a course called Launching Tech Ventures, which was really the first class I've taken that's technology-oriented. And as part of that did a project with a product management director at Google. And then from there decided to kind of focus much more into technology and ultimately that led me to start a company.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Thank you. I'm happy to be here. And, Harry, I've enjoyed listening to some of your podcasts and my commute down to Menlo Park.”

    2015-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source