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Laela Sturdy

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59
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2024-08-16
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2024-08-16
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  1. “Multiple things at once or multiple things faster than the average because the reality that you see in most startups around this second act is that they talk about it in board meetings, have it on their plan for a long time. Hey, we're going to go international. It's pushed out a bit. We're going to launch this product. It's pushed out a bit because it's so hard. There's so many things you're doing to focus on the core. And there's so many things just to have the opportunity in front of you. But that is an example of a bet that more often is wrong, believing that companies can achieve that sort of second act or that expansion. And so I look for any evidence to show that there's an outlier. And at times, we'll make the bet without it or times try to creatively convince myself through data that there's evidence that this company has a chance to do it more than others do.”

    2024-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Capital G's Laela Sturdy on What Stripe, UiPath and Duolingo Taught Me About Company Building and Investing | How to Analyse Valuation, Market Timing, Sizing and Exiting | Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “In a network effect business, it makes a lot of sense to start in one category and build up the network. And it's hard to go multi-category at once. Met with several founders who their plan was to go multi-category, met with a whatnot team, and I met with them within four or five months of their Series A. They were already live in five categories. So you saw evidence, even if it wasn't too liquidity yet or didn't have the dimensions of a full launch, you saw evidence that they were executing a multi-category strategy. So whenever I'm underwriting a case that involves expansion beyond the core in what you're seeing, I look for any evidence and I'm creative. It doesn't have to be working yet, but you want to see some something that's a little bit of an outlier that shows you this team is different. This team can execute.”

    2024-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Capital G's Laela Sturdy on What Stripe, UiPath and Duolingo Taught Me About Company Building and Investing | How to Analyse Valuation, Market Timing, Sizing and Exiting | Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yep, that's exactly right. At times, and there's been times that, you know, I have broken that rule, and there are times that great companies show you the evidence of that right away. I'll give you a good example of that. So whatnot, which is an investment that I led a couple of years ago, I'm still on the board there. They're in the live commerce space. And we had been tracking that space for a long time. We really believe that there was a huge opportunity in live shopping to not only build a live shopping business in the US, but and globally, but to use live shopping as a wedge to display some of these older network effect businesses in categories like collectibles where it's really hard to dislodge the networks in those spaces. I'd been tracking a bunch of early stage companies in that space and really believe that the right approach was a multi-category approach. Met with most of the founders and understandably,”

    2024-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Capital G's Laela Sturdy on What Stripe, UiPath and Duolingo Taught Me About Company Building and Investing | How to Analyse Valuation, Market Timing, Sizing and Exiting | Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Multiple business lines, they are the exception, but using that as an example as a pattern recognition, I can lose my base case on price, on the rigidity of that underwriting framework. You need”

    2024-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Capital G's Laela Sturdy on What Stripe, UiPath and Duolingo Taught Me About Company Building and Investing | How to Analyse Valuation, Market Timing, Sizing and Exiting | Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Investment. And I really learned that is much harder than it seems to do. And it takes much longer. The chance of success once you've seen a large number of growth stage companies you realize is relatively low. So the example I can think of is now when I look at an investment, almost always my base case is I'm only going to underwrite what exists today. I can get excited about the possibility of the future and that's built into the upside case. But if there's not evidence of the launch of that product or any sort of insight around consumer buying real data driven, then I will not put it in the underwriting base case. And I've missed a few great investments for that. There are a few teams that really can launch products at a speed that is just the velocity is unmatched in the market. They have the right intuition and they really can create multiple product lines.”

    2024-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Capital G's Laela Sturdy on What Stripe, UiPath and Duolingo Taught Me About Company Building and Investing | How to Analyse Valuation, Market Timing, Sizing and Exiting | Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “One of the early lessons I got in pattern recognition and investing was believing more in the second and third act than I think really would transpire for most companies. So I'll give you an example again when first did the stripe investment or the credit karma investment, both of those are examples of companies that have really, really strong core businesses in totally different areas, but they also have compelling stories for all of the additional software and additional products that can come along with it. And those are examples of companies where their core businesses were so strong that you didn't even need to see the second and third acts early on in the evolution because the first lesson is fantastic. Markets are always way bigger than you expect. But we had many other companies where the core investment, the markets were not as big and you really did need to see the second or third act transpire in order to make it a great.”

    2024-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Capital G's Laela Sturdy on What Stripe, UiPath and Duolingo Taught Me About Company Building and Investing | How to Analyse Valuation, Market Timing, Sizing and Exiting | Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Buy AI, but you may have to think differently about their pace of adoption or the risk to their core business. So everyone thinks that time is different. This is faster. This is going to, you know, and it's going to break sooner. This is a bigger trend, which I think to some extent is true. But the core in taking the important insights from the past, taking the important insights across industries, and then being willing to see something new, to me it's that combination that makes a great investment decision.”

    2024-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Capital G's Laela Sturdy on What Stripe, UiPath and Duolingo Taught Me About Company Building and Investing | How to Analyse Valuation, Market Timing, Sizing and Exiting | Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I think insights will always be important, but if you rely entirely on insights, rely entirely on the past predicting the future, you'll never be a great investor. I think it's the combination of insights with an open mind. So the first time that I invested in Stripe back in 2017, it was that same insight around understanding S&B scale as, you know, Stripe's early customers were inception customers. There were startups getting off the ground. And the new learning had to be how do you think about S&B channel expanding into enterprise sales and what will be different about a developer-led sales motion compared to a decision maker led sales motion? What would look differently? The AI example that you bring up today, I think we're looking at the same things, which is enterprise AI customers, you're still going to have still in the existing world, you have companies that are going to buy software.”

    2024-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Capital G's Laela Sturdy on What Stripe, UiPath and Duolingo Taught Me About Company Building and Investing | How to Analyse Valuation, Market Timing, Sizing and Exiting | Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “One of the early lessons I got in pattern recognition in investing was believing more in the second and third act than I think really would transpire for most companies. So I would invest in a non-founder-led company. You point out, Satya, I know dozens of incredible CEOs that were not founders and have same but different mix of special sauce that makes them the right person to lead that company and often to lead the company through different stages.”

    2024-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Capital G's Laela Sturdy on What Stripe, UiPath and Duolingo Taught Me About Company Building and Investing | How to Analyse Valuation, Market Timing, Sizing and Exiting | Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source