YouSaid · the spoken record

Misha Esipov

lines on the record: 30
first: 2020-03-20
most recent: 2020-03-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“As always, I so appreciate all your support and I can't wait to bring you a fantastic episode next Monday and next Friday.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their remote engineering teams from the ground up without sacrificing experience or quality, from workspaces to community to on-the-ground support, they take the guesswork out of remote so that you can thrive. But don't take my word for it, just ask high-growth businesses like Gusto, Chime, Ernin and Hymns, all trusting terminal with their remote teams, and you can find out more today at www.terminal.io. That's terminal.io. And finally, you have to check out Drift, a conversational marketing platform, changing the way businesses buy from businesses. Drift helps today's marketers connect with more of their buyers when they are at their highest intent on your website. Right now, your perfect customer is on your website and you're giving them the same generic experience and same generic form. Drift will help you roll out the red carpet for your customers and allows them to leave your site with the information they need and a meeting boot with a member of your team. To learn more about Drift and conversational marketing, go to www.drift.com forward slash offers”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More from us behind the scenes you can on Instagram. I really do love to see you there. But before we leave you today, I'm sure you've heard about it, but my word, I just love this product, Carter. Carter simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, track captables, and get valuations. Go to carter.com, forward slash two zero VC to get ten percent off. More than 800,000 employees and shareholders use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity, and Carter now offers fund administration so you can see real-time data in the Carter platform and work with Carter's team of experienced fund accountants. Simply go to Carter.com forward slash 20 VC to get 10% off. And speaking of teams there, did you know there will be 1.4 million job openings for developers in 2020? And that's when my friends at Terminal come in. Terminal is a remote teams engine for fast-growing companies, connecting you with global talent to deliver the product building powerhouse your business needs to grow. They provide services and infrastructure in a complete solution that allows businesses to build and scale”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's always a trade off. I do want to finish it on my final question, which is the next five years for you and Fenova. Can you paint that picture for us?”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Finish up grad school and we're fortunate to get into both of those and start the company. Who's the biggest mentor to you? And what have you taken from that relationship?”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On ones in my exec meetings, I try not to overpower the room. I try to really take a back seat and listen and be careful in spotting any subtleties and making sure that I follow up with the team on them. In terms of weakness, it's got to be the same thing around eyes are bigger than my stomach. As a team, we have so much sort of boundless potential in and around our core business in our core product market fit. And it's always tempting to start to pursue the next thing or launch the next product or expand into the next geography. And it's as a team, especially in such a very early stage, you have to remain ruthlessly focused on the core business and doing everything you can to strengthen it. Who was the first Chack Into Nova and how did it come about? I actually don't remember who exactly came first. It would either be Peigmon in their summer program or YC's summer program. They sort of came in roughly at the same time. Both of those programs were spending a lot of time on Sanford's campus. Obviously, they have brands. And so we applied to a variety of accelerators as we were about to.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“During grad school, right when I was on the fence about whether or not to start Nova or go back to the finance world. And the book is sort of part philosophy, part biography, part self-help. And it sort of helped anchor me in an approach to life, which is the thing that will bring me the most fulfillment in life is to master a craft. And my purpose is to figure out what craft I want to master. And as I started to think about in that stage coming out of grad school, mastering the craft of financial innovation, financial and engineering versus building an organization, setting a mission, scaling a team, it became increasingly evident and clear to me that I wanted to master that graph of what it takes to build an organization that is incredibly authentic, that is enduring in what is in pursuit of. And that book just helped really anchor me in setting what was most important. What's your superpower and then weakness in company building? 30 seconds on each. My superpower is probably that I'm a very careful listener. I bring an incredible amount of attention to my one.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those expectations. And then those are things that you're holding them accountable to, whether it be scaling a team or shipping product or delivering certain partners or customers, that level of just like clarity around this is what I am expecting. Inevitably, especially in the early days, your eyes are bigger than your stomach, you think you can do more than you really can. And so it's then on you to develop your own judgment on the reasons that we may be slipping on a certain KPI. Are those controllable? Are those really outside of our control and they were unknown unknowns? And this individual is doing everything they can and everything that any other individual would do to drive them forward. Yeah. No, I do agree with you in terms of the unknown unknowns now. I do want to move into my favorite element, though, Misha, which is the quick fire round. So I say short statement and then you give me your immediate thoughts in about 60 seconds per one. Are you ready to dive in? Ooh, that sounds fun. You ready? Yeah. Favorite book and why. What must I be reading? I got to go with the book that helped convince me to start a company. It's a book called Mastery by Robert Green. I read”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Team, we're setting the example in front of the company, in front of all the future hiring managers around this being an area of extra investment that is critical to the long-term endurance of the company. Can I ask, once onboarded whether diverse or not, sometimes it doesn't work out. And the big question that I always have is how do you know when to pull the plug versus when someone simply needs coaching, more time, more personal development? How do you think about this kind of question post-onboarding when performance may be lacking? First and foremost, you have to be very clear in aligning with someone around your expectations. I think a lot of, and this is something we've learned the hard way, because if you're not deliberate about here is what I expect out of this relationship, out of you in this role, then it's candidly not fair to them to then come back to them, you know, a few weeks or a month later and say, hey, I was thinking you were going to do this, but why did you do this? That's a misalignment in an expectation. But assuming you spend the time up front to say, here is what I am looking for, does that make sense? If not, let's have a conversation around why you think that does or doesn't make sense. It's a line on.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of the best talent world. Can I ask, how do you think about working with recruiters? Obviously, it's kind of a more intense wharf talent than ever before. We mentioned that earlier, but especially kind of with the diverse perspective in mind, how do you think about working with recruiters? I have never found a recruiter that can solve diversity. I think that is something that as a leadership team, you have to make a company-wide priority and do yourself. For example, I am working on several executive searches right now in the first slate that one of the top tier executive search firms here in the valley brought me was like 95% male and the five percent that was not male were candidates that i had put forward. And I said, hey guys, we need to pause this right here. This is not a slate that I'm comfortable moving forward with. We really need to push harder to bring more diversity into this slate. And that resulted in me personally emailing all of our VCs, asking for who are the strongest product and engineering leaders, personally reaching out, doing an incredible amount of outbound personally. So much work, but it's a necessary part to ensure that I'm personally setting in a leadership.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't get out of balance. And we then instituted a company wide OKR around team, creating a diverse team and culture where everyone can be their best selves. And we developed key results, metrics around ensuring that our mid-funnel across the company, across both engineering and non-engineering roles had a compelling level of diversity. And it becomes a red flag as a hiring manager if you're not seeing that level of diversity in the mid funnel. And so especially in the early days, negative effect of this is that it does take longer to ensure that you have enough diversity in your pipeline. But once you go through this process for a few quarters, it sort of becomes its own self-fulfilling thing where you build this brand as an organization, you are authentic as a leadership team to the rest of the company about how important this is to the culture here, to what this company wants to stand for and represent. And that can become an incredible force in being able to attract and retain.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What did you do deliberately and strategically to kind of ensure high quality diverse candidates, both in Paipan and the team, from your perspective? It's an incredibly difficult exercise and comes with its fair set of trade-offs. I think as an organization, we've been incredibly fortunate in that our founding team has an incredible amount of diversity coming from all over the world in terms of Nikki being an incredible leader, especially within the female fintech community. So it has to start at the top. You need to make sure that you're a leadership team, your executives have diversity because if you don't see that signal at the top, then it's very hard to build an organization that has that same degree of diversity that you need. So we started as three co-founders and we scaled up to 10 folks and all seven of those hires were male, despite having Nikki, my co-founder, not being male. And what that resulted in is just a wake-up call that this is something that despite having a female co-founder, we need to incredibly deliberate about ensuring that”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's our affair of giving the accountability. a fear of misperforming or choosing the wrong decision on the employee's behalf. How do you strike the balance of enough accountability without the fear from them of making the wrong decision? Unfortunately, you have to let the team on occasion make the wrong decision and learn from that. I may have an opinion and it will periodically differ from the team. I'll express that opinion. But at the end of the day, if it is a decision that they own in whatever function that they are in, it is not my place to override that decision. And so long as it's not, as Bezos would say, a tier one decision as in one that cannot be reversed, one that's a company killer, so long as it's not a tier one decision, I will not overstep my line. That is their decision. And so long as I've been consulted and they hear my perspective, if they still want to move forward, that is their call. And they will learn from that, whether it works out or it doesn't. Yeah, absolutely. I do agree in terms of that. Learning some of the post-mortems that can be done from it. I do want to talk about the team though, because I spoke to Iliam before the episode at KP and he mentioned the incredible diversity that you and Nikki have built in the team from day one.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you look back in the last years, specifically within your role, has there been an element that you found the most challenging to scale with”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can I ask have you seen your approach to CEOship change over the time in terms of kind of how you fundamentally approach the role itself and also kind of the tone with which you adopt within it?”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I have Matt on the show, and he's always my go-to for Aveling FinTech. So super pleased to hear about that. In terms of the conversations, though, they fundamentally back you, the founder. And do you want to ask about kind of your role as CEO and especially the psychology of it? So a bit of a personal question, but really interesting for me is how do you manage the psychology of being CEO, maybe especially given the first time founding status?”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I didn't agree with you more why we always believe in a small, very tight portfolio is I do want to ask it, because you mentioned your approach to conversations with VCs there, and you don't always get the money from VCs that you've maybe lied to you. What VCs didn't invest, but you really liked admired. And I guess, why did you enjoy those interactions so much?”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. Does that mean that the VC product could improve on? I'm often thinking about how I could do better as a VC. Where do you think VCs could do better or improve in your mind?”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the valley, we got into Page Month's summer program, Y Combinator's summer program. And so through that, we got an incredible amount of visibility from a very early start that sort of put us on the map in the first place. And so that gave us. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that kind of transparency up front really builds the trust in the relationship from the early days. I think a lot of VCs always talk about kind of VC Van Anni Land, especially when winning deals as competitive as Nova would have been. I mean, just to hear your perspective, what do you find most helpful about your investors on the one side? And then where do you think VCs could maybe do better or improve on the flip side?”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About our unit economics, how do we think about the defensibility of those unit economics? And ultimately, what are the steps that we're taking that allow us to continue to build a bigger and bigger moat around this or business that we started? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you did mention also that kind of the fundraises and the press around it and aura that you can build around it. And you've raised from some of the best in the business in indexing Kleiner to name a few. It's not always easy to raise them. So I'd love to hear your perspective because from the outside, often you get maybe a distortive view. How was the experience for you fundraising personally did you feel? We were T-”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Natural. We just got to get enough eyeballs and then the math will. A different style, and that has worked incredibly well for some of the largest consumer companies in the world We've approached it from a very different angle about being very And how do”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A direction for a business and executing on a strategy? Can I ask do you have to have that kind of mindset from day one and the cognizance to realize kind of the importance of the union economics fundamentals? Or do you think you can do the growth at all costs and we'll figure it out along the way? I think that's a philosophical.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I totally get it. I have to ask you sat there fundamentally taught you about how you think about value. I'm constantly reading the words of Howard Charlie Munger in terms of kind of value investing in the principles. How do you fundamentally think about value today? I'm sorry, I know it's quite a broad question, but how do you think about value today given that experience? I mean,”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“always have to have the optimistic mindset from the early days. I do want to ask you, because you imagine the early days there with GS and Apollo. It's kind of often denigrated though now as a path in terms of the investment banking path. I'd love to hear from your perspective. How transformative was GS and banking for you in your mindset today as a founder?”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would though love to kick off today with a little on you. So tell me, how did you make your way into the wonderful world of startups and come to change the way we think about consumer credit data with Nova?”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My word. I've heard so many great things from Market Index, from Ilian KP, and also from Pejm at Pe many, many years ago. But it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. So thank you so much for joining me, Stay, Misha.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your customers and allows them to leave your site with the information they need and a meeting boot with a member of your team to learn more about drift and conversational marketing go to www.drift dot com forward slash offers forward slash twenty VC. But now I'm very excited to hand over to Misha Esipov, founder and CEO at Nova Credit.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Team's engine for fast growing companies, connecting you with global talent to deliver the product building powerhouse your business needs to grow. They provide services and infrastructure in a complete solution that allows businesses to build and scale their remote engineering teams from the ground up without sacrificing experience or quality, from workspaces to community to on the ground support. They take the guesswork out of remote so that you can thrive. But don't take my word for it. Just ask high-growth businesses like Gusto, Chime, Ernin and Hymns. All trusting terminal with their remote teams and you can find out more today at www.terminal.io. That's terminal.io. And finally, you have to check out Drift, a conversational marketing platform, changing the way businesses buy from businesses. Drift helps today's marketers connect with more of their buyers when they are at their highest intent on your website. Right now your perfect customer is on your website and you're giving them the same generic experience and same generic form. Drift will help you roll out the rag carpet.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the World Education Services, and I do want to say this really was a team effort in terms of the episode Mark Goldberg, Pejman at Peer, Iliar Kleiner, Bill Tranchard, and Hemont at GC for some fantastic questions and suggestions today. I really do so appreciate that. But before we move into the show state, I'm sure you've heard about it, but my word, I just love this product, Carter. Carter simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, track cap tables, and get valuations. Go to Carter.com forward slash two zero VC to get 10% off. More than 800 thousand employees and shareholders use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity, and Carter now offers fund administration, so you can see real-time data in the Carter platform and work with Carter's team of experienced fund accountants, simply go to Carter.com forward slash 20 VC to get 10% off. And speaking of teams there, did you know there will be 1.4 million job openings for developers in 2020? And that's where my friends at Terminal come in. Terminals are a remote”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Welcome back. You are listening to the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and if you'd like to submit either guests for the show or submit questions, I always love to hear your thoughts and you can do that on Instagram at h stebbings 1996 with 2Bs, and I would love to see you there. But to the show today, and what a founder we have in the hot seats today, changing the world of fintech, removing international borders. And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome Misha Esipov, found and CEO at Nova Credit. The startup that allows you to use your international credit history to apply for credit cards, apartment rentals, loans and more. To date, Misha has raised over $69 million with Nova from some of the best in the business including Kleiner Perkins, Index, first round, pair, and core innovation capital, to name a few. As for Misha, prior to changing the world of credit history, he spent over five years in the more traditional world of finance, including time and Apollo in the world of private equity, and then also Goldman Sachs in the world of investment banking. And if that wasn't enough, due to the incredible impact that Nova is having, Misha also sits on the board.”
2020-03-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source