YouSaid · the spoken record

Sean Flynn

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26
first
2016-07-27
most recent
2016-07-27
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “There's over $700 billion of credit outstanding out there. It doesn't take a lot of customers for Tally actually to become a really big business. Two, the consumer lending space can be a really competitive space, particularly from a customer acquisition perspective. But we felt like Tally had this really unique angle and this unique insertion point for how they were creating value for their customers that would allow them to have an advantage from a customer acquisition perspective. And then three, finally, we had great residents with the founders, with Jason Brown and with Jasper Plattz. They had many of the characteristics that I alluded to earlier around tenacity, around this gravitational pull that gives them unfair access to capital and to partners and to talent. And we're really excited to be a part of the company.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “The most recent investment is a company called Tally. So, what Tally is, is it's a way to manage your credit cards so you don't have to worry about it. What you do is rather than trying to remember the five payment due dates for your credit cards, you pay Tally once, and then Tally turns around and pays off your credit cards. And doing that, they make sure, one, you never incur late fees. And two, they pay off the highest APR balances first to ultimately save you money. On top of that, what they'll do is they'll offer you the tally credit line for a variety of different reasons. Credit cards charge APRs that are artificially high relative to the underlying cost of that credit for each individual. Tally is able to avoid that and offer ultimately a far better rate, which again saves money for their customers. The reason why, or the reasons why we made the investment really kind of boils down to three things. One, the market is massive.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “So I'm going to cheat and name two industry side and the technology world, my favorite email to open is Nuzzle. I find that when I go to Twitter, it's just really hard for me to find the signal from the noise. And what Nuzzle does is basically it filters all the news through the context of my friends that I follow on Twitter or through my friends on Facebook. And as a result of that, I find that it's the place that I find the most interesting content related to the technology world. Outside of the technology world, I'm a huge fan of 538 blog. I have varied interests. I love sports. I have a deep interest around politics. And 538 blog was started by Nate Silver, who became famous predicting the last two presidential elections. And they write about these topics, but they write about it from a perspective of using data to draw conclusions and to predict the future, which I find really fascinating.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “So, with Doug, you know, we had known him for a long time. We had great conviction that he was going to come in here, he was going to make great investments, he was going to deliver phenomenal financial returns to our limited partners, to our investors. And so obviously that's critical. But even more important to us than that was that he would be a great cultural fit. The fact that we had known Doug for a really long time, each one of us as a partner was really important to us. We knew that he would come in here and that there would be a sense of mutual respect, a sense of mutual trust, making sure you get that right is critical. Partnerships can be tricky organization to run because it's not like there's one single person who's responsible for everything, making sure that those relationships are positive is a really important way to make sure that the organization is successful.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “My favorite book changes often given the circumstances of my life. Right now I've got three young kids and so I spend a lot of time reading children's books. And there's this one book called What Do You Do With an Idea. It's by Kobe Yamada. I think children's books generally are actually quite underrated. They have oftentimes these really special ideas, these special messages and they're presented in a really simple way. This book is about this boy who has this idea and there's a physical manifestation of his idea. And at first he's not quite sure what to do with it. It's a little awkward. It's a little weird. He thinks people are going to think it's stupid and some people actually do think it's stupid. But over time it continues to nourish it. He continues to let it grow. And in the end, it does amazing things because that's what I ideas do. They ultimately change the world. I think it's a great message.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “For me, the pro is the people. Every day I wake up, I get to spend my time with really smart, passionate entrepreneurs. People are trying to change the world, trying to make it a better place, and using technology to do that, which is the personal passion of mine. Every interaction that I have with these smart, passionate founders is a learning opportunity for me.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I think those are two emerging areas, but I'm trying to think about what other applications are uniquely suited towards being solved with this voice interaction experience. The second area of interest for me is platforms that would allow developers to build once and then distribute across multiple voice platforms, across both Amazon, ECHO, and Alexa, as well as Siri, as well as Microsoft and Cortana. Ultimately, I don't think it's going to be just these unique applications for voice, but I think many of the large technology providers today that are on mobile that are on the web will want to use voice as a way to extend their brand with their customers. For those developers, I think being able to very seamlessly develop once and then distribute across multiple platforms has the opportunity to create lots of value. So looking for opportunities around that idea as well.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I'm a huge fan of Amazon Echo and Alexa. I got it early on. We have two of them. We've got one in our bedroom. We've got one in our dining room. Our kids use it all the time. And this is really magical experience. Again, when I'm sitting at the dinner table, I don't want to take out my phone. That's actually a cumbersome way of interacting with the internet. But if I can just talk to Alexa, it's a magical experience. And so when I look forward, there's a couple areas that I'm excited about exploring. One is what sort of applications are uniquely suited towards a voice interaction paradigm. You know, early on, I think, two applications that have emerged around music. A lot of people control music in their home with Amazon Echo. Obviously, the same could be done in the car. And then two around home automation, using Alexa to turn off the lights, to do whatever it is I want to do in the home.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “To those contexts. And I think voice is extremely well positioned to serve the needs when people are in those circumstances.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “A couple challenges that series faced. One, being tethered to the mobile device makes it more of a challenge for people to truly understand the value of that interaction paradigm. Oftentimes, if I've got my phone right there in front of me, a couple taps into an application is going to be easier than trying to talk to Siri, particularly when the underlying technology, the intelligence algorithms behind Siri are still maturing. And so I think people have been largely underwhelmed by the experience that they've offered to date. What makes that different for me, it's all about context, right? So in the car, I'm not going to be grabbing my phone, tapping the phone because obviously it's very dangerous in the context of my home where I'm sitting at the dinner table. I'm not going to have my phone with me. But those are still places where there's value to be created by interacting with computers. And so what's the type of interaction paradigm that's well suited?”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “The one use case that I find more compelling, at least in the near term, is around these applications that are really native to the communication experience. It's not booking a taxi or booking an Uber that I think is native to that experience, but it's things that happen between two individuals or a group of individuals when they're communicating. Things like GIFI, where I want to convey an emotion, I want to convey a feeling oftentimes a gif is going to be more effective means of doing that than me trying to articulate it myself. Applications like that, payments is another one where, you know, again, in the context of a conversation between two individuals, I want to send money to you. It would make sense that I should be able to do it in that setting. But the single player experiences, it's just harder, again, for me to believe that at least today these messaging platforms are good context for trying to tackle those challenges.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, you know, I think even before you get to the business model, you're figuring out the use cases, figuring out what problems you're solving for users. Because if you can't do that, then it doesn't really matter what your business model is. So it's hard for me to come up with a generalization around business model when we're still just figuring out what value we can create for these end users.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Utilitarian applications that messaging is going to be able to catch up quickly in that regard. Now, there's a different class of applications, applications that are native to the communication experience that perhaps are more valuable early on. If you think about things like GIFI, right, that is something that's very native to a conversation that you and I might be having. If you think about payments that's native to a conversation that two individuals could be having, things like that might emerge earlier, but this idea that messaging will be the single place for all utility-driven applications I find harder to grasp.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yeah, it's interesting. I think this one is probably more hype than reality, at least at this stage. It makes a ton of sense why the big messaging platforms, Facebook, Kik, and others would want to turn their ecosystem into a development platform. I totally get why they would do it. It creates stickiness. It creates defensibility for them when you've got application developers building on top of that platform. What I feel like at this stage is more about the platforms trying to create value for themselves than actually think about the value they're creating for their end users. If you think about many of the applications that have been built to date, oftentimes it's actually a more cumbersome experience to try to do that in the context of a messaging application rather than going directly to the app itself. I believe that really well designed and smart software can be a magical experience. I find it hard to believe for at least for you.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I think ultimately that's where the really big wins will come in the long term, absolutely. I think of it a little bit akin to GPS, going back 10 years. When GPS was first emerging as a technology, people were focused on building that enabling technology and there were interesting companies who tackled that with these sole purpose devices like Garmin and others. But what really unlocked the value is when that”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Long term, absolutely. I'm very excited about long term, the potential value to be created from these platforms. If you think about the types of applications that can be created across education, across healthcare, across the enterprise, there's just so many ways those platforms, those computing paradigms can create value. That is really exciting. The other thing we have to think about as early stage investors is timing. Being early doesn't always pay, right? When I think about where we are and the development of this technology, I think we're still developing the underlying enabling technology. And so I think you can build interesting companies that are focused on building the enabling technology. But what I get most excited about is the applications built on top of that. And it'll probably be some time before those applications really emerge. There'll be some time before you get enough of an installed base to build a big enough business. It'll be some time before those enabling technologies.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Is a couple other categories in mobile where I feel like there's still lots of value to be created. Consumer health, how do I monitor my health? How do I get diagnosed with regards to certain illnesses? How do I treat those illnesses? I think those are all challenges today. And I think the mobile device is uniquely positioned to help solve those challenges. Consumer financial services is another category. Managing your finances as an individual or as a family is really challenging for many people, right? And many of those decisions that we make with regards to our finances are when we're out and about in the world. Do we buy this item? Do we have the budget to be able to afford this mobile devices are uniquely positioned to help solve because it's with us when we're out there in the world? Bottom line, we remain really bullish on the opportunity to solve some of these big problems and create lots of value, both for consumers and for the companies that create.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “And now people are saying. Yeah, you know, it's interesting in the venture world and the technology world, the pendulum can swing fast and people tend to follow, oftentimes like lemmings. In any event, I mean, there are reasons, you know, legitimate reasons for why I think people are articulating this view. The mold market clearly is more mature than what it was five years ago. It is really hard to get noticed when you're in the app store, right? And this idea that the big winners today will be big winners five years from now is a real challenge. That being said, I think there are still lots of unbet needs and lots of challenges that consumers face that workers in the context of their professionalized face, that mobile as a platform and as a device is uniquely positioned to solve. I think all you have to do is look at the success of what Pokemon Go has had literally over the last week to realize, hey, there's still massive opportunities to deliver magical experiences and users by leveraging these devices.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah, it's fascinating how quickly this has become a meme that people are talking about just a couple years ago, obviously, it was the primary focus for many investors.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah. At the end of the day, the economics of a venture firm like Shasta requires that we deliver really big returns with some of the investments that we make because we invest when there's so much risk so early on, a lot of those companies will return no capital. And the only way you can make economics work in totality is by having really giant returns. And that only happens when you're going after big markets. That being said, I feel like oftentimes when you're looking to the future, it's actually hard to understand the size of a market four, five, six, seven years out, right? You can look at what a market is today. And by doing that, actually miss out on where the world is going. And so we do tend to relax that constraint a little bit. I mean, I provided the two examples there with Nero and at the time fan base and also Zach and movie clips where we ended up relaxing that constraint because we felt like we had special founders that were going to find a way to build.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “There's going to be challenges and failures along the way. These are individuals who have likely succeeded their entire life. And so this idea of hitting failure after failure, I think is really challenging for most people. And so I think it takes a special kind of crazy to be willing to accept that challenge and actually get energy from failure. I think when I think about this, I think about one of the first investments, one of the first investments, actually the first investment I made in a company at the time was called movieclips. It's now called Zephyr. And we spent a lot of time getting to know the founders and really resonated with the team, but we had some questions about what they were doing and the size of the market opportunity they were going after. We decided actually to pass on the investment given those concerns around the market size. And the founder, a guy named Zach James, effectively wouldn't accept no-free answer. And I just remember being so compelled by the way he tackled that. And it just became convinced this guy was not going to lose.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah, I guess I'd start by saying I deeply care about product. In my view, it's not. It doesn't really matter how great you are at marketing, at sales, at BD, being great in those areas obviously is important, but can't make up for deficiencies as it relates to the core product and experience that you're offering to your customers and to your users. And so something that we really care about. At the same time, we're early stage investors. We're often investing before a company has product market fit or when there's really only early signs of product market fit. As a result of that, it's ultimately the people that we're betting on that are going to take these ideas and make it a reality. I'd say there's a couple different things that we look for in the people. The first is what I call this kind of crazy tenacity and unwillingness to lose, right? I think I've got the ultimate respect for entrepreneurs who take a white sheet of paper and try to build something great out of it. It's incredibly hard. And the one thing you can pretty reliably predict is”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “So we invest in early stage companies, and I really push them to be almost overly focused in the early days, be narrowly focused on a product, be narrowly focused on a customer profile. Ultimately, yes, you've got ambition to grow well beyond that. But until you've got product market fit, until you're excellent in one area, really nail that first before trying to expand beyond that.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, there's a lot of takeaways, but I think two things. The first is if you're just showing up to work and your career is a nine to five activity, you're very unlikely to do something great. You're very unlikely to do something special. What I came to realize is that the people who take great ideas and make them a reality are people who care deeply and passionately about what they're doing. And Yahoo unfortunately just had too many people who just showed up for work. There were smart people, they were experienced, but they didn't have the passion, they didn't care. In my world today, that's something that we look a lot for in founders. The second thing I took out of my Yahoo experience that I think a lot about now is the importance of focus. Yahoo is one of the early leaders in the portal space tried to be all things to all people. That's an almost impossible task. You want to be great for everyone. It often leads to just being adequate or average for everyone.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “This is coming out of the first internet bust. A lot of people were questioning whether or not the internet had legs, but in my view it was the most transformational technology in my lifetime. And so I wanted to be a part of that. I joined Yahoo in 2004, ultimately was there for about five years. And my time at Yahoo, I can really break out into two separate periods. The first couple of years, I learned a lot, worked with tons of smart people. The company was doing reasonably well. And it was a really great way to get into the technology industry. But the last couple of years, it became a really frustrating place to be, largely because, you know, we were 10,000 people and we were driving very little of innovation and we were surrounded by 5, 10, 20 person companies that were driving way more innovation than we were. And that's what I wanted to be. That to me is really the heart of what technology companies offer to the world. And so that led to my desire to want to be in the early stage ecosystem. And ultimately from that, joined Shasta. And I've been here.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yeah, absolutely. My story starts quite early on when I was probably about 10 years old. My dad introduced me to the idea of investing. He was a lawyer, but he managed his retirement fund for his firm. And so he was always looking at different stocks to buy, et cetera. And he got me really interested in this idea of trying to look into the future, evaluate these companies, and try to predict which ones were going to be great. Fast forward to coming out of college, that led me to believe that I'd be interested in a career in Wall Street. That led me to Morgan Stanley. It ultimately was not the job I was looking for as an investment banker. You kind of step in, you advise companies on a transaction, but then you move on. So you understand these companies that are relatively superficial level, which was a really unsatisfying feeling. And I really wanted to be closer to what these companies were doing, what they were creating, the products they were bringing to the world. That's around the 2004 timeframe. That's what led me ultimately to join Yahoo.”

    2016-07-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mythbuster: Is Mobile Dying? Is AR/VR Overhyped? Is The Excitement Around Bots Justified with Sean Flynn, Partner @ Shasta Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source