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Toni Schneider

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2020-03-16
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2020-03-16
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  1. “For me, that's a company called Pia Vita. They make a wonderful medical diagnostics platform for veterinarians. And I said yes to invest in them because I was so impressed by the CEO, Doreena Tis, and her co-founder, Sasha, and their entire team, that despite the fact that I knew virtually nothing about the veterinary space, I just really wanted to work with them.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I've worked with a lot of good ones. One example of a strong board member who has been a pleasure to work with for me is Ellen Powell from Project Include. I sit on a board with her in a diversity data analytics company called Atipica. And Alan has been very thoughtful and high impact. And she's somebody who really rolls up her sleeves and gets engaged.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I probably alluded to earlier is that this is about a lot more than just products and technology. It's about people and culture.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Right now, I'm learning or trying to learn about decarbonization to see if there's a seed stage investment opportunity in that space. And it's been challenging because it's a totally new area for me. And also the conventional wisdom is that it's not a good place to invest VC dollars.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I am a zero inbox person, so I try to respond to everything right away and then get to zero inbox at the end of the week.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “It changes a little bit every day. I try to be super responsive when people need me and stay out of their hair when they don't. I probably spend about half of my time with my existing portfolio and the other half meeting new entrepreneurs.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “For my all-time favorite book, I will pick their eyes were watching God by Zora Neil Hurston. And for business book, I think this is old school, but I think good to grade by Jim Collins is an absolute classic. And for something a little more recent, I really like predictably rational by Dan Arielli, really anything that he's written.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “It is, and people ask about the pros and cons of a distributed company. Like I said before, I think that pros are clearly access to a global talent pool and happy employees with good work-life balance, but the cons relate to very much what you just mentioned, which is how do you build relationships and trust with high functioning teams require trust and trust requires some amount of in-person human connection. I just think there's no way around it yet, maybe virtual reality will get us there someday or something else. But for now in-person connection is important and it's obviously easier to do when everybody's in one office. So if you're not, if you're remote or if you're working with remote investments, you do have to find ways for people to meet up in person. And it doesn't have to be a lot every day in automatics experience. I think once or twice a year, 14 is enough to get together, but you have to do that. You can't slack off on it.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “So, in the rest of the world, primarily Europe and Africa. And I think we're going to continue to see that. Just more great companies popping up anywhere, not just in Silicon Valley.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I think it's already changing. I mean, if you look at the True Ventures portfolio, we had three very big exits over the last two years, ring.com to Amazon, Duo Security to Cisco, and most recently the Peloton IPO. Now, these three companies have one intriguing thing in common. They were all built outside of Silicon Valley. Ring in Los Angeles, Peloton in New York City, and Duo in Ann Arbor, Michigan. So I think the Bay Area remains fantastic place to start a company. It's absolutely possible to do it in other places. So then the next question is always, where's the next Silicon Valley? And my answer is it's everywhere. You can locate your company anywhere and you can have employees who work remotely in whatever spot makes sense for them. So I believe that's the future and that's how we are currently investing at True. And I think it's going to continue to go in this direction. So we right now, I would say about a quarter of our investments are in Silicon Valley, about half are in the rest of the US, and in another quarter.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Fully Largely, this reason. There were other reasons, but it was largely this What was your concern about it? My concern was actually that they needed to have a centralized enterprise. They could scale an enterprise sales team to the customer base that they wanted efficiently. The way we've approached this at automatic is to say that there are jobs where geography is important. So it's just for the ones where it isn't, like developing software, you can do that from anywhere. So we should hire from anywhere in that case. Now, if you're a salesperson and you're interacting with a certain group of people in a geography, you should be in that geography. And that's okay. So we do look at each job and say, if it's”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yes, this is one of my favorite topics. I love remote or distributed teams. I believe tech companies will continue to become more and more distributed. And I believe that if you work on something that can be done by a remote team, software development being a prime example, that team will win because you have access to a global talent pool and you have people who are happy and empowered because they get to work from home in the exact way that they like to work. You also have fewer annoyances and distractions like commutes and superfluous meetings. And I think because of all of that, I think remote workers tend to just do better work and have lower stress. And where I see people going wrong is that they don't fully trust the remote model. They try to build a centralized company with some remote teams instead of going all in and building a fully distributed company, which I just think is a better approach. And I advise every company I work with to at least consider that model.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “We've definitely missed some deals. I think the ones to me that are interesting is that we've missed some deals because they just looked really different when we looked at them versus how they eventually turned out. So for example, we looked at Instagram really early and it was literally a different product with a different name. And we passed on it and then they later pivoted to Instagram. But by then it was too late for us to invest. So now a successful pivot is impossible to predict and be a lousy investment strategy. So I'm not sure we can learn a ton from that other that sometimes the timing is just off for us and there's nothing we can do about it. And you know what? That's totally fine. We can't look at and invest in every deal anyway. So we just focus on doing a great job with the ones that we pick.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I've definitely changed. So my original background is as a software engineer. So I definitely had an engineering product mindset coming into all of this. And really, I would say now in retrospect overestimating how important just the product is and the idea and the IP. So I always thought, well, if it's a great product, everything else will kind of take care of itself. And I've really changed to think a lot more about the people and the interactions and really the importance of the culture and what you're building in terms of bringing people together and balancing that. Obviously, you need a great product and that's a given, but that's not enough. And so I've really expanded my view of what it takes for all these pieces to come together and create something successful.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I would say in any interaction at work or really with anyone, I feel like fundamentally it's really important to be very, very respectful of everyone. So even when things don't work out, there's lots of positives that hopefully happen in the relationship and that people can take away from it. And just being really thoughtful and respectful. And again, think about it in the long run. You know, you might work again with this person. They might go off and do other things. Put it in that bigger perspective. And how can what they've experienced be taken forward? How can you be helpful going forward and explain why it just isn't working out right now? But that's not the end of the world and just putting it in that larger context instead of just this you screwed up here or it's not working out then bye bye. Let's move on. But just think about that bigger picture and just be very respectful.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Founders, and again, I was there myself. You always think about oh, I got to make this big, I got to have a big exit, it's the exit, it's making money for investors. And in the long run, that's actually not what it's going to be about. That moment, hopefully, if it happens where you have a big exit, that's just one little moment, along a long journey of things that happen that you learn, that you brought to this experience. And so try and think of it in that broader term instead of just focused on one endpoint.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, it depends on the personality of the founder for sure. But what I try to do is just talk about the business itself and where it's at and how the business is its own entity and organization and has its needs. And even though you started it and a big part of it is about you and the things you put in place, as it gets bigger and evolves, you have to just distance yourself and separate yourself and look at it, try and step aside and look at it like anybody else. Say, what does it need right now? And what can I bring to it? And where do I need help? Who can I bring in right now? Or what can I work on myself to really get better at this? And just don't think of it as about being about yourself. And another thing you can think about is what do I want to look back on five years from now, 10 years from now? Like what? What will I have taken away from this experience? And a lot of start.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “And this is hard because every founder feels very personally intertwined with their business. So when something goes wrong with the business, it feels really like a very personal failure to a lot of people. And I've been there myself. And it's really, I find it's important to acknowledge.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah, it's hard just in terms of not performing and giving feedback. I'm reminded of a workplace study that I read many years ago when they measured the stress levels of employees during a typical workday. And there was this distinct moment when everybody experienced a huge spike in stress. And it was always right when people were told by a boss or coworker, I have some feedback for you. That seems to really trigger people. And I think people are more receptive to feedback for sure when they have a good relationship in place. So good relationships are based on trust and trust is built slowly over time with small interactions that are consistent, where you make promises to each other, and then you follow through. So first thing is you just have to have good foundation in place. So you've already done a lot of work leading up to the point where you maybe have to deliver some tougher feedback about performance. And then secondly, I tried to make the feedback about what the business needs and less about the”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “You definitely scales. I mean, you can get to maybe 50 to 100 people where you can almost keep that just one list approach. And then you have to scale it by spreading across your management team and different parts of your business and making sure as people run different parts and you're sort of handing off parts of your business, people keep employing that approach.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Yeah, I think this is where I think startups can be stressful. And I think I'm probably in a small minority on this where I think they don't really don't have to be. And the example I would use is, I guess, the way we did it at Automatic, which was intense at times along the way, but I never really felt like it was terribly stressful. And I think the main reason was that we tried to always be really strict about focus and making sure we only worked on a few top priorities. So Matt and I always kept a running list of all the things we wanted to work on or maybe should be working on at some point and usually had like 30 or 40 things on it, probably even more because there's a lot of growth and a lot of ideas everywhere. And then once a month we'd spend hours going over this list, sometimes really agonizing over it and picking just three or maybe four things to actually work on and just put everything else aside for now. And that really helped keep the stress levels low for everyone. So I'm a big fan of just ruthless privatization.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “To me, it relates to, I almost feel like part of my job is to clear away all the obstacles that could take a founder off that path. So I think in a startup, a lot of times what happens is you just get bombarded and overwhelmed with just a lot of things you think you could be working on or you should be working on. And I feel like I can be helpful in clearing away some of the things that just aren't important right now. You know, say, yeah, we can deal with that later, but now really stay focused on the product. What's really important right now? Let's stay narrow on that. And that can be very helpful to have somebody around who helps you with that because the rest of the world around you is sort of bombarding you with messages about just thinking about the million different things supposedly you're supposed to be doing as a founder. And a lot of times you don't. It really just matters in the beginning to build a great product, build a great initial team, focus on your culture and the building blocks of that. And that's it.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I don't really feel like it's that compressed, to be honest. I mean, it does, you know, when a startup takes off, it does move quickly, but I feel like we get involved so early. We actually have a good amount of time on that first year or two when it's just people are completely focused on just the product. There are no customers yet. There's no distraction, ideally. You're just focused on really building that great product. And I think that's a great time for us to really get to know people and go deep and support them in going deep.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “I think the way I think about it is that the optimism is very important in the long view. As a founder, you want to keep very optimistic that in the long run, you're going to get there and you don't want to waver from that. In the near term, on a day-to-day basis, things can go wrong. Things will go up and down and zigzag all over the place, and that's okay. And you want to be flexible and be adaptable to that as long as you just keep the long view in mind.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “I've thought a lot about this because I've had a front seat to working with some wildly talented founders, people like Madded Automatic, Ethan Diamond at Bank, really many others. And I've noticed many qualities. They're driven, generous, creative, definitely very optimistic, great at selling a dream. There's one personality trait that I've noticed in particular, and that's, I feel like great startup founders seem to love to focus very deeply, even obsessively in one specific area. Take, for example, James Freeman from Blue Bottle Coffee. He went super deep into every detail of grading a great coffee experience, the origin of the coffee being the experience of walking into a cafe, the smell, the weight, the preparation of the drink, the feel of a cup in your hand. I mean, many, many, many details. And he spent 10 years of his life thinking about that and perfecting every aspect of it. And that kind of deep, deep-focused vision, I see.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Question It was actually eight years of doing both of those jobs. A big part of what made it work is that both organizations are structured in a very flexible way. Automatic is distributed so there's no office to go to, which was very helpful because it removed for me that guilt factor of not being there in person. So as long as I was super responsive to any automatic issues on email or Slack, it didn't matter if I was at home or at true or somewhere else. And then true is designed to let each partner pursue their own deals and ideas in their own”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “First, I'm just grateful that I have the experience of being inside a hypergrowth startup. That's a rare opportunity and a great learning experience. And I think it gives me a good perspective when I evaluate new teens and opportunities. Automatic taught me about open source, about using software as a platform or marketplace to empower others, about running a distributed company, all of those topics. Those are topics that I'm drawn to today when I'm investing. And there are topics that I bring into the mix across the portfolio. But most importantly, I'd say, even though my automatic experience is probably only a small part of my investment approach today, maybe 25%, the rest is really based on being part of the team at True. And like I said before, we're very collaborative group and we're committed to helping each other do great work and being part of that mix of people at True is really what has shaped me most by far as an investor.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “It helps me for sure. It's not a requirement though since there are plenty of very successful VCs who have never run a startup. But for me, it just makes it easier to connect with founders because I've walked a mile in their shoes”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “For me and for us is really, I don't think we call it that in the beginning, but really what has emerged as this idea of a founder-friendly firm. And that means different things to different people. But to me, what it means is that I like working with investors who act like mentors or coaches towards founders who really think about how can I help a founder be the best founder that they can be. And that is the kind of firm that we wanted versus maybe the more traditional VC firm or VCs can act a little bit more like bosses. And the other thing was just inside the firm, we wanted a firm that's extremely collaborative where we all work together very closely. We help each other. We share credit. We share blame. And that is the kind of firm we wanted.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Talented co founder of the WordPress open source project and automatic looked like a great opportunity for me to grow as a CEO. So both of these opportunities sounded fantastic to me. And I said yes to both of them.”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “For me, it started when I was a startup founder myself. I was going up and down Sand Hill Road, raising money for my companies. That's how I first learned about venture capital. I did that twice in 1999. I raised money for a company called Uplister in 2002 for Oppost. And then in 2005, I was working at Yahoo when Phil Black and John Callaghan decided to start true ventures. And Phil had been a friend of mine for years, and he and John asked me if I'd like to be a partner in their new fund. And at that point, I was interested in venture capital, but I never thought too much about being a VC myself. But I was intrigued and they basically told me, how would you like to help create the VC firm that you wished had existed when you were raising money? And that got my attention. And then at the same time, I was also talking to Matt Mullenweg about becoming CEO of his company Automatic that he had just started. And Matt is the incredible...”

    2020-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source