20VC: If You Do Not Like VCs, You Have Not Worked With a Good One, How Andreesen Have Added The Same Level of Value As A Co-Founder, Why Market Is The First Thing To Consider When Angel Investing & Why Series A Is A Hiring Decision with Roger Dickey, Foun

Roger Dickey is the Founder & CEO @ Gigster, the smart development service combining top developers and designers with artificial intelligence. They have raised over $30m in funding from the likes of a16z, Redpoint, Marc Benioff, Ashton Kutcher, Michael Jordan and then previous guests Rick Marini and Felicis Ventures. Prior to Gigster, Roger founded Mafia Wars, where he built the business to $1Bn in revenues and 100m users. Roger is also a prolific angel investor and LP in venture funds with a portfolio including the likes of Docker, ClassDojo and Addepar, just to name a few. If that was not enough Roger is also an advisor to 8VC, Lemnos Labs and OpenDoor. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Roger made his way from founding Mafia Wars to changing the world of software development with Gigster? 2.) Roger has said before "if you dislike VCs, you have never worked with a good one". So what makes a truly great VC to Roger? What does Roger believe are the core components VCs can add to a company? How should founders view investors when investing in them? 3.) Following Roger's discussion with Mike Vernal, Partner @ Sequoia, why does Roger believe that the Series A is a hiring decision? How does this change how founders should think about the A round & present themselves throughout the round? 4.) Why does Roger think it is important for startup founders to invest in other startups? What benefits does this bring to you and your own company? How does Roger prioritize, time-wise between LP, GP and founder? 5.) When angel investing, Roger admits that he takes the "market first" approach. Why is this? How does Roger assess the element of market creation? How does Roger look to balance between founder first vs company first? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Roger’s Fave Book: On Intelligence Roger’s Fave Blog: Elad Gil As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Roger on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. If you are an early stage startup, the right infrastructure and support systems are critical, that is where First Republic is so good. First Republic’s resources network and expertise allow entrepreneurs to customise a solid foundation for their business. Why First Republic, well you get to leverage their incredible network of VC firms to prepare you for future fundraising events, you get to count on a single point of contact that will be there for you and your employees, you get access to exclusive events and networking opportunities. Their clients include the likes of Instacart, eShares and Wish just to name a few. Check it out by heading over to innovation.firstrepublic.com Segment allows you to collect data from every platform (mobile, web, server, cloud apps) and load it into Segment. Segment then sends the customer data to your tools and destinations where it can be used most effectively, destinations include email, analytics, warehouses, helpdesks and more. With over 200 sources and destinations on the Segment platform that can empower your team, Segment really is the last integration you will ever do and that is why the world’s best companies use segment to drive growth and revenue including Atlassian, New Relic and Crate & Barrel. Simply head over to segment.com to find out more.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  This is Founders Friday on the 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and it'd be great to see you on Snapchat @H Stebbings with two Bs. However, to our fantastic founder today, and I think this is probably the hardest person I've ever had to summarize in one intro, so here goes. Roger Dickey is the founder and CEO at Gigster, the smart development service combining top developers and designers with artificial intelligence. And they've raised over 30 million in funding from the likes of Andreessen Horace, Redpoint Marc Benioff, Ashton Kutcher, Michael Jordan, and then previous guests Rick Marini and Felicis Ventures. Prior to Gigster, Roger founded Mathew Wars, where he helped build the business to 1 billion in revenue and 100 million users. However, that's just operations. Roger's also a prolific angel investor and LP in venture funds, with a portfolio including the likes of Docker, ClassDojo, and Adapad, just to name a few.

• 0:45Harry Stebbings?

  And if that wasn't enough, Roger's also an advisor to 8VC, Lemnos Labs, and Open Door. And I do also have to say a huge thank you to Sundip at Felicis, Andy Rankin, and Roy at Bloomberg Beta for the helping with the schedule today for Roger. It really was so kind of them. But before we dive into the show today, if you're an early-stage startup, the right infrastructure and support systems are critical, and that's where First Republic is so good. First Republic's resources, network, and expertise allow entrepreneurs to customize a solid foundation for your business across all stages. So why First Republic? Well, you get to leverage their incredible network of VC firms to prepare you for future fundraising events. You get to count on a single point of contact that will be there for you and your employees when you need them. You get access to exclusive events and networking opportunities. But don't trust me on this.

• 1:30Harry Stebbings?

  Their clients include the likes of Instacart, EShares, and Wish, just to name a few. Check it out by heading over to innovation-firstrepublic.com. And speaking of incredible startups there, one that really is a must is Segment. Why? Well, Segment allows you to collect data from every platform: mobile, web, server, cloud, apps, and load it into Segment. Segment then sends the customer data to your tools and destinations, where it can be used most effectively. Destinations include email, analytics, warehouses, help desks. And with over 200 sources and destinations on the Segment platform, that can really empower your team. Segment really is the last integration you will ever do. And that's why the world's best companies use Segment to drive growth and revenue, including the likes of Atlassian, New Relic, and Crate and Barrel, just to name a few. Simply head over to segment.com to find out more.

• 2:15Harry Stebbings?

  But enough of these dulcet tones, so I'm thrilled to hand over to Roger Dickey, founder and CEO at Gigster.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:30Harry Stebbings?

  Roger, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. A huge thanks to Sundeep, to Andy Rankin, Raymond Tonsing for the intro. But thank you so much for joining me today, Roger.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Certainly, great to be here.

• 2:40Harry Stebbings?

  I'd love to get started with a little information that a birdie told me that you hacked between 20 to 100 ideas before finding Gigster. So tell me, what was that process like for you?

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Oh, man, definitely a grueling process. I'm one of those founders who likes to have a lot of confidence about an idea before I get into it. Before Gigster, we actually tried about 25 different ideas. We built prototypes, shipped them on Product Hunt or Hacker News. We learned a lot about a lot of different markets and around the future of work. Before my previous company, which became Mafia Wars, we built, I think, 19 or 20 Facebook apps. So it's sort of become my process, I guess.

• 3:16Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, you mentioned the learnings from those iterations. What were the big learnings from really kind of stress testing those 25 ideas?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Well, we ended up getting a really good feel for what people liked and what they didn't like. One of the main things we were testing per idea was the value proposition. So Gigster itself was basically a landing page that said, "Hire a quality developer in five minutes." And then it had a simple chat application on the backend that you could use to chat with us and hire said developer. So typically, the applications involved were pretty simple, and it was mostly a test of the idea. In some cases, we were trying something that was more complicated, more of a feature that we were exploring. We built something called Pseudo, which was an app that developers could use to get real time help. So that was more a test of, okay, they understand the concept. Everyone likes the concept on the surface, and they'll tell us that they'll use it, but then will they actually use it? It turns out in practice, they would use it once and then never again.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  So we would learn anything from validating the value proposition to seeing if users engage. One of our ideas, we had people engage, but they wouldn't pay. So kind of all along the value chain, we wanted to make sure we stress tested.

• 4:20Harry Stebbings?

  Two immediate questions from that is just, do you agree with the common thesis that paying for it is the ultimate sign of customer validation?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  I think so. I think it depends on the idea. In some cases, you want to make sure someone engages first. I think in the case of a freemium SaaS product, for example, it's okay. If someone doesn't want to pay right out the gate, sometimes they have to get enough of their data into the system. Or they'll say, okay, now this is worth my time.

• 4:42Harry Stebbings?

  But then how did you decide that Gigster was the one for you? And after those 25 ideas, that this was the one you were going to pursue?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Well, we saw an immediate and very strong response to Gigster. So we we launched Gigster November, December 2014, pretty much the same week that we launched. Actually, it was, I believe, within one or two days. We had $3 million worth of business submitted, literally, I think, for the first 24 hours.

• 5:05Harry Stebbings?

  It's quite a week.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And then after the week, there was a long tail there. But it was so obvious to us that people had trouble hiring developers. And if there was a get me a great developer now button, that people wanted to click it. So the challenge then became making that button work, building the backend of that system. And, you know, we, of course, like, like, like any founder, we kind of faked it till we made it actually work, which came a couple of weeks down the road. But, yeah, it was it was the response we saw. And something we did that I think was smart is we didn't charge for the service. We didn't have any way to pay, but we had a text box where you could put in what your budget was to hire a developer. And we weren't sure what people would put in, you know, if they'd take it seriously or not. And that's how we were able to tell that there was that much money submitted. We didn't just say, click here to hire a developer.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  It was click here to hire a developer and tell us how much you want to pay for that developer. So it was great to see that outpouring of support.

• 5:54Harry Stebbings?

  And at Gigster, you sit at kind of a very interesting intersection of two foundational shifts in society, being AI and the freelance economy and the rise of it. So talking about the future of work, Naval Ravikant said on the show, on a long enough timescale, everyone will be working for themselves. To what extent do you agree with this? And how do you expect to see some serious shifts in the labor market?

• 6:14Speaker 02

  I love this topic, and this is right at the nexus of why we founded Gigster. We look across industries and, you know, we've seen marketplaces start to address and start to transform several industries, several spaces. But I think it's still very, very early. So you you look at marketplaces like eBay. Now you have buyers and sellers that can easily transact. And eBay has been around now, I don't know, 15, 20 years almost. You have Uber, which is, you know, the personal transportation market that connects riders and drivers. Marketplaces these days are connecting people to do fairly simple Transactions, often fairly short transactions, even sites like Odess, Elance, they've tried to expand on this a little bit. You're able to hire people that you work with for a long time, but the platform itself is more of a matchmaker.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  And matchmaking isn't, it's not the whole, it's not the whole value chain, it's the very beginning of the value chain. We look more broadly across white collar labor and we think for more complicated engagement, for a legal transaction, for a tax advisor, management consulting firm, a creative agency, or a development service, which is the first area we're addressing, how could the freelance economy start to move in and be the labor market for an industry like that? Early, early on, we tried to figure out, how do we take a combination of developers, some combination of designers, a project manager, maybe a product manager, QA, take all of those actors, this heterogeneous set of different talent, put them together, and instead of a one-to-one transaction, like a $20 Uber ride that takes 20 minutes,

• 7:39Speaker 02

  can we use the freelance economy to address maybe a six-figure, six-month transaction? Or we're deeply in the middle of the process and monitoring the talent, making sure the client gets the outcome that they want. It's a big challenge, but we've been working on it for years and made a lot of headway. There's research ongoing at Stanford as well, so we're partnering with a group there that's working on a concept called Flash Teams, which gets freelancers together to deliver outcomes. So we're trying to learn as much as we can here. And I think the kinds of things we're learning about how to take freelancers and use them to build software are actually addressable to other industries. And the more, the more we learn about how freelancing can address different industries, the more we'll have this kind of rolling thunder effect and we'll see, we'll see the gig economy address more types of work.

• 8:21Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, what are those learnings? And you said about headway, what are those inflection points that really cement the freelance economy in the labor market in society?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Well, it's been a fairly marked trajectory for us. So when, when we first started, we were doing $5,000 projects, $10,000 projects. You know, we've been doing six and $700 projects. I remember two projects we did that were that small. You know, and people were asking us to build simple webpages that pulled from APIs or web scrapers, very simple mobile application prototypes. This is back in 2015. We've, we've since seen the average size of project that we're able to handle. Go up dramatically between our series A and our series B, which is roughly 2015 to 2016. We saw our average project size go up from 15,000 or 20,000 to about 150,000. At the same time, you know, you'd expect if the model wasn't working, you'd expect that our customer satisfaction would go down,

• 9:11Speaker 02

  that our delivery on time rate would go down, our margin rate would go down. And we actually saw all those metrics go up, which was, which is pretty stunning that as we address more and more complex projects, the model has these network effects, it has these inherent efficiencies of scale that allow us to get even better as we do more complex types of work. That's a marker to me that shows, that shows the system's working. When we can do $500,000 project for a Fortune 500 client and they rate us 10 out of 10 on every, on every milestone that we deliver.

• 9:40Harry Stebbings?

  You said about the series A to B milestone and then the scaling. I'm intrigued, as I always am with the VCs and the fundraising aspect because you tweeted, if you dislike VCs, odds are you've never worked with a good one. What makes a great VC to you then?

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Well, we've actually been, and I don't mean to advertise for our investors, but we've been, we've been really happy with our investors. I think the stereotype on investors is that sometimes they just put money into a company and they're either unhelpful or worse, they can battle with the way a founder wants to run the business. We've seen with our investors, particularly with Andreessen Horowitz, that it's the opposite. Now, their model is a little different. I think they have 150 operating partners at the firm. So on top of the investment partners who, they're helpful here and there, you have these operating partners that will come in and say, oh, you're trying to hire a, you know, head of sales engineering. Well, that's, that's a role you've never hired for. Here's, here's 20 candidates. Here's how we'd recommend you interview them. Or, okay, you're, you're trying to hire a PR firm. Here are the five agencies our companies have worked with, and here are two that are excited to talk to you.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  No matter what it is that we need help with, we found that Andreessen is able to help. And I think there's other firms that have these type of facilities as well. As part of the thesis at Andreessen and what I think the mindset other firms have is they like to go after these highly technical founders, highly product oriented founders. When you do that though, you run into people like me who haven't, for example, built a, built a large sales team before. They haven't hired a top PR firm before. So when the firm Is able to come in and provide support structure there. You take these highly technical founders and you you're sort of able to augment them, you know, supercharge them and turn them into successful companies. So we've been thrilled to see that our investors have come out of the woodwork and helped in various ways. And I think, you know, one of the ways we think about it is Andreessen owns some large percentage of our company.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Let's say 10 to 20% of the company. We think of them like a co-founder and they actually have added the same level of value that a co-founder would.

• 11:31Harry Stebbings?

  But talk to me, because you've said the Series A is a hiring decision. Now, is that aligned to the hiring benefits you just suggested there with Andreessen? Or is there a different meaning to this?

• 11:40Speaker 02

  There's a different meaning to that. I was talking to Sequoia partner Mike Vernal about how Sequoia thinks about Series As. And I think this this would apply to Andreessen as well. He said that Sequoia sees a Series A as a hiring decision in the sense that the firm is hiring the founders in a way. They're hiring the founding team. So they're asking you a lot of questions that aren't about your traction or your product necessarily. They're trying to figure out, is this the is this the kind of founder that we want in the Sequoia family? Is this somebody we're willing to support no matter what happens? You see, you know, with the recent news about Benchmark and Uber, when investors don't support their founders, there's a very large backlash that you see in Silicon Valley. That's the kind of thing that's expected from investors. So when you choose to work with a company that's that early stage,

• 12:23Speaker 02

  you choose to work with a founding team as an investor, you have to be ready to back them no matter what. You have to back them through future future rounds. You have to stand behind the founder. You've become a reference for the founder. So Sequoia and I think other firms, they look at the Series A from the perspective of, hey, is this somebody we want to point at all of our internal resources? Is this somebody who we're OK emailing with, texting with, no matter what time of day or night it is? One anecdote from Andreessen, when we went to the partner meeting, the final approval meeting for our investment with Andreessen, I think they asked us to talk about ourselves for about 10 or 15 minutes before the pitch, which was one of the scariest parts, actually, because at that point I had the whole company pitch memorized. I could give it in my sleep, but I didn't have a five minute pitch on myself.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  So, you know, we were outside in the car before the meeting frantically taking notes, trying to make sure we had a good way to talk about ourselves. And it turns out for firms like Andreessen, I think Sequoia, that's. It's one of the most important parts of that series A they pitch.

• 13:19Harry Stebbings?

  I'm interested. You've said about backing the founder no matter what. So how do you analyse the company first versus founder first dilemma and really the differences between the two in light of all recent events?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  I feel like there's been a shift here in the last five years ago, or there used to be this mantra, you always back the team. I forget who said it first. I think, you know, one of the great investors, Brad Feld, Fred Wilson, you know, maybe it was Ron Conway, I think said that. And then the whole ecosystem adopted that mantra. What I've heard more recently, maybe, maybe five years ago, around that time was, I think, I think this might have been Peter Thiel or somebody who said, who said that the market is actually the first thing that they look at. I believe in, you know, in the stack of things you look at from, you know, market to founding team to the actual products, to the traction they have, the team they've managed to hire. Of all those things, market is the first thing I look at when I'm making an angel investment, because I've, I've actually seen, I've now been investing

• 14:14Speaker 02

  long enough that I've seen great founders pursue terrible markets and the businesses just don't go anywhere.

• 14:20Harry Stebbings?

  How do you assess the transience of markets then and market creation? If you take Gigster, for example, the rise of AI and societal shifts within kind of approaches to and willingness to engage in freelance economy fundamentally changes not only the TAM, but just the intricacies of the market and therefore the potential of the company, does it not?

• 14:38Speaker 02

  I think it could change the perception of the company, but it doesn't change the market. So the freelance economy, the sort of artificial intelligence tools that we use, that's not the market that we're in. That's, that's more so how we're implemented under the hood. The market for us is software development. On the demand side at least, it's, I'm a customer, I need to hire software developers. How do I do that? There's a five to one ratio of job openings for engineers to engineers that actually exist. So there's a massive disparity in demand. So if we can make engineers more efficient, we can make more engineers, we can make them more accessible, that's valuable for our customers.

• 15:12Harry Stebbings?

  I guess I was asking then, how do you analyse market creation?

• 15:16Speaker 02

  There are certain elemental markets that have, have been around for, for centuries or even, even millennia. And as a founder, those are the markets that I like to go after. You know, I think it depends how you define a market too. You look at Uber, is that a new market? Well, we'll know. It's personal transportation, which, you know, used to be served by taxis. In other parts of the world, I'm sure for thousands of years, there've been people that will carry you around on a cart, at least since the wheel was invented. So, you know, I think Uber is just the most recent, most modern evolution of a product that can address that market. When it comes to software development, you know, Gigster is just providing a different way to hire software developers. I think there are some markets that are created, but those markets are pretty risky to get into as an investor. The ideas that I find the most compelling are what I would call A plus B ideas.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Proven market A with deep existing demand plus novel technology or concept B. So Uber would be taxis meets mobile phones. Airbnb would be vacation rentals meets an online marketplace. Ideas like that tend to be the most valuable.

• 16:14Harry Stebbings?

  I'm intrigued. You spoke about value within companies there, and one unique aspect of your operations that I'd love to hone in on is your ability to both angel invest and to be CEO at Gigster. You've tweeted before, work smaller and harder. I agree with you there. But a question from Andy Rankin, how do you have time? And how do you prioritize what's important with such kind of dual hats?

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Good question. Part of it is I angel invest far less now than I used to. There are a few different ways to invest. My focus these days is more reactive than proactive. If there's a founder who I know who's starting a business, if there's a great idea that I happen to see, I'll reach out to the founders. If I'm at a demo day, like a Y Combinator demo day, and I see a great idea, I'll write a check. I'm not proactively going after founders anymore. I'm not taking pitches in industries I don't understand. I tend to cluster around certain themes I've already done a great deal of research on. So if I see a great founder who's going after that theme, I don't have to diligence the market anymore. I don't have to diligence the company as much. I really just diligence that founder.

• 17:11Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think more founders and CEOs should be actively investing in startups?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  I think so. I think it's been very valuable to me to get exposure outside of my company to other founders, how they're running their companies, the challenges that they're running into. I think I'm now in about 70 companies as an angel investor. So I regularly get investor updates from companies that I'm in, able to regularly mentor other founders. They say one of the best ways To learn is to teach. So I've found that when I help out other founders, I'm able, I'm able to learn a lot about how to be a better founder myself. And I, I, I love learning from founders as well. And there's always something to learn from the people I've invested in. So it tends to be a great way to just look more broadly at how to, how to be a good founder than, than just in the echo chamber of my own company.

• 17:55Harry Stebbings?

  I'm also very interested, and this is getting into slightly nerdy finance, but as an angel investor and then as a founder, and then also as an LP. How do you assess kind of your personal portfolio allocation and kind of horizons and timelines associated, especially with the LP part being the 10 year lockup?

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Well, I, I think the typical advice is to not invest more than five to 10% of your assets in private technology companies. Because they're so speculative, your money's locked up for such a long time, even in the best case scenario. Really any number of things could happen that are hard to predict, you know, imagine being an Uber investor right now, like, who would have thought that one of the investors would be suing this CEO for fraud? None of these are things you can see in advance, let alone the fact that Uber, Uber was a 10,000x return on the investment up until recently. Who knows if it's going to get marked down? So it's, it's very hard to predict what happens. It's the kind of thing most people shouldn't really be doing, expecting a financial return. So in, in, in my case, I have 40 or 50 companies that probably, probably 50 plus companies that haven't returned yet.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  And that's, that's a good and a bad thing, right? They haven't returned. It means they haven't failed, but I also haven't seen any money come out of those opportunities. So I've tried to limit my personal allocation as much as I can, certainly for self-directed angel investments. On the LP side, there are some funds that are just consistent winners. You have early stage seed funds where you're, you're really making a bet on that investor. If you're investing in their first fund or their second fund, it's hard to really tell what's going to happen. Then you have these more blue chip opportunities, like if you can LP with Sequoia, Greylock, Kleiner and Drisyn, you're probably going to get your money back. You know, that's almost like a mutual fund. So I'm in a couple of things like that. Um, I'm in a couple of really early stage funds where I'm betting very much on the, the investor.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  And then I, I have my angel portfolio. I'm starting to pare that down a little bit though, because I need more liquid investments.

• 19:38Harry Stebbings?

  But I'd love to finish on a quick fire round and, and my favorite of any interview. So I say a short statement and then you give me your immediate thoughts. How does that sound?

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Sounds good.

• 19:46Harry Stebbings?

  So it's 60 seconds per one. What do you believe that most around you disbelieve?

• 19:50Speaker 02

  I believe that there will be a higher level of language for software that makes software easier to build. You know, we've gone from assembly to, you know, C++ to JavaScript, now to these web frameworks. I think there's going to be something even higher level than that, that makes software dramatically easier to build in the near future.

• 20:07Harry Stebbings?

  Favorite book and why? What must I read on the next plane ride?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  I like the book On Intelligence, which is by Jeff Hawkins, and it talks about how the brain is architected, for lack of a better word. So he gets into, you know, basically every neuron, why it is where it is, sort of a, almost a computer programmer's perspective on how the brain is designed. It's fascinating. It gave me a better understanding of how our brains work.

• 20:31Harry Stebbings?

  Top tools and tips for productivity?

• 20:33Speaker 02

  I'm a big bulleted list person, to be honest.

• 20:36Harry Stebbings?

  Paper or phone?

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Phone or, I actually love Google Docs. So I have a document called Notes that I've been keeping up to date with the latest things that are top of my mind for the last probably five or 10 years. So what's cool about that is you can actually rewind through the history and see what was, what was in my head exactly three and a half years ago or something. So I've, I've maintained that pretty actively. And I think Google Docs is a great place to keep a bulleted to-do list. And I, I use bulleted lists everywhere.

• 21:02Harry Stebbings?

  Universal basic income, the future or not with the, the rise of autonomous machines replacing humans potentially?

• 21:08Speaker 02

  I think we're going to need something like that. The counterargument here is, you know, even in the industrial revolution, people were saying that factories would kill jobs and look at us now, we have more jobs than ever. I, I think the rate of technology, the rate of technology expansion is exponential. The rate of what technologies can address and the jobs technologies can replace is exponential. So I, I think we're going to start to see more of an acute issue as humans and machines, I should say, as machines start to outpace humans. I don't think this is happening anytime soon, but it will. And when it does, we'll need an economic solution.

• 21:40Harry Stebbings?

  Blog or newsletters, always the must-read for you. Likewise, a writer, where when they write, that you just have to read it?

• 21:45Speaker 02

  I don't read as much as I should online these days. I would say I check Hacker News every day and there's a couple of great people whose blogs show up on there. I've always liked A.Lot Gil.

• 21:53Harry Stebbings?

  He's one of my favorites. He's got Such a good blog.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Tremendous, tremendous blog and just tremendous, tremendous human being. Love that guy. I'd have him on the show if you can.

• 22:02Harry Stebbings?

  I have indeed. I've had him and I'm going to ask you a question that he posited. He said that the amount of investors investing in deep tech reminds him of the green tech and clean tech days of 2000 to 2003. Do you agree with this statement and the potentially concerning elements of investors entering markets they maybe don't know so well?

• 22:19Speaker 02

  I would agree with that. Yeah, I'd absolutely agree with that statement. I think it's more happening on the angel and kind of seed fund level. Where you have people that are, they're trying to find the next big opportunity and they think, they think that's where it is. Every investor is looking for their, their Facebook, their Uber, their, their massive 10,000 X return. I don't think there are opportunities in, in social or photo sharing apps right now. So the, especially with the, the issues Snapchat's had in the IPO. So people are looking elsewhere and deep tech is the most interesting thing happening right now. I think artificial intelligence is the wave. It's, that's the trend right now that's forming new companies. So you have a lot of people that are investing in teams that probably aren't the best teams to be going after those opportunities. I think there are going to be a lot of losses, but there will be a few winners.

• 23:00Harry Stebbings?

  What would you most like to see change in VC and startups?

• 23:03Speaker 02

  What I'd like to see change, at least from the perspective of founders raising money, is a more meritocratic process. I think this is, this is very hard to achieve in practice because you look at a company and you can't plug it into a spreadsheet and tell that it's going to be a good return. If, if that was the case, investing would get a lot easier. But I think there are a lot of aspects to fundraising. They're very subjective. They can introduce biases even into the process. You have some founders that are good at raising money, some founders that aren't as good at raising money. I know great people with great businesses that have a lot of trouble. They don't, they don't have the investor interest they should. So if there was a way to make the process more meritocratic, and I don't know what that is, I'd love to see that happen.

• 23:41Harry Stebbings?

  Next five years for you and for Gigster, what, what does the road ahead look like?

• 23:45Speaker 02

  So for me, for me, it's to work on Gigster. For Gigster, it's, I, I think we're going to go through a few transformations. Uh, most immediately in the next year and a half, we want to hire about 100 people. So we'll, we'll be, we'll be around 200 people as a company. Uh, we're hiring a number of executives to form kind of the leadership foundation. We're building a lot of technology. So. Gigster platform that powers how we actually deliver software, that's which is our core IP. That's what we'll be working on the next kind of year and a half. I think past that, so maybe looking at the next, the three years after that. We're aiming to reach profitability as a company, aiming to go much, much deeper into enterprise. You see, you know, the Accentures and Deloitte's of the world picking up 50 to 100 million dollar development contracts. Well, largest one we've worked on so far is about $2 million.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  So getting into eight and nine figure deals, being viewed as more of a trusted partner, someone who's a little more, more mature and established. That's where we'd like to get. We'd like to start picking up much more interesting projects.

• 24:41Harry Stebbings?

  Well, Roger, as I said, I had so many questions submitted and recommendations. It's been an absolute pleasure. So thank you so much for joining me today.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 24:51Harry Stebbings?

  So fantastic having Roger on the show there. And now you see why the intro was so challenging with such a diverse and varied career. Again, a huge thanks to Andy Rankin, Roy at Bloomberg Beta, Sandeep at Felicis and Ray at Caffeinated. So kind of them and really do appreciate that. And if you'd like to see more from us behind the scenes at the 20 minute VC, then you can by following us on Snapchat at H Stebbings with two Bs. It'd be fantastic to see you there. But before we leave you today, if you're an early stage startup, the right infrastructure and support systems are critical. And that's where First Republic is so good. First Republic's resources, network and expertise allow entrepreneurs to customize a solid foundation for your business across all stages. So why First Republic? Well, you get to leverage their incredible network of VC firms to prepare you for future fundraising events.

• 25:35Harry Stebbings?

  You get to count on a single point of contact that will be there for you and your employees when you need them. You get access to exclusive events and networking opportunities. But don't trust me on this. Their clients include the likes of Instacart, E shares and Wish, just to name a few. Check it out by heading over to innovation dot firstrepublic dot com. And speaking of incredible startups there, one that really is a must is Segment. Why? Well, Segment allows you to collect data from every platform, mobile, web, server, cloud apps and load it into Segment. Segment then sends the customer data to your tools and destinations where it can be used most effectively. Destinations include email, analytics, warehouses, help desks. And with over 200 sources and destinations on the Segment platform. That can really empower your team. Segment really is the last integration you will ever do.

• 26:20Harry Stebbings?

  And that's why the world's best companies use Segment, to drive growth and revenue, including the likes of Atlassian, New Relic and Crate and Barrel, just to name a few. Simply head over to segment.com to find out more. Again, I so appreciate all your support and I cannot wait to bring you next week's episodes.