20VC: 500 Startups' Dave McClure on Whether Unicorns Are Necessary For Venture Returns & Why Ownership Is Not The Math To Think About When Investing

Dave McClure is the founding partner of 500 Startups, who have made over 1500 investments in the likes of Twilio, SendGrid, Intercom and Makerbot just to name a few. Prior to 500 Dave was on the investment team at Founders Fund, he also led the Facebook Fund Incubator and was Head of Marketing @ Paypal pre IPO. In Today’s Episode with Dave You Will Learn: How Dave made his way into VC and came to found 500 Startups? Do you need unicorn exits to have significant venture returns? What is the 500 view with regards to the hit ratio of finding unicorns? How much ownership does 500 typically take? Does this allow Dave enough of a right to follow on in further rounds with such a small initial slice? How does Dave and 500 avoid the inherent signalling risk involved with their fund and accelerator? How prominent is signalling in today’s market? What did Dave think of Sam Altman’s statement on YC not accepting companies from other accelerators? How does Dave view YC companies? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Dave’s Fave Blog and Newsletter: Brad Feld, AVC, Mark Suster Dave’s Fave Book: Guns Germs and Steel, The Mystery of Capital Dave’s Most Recent Investment: Markhor As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Dave on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eve make 1 perfect mattress - made with 3 layer technology and next generation memory foam. It comes packaged in a beautiful box and arrives the day after you order. You get 100 nights to try it with free return pick-up - it really is the perfect mattress for everyone. Just go online to evemattress.co.uk and enter the code 20VC for £50 off. Everybody deserves the perfect start with Eve.

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

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  You are listening to the 20 Minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings at H Stebbings on Snapchat. Now today's guest I really have wanted to have on the show for a very long time, so I'm very excited to welcome Dave McClure to the show today. Now Dave really needs no introduction, but for those of you that have been living under a rock, Dave is the founding partner of 500 Startups who've made over 1,500 investments in the likes of Twilio, SendGrid, Intercom and Makeabot, just to name a few. And prior to 500, Dave was on the investment team at Founders Fund, he also led the Facebook Fund incubator and was head of marketing at PayPal pre-IPO. But before we meet the man himself, do I sound refreshed and ready to go for the week? That's because I have Eve. Now Eve only make one mattress and they stop at one because they know they have made it perfectly.

• 0:45Harry Stebbings?

  With three-layer technology and next-generation memory foam, it comes packaged in a beautiful box and arrives the day after you order. You get 100 nights to try it with free return pickup. It really is the perfect mattress for everyone. Just go online to evemattress.co.uk and enter 20VC for £50 off.

• 1:05Harry Stebbings?

  However, enough from me and I'm thrilled to welcome Dave McClure, founding partner at 500 Startups.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 1:19Harry Stebbings?

  Dave, absolutely fantastic to have you on the 20 Minute VC stage. Having met the other day, it really is such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for joining me today.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me. It's like to be here.

• 1:29Harry Stebbings?

  Now, I'd love to start with a brief synopsis on you and how you came to found 500. Yeah, summarise your life in two to three minutes.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  I'll try not to take up the rest of the show. I graduated from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in 88, I think. Came out to California in 89, was a software developer programmer for a few years. That kind of turned into my first startup. Eventually, I did some consulting, grew into a small company. I guess we started consulting in 92, did some work with Microsoft and Intel and a few others from 94 to 98.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  That to about twenty people or so, kind of screwed up everything I could possibly about running a small business. But we still managed to get a very small exit out of that. This around two thousand one, I guess, kind of during or after the first dot com blow up. Uh, I got a job working at PayPal and was there through the through the IPO and through the sale to eBay. And then a few years after that, until around two thousand four and met a lot of really amazing people there. Some of whom created some recognizable names in the internet.

• 2:41Harry Stebbings?

  Uh, we're gonna get on to that later, then, Marsh.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Uh, started doing angel investing as I was leaving PayPal in two thousand four, kind of doing that part time recreationally, I guess. But invested in about, I guess, about thirteen companies over the next four years, put about three hundred thousand, maybe total. And got a few wins out of that, I guess, Mint dot com, Mashery and Slide Share were kind of the bigger, bigger stories. Uh, those are all hundred million plus exits. And I guess I figured, okay, maybe I might be able to develop a career in venture capital. So started working on that, I guess, two thousand eight, uh, you know, the market blew up again. So that wasn't the best time to be raising a fund. Ended up working for Founder's Fund with Peter Thiel and Sean Parker for about a year and a half.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Managed a little bit of capital, uh, for Founder's Fund while I was running kind of an in-house angel program. And also took over and ran the Facebook Fund, uh, for two thousand nine summer. Uh, and then Christine and I got, uh, five hundred startups off the ground in twenty ten. And it's kind of been a crazy story ever since then, I guess. Grew the company from about five people to now over a hundred.

• 3:50Harry Stebbings?

  That is twenty five years in three minutes and thirty seconds. Well done, Dave. Brilliant. Um, but you, you mentioned some of the companies you've backed and I've got a question. I crowdsourced some questions here, a special interview, crowdsourced some questions. So one from Matt Lerner, uh, Distro Dojo five hundred's London office. Uh, and he asks you, you've backed the likes of.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  I know that.

• 4:09Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, Mint, Twilio, SendGrid, Lyft. What were you thinking when you saw those deals? Uh, did you know how they'd turn out in any sense over others? Uh, and were they hot as themselves as rounds?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  I guess the the three that I invested in while I was still kind of doing amateur angel investing. Mashery, SlideShare and Mint. I think. With both SlideShare and Mashery, I don't think either of them looked like a slam dunk win. I guess with Mint.com, there was, you know, probably an expectation that this could be a really big story. And Aaron Patzer, who was the founder CEO, was a pretty impressive founder. Even even the first time that I met him, he was, you know, had a product that was pretty compelling and was a very, you know, confident entrepreneur. So I don't I don't know. I mean, I still feel like most of the time when we when I invest in companies or when we 500 invest in companies, it's very, very early and it's hard to predict what's going to happen in the future.

• 5:03Harry Stebbings?

  Was it were they hot rounds? Obviously fantastic companies now. You imagine they'd be incredibly competitive rounds. Were they hot rounds in the early days?

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Um, no, no. SlideShare and Mashery certainly were not like super competitive rounds. Um, although, you know, strong team and capable founders. Mint.com, I guess, was probably a little bit competitive. Certainly by the time the A round happened, I put about 25K into the A round. But I'd already been, you know, helping the company here and there a little bit. So, you know, maybe Mint.com was kind of the hot round. But but certainly, you know, when I invested, when we invested in Lyft out of FB funds, I guess it was called Zimride at the time. And when we invested in Credit Karma and Twilio, they were not really that competitive rounds, even though, you know, the founders were compelling. Most of the time they were, you know, that particular time of time, 2008, nine, 10,

• 5:54Speaker 02

  was actually a pretty tough period of time for people to raise capital.

• 5:57Harry Stebbings?

  And you you you mentioned there some obvious incredible companies with high, high valuations. So moving from the investments to the investment strategy, does your investment approach require unicorn exits to have a good return? We saw the tweet storm last week between you and Michael at Sundar, Simon. I'm sorry for starting that one. I feel a bit of a.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  I don't think you're sorry one bit.

• 6:20Harry Stebbings?

  No, not at all, actually. But let's go with the, does it require unicorn exits to have a good return?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Uh, well, it certainly helps. Uh, I don't think it's required necessarily. So in my angel investment portfolio, I made about thirteen investments. Uh, I did some advisory work for a few other companies, but let's say it's maybe fifteen companies. There were no unicorns in that group of companies, but I had three, what we would call centaurs or hundred million plus, uh, sort of exits. Um, on a relative basis, all of those companies were probably between a ten to twenty X return on investment. And so, you know, three out of thirteen or three out of fifteen is probably a hit rate that's maybe higher than I would normally expect, but let's say that's somewhere around, you know, maybe a twenty percent

• 7:06Speaker 02

  sort of hit rate on winners. You know, so I, I basically made about a million dollars, maybe a little bit more than that on three hundred thousand. And so a three X return or slightly more than a three X return, the investment period, return period, maybe was around seven or eight years. Uh, I don't know if that's typical, but in that case, you know, I made a decent return, at least measured on the IRR basis, that's probably around a twenty percent return, plus or minus. But I didn't have any unicorn. Now, when we invest, we do expect to find unicorns, but we do a lot larger portfolio size. Um, our expectations are that we'll find those, you know, unicorns, or at least let's say fifty to a hundred X return profile companies,

• 7:44Speaker 02

  probably not more than two percent of the time. If we find, you know, unicorn only two percent of the time, or heaven forbid, one percent of the time, our portfolio size needs to be a minimum of fifty to a hundred to really have a shot at that. And I would argue, actually, we are aiming for more than one unicorn. We're probably aiming for like three to five. And then our portfolio size starts to become necessarily more like two hundred, three hundred, or even five hundred startups in order to have, you know, predictability around that outcome.

• 8:12Harry Stebbings?

  And in terms of the ownership stake that you take in these companies, when you have such large portfolios, what does that look like? Does it allow you with the increased fund size, you know, it's not a three hundred K fund now with five hundred, it's a much bigger fund. Does that? All ownership still carry over to big venture returns.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Well, I think it does work for us. The typical ownership that we hold in most of our seed round investments is probably between one to five percent. Maybe a little bit higher in some of the international geographies where valuations are lower. For accelerator, it might start at around five to seven percent, depending on when we invested. But most of those investments are probably never going to be higher than ten percent. And in a lot of cases, they might be, you know, only around five percent or smaller. But the point that I was making with Michael is that ownership really isn't the math that we use to kind of think about how we invest. We really think more in terms of number of investments and the likely probability distribution of finding large outcomes.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  And then potentially we think about, you know, reserving capital for following on in our winners. But still, our second check, you know, investments are probably not going to be as great an outcome as our first check. You know, so when we think about investment, we really think about, you know, about two percent of our portfolio doing fifty X or better. And hopefully about five percent of our portfolio doing twenty X or better. And then we might have another ten to twenty percent that gets us some positive return. So that's probably going to give us a base criteria, a base outline of maybe two to three X in performance. And if we're smart about the follow on investments and the timing of our investments goes well. Then we could probably steer that north of three X and maybe up to even four or five X.

• 9:55Harry Stebbings?

  I'm really, I'm really pleased you said about follow on investments there because I'm, I'm intrigued to hear how you ensure that you can invest the amount that you want to in follow on rounds. Obviously, they're very competitive. Sometimes you can get pushed out by the, the larger players. So how do you ensure that you get into those rounds?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Well, we can't. We don't always know that we're going to get into those rounds. A lot of the time we have to, you know, work hard to have a good relationship with the founder. You know, sometimes we can, you know, get that relationship contractually by, you know, signing the investment agreement, asking for follow on investment rights. We usually do that so that we can invest in at least one follow on round. With our accelerator companies. We have a kind of fixed structure that we invest into and we ask for a 500K uh option to invest in the follow on round where we don't exceed 20% of the round. So, you know, typically if someone's raising a series A, that might be, you know, two, three, five million dollars. We would like to be able to invest up to 500K, but we're not usually the lead in that scenario. But most of the times, you know,

• 10:58Speaker 02

  most of the times we get some ability to follow on, uh but you're correct, we don't always. And again, that's why we have a very large portfolio strategies. We want, you know, to get that to happen in at least enough scenarios where we can deploy follow on capital into our winners.

• 11:12Harry Stebbings?

  When you don't get into them, why do you think that is? Do you think that's the big boys pushing you out? Do you think that's founders? What are the reasons you think and how do you look to rectify them going forward? I know you, you're not going to be happy with that.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, that's definitely happened. Um, sometimes it's larger investors who want to take as much of the next round as they possibly can. Sometimes, uh, we don't always have those rights contractually. Um, sometimes we may not always have capital available or we may choose not to put in money in those rounds. But more often than not, it's usually because there's demand for the round and it's oversubscribed and, you know, the participants in the round are trying to jockey for their position. I think that doesn't happen as much as, you know, maybe people might be concerned about. It does happen. The funny thing is sometimes it happens in rounds that are hot that don't end up really being that valuable. And a lot of times it doesn't happen in rounds where it's not that hot, but later it becomes valuable.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  So I don't really think that there's as much correlation with, hey, this seed round or this A round is really hot and later that becomes Uber. You know, that does happen every once in a while, but I would say if I look back on a lot of the deals that ended up becoming really big for us, you know, Twilio and Credit Karma in particular, and maybe a few others. They weren't hot when we invested or weren't that, they weren't so hot when we invested that we couldn't get into the round or we couldn't get into a follow on round. So yes, it happens, but I don't know that that's a huge concern. Uh, obviously we don't like it when that happens. Sometimes founders, you know, we may not have a perfect relationship with founders and they may or may not always be looking

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Out for our interests all the time. I mean, hopefully, if we are doing a good job in being a investment partner with the founders, they do, you know, hopefully look out for our interests in follow on rounds, but you know, I don't always expect that and we have to earn that right.

• 13:00Harry Stebbings?

  When you, when you do follow on, how do you avoid the, the common problem of, of a structure like yours of the negative signaling that can occur in the wider market? Do you think about that?

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Uh, we think about it a little bit and it does again matter, but I think people tend to overthink this. I think that the signaling issue, whether it happens for us or even other downstream investors, you know, well, first of all, I would say signaling is an issue when the lead investor in a prior round doesn't follow on in the next round substantially enough. And that's more likely the case for an institutional lead investor who's playing a seed or series A role where they're on the board or they were the biggest investor in the previous round. That's really not a typical role for us to play. You could argue that maybe coming out of our accelerator, we might have that situation, but that's not quite the same. And we're usually not the lead investor in seed or series A rounds, but it does happen.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  My perspective on this is typically that if the founder or other investors are more worried about my investment decision than the baseline performance of the company, there's already likely some kind of problem there. You know, I would have to say that the most important thing in making a decision to invest in the company is the company's performance. If the founders are worried about, you know, whether I'm going to follow on or not, or the next round investors are worried about whether I'm going to follow on or not, it's probably because there's not strong metrics or performance or other concerns that are going on.

• 14:24Harry Stebbings?

  Uh, you, you mentioned the accelerator there, uh, obviously 500 startups, big accelerator program. Uh, I was chatting to a VC friend of mine the other day and he stated that accelerators have big issues with reverse selection with regards to the best entrepreneurs not going through them. Does that pervade into your thoughts much?

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Uh, that's kind of bullshit. I mean, that really depends a lot on the program. When things were first getting started with accelerators, maybe that's the case. And I think if you, if you have very, very accomplished entrepreneurs, perhaps those have already had exits before or have raised. Venture capital before, you know, I think they have the option to certainly raise directly from VCs. But I don't think you see that criticism, at least of the more established accelerator programs. There's certainly people who say, hey, I don't need that. I've already got a network. I've already got the resources I need for help with customer acquisition and distribution or with other areas. But I think you've also seen very successful companies come back and do an accelerator program. Or founders who've had, you know, exits come back and do an accelerator program a second time.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  And I certainly think for first time entrepreneurs, the network is really, really important. So, you know, people who get into either, you know, 500 or Y Combinator or Techstars or another top program. You know, probably the network and the alumni and the connections and the help is worth, you know, the relatively small amount of dilution. Uh, and usually that's, you know, made better through the valuation, the increase or bump that you're likely to get. Uh, if not, you know, all the other connections. I mean, there are people who have that criticism. That's fine. They don't have to go through an accelerator program. But I think for most people who would get into a top, you know, 20 college or MBA program, certainly if you get into the top three programs, there's a lot of value in there that goes beyond just valuation and cash.

• 16:05Harry Stebbings?

  You, you said about the top three programs there. Uh, I do have to ask what you made of Sam Altman's, uh, post. Uh, when he said about Y C, obviously taking entrepreneurs who, uh, they wouldn't take them if they'd been to other incubators or accelerators. What did you make of that? You must have read that and thought, huh, that's interesting, Sam.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah, well, I, I did read that and actually I responded in a blog post with what I thought. I don't, I don't think Sam said that exactly. I think what he said was people who've gone through a prior accelerator program probably have a higher bar for their performance. Um, and that Y C will have some higher level of expectation if they've, quote, been accelerated, unquote, before. I think I generally agree with the underlying premise that Sam was trying to make. It was more his conclusion and recommendations afterwards that I disagreed with pretty vehemently. I think his response generally was if you don't get into Y C, just hang out and wait and keep trying. And eventually you might get into Y C. That's better than doing any other accelerator program.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  He didn't exactly say that either, but I think that was his implied statement. I think that's kind of laughable and actually probably really poor advice for entrepreneurs. Usually I think SAM and Y C in general is an amazing program and they offer lots of benefits and advice. In this particular case, I think they were being a little bit more selfishly directed about their advice to entrepreneurs.

• 17:28Harry Stebbings?

  Do you have a problem with entrepreneurs who've been to other accelerators before?

• 17:31Speaker 02

  No, and in fact, I was going to mention, you know, we've been investors through our seed investment program in a bunch of Y C companies, over a hundred. I think we're actually one of the top three or four investors in Y C companies over the years. And same thing with Techstars, I think we've done at least forty or fifty of the Techstars companies as well. So we don't, we do compete at one level, but we also invest in their, in their companies. I would say, you know, probably a third of our overall portfolio has gone through our own program. So maybe five hundred out of the fifteen hundred companies. Probably another five hundred went through some other programs. So whether that's Y C or Techstars or Angel Pad or Seedcamp or whatever, we've invested in plenty of other companies that have gone through both major, you know,

• 18:13Speaker 02

  globally recognized programs here in the U S as well as other programs around the world. And actually frequently for us, we find companies that come from other programs around the world that may do those programs before they come to the U S and do ours or Y C or someone else.

• 18:28Harry Stebbings?

  And final question before we dive into the quick fire. I want to ask about, we mentioned the PayPal team earlier, often named PayPal mafia, one of the most amazing teams ever assembled, clearly. But did you guys have any idea at the time what an extraordinary group that you were? And what was it like working with these guys in the beginning?

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Well, I hesitate to put myself in that group because I have not created a billion dollar company, at least not yet.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Well, maybe we'll see. I think, you know, I had the really good fortune to work a little bit of time with some of those folks. Initially, when I started at PayPal, Dave Sacks was my boss who went on to run Yammer, which got acquired by Microsoft for about a billion bucks. I got the chance to work pretty closely with Steve Chen and Chad Hurley and Jared Karim, who are all the founders of YouTube. Really great people. I, you know, didn't realize they were going to create the world's largest video platform, but they were great to work with.

• 19:22Harry Stebbings?

  How do you, how do you think you grew working with people like this?

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Well, I think, you know, getting to work with and probably watch the progress of a lot of those folks. I think Peter and Max and Reid Hoffman and a bunch of others, it obviously had lots and lots of success. But the lessons that we probably learned at PayPal were probably learned in the trenches with a lot of other people on the team. Um, and those were, you know, how to build product and how to do marketing, um, kind of how to deal with tough situations when, you know, maybe fraudsters are trying to steal money from you or other large companies like eBay or Visa card associations are competing with you. And I think, you know, there was just a lot of really thoughtful and smart people there that, you know, we had to move quickly. Otherwise, you know, we'd get our asses kicked.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  One of the things I do think is interesting that people don't always understand is, you know, PayPal maybe didn't have as a very easy road when it was getting started. If you compare maybe a couple of companies like, you know, Microsoft or Yahoo or Google, those three probably all discovered their business models relatively early and then really had dominating performances. If you look at a few others, maybe like Amazon or Facebook and PayPal, they had really strong growth, but they had some challenges in really getting the business model worked out or a lot of, you know, tougher situations. And I think people that maybe came out of some of those environments were used to stress and used to having to respond to the market by changing their product or their marketing in order to, you know, stay alive.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  So for whatever reason PayPal became an interesting place where a lot of people dealt with stress

• 20:58Speaker 02

  from multiple sources and obviously a lot of really, you know, smart people. But it was, you know, a terrific place to meet, um, you know, very, very thoughtful and experienced and strong founders. And, you know, the alumni have obviously gone on to create a bunch of, you know, very recognizable company names.

• 21:15Harry Stebbings?

  Sure. And I, I want to finish with a quick fire round. Uh, so I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts, 60 seconds or less. How does that sound?

• 21:23Speaker 02

  All right.

• 21:23Harry Stebbings?

  Okay. Do you think the world has enough VC? And enough VC money.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Fuck no.

• 21:27Harry Stebbings?

  Right, right, okay. Uh, non enough VC money or non enough VCs? Do you want a higher concentration?

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Both. I think, you know, definitely not enough VC capital. And, and we should be clear about that. That's, you know, in Beijing and in Silicon Valley, there is a lot of money. In most other places around the world, there isn't.

• 21:44Harry Stebbings?

  Where would you most like to take your money?

• 21:46Speaker 02

  I think, you know, there's a bunch of geographies where we feel like there's not enough VCs or not enough capital. Right now, Southeast Asia and India are probably our two biggest priorities. But if I look at Latin America, uh, the Arab speaking Middle East and Africa, those three places also, you know, have huge potential, but not enough capital right now.

• 22:05Harry Stebbings?

  And then you focus a lot on diversity at 500. Which other VC does diversity well?

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Uh, I think probably social capital. Chamath Palihapitiya has made that a pretty big focus. Um, I think Mitch and Frida Kapoor at Kapoor Capital, um, they're not always considered a VC, but they certainly do both for profit and nonprofit investments and social impact investing. I think they're probably the leaders of a lot of that. There's, uh, obviously individuals who I think have made it a priority, who, you know, come from different, uh, either ethnic backgrounds or other maybe underrepresented sort of groups that are doing great jobs.

• 22:41Harry Stebbings?

  Uh, and then I want a favorite book and why?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Uh, I'll give you three. Uh, Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, uh, The Mystery of Capital. One other is a book called Spent by Jeffrey Miller. Uh, sorry, The Mystery of Capital is by Hernando de Soto. Uh, that's not the explorer, but the economic minister of Peru in the late eighties. But The Mystery of Capital is probably an under-promoted book. That's not really common on a lot of people's lists. Um, I think that's just amazing for thinking about capital formation. Uh, Spent is an amazing book that, you know, talks really about behavioral psychology and the impact of, you know, a lot of different things on behavior, uh, particularly sex, but a lot of other things.

• 23:21Harry Stebbings?

  Sorry, I just added that to the list, Dave.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 23:25Harry Stebbings?

  Um, yeah. Uh, and, and then what about the biggest deal that you missed out on?

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Uh, clearly Uber was the deal that I totally fucked up. Uh, Travis gave me the opportunity to invest in June of 2010.

• 23:37Harry Stebbings?

  Does it keep you awake?

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Oh, every day, every week, I think about that.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Uh, the reality is I didn't invest multiple times, not just in the seed round. So it's probably my mistake. Uh, multiple times over.

• 23:52Harry Stebbings?

  And then your favorite blog or newsletter, what are the must reads for you?

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Uh, there's a bunch that I like out there. I definitely, you know, uh, good friends with Mark Suster, read his stuff all the time. He's probably one of the more thoughtful people out there. Brad Feld and Fred Wilson have, uh, been sort of mentors and, you know, our small investors. In our fund and they've kind of been, you know, huge influences. I think, uh, Brad certainly has written tremendous amounts online, uh, way in the past. Naval doesn't write quite as much as he used to and, you know, really Nivi and Naval did a lot of work with Venture Hacks that I thought was very helpful. But that was probably more like five to 10 years ago before they did Angel List. There's a lot of other, you know, great folks out there. I, I think, you know. One thing is maybe not to worship other blogs too much and think about writing yourself. I think there's a lot of folks who probably, you know, could.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Start their own blogs and, you know, get a voice heard. I think it's really important to not just lean on, you know, everybody else doing that work. But even for younger folks who are getting into the industry to write down their thoughts. Charles Hudson, I think, has actually, uh, done a great job.

• 24:55Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely. He's also got a brilliant newsletter.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Yep, that's true. And some people like Jason Calacanis do their writing in kind of newsletter formats as well.

• 25:03Harry Stebbings?

  And then let's finish today on your most recent investment and why you said yes, that's public.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Well, let me just talk about one that is memorable for me that was fairly recent. Uh, we did it early this year. There's a. Company that went through the Y Combinator program, uh, called Hometown. I guess, um, the. Public facing name is called Markor. They do custom high-end shoes. Uh, it's a founder out of Pakistan that moved to the U S. And they're doing over a million dollars in revenue. They're profitable already. Part of the team is still back in Pakistan and they produce some of the best. You know, high-end sort of leather goods shoes. Uh, they compete with kind of Gucci and others. Uh, shoes that cost over a thousand or $2,000. Although theirs only cost around $200 or $300. Really resourceful founder and really smart team and.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Was our first investments in a Pakistani company, not necessarily Pakistani founder, but a Pakistani company. I was just really impressed with what they're doing. Really great product, really great service.

• 25:58Harry Stebbings?

  Well, Dave, it's been such a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining me and I look very forward to welcoming you back on in the future.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Thanks a lot. Anytime Michael wants to go spar online, we should do that.

• 26:11Harry Stebbings?

  Love that from Dave there. And if you have not seen the great debate on Twitter between Dave and Michael Kim at Sendana, then that really is a must check out. And I'd like to say a huge thank you to Dave for giving up his time today to be on the show. It was a 7am on a Saturday morning interview for him. So really I'm very grateful. If you'd like to stay up to date with the show, then you can follow me on Snapchat at H Stebbings with two Bs, or you can sign up to the newsletter on the 20minutevc.com all in letters. That way you never have to miss an episode or an update from us. However, before we leave you, with the week ahead, remember, every great day starts the night before. Every smart move you make on Wednesday has its roots in Tuesday. So leap out of bed with a can do attitude and you've got a head start on the world. And that's why

• 26:52Harry Stebbings?

  Eve only make one kind of mattress, the very best, with three layer next generation memory foam and open cell technology. And they even give you 100 nights to try it and make sure it's perfect for you with free return pickup. So go to eve mattress.co.uk, enter the code 20vc for £50 off and it'll be with you the next day with next day delivery. Everybody deserves a perfect start with Eve. As always, thank you so much for tuning in and I so appreciate your support.