20VC: Lightspeed's Nicole Quinn on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, Why M&A Has Not Been This Exciting For A Long Time & Why Amazon Is Never Your Friend

Nicole Quinn is a Partner @ Lightspeed, one of the world's leading venture funds with a portfolio including the likes of Snapchat, Nest, StitchFix, AppDynamics and Max Levchin's Affirm, just to name a few from their incredible portfolio. At Lightspeed, Nicole focuses on the consumer market having made investments in the likes of Cheddar, Zola and Rothy's. Prior to Lightspeed, Nicole worked at Nutmeg, one of London's leading fintech players and before that spent 8 years covering consumer, eCommerce and brands at Morgan Stanley on the equity sales and research side. At Morgan Stanley, Nicole worked on the IPOs for Facebook, Groupon and Pandora. Fun fact: Nicole is also a star of the big screen featuring on Apple TV's Planet of The Apps. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Nicole made her way from Morgan Stanley to a leading London Fintech player to now, a partner a Lightspeed in San Francisco? 2.) How does Nicole define "digitally native brands"? What are the core benefits of owning the entire customer journey? Why does Nicole believe that brand is a key network effect today? 3.) Why does Nicole disagree that we are in a fallow period for consumer? How does Nicole analyze the incumbent heavy competitive landscape? Does Nicole believe that Amazon does more to make the market than destroy it? 4.) Why does Nicole believe we are in a consolidatory environment? What about the current ecosystem makes now the most exciting time for M&A in a long time? How does Nicole analyze M&A's ability to move the needle with transactions like Bonobos' acquisition? 5.) Being a star of Planet of The Apps, how important does Nicole think it is for investors to have public brands today? How does Nicole view VCs and digitally native brands in the same way? How does this mean that VCs should act in market? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Nicole’s Fave Book: The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton Nicole’s Fave Blog: Lean Luxe Nicole's Most Recent Investment: Rothy's As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Nicole on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Lattice is the #1 performance management solution for growing companies. With Lattice, it’s easy to launch 360 performance review cycles as often as you want. And you also get a continuous feedback system with OKR goal tracking, real-time feedback, and 1-on-1 meetings to make sure employees get feedback between reviews. Find out why the likes of CoinBase, PlanGrid, Birchbox and WePay trust Lattice as their performance management solution by heading over to lattice.com to start investing in your people. That’s Lattice.com. Recurly, the company powering subscription success, with Recurly’s enterprise-class subscription management platform providing rapid time-to-value without requiring massive integration effort and expense and they have the ability to not only increase revenue by 7% but also reduce the all-important churn rate. That is why thousands of customers from Twitch to HubSpot to CBS Interactive trust Recurly as their subscription management platform. Check them out on recurly.com that really is a must.

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 the British tones of me, Harry Stebbings, but today is a very special episode as these British tones will not be accompanied by American ones, as they usually are. And I'm thrilled to welcome a fellow Brit to the hot seat today, in the form of a very talented individual and friend, Nicole Quinn. Now, Nicole is a partner at Lightspeed, one of the world's leading venture funds with a portfolio including the likes of Snapchat, Nest, Stitch Fix, AppDynamics, and Max Levchin's Affirm, just to name a few from their incredible portfolio. At Lightspeed, Nicole focuses on the consumer market, having made investments in the likes of Cheddar, Zola, and Rothy's. And prior to Lightspeed, Nicole worked at Nutmeg, one of London's leading fintech players, and before that, spent eight years covering consumer e-commerce and brands at Morgan Stanley

• 0:42Harry Stebbings?

  on the equity sales and research side. It was at Morgan Stanley that Nicole worked on the IPOs for Facebook, Groupon, and Pandora. Plus, a very fun fact, Nicole's also a star of the big screen, featuring on Apple TV's Planet of the Apps. That really is a must-watch if you haven't seen that yet. I do also want to say a big thank you to another Brit, James Wise at Balderton, for the intro to Nicole today, without which this episode would not have been possible. But before we move into the show today, if you're a founder or operator, your most important job is people operations, whether that be hiring execs, developing managers, or retaining top talent. And that's why you need Lattice. Lattice is the number one performance management solution for growing companies. With Lattice, it's easy to launch 360 performance review cycles, as often as you want. And you also get an incredible

• 1:24Harry Stebbings?

  continuous feedback system, with OKR goal tracking, real-time feedback, and one-on-one meetings to ensure employees get feedback between reviews. So find out why the likes of Coinbase, PlanGrid, Birchbox, and WePay trust Lattice as their performance management solution by heading over to lattice.com to start investing in your people. That's lattice.com, the number one performance management solution for growing companies. And speaking of number one there, you must check out Recurly, the company powering subscription success, with Recurly's enterprise-class subscription management platform, providing rapid time-to-value without requiring massive integration effort and expense. And they have the ability to not only increase revenue by 7%, but also reducing the all-important churn rate. And

• 2:04Harry Stebbings?

  that's why thousands of customers, from Twitch, to HubSpot, to CBS Interactive, trust Recurly as their subscription management platform. And you can check them out now on recurly.com. That really is a must. But enough from me, so without further ado, I'm delighted to hand the mic over to the very special Nicole Quinn, partner at Lightspeed.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:31Harry Stebbings?

  Nicole, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. A huge thanks to James Wise at Balderton many moons ago for the introduction, but thank you so much for joining me today, Nicole.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Thanks so much for having me, Harry. This is gonna be great.

• 2:41Harry Stebbings?

  Not at all, but I'd love to get the ball rolling today by discussing a little bit about you and how you made your way into what I call the wonderful world of venture.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  So I guess the wonderful world of venture. I probably knew from a young age that I kind of wanted to do something in this world. I had a very inquisitive mother, so that definitely rubbed off on me, and a very competitive entrepreneurial father. He's actually 78 right now and just launched his new startup in London. And he did an online test the other day that said to him that he was gonna live to 107. So he came running into the room and he said to me, "I've got 30 more years alive. Do you know what that means? I can launch three new startups."

• 3:19Harry Stebbings?

  Is he looking for seed funding?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  He is, Harry. I'll make the intro.

• 3:24Harry Stebbings?

  And so, and so how did that then translate from the family development to venture?

• 3:28Speaker 02

  So I was always a math student, so naturally went into finance. And then I nearly spent a decade at Morgan Stanley. I was in the equity research and sales side and was the analyst covering retail and e-commerce names. I mean, it was a fun time to be covering them. So it was ASOS, Netaporte, Yoox, really at a time where e-commerce was just taking so much market share and people were just sort of learning about these names back then. So I would, you know, meet these companies a year or two before they IPO'd and really think about how to best position them for IPO, further scale the business and the brand for, you know, continued scalable growth. So that was a good nine or so years there. And then I went to a consumer fintech startup. You actually know it, Nutmeg.

• 4:12Harry Stebbings?

  Indeed, I do.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Good one in the UK. So I was doing brand marketing and fundraising there and then tried to take those lessons and bring those lessons over to Lightspeed.

• 4:23Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned that your background there in, in consumer and the retail environment with the explosion of kind of the early days of commerce. I do have to ask, what were the key learnings from that experience, seeing that firsthand? And how have you applied that then to maybe your role today with Lightspeed?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Covering ASOS when the stock was three P. I always just now think, listen, if something's working, then don't discount it. It is working. The dogs are eating the dog food and customers just love it and are telling their friends about it. And so ASOS, the stock went from three P and is now seventy pounds. You know, you try to sort of pick the highs and think, oh, no, you know, it'll come down from here. Maybe there's going to be competition. But at the end of the day, if something's working, then you've just got to really stick with those founders and continue to be the best partner you can.

• 5:07Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned some of the the big names of the day there and the Netaportes and the Yux of the world. I'd love to start on a buzzword associated to those names being the one that I always hear in the realms of e-commerce, digitally native brands. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on what that really means and how you look to evaluate it today.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So I spend a lot of my time with digitally native brands or DVNB, digitally vertically integrated native brands. And so we like to think about these brands may be sold through other channels, but first and foremost, they are sold through your own channel. That really allows you to own the entire customer experience. I find that these companies can then gain insight into really who their customer is, what their purchase behaviour is, whether they're coming back again. And if they're coming back again to gift, if they're coming back again to buy something in another style, another colour, what it is. It's really fascinating. And I think like only the entire customer journey is key to these companies' success and to the data that they have about who their customer is.

• 6:09Harry Stebbings?

  Can I dive in on that data before we move on and just ask, what gets you excited within that data? Is it kind of recurring customers? Is it amount willing to spend? Is it NPS of the product? What is it for you that really gets you attracted?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  For me personally, it's any data that shows me that the customer truly loves this brand. Yes, it's NPS. Yes, it's repeat behaviour that the customer is coming back time and time again. It's also data surrounding the referral programme to show that people are not just coming back themselves, but they're also telling their friends about this. Maybe there is a referral bonus. Maybe they're referring their friends not for money. Quite often, other motivations. Quite often, it's, you know, the ego of saying, oh, I found this amazing new product. You have to try it too. But whatever the motivation is, it's interesting. You can see it in the data that people are coming back time and time again and telling others to do so.

• 7:01Harry Stebbings?

  You said before, a potentially contrarian thing to me being brand as a key network effect. I'm intrigued, what does that really mean?

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we spend a lot of time thinking about network effects. And I certainly believe that brand is a key network effect. And yes, user economics, TAM are important. But at the end of the day, your margins and the size of the market, not quite as important if no one's buying your product. And so for me, it's the magic behind the brand. And to that point, Emily von Glossier says it best when she says a brand, it's a little bit of science and a little bit of magic, all rolled into one. I very much agree with that. I think that it is a brand that gets people to come back time and time again, purchase, tell their friends about it. We've invested in Rothy's and Zola. And if you speak to Zola, for every customer that has their wedding on Zola, they refer 2.2 other

• 7:52Speaker 02

  couples to also have their registry on Zola, the online wedding registry business. And so, you know, that brand can really create a real moat around your business. And it's not just e-commerce, but it's the whole of consumer that's so important for.

• 8:06Harry Stebbings?

  I'm sorry, I do have to dig in on one aspect. You mentioned TAM being important. As a venture nerd, it's one that I always debate on. How important really is TAM for you, especially with ever increasing amount of new markets being created and the difficulty with assessing those? How do you think about TAM, its importance and then kind of market creation?

• 8:23Speaker 02

  So this is contrarian, but I actually don't think that TAM is very important. The greatest consumer companies of our time have been created in very small markets. So at the time, the taxi market clearly was not as large as the market that Uber's currently going after. And you could say the exact same thing for Airbnb and sleeping in other people's apartments. So for me, it's about can the existence of this company increase the TAM? Can it bring lots of small markets together? Can it increase the overall size of the market? And so we don't necessarily To think about the current size of the market, but more the size of this market could be.

• 9:02Harry Stebbings?

  How does margin play into that perspective in terms of the importance of margin for consumer brands and the requirement to have them early? Is there a time when actually margin does become kind of pinnically important?

• 9:12Speaker 02

  So when Lightspeed started nearly 20 years ago, we were an enterprise and infrastructure focused VC. And so as a result, we still think of margins as sort of, you know, the 90% plus SaaS type margins. So if we're bringing a 30% gross margin e-commerce company to the table, then that to us is not going to quite hit the bill or cut the mustard. And so I think it's interesting when you find an e-commerce company that has 90% plus margins. And I am regularly meeting these digitally native vertical brands which have SaaS type margins. You look at cosmetics, for example, and a lot of these cosmetics brands have 95% margins.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  And so they are just as attractive, if not more attractive than the margins we see on the enterprise side.

• 10:01Harry Stebbings?

  So you wouldn't agree then with the thesis that in the early days of consumer, you have to lose money on initial customers to really scale?

• 10:08Speaker 02

  So that is true for some areas within consumer. That is not necessarily true for areas within e-commerce and brands. It's interesting when we believe be everywhere that your customer is. And so we do believe in the Bonobo's Guide Shop type model. And clearly all birds have just raised the round to focus on retail expansion. And you can see that these retail stores are profitable in a matter of months. Often they're cost neutral marketing channels. We quite often think that within e-commerce, no, you're not necessarily losing money on every transaction. And certainly they will get better with scale. And those are the type of companies that we invest in where they can't afford to keep the stock in. The demand is much higher than that. And so they need money for that.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  They need money because it's scale. This is going to be a very profitable business. But yeah, that statement is not necessarily true in e-commerce land.

• 10:57Harry Stebbings?

  Speaking of kind of scaling and people who've enjoyed those rapid scaling times, obviously some of them are the current incumbents. I had Jeremy Levine at Bessemer and Eric Fang at Kleiner on the show recently. And they agreed that we'd be entering a fallow period for consumer owing to the incumbency advantage with the roster distribution channels. I'd love to hear your thoughts as a consumer focused investor. If you agree with this and whether we really are entering a fallow period for consumer.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  So this fallow period that you speak of, I like to think of this as we are in a period between platforms. And we don't yet know what the next platform is going to be. Is it AR? Is it VR? Will it be AI or drones? We don't yet know. And so my belief is actually that the next platform will be voice first. And, you know, we're definitely seeing a strength from a current incumbent in the form of Amazon here, who's definitely done an excellent job of getting Alexa, Echo, DART and our show into our homes. And over 20 million at the time of recording. And if you think big picture about this, then you've got to think about, okay, so there's 3 million people that are currently online.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  And if we want to bring the entire world online, then if we bring another 4 million people online, a lot of those people are actually illiterate. And so perhaps mobile first is not the best platform for them. Perhaps voice first is. So I'm pretty excited about voice in terms of the long term, the big picture here. And then in terms of how I spend my time now, it's very much thinking about which companies can go across platforms. Maybe they're not confined to just mobile first. Perhaps it's digital health companies across platforms. And we can have a fitness app on our mobiles just as much as we can have it speaking to us through Google Home or Alexa. And then I'm also spending my time on e-commerce and brands, as we've already spoken about.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  And at the end of the day, we're going to still be buying stuff, whether it's on mobile now or on whatever next platform it's going to be, we will still be buying things. And millennials shop differently. So we need to keep an eye on the new retailers and new brands that are really successful in terms of tapping into the key trends. So that's how I'm spending some of my time and trying to not think about this fallow period too much.

• 13:07Harry Stebbings?

  What a depressing thought. But you mentioned Amazon there. I have both Kirsten Green and Henry McNamara Greeno's on the show. And they agreed with you with regards to the optimism. And they said that Amazon does more to make the market opportunity than to crush it. I'm intrigued, how do you perceive the role of Amazon for consumers today? And the potential enabling power that it does present, as suggested by Kirsten and Henry?

• 13:28Speaker 02

  I actually listened to that podcast, Harry, where Kirsten Green said that. And I thought it was a very interesting comment. So while I do think there is certainly some truth in that, my view is always that Amazon is not your friend. They are maybe increasing the size of the overall pie. They are making companies' lives very, very difficult. And anything that's working, they see and they decide to go after. So I already mentioned Zola, and so of course, Amazon have got their wedding registry business. And so we have to constantly be on our toes and thinking about how we can have a moat around the business. So that Amazon can't just instantly copy exactly what you're doing. And so going back to our earlier point, brand is definitely a moat.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  And content is another really interesting moat that I like to think about. So Glossier have done a really great job with that in first of all, creating the content, then tapping into exactly who their customer is and what their customer wants, and then producing the products that their customers want. And so I think models like that, that have strong moats around them, those are the ones that it's going to be very difficult for Amazon to copy. So for them, it's great. Amazon will increase the size of the pie, but they can't take their market share quite as easily.

• 14:41Harry Stebbings?

  No, I love that. Amazon is not your friend. On the other side, though, of the equation of kind of copying the product, in many ways, an easier solution is the acquisition route. We've seen it with the likes of Dollar Shave and Bonoboss with regards to selling to the large incumbents of today. Do you believe then that we're potentially in a consolidatory environment? Or do you think there will be this next gen crop of e-commerce companies like the Glossiers and Zolas of the world?

• 15:02Speaker 02

  I think we are certainly in a consolidatory environment. I believe M and A has not for a very long time been this exciting. And if you look at the beauty brands, Estee Lauder and L'Oréal are acquiring these companies on seven times forward year revenue multiples. Huge valuations being paid for many of these companies, whether it be in cosmetics or whether it be Jet or Dollar Shave Club. But I always believe, you know, we can do as much analysis as we possibly want with regards to justifying the valuation multiples. But at the end of the day, something is only worth what someone's willing to pay for it. So if you're Unilever thinking, I can get great insight through having Dollar Shave Club as part of Unilever.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  And this can be our entrance into the bathroom. You're willing to pay a much higher multiple for that. Quite often, Estee Lauder will publicly say, we think that 95% of our growth for the next 10 years is going to come through acquisitions. We're just not innovating and we need to acquire to get that innovation. If the big company is thinking that they just can't get that same level of innovation, they're going to have to continue to make the acquisitions that we've been seeing. So I definitely don't see any signs of that stopping anytime soon.

• 16:13Harry Stebbings?

  Can I be a contrarian and say, do you think that's good then for VCs? Especially take on the perspective of Lightspeed, billion dollar fund, Bonobos, Dollar Shave and Jet, brilliant, but anomalies to the equation. Bonobos, say a 300 million more, more normal acquisition, maybe with a 10 to 15% ownership, doesn't really move the needle. Do you think that does mean it's still exciting though?

• 16:34Speaker 02

  So it depends on a couple of things, depends, we're early stage investors. So we'll often invest at the seed or series A or series B stage. And so it certainly depends the valuation you're getting in at. And then, yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. We definitely need billion dollar plus acquisition to move the needle for our funders, yeah, 1.2 billion dollars. And so we need to be thinking about whether this is a company that will be acquired for more than a billion dollars. Or ideally, whether this is a company that can IPO at some point in the future. And remember that Stitch Fix only raised their seed and series A before getting to the point that they're currently at.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  So if you're that capital efficient and can go all the way to IPO or acquisition on such little capital, then that makes it very interesting.

• 17:22Harry Stebbings?

  No, I completely agree on the capital efficient element. I do want to slightly switch tangents. So before we move into the quickfire, being a fanboy of Planet of the Apps, I do have to ask, how did that come about? Talk to me, what was the story?

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. It was a really fun experience. It was originally William's idea, so he pitched it to the propagate guys. I have to say, it was one of the most enjoyable weeks that I have had and certainly didn't expect that I would be. On a show with Will I Am, Gwyneth Paltrow, Gary Peterchuk and Chesa Salva. When I started this a couple of years ago. So the thing that I find most interesting is that the show really democratized entrepreneurship. Because we looked across the entire country for founders. And this is not just people in Silicon Valley building products for people in Silicon Valley. This is really products for the 99%. This is what gets me really excited, the fact that one of the first companies I ever worked on was Holler.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  We did the seed in Holler, which is an online dollar store. And so products like that for the 99% or Stitch Fix. Those are the companies that I find really exciting and I'm spending a lot of time on right now. And so for me, Planet of the Apps did exactly that. And Harry, you'll have to check out the second episode because it was the largest amount there was ever invested on television. I invested in a female entrepreneur called Lauren Farley from Dope, which is a virtual.

• 18:43Harry Stebbings?

  The mall app.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:45Harry Stebbings?

  Yes, I told you I was a fanboy. I wasn't lying.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  So you saw Gwyneth Paltrow cry on that episode then?

• 18:53Harry Stebbings?

  I did, I did. I would have naturally put my arm around her and comforted.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  You're so selfless, Harry.

• 18:59Harry Stebbings?

  I know, I know. What can I say? I am interested though, because with that and with that hat on, I'm always intrigued as to the potential and the benefits with regards to VCs being public. What are your thoughts on VC brands and visibility with VCs today in such crowded and proliferated marketplaces? What are your thoughts on that and the need for that?

• 19:20Speaker 02

  So I think it's important, like if we say brand is a network effect, if we say content is a key mode. Then I think you have to take those and apply them to your own business. And so for us, our investment thesis is that content is a key mode in creating an e-commerce business. And so it was quite fun to create that content ourselves and to really think about having a brand in such a noisy environment. And so I think it's important that people know what you stand for, what your values are and what sectors you're spending your time on. Because at the end of the day, this is such a specialized business and so you do want to. To spend as much time as you possibly can getting your brand out there so that people know what you're selling for.

• 20:04Harry Stebbings?

  I would love though to hear your thoughts moving into a quick fire round. I say a short statement and then you give me your immediate thoughts. How does that sound?

• 20:11Speaker 02

  That sounds fantastic, Harry.

• 20:12Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so sixty seconds per one. Favorite book and why? What should I be reading? One Brit to another.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Oh, well, I just read Phil Knight's Shoe Dog. That was wonderful. I definitely learned a lot of lessons there on. Well, I mean, the highs and the lows of being a founder just never stopping, you know, even post IPO. You really have to love that journey and mission and there were a lot of great lessons there on brand. If I'm really honest with you, my favorite book and the only book that I have read seven times is Enid Blyton's Folk of the Far Away Tree. Every single, oh, I know, what does it say about me? But every single day, there is a different land at the top of the tree. Great to read to your kids or maybe just read to yourself because if you've got a curious mind and a good imagination, it is such a fun little book.

• 20:56Harry Stebbings?

  Well, that's fantastic. I was looking for a new book to read to the non-existent kids. Thanks for that.

• 21:03Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, question from your partner Nakul. How do you ensure as a young VC partner that you're the go-to person for startup founders?

• 21:10Speaker 02

  So my view is that this business is one of specialization and so it's important, whether it be e-commerce, brands, digital health, voice, or whatever next space we move into, that I know the space extremely well. And so I want to make sure that I'm a specialist in that space. I think that that will make me a much better board member. I think it'll make sure that I have better insights. It'll mean that I have a specific network within those areas and I can introduce those to the founders. So I always like to say those are the spaces that I'm spending my entire time on. And so I do know those spaces very well. I also like to say to founders that I'm not just an investor.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  I am a customer in your company too. And I think that being a customer of a brand also allows you to give good insights to the founder at the end of the day. And the way that I sort of think about the VC founder relationship and being the go-to person on this is that, isn't it's the founder's company. So. End of the day, I just want to be supportive. I want to be the sounding board. It's not the VC's job to grab the wheel at the end of the day. It is your job to have the periphery vision. So if the founder's the driver, it's your job to have the periphery vision and say, hey, there's this thing happening over here. I just want to make sure you're aware of it. Or there's this person over here. I just want to make sure you're aware of them. That's the way that I like to think about what I can bring to a founder.

• 22:32Harry Stebbings?

  Tell it to me. The average consumer downloads less than one app per month. The app store is hence dead. Agree?

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Disagree, but I do think that it is increasingly hard to be a home screen app. So this is definitely why we think about what is the next platform. But within mobile first, you've got to think about it is just so hard to be a home screen app right now. And so the way that we think about this is we just constantly look at daily active users. We just think that is the number one metric to look at to show whether somebody is using this on a daily basis. Whether they're using this so often that it is on their home screen. Because, you know, out of sight, out of mind, if it is not on your home screen, then you are not using this on a daily basis. That's certainly the number one metric that we'll speak to founders about. And it is difficult, you know, it's why we're looking at e-commerce, it's why we're looking at other platforms. So it's not dead, but it's just harder.

• 23:22Harry Stebbings?

  I'm intrigued. Consumer apps, what's a good MAU for you?

• 23:26Speaker 02

  So we like to think about DAU divided by MAU. If you're a social media app, then we want it to be over a third. If it can be over fifty percent, then it really is a daily use case. And that's exactly what we saw from Snapchat back in the day. But we definitely need for it to be over twenty to thirty percent.

• 23:44Harry Stebbings?

  Favorite blog or newsletter, must reads, rainy day, what do you sit down to?

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Oh, well, given how much I love the space, I always read religiously Lean Luck's Business of Fashion and Glossy. I just feel like Paul Mumford does such a great job with Lean Luck, so I love that one.

• 23:59Harry Stebbings?

  What would you most like to change in the world of startups and Silicon Valley now being at the centre of it?

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Well, very timely right now, but I have to say greater diversity across the board. My belief is always that we learn, grow and mature. It's actually something that, this is something that I heard in church, but we learn, grow and mature through being around people who are different from us. So I just think whether it's A partnership, whether it's around a board table or in the makeup of a company with true diversity. I just think you're going to arrive at the best results. So that's what I would love to continue to see change.

• 24:31Harry Stebbings?

  Completely agree. I would like to finish though, on your most recent publicly announced investment and why you said yes.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  That will definitely be Rothies. I have never seen word of mouth like this company. So Rothies is a digitally native vertical brand and it is a shoe made entirely of recycled plastic bottles. And with this woven technology that is used to make probably the most comfortable shoes you will ever wear. And of course, sustainable and good for the environment. And why I said yes, well, they own the entire experience. So their website's easy, their email and Facebook marketing is fun and shows the environmentally friendly nature of the brand. And then from the moment the box arrives, you put the shoe on, the product itself is just better than any other shoe I've experienced. And when you speak to customers and put yourselves in their shoes, sorry for the pun there.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  The, the customers will just tell you that they love it and they tell one another. And so we find that most people that are new customers will be saying, oh, I heard about it from my friend. Or I saw somebody posted on Facebook. So we just get really excited about that level of word of mouth.

• 25:39Harry Stebbings?

  Well, Nicole, as I said, I've wanted to have you on the show for a long time now. So thank you so much for joining me. It's been so much fun.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Thanks, Harry. It has been fun. Look forward to seeing you soon.

• 25:49Harry Stebbings?

  Again, a huge hand to Nicole. As you can tell, we so enjoyed that episode and very exciting times ahead for her and Lightspeed. And again, a big hand to James Weiser at Ballsen, so kind of him to make the intro without which the episode would not have been possible. And if you'd like to see more from us behind the scenes at the 20 minute VC, you can by following me, Harry Stebbings 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 a founder or operator, your most important job is people operations, whether that be hiring execs, developing managers, or retaining top talent. And that's why you need Lattice. Lattice is the number one performance management solution for growing companies. With Lattice, it's easy to launch 360 performance review cycles as often as you want, and you also get an incredible Continuous feedback system with OKR goal tracking,

• 26:33Harry Stebbings?

  real time feedback and one on one meetings to ensure employees get feedback between reviews. So find out why the likes of Coinbase, Plan Grid, Birchbox and WePay trust Lattice as their performance management solution by heading over to lattice.com to start investing in your people. That's lattice.com, the number one performance management solution for growing companies. And speaking of number one there, you must check out Recurly, the company powering subscription success with Recurly's enterprise class subscription management platform, providing rapid time to value without requiring massive integration effort and expense. And they have the ability to not only increase revenue by 7%, but also reducing the all important churn rate. And that's why thousands of customers from Twitch to HubSpot to CBS Interactive trust Recurly as their subscription management platform.

• 27:17Harry Stebbings?

  And you can check them out now on recurly.com. That really is a must. As always, from everyone here at the 20 minute VC, we so appreciate your support and cannot wait to bring you Founders Friday with Addy Seidman at you now.