20VC: Accel GP, Rich Wong on When Is The Right Time To Scale A Startup, Optimising Initial vs Follow-On Investment Decision-Making & The Globalisation of VC In Recent Years

Rich Wong is a General Partner @ Accel, one of the world's leading venture funds with investments in the likes of Dropbox, Slack, Facebook, Deliveroo and Atlassian, just to name a few. As for Rich, Rich has led investments in the likes of Rovio (IPO), SwiftKey, AdMob, MoPub and more incredible companies. Rich also sits on the boards of the likes of Checkr, Osmo, Rovio and Atlassian where he was first outside Board member and lead investor. Prior to joining Accel, Rich served as SVP of products for mobile pioneer, Openwave Systems and CMO of Covad Communications. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rich made his way into the world of VC with Accel from OpenWave and having been active in the mobile and broadband ecosystems? 2.) What does Rich mean when he states the rise of the "Globalisation of VC"? How does Accel both find and win deals in locations such as Australia, Finland? How do the founder's mentalities differ to Bay area founder mentality? 3.) How does Rich think about price sensitivity when assessing opportunities? What would be considered a good return multiple when investing from the early stage fund? How does this differ from the growth fund? 4.) What is the internal structure of investment decision making at Accel? How does Rich analyze reserve allocation? How does initial to reserve decision-making differ? How does the Accel partnership determine the 10% of portfolio that are "winners"? 5.) Question from Manu Kumar @ K9: How does Rich decide when is the right time for a company to scale? What is the balance of not too early and not too late? How should unit economics play a role in this decision? What characteristic must be inherent within multiple functions of the business, pre-scaling? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Rich’s Fave Book: The Big Short Rich’s Fave Blog: Wolf Street Rich’s Most Recent Investment: Instabug As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Rich on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Namely is the all-in-one HR, payroll, and benefits platform your employees will love to use. It’s as intuitive as social media, but powerful enough to support the complexity of today’s workforce. Namely’s mission is to help mid-sized companies build a better workplace. See how Namely can transform your workplace at www. Namely.com. Eero is the world’s best-reviewed wifi. A system of eero and eero Beacons wirelessly connects to blanket your home in fast, reliable WiFi, so despite the increased number of devices with Christmas coming, you’ll still be able to get powerful mesh WiFi in every nook and cranny of your home, backyard included. No more dead spots, slow spots, drop-offs, or buffering — right out of the box. Eero is only available in the US and Canada and you can check it out here!

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

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  Welcome back to the 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, at H Stebbings with two B's on Snapchat. I always love to see you there. And you can download our app on the App Store by searching for 20 VC, that's 2-0 VC. And with the app, you can easily tag episodes and go back to them at later dates, easily find and buy resources mentioned in the show. And most importantly, for me to continue improving the content, you can rate episodes and provide feedback. However, to this week on the show, and I'm thrilled to feature one of the top performing funds of the last decade, with investments in the likes of Facebook, Dropbox, Slack, Atlassian, Deliveroo and many more incredible companies. Have you guessed it? Well, I'm thrilled to be featuring Excel this week. And joining me in the hot seat from Excel, we have Rich Wong, general partner and the man behind investments in the likes of Rovio,

• 0:42Harry Stebbings?

  which IPO'd earlier this year, SwiftKey, which was acquired by Microsoft, AdMob, MoPub and many more incredible companies. Rich also sits on the boards of the likes of Chequer, Osmo, Rovio and Atlassian, where fun fact, he was the first outside board member and lead investor. And prior to joining Excel, Rich served as SVP of Products for Mobile Pioneer, OpenWave Systems and CMO of Covad Communications. I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Rich's colleague, Brian O'Malley, for the intro to Rich today and to Manu Kumar at K9 Ventures for providing such fantastic questions. We really do appreciate that. But before we dive into the show today, the heart of any good company is its people. That's why Namely brings employees together on the HR platform that everyone loves to use.

• 1:23Harry Stebbings?

  It's as intuitive as social media, but powerful enough to support the complexity of today's workforce. Namely is the all-in-one platform that helps companies manage HR, payroll, benefits and more. Their mission: to help mid-sized companies build a better workplace. See how Namely can transform your workplace at www.namely.com today. And speaking of transforming a space, that's exactly what Eero can do. Eero is the world's best reviewed wifi. A system of Eero and Eero Beacons wirelessly connects to blanket your home in fast, reliable wifi. So despite the increased number of devices with Christmas coming, you'll still be able to get powerful mesh wifi in every nook and cranny of your home. Yes, backyard included. And no more dead spots, slow spots, drop-offs or buffering, right out of the box.

• 2:06Harry Stebbings?

  And Eero is only available in the US and Canada and you can check it out at Eero.com. But enough from me, so without further ado, I'm thrilled to hand over to Rich Wong, general partner at Excel.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:25Harry Stebbings?

  Rich, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today, having heard so many great things from both Brian and Jake. So thank you so much for joining me today.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Thank you very much. Great to be on the show, Harry.

• 2:34Harry Stebbings?

  I'd love to start this day with a little on you and how you made your foray into the world of early-stage investing. So what was your entry point, Rich?

• 2:42Speaker 02

  So I was actually quite an accidental venture capitalist. I was a operating exec. I ran the products group of a company called OpenWave Systems, which was a pioneer in wireless internet and mobile technologies. And I really thought I was going to stay going on the operating executive side of the world, looking for sort of the right COO or president job as the next gig. And I'd known the Excel team for many years, mainly because we had worked in similar telecom and internet spaces in the past. And so when I came to see them to look for ideas of companies to go work at, they were looking for someone who had a background in mobile technology. And that's how I ended up wandering into venture capital.

• 3:20Harry Stebbings?

  But I want to start today and go through the life cycle of a deal. So starting with sourcing and finding the incredible entrepreneurs in Excel's portfolio, then discuss some of the investing mindsets and mechanics, and then talk about post-investment, how you think about scaling and being an effective board member. How does that sound?

• 3:36Speaker 02

  That sounds great.

• 3:36Harry Stebbings?

  So in terms of starting on the sourcing of great deals, you've spoken before about the globalization of VC. What do you really mean by this? And how are we seeing a fundamental shift in mindset, do you think?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So when I started in the VC industry, I guess it was 11 years ago now, I think the historical conventional wisdom at the time was that you would only want to invest in companies that you could quote unquote "drive to" or that were very local here to Silicon Valley. And I think that was relatively logical and empirical in that, you know, most of the big outcomes of the previous era, whether in the software, the internet, or the networking space, were all largely, Microsoft being obviously the exception, largely either on the West Coast or the Bay Area specifically. And so there was this belief that there was this concentration of talent, and so the vast majority of your dollars should end up here. I think it's pretty obvious now, whether it's companies like Spotify or Supercell or Atlassian or other companies of that form.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  That is now an outdated view and I think it's simply put all the innovations that we've all spent time on, whether it's broadband telecoms or mobile or the ability to do distribution over the internet, whether it's through search words like AdWords or social distribution through Twitter or Facebook. It allows companies to start far from Silicon Valley and actually in many cases grow to multi-billion dollar companies, not based in the valley. And so I think it's a true renaissance that's been happening of Silicon Valley going from being a physical place to being in some cases an entrepreneurial mindset that's not physically based here. And so I think broadly it's a very positive and good thing in that it just creates a greater amount of entrepreneurial opportunity, both for founders and of course for those of us that assist them, you know, the VCs, investors.

• 5:16Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned that transition from kind of pure location to mindset and some of the companies that you've backed also. You led the deal in Atlassian, a company at the time in Australia. Talk to me, how does Excel source those truly great entrepreneurs who are miles away from the valley in many cases? And how do they really find those great deals?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, in Atlassian's case, this was actually a company that just about everybody knew about. But I think it was hard to predict when Mike and Scott, the founders, were ever going to actually raise capital, if ever.

• 5:46Harry Stebbings?

  Quite like Qualtrics almost?

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Quite like Qualtrics, like Rovio was similar, Squarespace was similar. There are many companies that had bootstrapped themselves to a certain level of success. And you know, the companies were owned by the founders and so there was a, it wasn't a question of when they were going to quote unquote, do a venture capital round, there was a possibility they might never do it. And so I think you had to make the calculus in one's head of how much time did you spend with those founders? And would you spend 14 hour plane flight to go quote, have lunch with them and spend the time to build a relationship? So in Atlassian's case, it was a company that was actually pretty well understood. But I think only so many people took the effort to go down to Sydney and build a relationship. In other cases, you do have really interesting companies hiding in plain sight.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  But you just have to spend the effort to network with the local knowledgeable entrepreneurs and other angel investors to find those interesting companies. The company you were mentioning a moment ago. Qualtrics is a good example of that. Hiding in Salt Lake, you didn't think that there was going to be a multi-billion dollar company in the area of market research surveys, but we were lucky enough to find that company relatively early on and spend the time building a relationship with the founder, Ryan Smith.

• 6:57Harry Stebbings?

  I'm intrigued, how do you think about, you know, a GP at Excel? How do you think about effectiveness of GP time when building those relationships? And what makes one highly worthy of that time and another not so worthy?

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Right, the internal joke, I suppose, that we sometimes say internally or that I say internally is that the longest flight you'll ever take is to the deal that's not working or that it's not special. And the point being, whether it's just down the street from you or whether it's 14 hours away. Of course, in our business, what matters is the unique or special company. And even if it takes 12 hours or 14 hour flight to find it, I think I'd far rather spend that time than to spend all your time reacting to the noise. This is easy to say and hard to do, but to the degree that you can divine out what you think is a special or interesting company, recognizing that we'll be wrong a substantial percentage of the time. Trying to have that high bar, that high standard is where you should spend 90% of your time,

• 7:48Speaker 02

  even if that company you identify is a long ways away from where you work or where you live.

• 7:53Harry Stebbings?

  And when you do identify that company, I'd love to kind of transition into the next stage in the funnel, so to speak, and going one layer deeper. So in terms of price sensitivity, you invested at a very interesting stage. You get largely A and B from my analysis. So talk to me, being too late to not be price sensitive like the first checks and too early to be overly price sensitive, how would you respond to say Peter Fenton on the show, who said, never turn down a company based on valuation, it's a mental trap? How do you think about price sensitivity and your feelings towards it when making those deals?

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Well, I would say I mostly agree, but not completely. I mean, I think certainly at the early stage, you're purely, you're betting on team. I see that the company called Mopub, there were a couple of engineers and product managers that came out of a previous investment, AdMob. And so they were entrepreneurs that completely understood the category they were working in, had an authentic understanding of the problems still to be solved. That was one where you were purely betting on team and it really wasn't a debate about your valuation at all. That is also true. Of companies being price insensitive and not worrying about that too much is also true of companies that you believe have some unbounded or uncapped upside. And we'd like to say that all companies do, but the reality is not all of them have that truly uncapped, unbounded upside.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  So company like Atlassian, I think we were not on the low end of how we put in our term sheet in terms of the valuation that we ascribed to Atlassian at the time. That said, I think there are other companies that the category or the nature of the competitive set, you have to have some amount of price discipline in order to achieve true good returns. And I think those are in categories that you there's just simply not a completely unbounded upside is where you have to be somewhat price conscious. That is largely true of almost every practitioner in VC, my personal opinion, including Peter.

• 9:39Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, a lot of people say in the ecosystem that large multi-stage funds have reverted to the batting average element of investing, kind of minimizing loss ratio and being happy with the five to eight X. How would you think about this? You mentioned there about the uncapped upside. How would you respond to that suggestion, probably with Excel lying in that multi-stage fund assertion?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  I think it very much depends on where you sit on the early stage versus growth spectrum. You Excel actually has two different vehicles in the US. One, a early-stage $500 million fund and a larger billion-plus growth fund. So you really have to be shooting for the unbounded upside opportunities on the early-stage side. You're shooting for the metaphorical 10x, you know, obviously we don't always get there in every deal, but you really have to believe that there's that upside opportunity in that side of the fund. But you on the growth stage, you are still looking for the upside opportunities. The Qualtrics, the Rovios, the Atlassians are all bets out of the growth funds, it turns out. But I think it's more all right if you can sort of see the five to seven X opportunities

• 10:39Speaker 02

  and you don't necessarily believe it can be 10x plus if you're on that side of the capital spectrum.

• 10:44Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned the two different elements of the fund structures there. I'd love to discuss the two different elements of decision-making with regards to initial investment to follow on. How do you think about reserve allocation with Excel? And what's the thought process around allocating reserves effectively? How does that look?

• 11:01Speaker 02

  It's not obvious to me we necessarily do it all right, but I'm happy to describe what we do, what we do do. You know, of course, things are often very cycle dependent and company dependent. But I would say when you do an early stage investment, on average, we at least reserve an equal amount of capital. So if you put in an eight million dollar Series A, one might reserve eight, 10, 11 million dollars, you know, for follow on rounds to support the company as it grows. I would say that ratio decreases the later stage one is involved. As you spend those reserves, obviously, if you were to do a Series B or a Series C as the initial investment, you know, I would say that ratio declines somewhat as the company moves further along. Historically, 10 years ago, when I first came to Excel, I would say historically, we would do the standard pro rata

• 11:44Speaker 02

  or slightly below pro rata as our standard way of following on to any of our early stage investments. I think that mentality has changed in a smart way, meaning we can actually see the companies that have the chance to scale to these multi-billion dollar opportunities. And it is just illogical that we wouldn't use those investment opportunities to then do pro rata or in some cases, super pro rata, you know, behind these growing investments. Qualtrics that we've spoken about a couple of times here is a good example of that, where we invested perhaps six, seven years ago as our initial investment. I think the first round that they ever did institutionally. And we've had the opportunity to buy up in many rounds along the way, and we're quite pleased with that opportunity.

• 12:23Harry Stebbings?

  I'm intrigued. In terms of Excel's portfolio, there's a lot of companies raising big rounds and a lot of exciting opportunities ahead. How does that internal decision making look in terms of allocating dollars into the highest performing companies? What does that look like?

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Just like everything in hopefully good, healthy partnerships, there's a fair bit of debate about all of this. You know, there's times that we certainly have debates about is there a good opportunity to exit? If there's a, at least part of our position, if there's a huge round. And similarly, you might have part of the partnership arguing this is one of those unique, special companies. So we look at all the opportunities that are out there, investing in this round, even though we already own a substantial percentage, might be one of the best investment opportunities we would see. So there's often never consensus, and we often debate this quite vociferously. That said, if you were to take an objective assessment across the Excel partnership, we all know. Who the top 10% companies are and which ones are quote unquote special. And so I think those are the ones we try to direct chunk of our follow on dollars towards

• 13:19Speaker 02

  as opposed to just spreading it peanut butter across, you know, everything in the portfolio. I think this is a still a work in process for our firm as well as others. But you certainly, we're not sure we have it completely right, you know, ourselves today.

• 13:31Harry Stebbings?

  Speaking of kind of identifying those really special companies around them, there's always an intense amount of competition. And one element that that kind of affects your ability to get in is that competitive landscape. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on competition dynamics in the Bay today. And how do you think about staying relevant with the progression of time and the entrance of new funds?

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Right. I think all of us in the industry talk a lot about, you know, how do you find the signal out of the different noise that that's out there in the volume of deal flow. You know, one of the first ways we do it is by not only focusing just in the Bay area, as we talked about earlier. The fact that one can take advantage of the global nature of what's happening in entrepreneurship means that if you actually spend your time in Salt Lake, in Austin, in Dallas, in Seattle, other markets. And then of course internationally, whether it's Finland or or Australia or other markets. There actually is less noise in those areas relative to the amount of interesting companies that can emerge. So one of the ways to help reduce that, to improve our focus, is to look in areas where others are not. And those geographies are one example.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, the second, probably heard this from multiple Excel people, is that we have this internal phrase called the prepared mind. It comes from Louis Pasteur, quote, you know, chance favoring someone who has a prepared mind. It's just an internal way of saying having a thesis inductive based approach is another way to sort out what's interesting from all the different deal flow and activity that's out there. And I think we do practice this quite well internally, whether it's around the API initiatives or around enterprise software. We've been able to build a collection of companies, you know, whether it's the slacks or cloud errors or drop boxes or invisions. A lot of those companies, when we go pursue those entrepreneurs, see value in others in the family that have similar experiences.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  And so obviously, like many firms, we try to position and market those unique experiences and have those companies see how they can benefit. From others in the portfolio.

• 15:22Harry Stebbings?

  I'm so glad you said about kind of benefiting from others in the portfolio in terms of scaling. It leads perfectly to my next question, which is actually from Manu Kumar at K9, who says that, you know, you've seen many incredible companies go through the scaling process. How do you decide when's the right time for a company to scale? Let's start on that.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Sure, you know, I, I, I think it's pretty basic in terms of the question of when do you start pressing on the gas pedal or, or not? It relates to the simplistic and straightforward points around value prop market fit and the proof of unit economics and the belief that one can start to see the scalability of those unit economics. In general, I think most companies, especially in a capital-rich VC environment in Silicon Valley, most of companies are largely make the mistake of stepping on the gas too quickly. And I think wasting precious capital or founder dilution, depending which way you want to look at it, in a way that's unnecessary. So I think most companies will know if you have the discipline and patience of when you're starting to see repeatability. And that repeatability is the time to step on the gas.

• 16:20Harry Stebbings?

  To what extent do you define repeatable? Is it kind of continuous for a couple of months? How do you gain comfort in seeing those repeatable revenue streams and cycles?

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Generally, I would say, you know, on median, it's a couple of quarters, three to six months of repeatability. And more important than just the time dimension is whether you can see the, you know, the atomic level of the unit economics working. It's, it's very powerful. For example, if you can start to see an expansionary cohort of either usage or dollar expansion, once you've acquired a customer, it's the metaphorical land and expand success. And so I think while every situation is slightly different, there are certain magical moments you look for to see that while the core unit economic is really starting to work. And I think that's the time you really want to pour on the gas.

• 17:05Harry Stebbings?

  I'm interested, you said that a lot of companies scale maybe too early. I'd love to hear your thoughts on a time where, where you've seen a mistake being made with regards to scaling time. And what were the big takeaways for you?

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Right, this I'd point to, you know, many of my own personal mistakes. If I were to go back to my time before Excel, my OpenWave systems, you know, the, the fundamental landscape in telecoms was changing right as we were trying to make a transition ourselves. And we were continuing to Invest in technologies selling to the big carriers and telcos, which were really starting to go away as key players in the market. If we had taken the time to think carefully about who our customer base should be, we could have built technologies like Skype, like Twitter, as opposed to just continuing to build technologies selling to Orange or Singular or Nextel or AT&T, the customers of that time. And so I think that was an example where we both, in some cases, were successful too quickly and so the company scaled so quickly

• 17:59Speaker 02

  that we were trying to build our entire business on that one customer base versus diversifying and looking at other customer bases or other value propositions, which was a missed opportunity certainly on my watch.

• 18:11Harry Stebbings?

  We mentioned Manu earlier and we mentioned the right time to scale. Often that for you now is in the case of being a board member. Before we dive into the quickfire, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you've seen yourself evolve as a board member over your time since 2006 with Excel and where the inflection points have been in your learning.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  In terms of my learning as a board member, when you first started out as a venture person, particularly if you come from an operating background, I found myself racing around trying to help the company in every tactical or business development or marketing way possible. And so I think the way I acted as a board member early on was just trying to throw every ounce of energy and activity to support the company in every way possible. And I think I came to realize that that was not always helpful, in some cases, not always productive for the company, and to try to pick your spots where the greatest points of leverage are and how you can share things that is harder for the founder, CEO themselves to see. So to give you a tangible example of that, because you as a venture capitalist get to see the entire industry

• 19:10Speaker 02

  and all of the companies that surround your portfolio or companies, you're probably better or should be better at understanding competitive dynamics and how the shape of the market is developing overall. You're probably less helpful down in the tactics of product management or the day-to-day marketing activities. And so I think being able to focus on the more strategic elements of understanding the landscape and how the landscape is changing is where I'm starting to spend more time as opposed to racing around trying to do every area of tactical support in my earlier days of being a VC.

• 19:39Harry Stebbings?

  I'd love to dive into a quickfire around with you. Now, so I say a short statement and then you give me your immediate thoughts about sixty seconds per one. How does that sound?

• 19:47Speaker 02

  That sounds great.

• 19:48Harry Stebbings?

  So let's start with your favorite book and why. What should I read on the next plane ride?

• 19:51Speaker 02

  My favorite book is The Big Short by Michael Lewis. The reason why I really enjoy that book is first of all, I've enjoyed Michael Lewis's writing all the way back to Liar's Poker when I was, I guess, still in college, you know, back when he first wrote that. But I really like when you read The Big Short, it's a great discussion about how to perceive something that's different than the conventional wisdom. And I think, of course, the wonderful story there is how few people saw what was happening and the mania of the crowds in terms of bidding on mortgage-backed securities. And how do you recognize when you're in that bubble? And how do you recognize how to get out of the conventional wisdom of what everybody else thinks? Because fundamentally, I think what we partially do as venture capitalists is you're riding the up cycles and riding these secular waves of technology.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  But of course, the great money and the great upside can be made also from trying to figure out where everybody else is wrong, where the conventional wisdom is wrong. And so that's what I really like about, you know, that that story of The Big Short.

• 20:46Harry Stebbings?

  What's the worst advice that you commonly hear being given in our industry?

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Oftentimes, in terms of bad advice, there is a discussion about how a category is quote unquote hot. And how maybe we as a venture capital firm need our bet in X category. So whether that's cryptocurrency or Google Glass or whatever the hot category is of that year or that couple of years. I I think it's not good advice to quote unquote have a play in X category. Because if you are able to pick the best, that may be the company that makes all the money. And the other ninety nine percent of the companies may end up being money losers. And so I we try to avoid that dialogue, you know, here internally.

• 21:24Harry Stebbings?

  What have you changed your mind about in the last few years? And why do you think you changed your mind on that?

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Well, I think when we first started out, was when I first started out, there was very much a belief that I very much had the belief. It was unclear what the value was of having a large syndicate or a very strong syndicate of fellow board members. That in some sense, if you had a strong enough relationship with the entrepreneur, you could help influence that entrepreneur. And then also provide the capital to help that company be successful. I think. Out of some learning of the past five to seven years, I think Osmo, by the way, as we mentioned, is a very good example of this. Having a diverse syndicate that has different points of view to the board, even if you don't a hundred percent always agree with the other members of that board, can actually make a dramatic difference in helping the company be successful long term. So as I think I mentioned before we started the podcast,

• 22:11Speaker 02

  you know, Mark Suster from Upfront, Manu from K9 and myself are the three of the board members at this company, Osmo in the educational gaming space. And the three of us just come from different backgrounds, but I think each bring useful and complimentary perspectives, you know, to help the founder promote be successful. And I very much enjoyed the interaction. And it's one of the, one of the things I've greatly enjoyed in the past couple of years.

• 22:33Harry Stebbings?

  But I would love to ask, your favorite blog or newsletter, what do you love to read?

• 22:37Speaker 02

  You know, my, my favorite blog is a blog called Wolf Street. And it is a blogger that talks a lot about what's going on in the world economy, about bubbles in real estate, about bubbles in tech. It comes very much off the Big Short sense of thinking that, that I talked about a moment ago.

• 22:51Harry Stebbings?

  How does Excel think about training the next generation?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  You know, training the next generation is something we spend a lot of time thinking about. I referred to this prepared mind, a shtick and, and approach that we talked about maybe a few minutes ago. And so the idea of how do we get folks that are just starting in their career, engaged, plugged into the partnership as quickly as possible and leading deals as quickly as possible. When I first joined Excel, I was able to actually lead my first deal within 30 days of actually starting. And that wasn't because of me, that, that was because the organization encouraged and supported that. And so I think we've proven over the years the ability to do that. And of course, it's the heart of how, how a venture capital firm stays healthy.

• 23:31Harry Stebbings?

  And then let's finish today on your most recent publicly announced investment. And why did you say yes?

• 23:36Speaker 02

  The most recent publicly announced investment is a company called Instabug, which is based out of Cairo, Egypt, and a couple of entrepreneurs that came out of the Y C system. But you know, almost their entire team is, is based there in Cairo. You know, I, I think in terms of why I said yes, I think they're, they're a team that had proven, even at this very early days, value prop and market fit. And it very much fits many of the things that we talked about today in terms of the. The globalization of VC and the chance to build a scale company even from a different geographic headquarters. They sit at the intersection of product development and mobile. So they sort of fit the intersection of my sort of Atlassian sort of world plus my mobile background.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  And I was just super impressed by the founders Omar Mottaz and so we're very honoured to be investors with them.

• 24:23Harry Stebbings?

  Well, Rich, as I said, I heard so many great things from both Brian and Jake and also Jason Lemkin. So thank you so much for joining me today, Rich.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Thanks very much for having me here. Appreciate it.

• 24:33Harry Stebbings?

  What a very special guest Rich was to have on the show. And again, a huge thanks to him for giving up the time to appear on the show. And if you'd like to see more from Rich, you can find him on Twitter at R Wong. Likewise, you can follow us behind the scenes at the 20 Minute VC on Snapchat on at H Stebbings with two Bs. It'd be fantastic to see you there. Likewise, you can now download the 20 Minute VC app on the App Store by simply searching for 20 VC. But before we leave you today, the heart of any good company is its people. That's why Namely brings employees together on the HR platform that everyone loves to use. It's as intuitive as social media, but powerful enough to support the complexity of today's workforce. Namely is the all in one platform that helps companies manage HR, payroll, benefits and more. Their mission to help midsize companies build a better workplace.

• 25:17Harry Stebbings?

  See how Namely can transform your workplace at www.namely.com today. And speaking of transforming a space, that's exactly what Eero can do. Eero is the world's best reviewed wifi. A system of Eero and Eero Beacons wirelessly connects to blanket your home in fast, reliable wifi. So despite the increased number of devices with Christmas coming, you'll still be able to get powerful mesh wifi in every nook and cranny of your home. Yes, backyard included and no more dead spots, slow spots, drop offs or buffering right out of the box. And Eero is only available in the US and Canada and you can check it out at ero.com. As always, I so appreciate your support and I cannot wait to bring you Wednesday's episode with part two, Jake Flomberg, partner at Excel.