20VC: How Both Founders & GPs Should Construct Their Pitch, Why VCs Are Eternal Optimists & What Makes The Best Post-Investment VC/Founder Relationship with Brian Ascher, Partner @ Venrock

Brian Ascher is a Partner @ Venrock, a leading fund with prior investments including Nest, Dollar Shave Club, AppNexus and many more. At Venrock, Brian invests broadly across enterprise and consumer markets and has enjoyed no less than 10 of his investments exit successfully. Due to this exit rate,Brian has been named to the Forbes Midas List multiple times, for the VCs who have backed the most profitable winners in the last four years. Prior to Venrock, Brian was a Senior Product Manager at Intuit responsible for Quicken and Quicken.com. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Brian made his way into the world of VC and came to be a partner at Venrock? 2.) Does Brian believe that in today's world of 'ask for advice and get money', that slide decks are necessary anymore? 3.) How does Brian like pitches to be structured? How should the deck start? Why should the deck not start with the team or the origin story? Should the deck include the amount being raised? 4.) What are the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make in pitches? How can they turn these into an advantage and show the VC their unparalleled insight? 5.) How does Brian view the post-investment relationship with founders? What makes for the optimal relationship? Is it possible for VC to be both friend and board member? How does Brian look to scale the relationship curve when getting to know a founder? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Brian’s Fave Book: Extreme Ownership Brian's Most Recent Investment: Socrates As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Brian on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom’s their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They’ll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

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

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  We are back and welcome to the 20 minute VC with me, your host, Harry Stebbings. I'd love to see you on Snapchat at H Stebbings with two Bs. All ads get a personal message from me. But for the show today, and I'm not sure I've quite had a VC on the show, who's had such a good hit rate with investments exiting as our guest today. So joining me on the show today, we have Brian Asher, partner at Venrock, a leading VC fund with prior investments in the likes of Nest, Dollar Shave Club, AppNexus and many more. At Venrock, Brian invests broadly across enterprise and consumer markets and has enjoyed no less than 10 of his investments exiting successfully. Due to this exit rate, Brian's been named to the Forbes Midas List multiple times for the VCs who've backed the most profitable winners in the last four years. Prior to Venrock, Brian was a Senior Product Manager at Intuit, responsible for Quicken and Quicken.com.

• 0:44Harry Stebbings?

  I do also want to say a massive thank you to previous guests, David Pateman and Nick Bym at Venrock and Alex Rosen at IDG for the intro to Brian today, without which this episode would not have been possible. But before we head into the episode today, a lot of people ask me, Harry, you do so many calls and interviews, but what do you use? My response, Zoom, the number one video and web conferencing service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to an array of activities, including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business IM, just to name a few. And it's the easiest solution to use, buy and scale, and for sure, the most straightforward pricing. But hey, don't take my word for it. Their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100 million funding round says it all. Zoom really is a must-check out for your business.

• 1:28Harry Stebbings?

  I cannot emphasise that enough and you can find them at zoom.us. Speaking of video, though, to power your company there with Zoom, you must check out Viewdit. Viewdit is a free video recording tool that makes it easy for organisations to embrace the power of video for personalised communications. Viewdit enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalised videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the video platform, video creators will know who is watching what and which video messages resonate with which users. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. And you can find out more and download Viewdit for free at video.com/Viewdit.

• 2:11Harry Stebbings?

  But it's now time for me to shut up and I'm delighted to hand over to Brian Asher, partner at Venrock.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:25Harry Stebbings?

  Brian, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. A huge thanks to Alex at IDG for the intro, but thank you so much for joining me today, Brian.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Oh, my pleasure. Happy to be here.

• 2:34Harry Stebbings?

  Now, I'd love to get started though, Brian, with a bit about you and how you made your way into what I describe as the wonderful world of VC.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  I do love what I do, so I would agree. It is wonderful. It's a privilege to work with great entrepreneurs every day. I got in through this thing called the Kaufman Fellows Program. I had been a product manager at Intuit, managing the Quicken product family and helping launch Quicken.com. This is going back almost 20 years, over 20 years really, when I started at Intuit. And I had heard about this Kaufman Fellows Program that was kind of modeled after White House Fellows, trying to bring people into internships and venture capital. And the goal at the time was to reach far and wide for folks with slightly different backgrounds than typical. And that program got me paired with Benrock, and I had great mentors, and I've stayed ever since. And now the program itself is 22 years old. There's been hundreds of fellows.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  And now it's a global program, bringing folks from all over the world and all sorts of nationalities. And very high percentage of women coming through the program, and it's a great thing. But that was my gateway to venture.

• 3:37Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, is there any advice you'd give to people looking to make their way into venture today? It's probably one of the most common questions that I get in terms of their entrance into venture. Is there anything that you'd advise people looking to make their way in?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Well, there's kind of two paths. You beat and kick and scratch and claw your way in as a young person, who doesn't yet really have much to bring to the table by way of a track record or proven deal flow based on your stature as a founder or senior executive at a platform company. So you get in at the bottom and you climb your way up through performance. And that was kind of the track that I took, joining early as kind of an associate. Or you do it late in life when you're being invited in because you do have a track record and you have something that will be immediately appealing to entrepreneurs because you founded a successful company, you were senior at a great company. So both tracks are Very worthwhile. It really depends how compelled you are that you absolutely want to be a VC when you're younger.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  It is the harder path. The the numbers are slightly against you. But I always say, if that's what's in your heart, then go pursue it. And there's always room for one more.

• 4:42Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Certainly always room for one more good one.

• 4:44Harry Stebbings?

  And I'd I'd also add a third path in starting a podcast, increasingly common these days.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 4:51Harry Stebbings?

  But I before before we dive into sectors and the technology itself. Now, as a VC, a lot of entrepreneurs ask me, how would you like me to pitch? And more specifically, how do I start my pitch? So I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and and the advice that you give entrepreneurs in terms of kind of the expectations that you have and how you like them to start.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  I love pitches. I think, you know, as a VC, you have to be an eternal optimist. A good pitch is a story well told about how the future is going to be better than the present. And so who who wouldn't like that? I think the first bit of advice is to have a pitch. There's a current meme out there which says that you don't want to have slides. You want to have a conversation and you want to seem like you're not actually looking for their money. They'll be lucky to get their money into your company. And I appreciate the sentiment of where that's coming from. I don't favor pitches because I like a power dynamic between, you know, the seller and the buyer. I like pitches because it's putting your best foot forward in really crafting a beautiful narrative

• 5:55Speaker 02

  around your vision for the future. And I think that's generally a lot more effective than winging it in a free form conversation. It's why they have Academy Awards for for movies. And there's, to my knowledge, no category for improvisational sketches. Plus, you you want to get quantitative and use pictures, pictures worth a thousand words, all that sort of stuff. So my first advice is to have slides. They're not only useful for fundraising, but the PowerPoint deck has become the de facto business plan. It can substitute for your mission statement, vision statement, etc. Like, there's never not a good time to have a a good, short deck about your company. That's good for internal partnerships, etc. And you could always come to a meeting, ready to give it, and if someone says, no, no, I don't.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  No one slides, I just want to talk, then you can always talk. Or you could always take a conversation and say, you know, I just want to show you three slides that I think will really capture the essence of what we're doing, or really demonstrate our traction. So that's the first point. But when it comes to how should I start, I have a very specific opinion on this, which is start by setting up the problem. And that might seem obvious, I know, I'm sure everyone does it, but they don't. A lot of pitches start with the team slide, which I understand why this comes from, because no one, no one wants to come in and not introduce themselves. But I think you can introduce yourself, here's my name, here's my role, here's the people with me. But generally, a team slide, it's hard to generate excitement and interest. Like, you might all have very impressive backgrounds, but a five-minute slog of three or four or 10 people's resumes is just not high-energy.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  And it's much better to do it at the middle or end of a presentation when you actually know what you'd be listening for. Like, what are the relevant points in a background that feed into this business? The other thing people tend to start with is the origin story. Here's how we got started and why. And sometimes there's some relevant nuggets in there. But again, it's better once you have the context of understanding the business. And generally, the origin stories tend to ramble and include a lot of things that frankly are not quite relevant. So start by setting up the problem. This is what is wrong with the current world. And this is how I envision a better future. I have a market insight, or I have a technology insight that's going to make things better. So that's, that's sort of how I would start.

• 8:01Harry Stebbings?

  What's your thoughts on demos internally within the pitch? Do you love to see them? If so, what do you think makes a great demo? Or do you think they're not necessary?

• 8:11Speaker 02

  I do love a great demo. As a former product manager who gave lots and lots of live demos, I think they can be super compelling. But again, you need to craft it as a little short story with characters and a plot, some tension, and then ultimately, resolution. So when I say characters and a plot, I think it's very important to set up who you are as the user. Pretend, put your, put your audience in the shoes of the user who's going to use this product, and what their problem is. And then walk them through a scenario or two of why they're using this product and how it makes their life better. Rather than just clicking through a bunch of features. And menu items and here's the next thing that this thing can do like put it all in a story in the service of why you make the world better.

• 8:56Harry Stebbings?

  I I do completely agree with that on the demo. One that always very much irritates me and I I'm probably unfair to say this, but very much irritates me is the market element where we're pitched now. I've seen three times now trillion dollar markets, uh which to some extent can be ridiculous when it's being pitched by nightclub software. So so I'm intrigued to hear your thoughts on how you approach market slides, kind of the tam around them and whether you're a bottoms up man or or a top down.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Well, I'm definitely not top down from the sense of, you know, here's what Forrester or or Gartner or some, you know, consulting firm says and a ridiculously large number. All I'm really looking for is, is the entrepreneur thoughtful about their claim on the market size? Have they identified the segment that they're really going to serve? And if it's a well crafted, deeply insightful analysis, then I'm willing to buy that the market may in fact be larger than I would have assumed. Which sort of is a very important point I'd like to bring up, which is I've noticed that when pitches go wrong or often a cause of wrong pitches is the entrepreneur assuming that something is obvious and then getting resistance from the audience and getting defensive about the questions they're being asked.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  And in reality, this is the perfect opportunity to actually seal the deal, to nail the fact that, hey, I as an entrepreneur, I have a non-obvious insight. It might be a market insight that I know that this need is way bigger out there than anyone would have realized. So maybe it's Airbnb realizing that people are willing to rent out a room or their couch in in their private residence. And there are other people who are willing to pay to sleep there. Or it could be a technology insight like Tesla realizing that they could build a really awesome electric car when up to that point, people thought electric cars were were bogus. So when an entrepreneur has this non-obvious insight, they should present it as a non-obvious insight.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Fact often happens is the opposite. They present this non-obvious insight as if it should be obvious to everyone and when. When they get questions or resistance, they get defensive or make the audience feel like a bunch of morons for not seeing it. Whereas I think if you flip it around and say, I recognize that you might think this is crazy. And in fact, most people think it's crazy and that is the insight I have. Of course, three years from now, this is going to seem obvious. Here is why I am so confident that this need exists or where I can solve this technology problem. And, and I think that is ultimately what early-stage VCs are looking for. We're looking for a non-consensus viewpoint that will ultimately prove right. And the market will catch up and reward the company for achieving this goal.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  I just think if you reframe it as you don't get pissed off when the investor doesn't see it. Show them that, hey, this is what you came for. It's like that Rihanna song. This is the point at which you really need to put yourself in my shoes and, and listen to my argument as to why I think this is the pivotal point of why I'm starting this company.

• 11:51Harry Stebbings?

  Do you like entrepreneurs to include the risk element in their, in their slides and in their pitch? In terms of these are the potential problems that may arise and then potentially ways that we could combat this. Do you like to see that or do you think it's potentially not something that needs to be included? I quite enjoy it personally.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  I do too, because I chose a real self-awareness and a realistic sense of the challenges in front of you. You still need the optimism and excitement about the future, but, but ultimately being able to identify the things that can go wrong is awesome. I remember seeing Jack Dorsey's pitch for Square's Series A and he literally started with like, these are 75 things that could kill this company in the short term. And I thought it was a very confident, it was almost a little cheeky because 75 things is quite a few risk factors. And so maybe it was a form of a humble brag or humble confidence, but I thought it was overall very effective.

• 12:46Harry Stebbings?

  No, I, I agree. I love that. Another big question that a lot of entrepreneurs ask me, and I always like to see it, again, I'd be intrigued to hear your thoughts. Should they include the dollar raise in the slide of how much they're raising and potential utility of the, the capital that is being presented? Do you like to see that?

• 13:01Speaker 02

  I actually do like to see the amount you're raising. It's sort of an important fact and it has implications for how much ownership may be of. Available valuation, how capital intensive they think this first phase is going to be, what sort of milestones they could achieve. I don't particularly find that there's a whole lot of variance in how they're going to use the funds. So I don't need to spend a lot of time there because I assume you're going to hire a bunch of people to build your product and sell your product. Sometimes there's some unique things and details that are important, but I wouldn't spend a ton of time there. But I do think you need to let the VC know, are you raising $2 million or $10 million? That's kind of an important thing.

• 13:38Harry Stebbings?

  No, absolutely. But kind of providing this insight, I'm really intrigued now to hear, what's the best pitch you've seen and why was it so compelling?

• 13:46Speaker 02

  A perfect example of the phenomena that I mentioned earlier of set up the problem really well was Castlight Health. This is a Venrock investment, they're now public. So if you like the story, you can go buy the stock. But they set up the problem as follows. In healthcare, unlike any other market, the consumer, the patient, doesn't know what things are going to cost until they've already received the service. And in fact, 30 days later, when you get this nearly incomprehensible bill that's called an explanation of benefits and has lots of numbers and jargon on it. But you can't go in and shop for an MRI or much less an exam or a bunch of other things in general. And they set up this problem so well.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  They compared it to what would it be like if you went to a grocery store and you had no idea what things cost until you were checking out and then they sent you a bill 30 days later? That they didn't even have to say what exactly they did to solve this problem. By the time they were finished outlining the outlandish state of US healthcare and the problem, you were ready to give them money because they were going to solve it. They had gotten you so riled up that this was a problem worth solving that it was like a done deal by slide five. And I just thought that that was exactly what one needs to do to generate excitement about why their company exists.

• 15:06Harry Stebbings?

  No, absolutely. I love that. We spoke about the portfolio company there and the investment made. A lot of entrepreneurs forget the post-investment relationship when they're in fundraising mode and the importance of choosing. Using the potential partner that will be your VC and potential board member. So I'm super intrigued to hear how you evaluate the ideal relationship then between the entrepreneur and the VC. What's your thought process around this?

• 15:31Speaker 02

  This is my most fun part of being a VC. While I enjoy a good pitch, I really love the relationships that I get to form with entrepreneurs and executive teams at our companies. And what makes for a really healthy relationship is trust, transparency and approaching it as a true partnership. And the trust goes both ways. If you're going to make a safe environment for a founder to share all the problems and challenges and setbacks and even mistakes that they face, then you as a venture capitalist have to ask, react in a constructive, helpful, non-threatening way. I assume going into every one of our companies that we're going to spend most of our time in board meetings and outside of board meetings,

• 16:13Speaker 02

  solving problems, fixing things, trying to make it better. We actually spend very little time congratulating ourselves on the great quarter or the wonderful press we got from a launch or what have you. So if there's a good two-way street of I'm going to tell you all the stuff that you need to know and the things that are going wrong and I'm going to pitch in and help and be calm, cool, collected and collaborative, then that's the ideal relationship. And you know, when you go through the tough times and you're then enjoying a spell of good weather and sunshine, it's a beautiful thing. The thing I love about venture is alignment. Sometimes you can get out of alignment with an entrepreneur, but it's both your jobs to get back in alignment and work towards the common goal.

• 16:55Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, is there a way to stress test this trust and transparency that's so crucial to the relationship pre-investment? What does the kind of onboarding of the relationship between you and the founder look like?

• 17:07Speaker 02

  While you're still making up your mind on the investment?

• 17:10Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  I think it comes down to the interaction you have when you're asking a bunch of tough questions, maybe sharing a bunch of risks and concerns. You know, does the entrepreneur get defensive? Or can they react in a very pragmatic, realistic way that inspires confidence?

• 17:28Speaker 02

  This person understands that this is going to be really hard, they're going to get things wrong. And that you asking questions about this is not a bad thing, is not taboo. It's actually, you know, I always say that, look, I'm, I'm, I'm a lot less tough than the market is. I may ask a question, but the market's going to vote with their dollars to buy or not buy your product or to, you know, have you in a sales cycle for nine months and then ultimately decide against you or, you know, all those things. So like, we shouldn't have conversations that are painful when it's just trying to seek truth about a company or about a, a challenge to the quest that you're going to be on. So I think if those things go well and you're really bonding and relating and communicating pre-investment,

• 18:11Speaker 02

  that, that bodes generally pretty well for post-investment.

• 18:14Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, to what extent do you think VCs can be both board members and kind of the sounding board that we are in a business sense, and also a friend on the side who is kind of the personal alliance? To what extent can you be both friend and VC, do you think?

• 18:28Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's definitely possible. It doesn't have to be the case. I think there needs to be mutual respect and trust and general like spending time with each other because you, you will spend a lot of time and it could go for a lot of years. But it can also go all the way to the point of very, very close personal relationships. One of my favorite entrepreneurs, Brent Lang, who's the CEO of Vocera. He and I knew each other for a good dozen years before we invested and then I was on his board for 12 years. So like a 25 year friendship that started in our first jobs out of college and then business school and family, friend, the whole nine yards. And, and we went through tough times in the business and then good times. And all the while our friendship endured because we trusted each other.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  The friendship didn't get in the way of the inevitable and necessary hard conversations. And it was a testament to his confidence and ability to trust that sharing all the tough stuff with me wouldn't result in something bad happening to him. Instead, I would, I would help him. And so our friendship only deepened. It's wonderful to do business with your friends, frankly.

• 19:30Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely. No, I know, I do agree. But I do want to move into a quickfire round now. And this quickfire round actually is more centered around favorites. Favorite of everything than ever before. So I'm very excited for this one in terms of updating my toolbox. So I start, so it's a short statement followed by it's about 60 seconds per one. How does that sound?

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Wonderful.

• 19:50Harry Stebbings?

  So let's start with your favorite book and why?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  So a book I'm giving out a lot these days is called Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win. And it's written by a former Navy SEAL, Jaco Willink, and it's all about how leaders need to really take responsibility for their entire environment, not only their subordinate, but also their peers and also their bosses or superiors, and really not blame other people, but take accountability. And I think it sounds like platitudes, but when you read the book, you realize, boy, I know so few leaders who actually do this, but the most effective leaders I do exhibit these traits. I think it's a beautifully written book.

• 20:29Harry Stebbings?

  What are your favorite productivity tools?

• 20:31Speaker 02

  So I use Evernote and the Evernote ScanSnap Scanner for everything. I've tried to go paperless as best I can. I use Google Drive for anything that's going to be collaborative. And of course, I use Box for work stuff and Dropbox for personal stuff. And these are some of the tools I can't live without.

• 20:47Harry Stebbings?

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

• 20:50Speaker 02

  I'd like to see it be less transactional and more relationship oriented. I feel like it's become a bit of a, yeah, yeah, yeah, write me a check and join this long cap table list. But ultimately, for me, again, it's about the long-term partnership relationship.

• 21:05Harry Stebbings?

  What's your favorite new product and why?

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Google Photos to me is not getting nearly the credit and discussion it deserves for being a truly remarkable example of artificial intelligence. I think this photo management problem has existed even before digital photos, but nothing has nailed it in a way where they eliminate any need to tag or categorize or label the way you can use it to not only search for anything. I could say cat, I could say color yellow, I could say place and it finds it, but also they're creating things like photo albums and movies and animations without you even asking for them. They're surfacing photos from three years ago today, or here's a photo of all your children smiling, just proactively without ever asking for it. I think that is.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  A harbinger of the way most software in any category will work in the future. I think it's stunning.

• 21:53Harry Stebbings?

  I'm downloading it now. Uh, no, I haven't actually tried it yet, so I will do. Uh, what's your favorite quote and why?

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Uh, this comes from Jack London's credo and the first line of this poem is, I would rather be ashes than dust. And it's really a statement of how to live your life fully and not, not just play it safe and, and idle.

• 22:13Harry Stebbings?

  Mm hmm. No, I agree. And then what's your most recent publicly announced investment and why did you say yes?

• 22:19Speaker 02

  It's a company called Socrates and what we're trying to do is be like Alexa for the enterprise. Very large companies that might have 50,000, 100,000 employees or more to provide assistance in all the various corporate services, whether it's HR or benefits or approvals, travel, expense reporting, facilities request, book a conference room, et cetera, et cetera. All the things that take you away from productively doing your job, but are nonetheless necessary and which would otherwise require calling an HR help desk or logging into a dozen different systems, depending on what the need is.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  We want to create an intelligent chat-based agent that can answer these questions and perform these actions automatically. And if we don't understand you or we can't perform it automatically, then hand you to the right live help desk person who knows exactly what you're trying to do and is trained and, and capable of providing that answer. So it's, it's really a form of providing a great employee experience because most of what companies have focused on the last 10 years is customer experience, but the employees have been left as second-class citizens when it comes to optimizing all these touchpoints.

• 23:31Harry Stebbings?

  Brian, it's been such a pleasure having you on the show. Alex told me it'd be fantastic, but it's absolutely surpassed expectations. Uh, so thank you so much for joining me today.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  I've enjoyed it a bunch. Thank you.

• 23:42Harry Stebbings?

  Such a pleasure to have Brian on the show there today and I so enjoyed recording that episode, so a big hand to him for giving up the time today to come on the show. And again, a big thank you to Nick Byham, David Patman at Venrock and Alex Rosen at IDG for the intro, without which this episode would not have been possible. But before we leave you today. A lot of people ask me, Harry, you do so many calls and interviews, but what do you use? My response? Zoom, the number one video and web conferencing service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to an array of activities, including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms, and business IM, just to name a few. And it's the easiest solution to use, buy, and scale, and for sure the most straightforward pricing. But hey, don't take my word for it. Their partnership with

• 24:24Harry Stebbings?

  Sequoia in their latest 100 million funding round says it all. Zoom really is a must-checkout for your business, I cannot emphasise that enough. And you can find them at zoom.us. Speaking of video though, to power your company there with Zoom, you must check out Viewdit. Viewdit is a free video recording tool that makes it easy for organisations to embrace the power of video for personalised communications. Viewdit enables sales professionals, executive leaders, and customer support teams to easily record personalised videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the video app platform, video creators will know who is watching what and which video messages resonate with which users. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. And you can find out more

• 25:09Harry Stebbings?

  and download Viewdit for free at video.com/ viewdit. As always, I so appreciate all your support and I cannot wait to bring you Friday's episode with founder of Trivago.