20VC: Thumbtack's Marco Zappacosta on The 3 Core Elements To All Board Meetings, Raising $250m from Sequoia and Why You Have To Win Supply Side Acquisition First For Marketplace Success

Marco Zappacosta is the Founder & CEO @ Thumbtack, the startup that allows you to find local professionals for pretty much anything. To date, Thumbtack has raised over $270m in funding from some of the very best including Sequoia Capital, CapitalG (Google Growth), Ali and Hadi Partovi, Scott and Cyan Banister and Jason Calacanis. Due to Marco's incredible success scaling Thumbtack to helping millions of Americans today, he has been recognized by Forbes as 30 under 30 and Thumbtack was recently acknowledged as one of GlassDoor’s best places to work. CLICK TO PLAY CLICK TO LISTEN ON ITUNES In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Marco made his way into the world of startups and came to create one of the most prominent marketplaces of the day in Thumbtack? 2.) What does Marco mean when he says "founders must treat board members as employees"? How does Marco view the optimal structure for a board meeting? What are the core elements that founders must takeaway? Where do most first time founders go wrong with board management? 3.) Thumbtack has raised over $250m in VC funding, how can one look to achieve both operational efficiency and capital efficiency with such large injections of capital? What is core to maintaining this sense of frugality despite such large investments? How does Marco think about when is the right time to raise that warchest round? 4.) How does Marco suggest that marketplace founders can entice the supply side in the early days? How has Marco seen his supply-side acquisition change and develop with time? What has worked and what has not? Does Marco agree with Leah Busque that in marketplace, the NPS for one side will always be down? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Marco’s Fave Book: The Wizard and The Prophet As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Marco on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Cooley is a global law firm built around supporting start-ups and the venture capital firms that fund them. Now we have spoken before about their forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, and forming more VC funds than any other law firm in the world but Cooley also represents more than 6,000 high-growth startups across the globe – through the full company life cycle. They are the #1 law firm for VC-backed exits (M&A and IPO) ranked by PitchBook, and since 2014 has represented more companies in their IPOs than any other law firm. Simply head over to Cooley.com or you can check them out at Cooleygo.com.

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 for another installment on the 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and for all things behind the scenes at the 20 Minute VC, which is largely gym routines, protein bars, and mojitos right now, then I would love to see you on Instagram at HStebbings1996, Stebbings with two Bs. However, to the show today, and we return for part two of this very special feature week on marketplaces, and who better to join us than the founder of a unicorn marketplace? So with that in mind, I'm thrilled to welcome Marco Zappacosta to the hot seat today. Marco is the founder and CEO at Thumbtack, the startup that allows you to find local professionals for pretty much anything. To date, Thumbtack has raised over $270 million in funding from some of the very best in the industry, including Sequoia Capital, Capital

• 0:41Harry Stebbings?

  G, Google's Growth Arm, Ali and Hadi Partovi, Scott and Cyan Banister, and Jason Calacanis, just to name a few. And due to Marco's incredible success, scaling Thumbtack to now helping millions of Americans daily, he's been recognized by Forbes as 30 Under 30, and Thumbtack was recently acknowledged as one of Glassdoor's best places to work. And I do also have to say a huge thank you to longtime friend and wonderful person, Michelle Tandler, for the intro to Marco today. I really do so appreciate that. But before we dive into the show today, our new sponsor, Ring, first made a splash when they were on Shark Tank a few years ago. The concept genius. If someone rings your doorbell and you aren't home, or don't want to come to the door, you can respond to the person using just your smartphone, adding a level of both security and convenience. Today, over a million people are using the Ring Video Doorbell to help

• 1:26Harry Stebbings?

  protect their homes. And now Ring has a great new product called Ring Floodlight Cam. Just like Ring's amazing doorbell, Floodlight Cam is a motion activated camera and floodlight with HD video and two-way audio that lets you know the moment anyone steps onto your property, and you can see and speak to visitors, even set off a built-in alarm right from your phone. So for me, spending my life in the studio, I have my Ring at home, and you can instruct deliveries, check security, and just feel much more comfortable, all for me from the studio. Simply put, with Ring, you're always at home. And now as a listener, you can save up to $150 off a Ring Security Kit when you go to ring.com/20vc. That's ring.com/20vc. And speaking of providing security and comfort, that's what happens when you work with a firm.

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  Like Cooley. Cooley is a global law firm built around supporting startups and the venture capital firms that fund them. Now, we've spoken before about they're forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley and forming more VC funds than any other law firm in the world. But Cooley also represents more than 6,000 high-growth startups across the globe through the full company lifecycle. They're the number one law firm for VC-backed exits, both M and A and IPO ranked by PitchBook. And since 2014, they've represented more companies in their IPOs than any other law firm. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VCs and VC-backed companies, simply head over to Cooley.com or you can check them out at Cooleygo.com. But enough from me, so without further ado, and I'm thrilled to hand over to Marco Zappacosta, founder and CEO at Thumbtack.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 3:03Harry Stebbings?

  Marco, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. Huge thanks to Michelle Tandler for the intro, but thank you so much for taking the time out to join me.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Uh, thank you for having me, Harry.

• 3:11Harry Stebbings?

  Not at all, but I want to kick off today. So tell me, how did you make your way into startups? And what's the founding story for Thumbtack in a very succinct three to four minutes?

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Sure. So we kind of did what you're not supposed to do, which is decide to start a business and then go hunt for an idea. However, I think that actually gets a very bad rap here in the valley and it's a very tried and true method. You know, Amazon did that, Microsoft did that. And what I had coming into this was a relationship with a couple of guys who we'd worked together in college and we kind of started this nonprofit together. We had a lot of fun doing that, but decided to sort of change industries, start a technology company and really go hunt for a big problem. Uh, we literally said to ourselves, you know, what's the biggest problem that we can solve with technology? And one that we believe is inevitably going to be solved. And so we just started talking and talking about the world and sort of things that we thought were broken.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  And the observation that led to all of this was why is it so hard to hire a plumber? And when you think about it, the universe typically makes it very easy for you to spend money to get what you want. And yet here was this massive category. It's not plumbers, it's not just home Services, it's all local services where you had to work hard to spend your money. And it wasn't because there weren't great professionals who are ready to do the work. It was literally a market failure, a problem of discovery that these two sides couldn't easily find each other and transact. And, you know, we looked around and we saw that no one was really sort of doing anything innovative in the space. And we figured that's a big, important problem and, and one that we're excited to dedicate ourselves to. And here we are, still at it.

• 4:45Harry Stebbings?

  And it's not just you, though, that's been excited by the problem you're solving. You've educated and also got on board many incredible investors. And I want to start and stay on the theme of boards. We used to work before and you've said that founders should think of board members as employees. So start on this, why do you think this? And how does that alter maybe how you interact and really engage with those board members?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  So I think probably the appropriate term would be to say partners. I think too often founders are intimidated by the board and sort of see it as a sort of group on high that needs to be answered to, when really these are smart, capable, hardworking people that you should partner together to navigate through this sort of very challenging environment. And I think fundamentally, the board is an accountability mechanism. And it's a way for you to audit your own progress and hold yourself accountable to whether you did what you said you were going to do. And then it's a brain trust of very strategic, hopefully, and, and very sort of long-term and thoughtful people that you can bat ideas around with, that you can test things out, that you can sort of get smarter about how to make some of these big decisions.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  It is a skill, though, and you have to really practice and work on it.

• 5:55Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, in terms of the skill that you've practiced and honed, how do you really like to structure and run your board meetings? Is there kind of commonalities in how you view kind of effective board meetings?

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's sort of like three chunks. One is just the administrative part that just needs to get banged out at the start. So approving minutes, option grants, all the sort of legal procedural stuff. Then there should be a business update and sort of a financial component. But really, it's about reflecting back how you did against the goals that you set out for yourselves. And ideally, it's not so much of the reporting of like, here's what the number is. But much more about here's what happened. Here's why we exceeded or here's why we fell short. Here's what we learned. Here's where we were wrong. And just providing that insight, which I think is honestly most valuable in preparing rather than necessarily the discussion that it fosters.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  And then the real meat of the conversation is a discussion around one, maybe two key strategic decisions that the company is facing. So it could be something about entering new markets, fundraising, thinking about a hiring plan, thinking about sort of a long-term product strategy, things that are going to play out over quarters and years that are really important to get right and think through ahead of time. And again, a lot of the value is in preparing for it, in thinking through the various options and the pros and cons. And then it's about getting real sharp on the answers and hearing the feedback from these people who have the benefit of not being too far in the weeds, but enough context where they can really be helpful.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Kind of need someone who's not all the way in to be able to call out your blind spots.

• 7:32Harry Stebbings?

  Absolutely. In terms of those kind of strategic points that you address in element three of that chunk phase, I'm intrigued. I recently had James Reinhardt from Thread Up on the show and he said that your board is right 50% of the time. The skill is knowing the other 50% of the time. I'm intrigued, how do you assess when the board is maybe right and not right? And is there a time maybe that you can recount where you may be disagreed with the board and their strategic thoughts? And how did you communicate that?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess I don't think of the board as a monolithic entity that, you know, has one judgment. You know, there's five of us on there and we come from different backgrounds and have different perspectives and we often agree, but not always. And I don't think it's any different than me and my executive team that we disagree on all sorts of stuff. And that's important and that's healthy. I think starting from the premise of right and wrong is a false framework because the truth is you don't know and you will not know whether you're right or wrong for years. And so it's much more about the process around the decision-making, how well you can uncover sort of blind spots or things that hadn't been thought about, getting buy-in, committing. And I think an important part of the board is Willingness to commit to these big decisions.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Some pack over the last year and change has really evolved the product and the platform quite a bit. And that's something that the board had to be super bought in on and the executive team, obviously the whole company. But it's not about right and wrong. It's about, hey, we agree that this is the path forward for these reasons and we're going to work like hell to make it work.

• 8:59Harry Stebbings?

  No, I love that kind of aversion from the binary nature of it. You mentioned the five members on the board there. One of them is Brian Schreer, who I spoke to before the show. And he told me about your one on ones with him once a week. I'd love to hear your thoughts or maybe some of your biggest takeaways from those one on ones. Let's start with that.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'll be honest, first when it was proposed, it felt like a lot. And I was worried that, you know, it was going to be either a waste of time or worse sort of micromanagement. But it's been hugely valuable and the benefit is there's no prep, there's no agenda. But every week there's something on your mind. And so knowing that I have that call on Tuesday means that I file a few things away every week and say, okay, this is a perfect thing to bring up with Brian. And honestly, it's often fairly tactical things. And it's like, hey, we're in the midst of thinking through a benefits review. And we're thinking about self insurance, like give me your thoughts on self insurance in, you know, the next five minutes.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  And it's not that that's the final answer, but somebody like Brian, who's, you know, on the board of Dropbox and Qualtrics, companies who are a couple of years ahead of us, has just seen them go through a lot of these same questions. And it's the type of question that's not going to make us successful. But doing it wrong can be a gigantic waste of time and money. And so having someone who can just give you a few data points and say, hey, you know, here are the couple of things that we wrestled with. Here are the pros and cons of that one. Here are the pros and cons of this one. Here's my gut on where you guys should probably net out is so valuable. Also, he knows the people really well. And so people issues come up all the time. And having someone who is sort of a step removed, who's not necessarily on the exec team to just say, hey, this is going on with these two people, like, what's your take? How do you think about that?

• 10:42Speaker 02

  So as like a sounding board, for me, it's immensely valuable.

• 10:45Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, in terms of kind of that one on one interaction, would you advise all founders to maybe? Have that external sounding board as a one on one weekly meeting? Or do you think maybe it's a very tailored individual circumstance?

• 10:57Speaker 02

  I think it can come in a lot of different ways, but I would definitely encourage founders to have a weekly or every other week phone call. Ours is thirty minutes. We often use ten to twenty minutes. Sometimes we use the whole thing. Rarely we skip it, but it does happen. And it's just someone I trust a lot, someone who knows the business and cares about the business and has seen a lot and can help me honestly just move faster. I've never done this before. And so there are definitely times where I don't know what the range of possibility is. And so having him sort of fill in that gap gets me to make a decision much faster than I otherwise would be able to.

• 11:33Harry Stebbings?

  No, absolutely. I'm wonderful to hear about kind of this strategic advantage of having these conversations. I'm intrigued on the strategy perspective that we discussed. In terms of business model, there have been some big shifts. You shut down millions in recurring revenue for a new model. Talk to me, what was that conversation like between you and your co-founder Jonathan?

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Man, that was scary. So, you know, the background here is we really struggled to raise our series A. And the primary feedback was that we hadn't shown an ability to monetize this marketplace, which was valid. And so sort of at the last minute, we put in place a subscription model, which we knew wasn't perfect, but had the benefit of being easy to implement and quickly showed that we could make revenue. Then we were in this position where we'd scaled that thing up. Honestly, just because the marketplace was growing and doing well, but we knew it was imperfect. You know, subscriptions are a pretty static monetization method and marketplaces are highly dynamic. And so we just had less control over one of the key variables, the price of one of these connections than we wanted.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  And so this was one of those moments where you have to go back to what you're optimizing for and what you're playing the game for. And for us, we wanted to build a big independent franchise, a household brand. And to do that meant sort of sacrificing this sort of short term path to do the right thing for the long term health of the business. And we went for it. You know, in retrospect, it was obviously the right call, but at the time it was super scary.

• 12:58Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, how did that decision affect? The fundraising and the investor appetite, given the the potential loss in the repeatability and sustainability of revenue coming in.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Honestly, it catalyzed it. We raised our A in January of twelve. We began testing sort of new models not much later in the spring of twelve. By the fall, we had a very strong hypothesis on what it was being. We tested that out. And then finally, in sort of January and February of thirteen, we flipped the marketplace. And so February and March were the first months that this new model was rolled out nationwide. And we raised our B from Sequoia six weeks later because they saw the potential in what we had done. And also, I think they recognized that, you know, this was a team that was willing to go for it.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  They were not, we weren't going to get stuck with sort of decision paralysis or get caught in a local maxima just because we were sort of scared of how to unwind that. And so that meta fact, I think, helped a lot too. And but, you know, we're a marketplace, so no one expected or wanted us to have a subscription based business, which is great in a lot of contexts, but not in a marketplace.

• 14:04Harry Stebbings?

  No, absolutely. I agree with you, especially with regards to kind of that virality and network effect. You mentioned the fundraising there and the element of Sequoia coming in. You've obviously excelled and made significant moves with fundraising, especially with the latest hundred million dollar round. I'm intrigued, with regards to that round maybe in particular, why did you feel that then was the right time to really pour fuel on the fire?

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Again, it goes back to what you're optimizing for. Fundraising can only be evaluated in light of the objective that the company is trying to achieve. We're trying to shoot the moon. We want to be a household and a brand. We want Thumbtack to become a verb. And to do that requires making these big bets, and that takes capital. And that's on the product and the platform, as well as ultimately the brand and the marketing of it. And we pursued a fundraising strategy in support of that vision. It's not necessarily right or wrong, but it was the right thing to do for us.

• 14:57Harry Stebbings?

  In terms of kind of that sudden capital injection, I'm intrigued. How do you think about kind of maintaining a strong operational efficiency and capital efficiency with such a large capital reserve suddenly given?

• 15:10Speaker 02

  A great CFO and one who can help impose the discipline around doing what you say you're gonna do. And from a budgeting standpoint, yeah, you have a lot of money in the bank, but you still need to be deliberate. You still need to justify these investments and understand how they're going to play out and have a rationale for it and hit your numbers. And so we're in this position where we've raised two hundred and fifty million dollars and a huge chunk of that is still in the bank because of that discipline and the business is done very well, but we don't exceed our budget. We don't spend frivolously. We make big investments in things that we think will pay dividends over a long time. And having sort of a good FPNA function and just sort of a strong sort of CFO is vital to that.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Otherwise, the truth is, there are a lot of good ideas and the challenge is say no to a lot of these good ideas in support of the great ideas where you should really be doubling down and investing in. That I think is where a lot of companies sort of go a little sideways. They sort of fund all the mediocre to to good ideas and forget to really just go all in on the great ones.

• 16:16Harry Stebbings?

  I I do want to discuss one final element, though, before we move into the quick fire, which is my favorite. And it's to do with marketplace dynamics themselves. It's always the balancing equilibrium of demand and supply side. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you think about supply side acquisition and where it's really worked for you and maybe what hasn't worked.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Sure. I mean, we have a unique challenge, I think, among marketplaces in how many distinct markets we need to fill. So if you think about an e-commerce site like Amazon, they effectively have one network per country or, you know, in some cases, one network globally. A local marketplace like an Airbnb has a localized network, so it's true in in sort of these different geographies. We have a local network as well, but one that is highly differentiated by category. So for you in London, if you're looking for a plumber, you could care less how many caterers and tutors we have. All you want is plumbers. And so we have, you know, on the order of a hundred thousand unique different markets to fill, you know, across, you know, a hundred

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Cities and a hundred metros and a thousand different categories. So supply side acquisition is something that we have worked very, very hard on for a long time. And the truth is, there's no silver bullet. I think the answer is different in when you are starting early on and you're trying to jumpstart a marketplace where you have to really find a way to entice the supply side to join before you have liquidity and sort of demand to offer them. But then, once you have that demand, it's all about being super efficient about recognizing where the holes are, how much you can spend to fill those holes, and then being very thorough in testing the various channels, online and off, to attract professionals. Something that we see is that different categories operate in very different ways.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  So creative services, think photographers, DJs, are very digitally savvy and tend to have Facebook pages about themselves and talk about themselves on social media. And so we can target them more easily on Facebook. Home service companies like plumbers, HVACs tend to be a little less tech savvy and harder to reach through digital channels. And things like direct mail or offline ads can be more effective. So there's no one answer, and it's about building the analytical framework to understand where the holes are, how much you can pay, and tracking the efficiency of filling them everywhere. It is a analytical challenge almost above all else.

• 18:44Harry Stebbings?

  No, absolutely. And what a challenge it is and what a challenge. But I do want to kind of address, before we move on, the demand side. We addressed supply side acquisition there. I'm super intrigued, when opening up new markets in new states, how do you really look to frontload demand with maybe no existing presence? And what does that demand side look like?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  So we actually went nationwide very, very early in our history because we found a supply side acquisition strategy that could really fill up the network everywhere. And so at this point, we actually have a paying professional in all but one county in the United States. And so geographically have managed to be very, very broad. And the benefit of that is it has let us then leverage marketing channels that are not geographic.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Specifically specific so we can buy remnant on TV or online independent of where it's going to show because we have supply everywhere. So this is actually a challenge sort of jump starting a new market that we haven't really had in a long time. So it's something that we don't have like a playbook for. When the day comes that we ultimately go international, we'll have to really think through that. But for the time being, some tech is already nationwide. We're live in every city in the United States. We have pros just about everywhere and now are working to get ever more demand. So it's a different problem for us than most.

• 20:04Harry Stebbings?

  And then final question is from Leah Buskey at TaskRabbit or formerly of TaskRabbit. You said that with marketplaces, your MPS is always going to be bad on one side of the equation. Either you make it great for the demand side with lower prices and then you make supply side unhappy or vice versa. How do you think about that equilibrium of marketplaces and one side always being unhappy?

• 20:25Speaker 02

  I think that's bogus. I think that's definitely not true of Amazon. It's definitely not true of Airbnb. And it shouldn't be true of a service marketplace either. I think TaskRabbit's challenge is that it commodified the labor side of the platform. And therefore, its main offer to the customer was speed and low prices. And in that sense, yeah, it's it's going to have a low MPS on the supply side. Our pros are earning seventy two dollars an hour and are able to differentiate themselves on more than just price. Now, we obviously have complaints. It's not like we're perfect in any way. But I don't think structurally, we are going to be in a position where we have to privilege one side or the other. I think that may be true in these more commoditized services.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  So I think ride sharing could be one of these where, you know, if you ask me what I care about in a ride from my home to my office, like it's as fast as possible and as cheap as possible. And unfortunately, that means the driver is going to continue to be squeezed. So much so that they're looking to replace the driver with software. In our marketplace, you're looking to hire a talented professional to do something you can't do yourself. Say be your wedding photographer, tutor your child on the SATs, paint the exterior of your home. And therefore, there's a lot of discretion that goes. Into and you're interested in finding the right match for you. And if we do our job well and we match efficiently and price appropriately, both sides should be happy. Both sides should have a high MPS. That is absolutely our goal.

• 21:51Harry Stebbings?

  No, absolutely. I do agree with you there, but I do want to move into my favorite element of any interview being the quickfire round. So I say a short statement, Marco, and then you give me your immediate thoughts in about 60 seconds or less. How does that sound?

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Deal. Let's do it.

• 22:04Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so your favorite book and why? What must I read?

• 22:07Speaker 02

  That's an impossible question. The book I'm reading right now, which I love, it's called The Wizard and the Prophet. It's by Charles Mann, who's a historian, and he wrote this book, 1491 and 1493, about pre-colonial America, which were incredible. And this book is about the 20th century environmental movement and the two schools of thought that emerged, the sort of conservation environmentalism and the sort of techno-optimistic sort of environmentalism. And it's interesting, he does a great job of not telling you sort of what's the right way forward, but just presenting the challenges we face when it comes to water, energy and the like,

• 22:48Speaker 02

  through the lens of these two approaches and these two men who sort of started these movements. It's a beautiful book.

• 22:54Harry Stebbings?

  What's the single best piece of advice given to you in the incredible thumb fat journey?

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Someone relayed to me at some point the Bill Gates quote, that people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade. And that has always stuck with me. And actually, I was reflecting on that recently, you know, with Dropbox going public, which was an awesome outcome. But, you know, they've been at it for 11 years. And that was also YC's first company to IPO, again, after 11 or maybe even 12 years. And these are the two of the most premier brands in the valley who've had incredible success and are full of talented people. And it took them a decade plus to achieve this outcome. And it's a reminder that building things at sort of colossal scale takes time. And that perspective is too often missing, I think.

• 23:43Harry Stebbings?

  I have to ask this. It's not in the schedule, but what's it like having Jason Calacanis as an angel?

• 23:47Speaker 02

  It's the best. I love having him in my corner. He's spotted us from the beginning and he's been a fan and a supporter ever since. We're very thankful to, you know, his Open Angel Forum, that's where our Angel Round in 2010 really started to come together and got us a great group of people involved. So it's one of those lucky things that happen that I will always be thankful for.

• 24:07Harry Stebbings?

  What keeps you up at night, Marco?

• 24:09Speaker 02

  My big sort of fear or anxiety is around building a household brand and building an experience that is consistent and reliable enough such that we become the default starting point for all of these searches. We're solving a big problem. We're solving a problem that nearly everybody in the country and ultimately the world has. But there's never been a go-to solution for it. Uh, there's never been a brand either like offline or on that is sort of the destination for this stuff. And it argues primarily because of how hard it is to get all these various categories and all these various price points and all these various types of demand fulfilled consistently. And so that's the challenge in front of us, being able to credibly tell a customer, hey, Thumbtack is the best place to hire a professional for whatever you need done.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  And delivering on that promise is what I spend a lot of time thinking about.

• 24:59Harry Stebbings?

  And then I want to finish today on the next five years for you and for Thumbtack. What's the road ahead, Marco? International expansion, IPO? What are the thoughts?

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, both of those things I would expect to happen in the next five years. But going back to sort of my last answer, I would really say I want us to become a verb and that's something that I think we can do over the next five years, to become that solution that is so trusted that, you know, when somebody says, hey, Harry, you know, a good plumber, I want the answer to be, oh, just Thumbtack it. That's the way you solve this problem. They'll, they'll connect you with the, with a great guy. That's the magic that we're after.

• 25:32Harry Stebbings?

  Marco, I heard so many great things, as I said, from Jason and so many other people. So it was such a pleasure to have you on the show today and thank you so much for joining me.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks for having me. This was a blast.

• 25:44Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, just the most exciting times ahead. And I want to say again a huge thank you to Marco for giving up the time today to appear on the show. If you'd like to see more from him, you can follow him on Twitter @MLZ. That's @MLZ. I do also want to say again a massive thank you to Michelle Tandler @thumbtacknow for the intro to Marco, without which the episode would not have been possible. And we'd love to see you behind the scenes here at the 20 Minute VC. You can find us on Instagram @HStubbings1996. It'd be great to see you there. But before we leave you today, our new sponsor Ring first made a splash when they were on Shark Tank a few years ago. The concept: genius. If someone rings your doorbell and you aren't home, or don't want to come to the door, you can respond to the person using just your smartphone, adding a level of both security and convenience.

• 26:26Harry Stebbings?

  Today, over a million people are using the Ring Video Doorbell to help protect their homes. And now Ring has a great new product called Ring Floodlight Cam. Just like Ring's amazing doorbell, Floodlight Cam is a motion-activated camera and floodlight with HD video and two-way audio that lets you know the moment anyone steps onto your property. And you can see and speak to visitors, even set off a built-in alarm right from your phone. So for me, spending my life in the studio, I have my Ring at home, and you can instruct deliveries, check security, and just feel much more comfortable, all for me from the studio. Simply put, with Ring, you're always at home. And now, as a listener, you can save up to $150 off a Ring Security Kit when you go to ring.com/20vc. That's ring.com/20vc.

• 27:09Harry Stebbings?

  And speaking of providing security and comfort, that's what happens when you work with a firm like Cooley. Cooley is a global law firm built around supporting startups and the venture capital firms that fund them. Now, we've spoken before about their forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley and forming more VC funds than any other law firm in the world. But Cooley also represents more than 6,000 high-grade startups across the globe through the full company lifecycle. They're the number one law firm for VC-backed exits, both M&A and IPO, ranked by PitchBook. And since 2014, they've represented more companies in their IPOs than any other law firm. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VCs and VC-backed companies, simply head over to Cooley.com, or you can check them out at CooleyGo.com. And I do really want to stress how much I appreciate your support.

• 27:54Harry Stebbings?

  It means so much to me, and I cannot wait to bring you next week's episodes.