Jan 3, 2018 · 28m · 20vc
20VC: Why VC Is A Game of Maximising Serendipity, How VCs Can Characterise Their Approach To Working & Product Lessons from Jack Dorsey & Sonos' John MacFarlane with Kevin Thau, General Partner @ Spark Capital
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of The 20 Minute VC, host Harry Stebbings interviews Kevin Thau, General Partner at Spark Capital, exploring key lessons from Twitter's hyper-growth, the art of product roadmapping, and how operating experience shapes venture investing.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 35.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 3.0 Guest teaching 1.8 Guest disagreement 0.8 Harry pushing back 1.6
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 13:35 Polite disagreement on VC time allocation
When Harry suggests meeting as many people as possible is the best VC strategy, Kevin gently counters that filling days with meetings prevents investors from conducting serious strategic research.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 8:00 Challenging the market timing premiseHarry pushes back on Kevin's Sonos example, questioning how market timing works when Sonos was likely way too early and an anomaly rather than a standard rule.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:12 Vertical integration vs component strategyKevin educates Harry on why early-stage tech companies succeed when providing full vertically integrated products out-of-the-box rather than single components in an undeveloped stack.
Harry holds his own ▶ 19:12 Instagram vs Amazon brand impactHarry actively interjects with his own synthesis that Instagram is vastly superior to Amazon for brand building, which Kevin immediately concurs with.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kevin Thau's Background and Journey to Spark Capital | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Harry asks standard background questions regarding Twitter's hyper-scaling phase and product roadmaps. Kevin shares operational lessons about constraint forcing prioritization in high-growth companies. | |
| Working with Visionary Product Leaders and Market Timing | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Harry questions whether Sonos was a rare exception of being too early to market. Kevin explains the strategic difference between building vertically integrated products versus single components in an early market stack. | |
| Transitioning from Operator to Founder-Driven VC | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Harry shares his own view that meeting as many people as possible is key to VC productivity. Kevin gently nuances this, warning that over-scheduling meetings deprives investors of time for deep research. | |
| Building Consumer Brands and Distribution Channels | 5 | 2 | 1 | 3 | Harry demonstrates strong industry context by quoting Kirsten Green and Jeremy Conrad, and asserts that Instagram builds brands better than Amazon. Kevin agrees with Harry's analysis on brand distribution. | |
| Quick Fire Round: Book Recommendations, Dogma, and Brain-Machine Interfaces | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | A fast-paced quickfire round covering Moneyball, educational dogma, and brain-machine interfaces. The conversation is collaborative and conversational. |
Statements from this episode (13)
Twitter had under 20 employees and 1M users when Kevin Thau joined
“When he joined, they had less than 20 employees and one million users”
Thau: No competitor has come close to disrupting Twitter's core use case
“And it's amazing to me that over all these years, they still own that use case. No one's even come close to disrupting them for the Twitter use case.”
Thau: Abundant capital makes growing companies lazy in prioritization
“Focus and prioritization becomes a big challenge, and I think when you grow very quickly and you are fortunate enough to raise a lot of capital, it can sometimes make you lazy in how you make those hard decisions.”
Thau: OpenWave built the first mobile browser 10 years too early
“OpenWave, and we created the first mobile browser, and really we're selling the promise of the mobile internet. Well, that was a company that got a lot of hype at the time, but the market for, you know, true mobile data and mobile internet didn't come till muc…”
Thau: Vertically integrated products succeed better in early markets
“The companies that do a vertically integrated product when the market's early seem to have a better chance, in my opinion, than trying to be one piece of technology in the stack of a market before the market is there.”
Thau: VC approaches split into thesis-driven and founder-driven models
“You can either be a very thesis-driven venture capitalist like Fred, or you can be a very founder-driven venture capitalist like Bijan, and I think, you know, what fits better for my personality and the way I see things is being a founder-driven venture capita…”
Thau: Venture capital is fundamentally about manufacturing serendipity
“We're in the business of manufacturing serendipity, and that's very unclear to me how you do that.”
Thau: Facebook lacks Twitter's strong brand persona
“Even a product like Facebook is one of the most impressive companies and products of all time. It doesn't really have as much of a brand persona as a Twitter does, and I think it's because of all those little, little things.”
Thau: Consumer investing is harder than B2B due to adoption risk
“Anything in consumer is very, very hard because you're betting on a big market adoption versus, say, a B to B company with recurring revenue and enterprise clients.”
Thau: Amazon accelerates sales but does not build brands
“I don't know that I believe that Amazon does a great job of helping build brands. Like, I don't see brands getting built on top of Amazon. I think it's a great accelerator.”
Thau: College brand association and academic pedigree do not matter much
“I don't believe in the over obsession of where someone goes to school, that this, like, brand association of where people go to college or in education is that important. I think people get too wrapped up and obsessed with that, parents, kids, and I just don't…”
Thau: Diversifying venture firms and startup leadership is the ecosystem's best trend
“Making all of these venture capital firms, Boards, executive teams, employee-based, diverse. I think that is the best trend that could possibly happen to the whole ecosystem.”
Thau: Computing is shifting to ambient interfaces beyond phones and PCs
“I do believe that computing is moving from trapped in these little boxes, either a phone or a computer, and computing's moving to everywhere. It's everywhere around us, whether it's your Amazon Echo or different displays around your home, and who knows what's …”