The Exchanges

Q It makes me think of the hunter analogy. And I'm just fascinated. How do you think about the hunter versus farmer analogy and knowing what structure you want at what stage?

A I think ultimately it depends on, um, how your customers are buying. So, you know, I'll give you a concrete example. Um, we, you know, we started off with the hunter farmer model at one password. Um, and the main reason for that is when we landed here and started building the team, the company had already acquired 50,000 businesses that were using our product. Um, But we had less than a two percent penetration rate within those businesses because these were fanatical users that were bringing our product into the workplace. So if all we did was have one flavor of sales individual, they would favor expanding across the base. Um, and they would likely be a lot less efficient with any inbound demand, and they certainly wouldn't be pushing themselves to go out and generate outbound demand. So early on, we decided to create that friction on both ends to say, right, we're going to have a team of hunters and a team of farmers. Today and going into next year, we're actually bringing those functions back together in a hybrid sales model. And the reason for that is we now have a multi-product portfolio. Um, our customers are landing and expanding with us far more. And what we, what we saw was that we were actually losing new business deals because we were pushing too hard to get too much upfront. And so now we sort of aligned the sales motion and model to how our customers buy and take a …

AI assessment note: “I think ultimately it depends on, um, how your customers are buying.”

Q It makes me think of the hunter analogy. And I'm just fascinated. How do you think about the hunter versus farmer analogy and knowing what structure you want at what stage?

A I think ultimately it depends on, um, how your customers are buying. So, you know, I'll give you a concrete example. Um, we, you know, we started off with the hunter farmer model at one password. Um, and the main reason for that is when we landed here and started building the team, the company had already acquired 50,000 businesses that were using our product. Um, But we had less than a two percent penetration rate within those businesses because these were fanatical users that were bringing our product into the workplace. So if all we did was have one flavor of sales individual, they would favor expanding across the base. Um, and they would likely be a lot less efficient with any inbound demand, and they certainly wouldn't be pushing themselves to go out and generate outbound demand. So early on, we decided to create that friction on both ends to say, right, we're going to have a team of hunters and a team of farmers. Today and going into next year, we're actually bringing those functions back together in a hybrid sales model. And the reason for that is we now have a multi-product portfolio. Um, our customers are landing and expanding with us far more. And what we, what we saw was that we were actually losing new business deals because we were pushing too hard to get too much upfront. And so now we sort of aligned the sales motion and model to how our customers buy and take a …

AI assessment note: “I think ultimately it depends on, um, how your customers are buying.”

Q You would push back on me when I say it's a commoditized industry. In terms?

A I, I think it's absolutely not a commoditized industry. If you just look at the results, and the result is that Lime, five, six years ago, Lime was one of many, many, many operators. Today, Lime is the clear global leader, and we are the market leader in almost every market where we operate. Last year, we did over six hundred million dollars in gross bookings. Our four-year top line CAGR is 30%. In each of those four years, we expanded our profit margins. And last year we did over ninety million dollars in company-wide EBITDA. The same year our biggest competitor went to chapter 11. So if it was commoditized, then we would have the same financial results as everybody else, but we've been growing in a differentiated rate and delivering a differentiated bottom line. The proof is in the results.

AI assessment note: “I think it's absolutely not a commoditized industry. If you just look at the results”

Q Can I ask, when you expand into a new market, what does that expansion playbook look like? And can you just break that down for me?

A So I think it starts with talking to local regulators and governments, and I think we started by talking about what I learned in government, and it starts with, we want to be there to solve a problem for the city. And transportation, the biggest challenges in transportation are affordability, congestion, And carbon emissions, and you convince the city to launch a pilot, and there's a competitive RFP process through that pilot, where you maybe do a one-year pilot or a two-year pilot, and they invite multiple players to come and compete in that competitive RFP. And we actually like the competitive RFP process for two main reasons. One is that it actually naturally reduces the number of competitors you have in a city, because the city is not going to pick 20 different players. They're going to pick between one and And three. And the second thing that we like about it is Lime is really, really good at winning competitive RFPs. We have a greater than 90% win rate of competitive RFPs on a global basis, and we, we renew our permits at a greater than 95% rate.

AI assessment note: “it starts with talking to local regulators and governments”

Q And when we think about skill development, what have been your biggest lessons on how to train reps effectively, especially in this ramp time?

A The mental model that we used is we started with this hypothetical, fully ramped salesperson, uh, this individual who has Every single skill, every single knowledge needed to be successful, you know, in the full gamut of, of selling our solution. Then we said, okay, let's break down all those skills and knowledges into, uh, competencies that we think can be learned in three hours or less. Then let's group them by what is the ideal modality to learn it? Is it something that they can learn on their own? Is it something that they can learn on a zoom call? Is it something that they really need to be in a classroom to learn? Great. Now let's look at the ideal sequence. What's the right sequence so that we can get them to land a good, healthy new logo as early as possible. And then what we did or what we're doing is we've created a learning journey that really spans about almost nine months. And it has three week long trainings, a bootcamp, an intermediate, and an advanced. And then coming out of bootcamp, there's a one, there's a, there's a roughly half a day. There's a three hour remote session that they attend with the same cohort that they went to bootcamp with that goes deep on one competency. And so, what we end up with is people coming out of boot camp able to do pipeline generation. They're able to have a conversation, start, start meetings, they're able to do discovery, do a…

AI assessment note: “we've created a learning journey that really spans about almost nine months.”

Q But successful founders that you found is a trend. Can you talk to me about the different profiles?

A I'm, I'm, I'm happy to. I, I always joke around and say that, uh, you can, you can bucket great founders into, into three backgrounds. Uh, I think probably the most common is that you had kind of a messed up childhood. Uh, the second most common would be, uh, you're gay. And the third most common would be you were adopted. And I think if you can look at, like, a list of all-time greats, you know, like, uh, Elon Musk kind of messed up childhood, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs adopted, uh, you know, uh, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, you know, like, you know, publicly gay. And I think that all of these kind of early life experiences end up giving you some desire, some, like, deeper passion to go out and prove yourself.

AI assessment note: “you can bucket great founders into, into three backgrounds”

Q But successful founders that you found is a trend. Can you talk to me about the different profiles?

A I'm, I'm, I'm happy to. I, I always joke around and say that, uh, you can, you can bucket great founders into, into three backgrounds. Uh, I think probably the most common is that you had kind of a messed up childhood. Uh, the second most common would be, uh, you're gay. And the third most common would be you were adopted. And I think if you can look at, like, a list of all-time greats, you know, like, uh, Elon Musk kind of messed up childhood, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs adopted, uh, you know, uh, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, you know, like, you know, publicly gay. And I think that all of these kind of early life experiences end up giving you some desire, some, like, deeper passion to go out and prove yourself.

AI assessment note: “you can bucket great founders into, into three backgrounds”

Q Wow. Okay. And then you went out and wanted to raise like seven, no?

A So that was the later round. So that was back in 2017. We did a million at five. That kind of got us started. We went like 12, 18 months, as you do. Went out to the market, felt like now we had a working technology. We were back then focused in on, on AI dubbing, not the kind of avatar tech that we, that we mostly have today. And, um, again, learned a hard lesson. You know, we went out and we're like, okay, we built this great technology. We're a great team. Um, let's raise eight million. That completely failed. And for like nine months, which is like dragging our feet, I made all the mistakes you can make as a founder. You know, I dragged out the funding process over nine months, like different data points, different investors. It was a big shit show. And we actually had to rewind because we were running out of money and we ended up raising 3.1. And that kind of took us through to, um, the series A, which is when we had actually found product market fit and had like a sustainable business. But those two first rounds were very much rounds we raised based on story. And it was a story back then that just didn't resonate that much because it was very hard for people to see what we had, how that could extrapolate that into, you know, everything that we came today.

AI assessment note: “let's raise eight million. That completely failed. And... ended up raising 3.1.”

Q And like, bluntly, is Synthesia liable? Are you the arbiter of justice on what is good or what isn't? Also, if something is an opinionated rant that I put out there, maybe it's right and fair, but it upsets a lot of people. Do you see what I mean? Are you the arbiter of right and wrong?

A Yeah. So today we are, um, and that's a decision that we have made. We had a lot of discussion about this in terms of like, how do you, what's our approach to this problem? And for me, again, comes back to the customers, right? We're an enterprise product. Um, it's important that the avatars that we have are not seen to be used in all sorts of like wacky content online. We don't, as a company have, we don't see ourselves as having to uphold any kind of right of free speech. And, uh, frankly, from a business perspective, having someone pay me 30 dollars a month to create very questionable conspiracy content, it's just not good business. So for me, all of those things kind of lined up, right? Our, our enterprise clients, they don't want, uh, you know, ever to us to be affiliated with content that doesn't kind of like match the brand, um, and economically for us, it just doesn't make sense. So we've taken a very strict approach, uh, which means that we are actually going and being the arbiters of truth. And we definitely have people who are unhappy with that.

AI assessment note: “we are actually going and being the arbiters of truth”

Q Now, some of those expansionary products that you mentioned there from financing to insurance to trade-ins will be more impactful than others. What was the most impactful from a margin transformation perspective?

A Financing is a huge one. And so in the automotive retail, about 90% of transactions are financed. Um, and, um, because the industry is so fragmented, it's basically just outsourced to lenders. And so dealerships generally get, uh, basically a lead gen fee about one and a half percent of the amount financed, um, of the car, but the lender is making closer to 10%, um, of the amount financed, right? Because these are multi-year loans and they're collecting interest throughout and net of all their expenses, et cetera. So on a 25,000 dollar car, That's about 2000 dollars of profit per car in spread. And so we built at Carvana, um, we've built ourselves as a full spectrum lender. We do our own proprietary credit scoring, loan structuring, decisioning, underwriting.

AI assessment note: “Financing is a huge one. And so in the automotive retail”

Q To what extent do you listen to team members on product reviews? And what I mean by that is, I think we should do this. That's great, Dan. Back in your box.

A We love the ideation coming from everywhere. Um, you know, we have a number of product managers in our organization that were customer advocates. They were on the phones listening to customers and dealing with customers all day, every day. We have ones that were loan underwriters. We have ones that did home delivery of vehicles. And they know how the experience actually works and where the tooling has been falling down and, and where the frictions are and how to make those gains. And so we love that coming up from the bottom, but we have a very high bar for rigor. You better have a hypothesis for, you know, why this is going to matter. And a good framework for that is, you know, the magnitude of impact times the frequency of occurrence. You can say that something is a horrendous experience, but if it happens One in every 50,000 deliveries. That's not a very good thing to bring to the table. Um, even something with medium pain that happens one in every 50 deliveries is much more important for us to, to pay attention to. And you can distill that into a unit economic impact. You can say, what is this doing to our cost per unit? Or what is this doing to our profit per unit? And we ask everyone to collapse their ideas into that unit economic framework so that they can be compared apples to apples.

AI assessment note: “we love that coming up from the bottom, but we have a very high bar”

Q You mentioned the multiple different products there. I'm really interested to hear about how you think about a review, so to speak, of what you've done. What did you do that you wish you hadn't done with the benefit of hindsight?

A I would say my biggest regret is more of a team structuring regret than, uh, a specific product decision. So for, for the first many years at Carvana, I said that my job was to build a machine that can parallel process the needs of the business. And there is a lot of truth in that. You need to build capabilities as primitives that can be snapped together. And for a vertically integrated business like ours, we do need to do many things at once, but I took it too far. At one point we had 90 very small teams working in parallel. Um, but that also means 90 different prioritization cues. And ultimately there are not 90 number one priorities that the fifth priority of a certain team might actually dominate the number one priority of many other teams, but they're not going to get to it because it's fifth on their queue. And so what we did in 2022 is we went from 90 back to eight, uh, and we forced so much more Cross-functional prioritization. And we asked resources to be more flexible between teams and to have a willingness to jump into different projects and reprioritize more dynamically. And this ended up being so huge in putting more effort and speed behind the most important priorities in the business.

AI assessment note: “I would say my biggest regret is more of a team structuring regret”

Q Do you not think you should just blindly follow if you got a tier one?

A No, but, but that's closer to right than not. You know, like if, if I look at fund one, what was our top performer? It was demand force. Who followed me in demand force? Bill Gurley at benchmark. What was the second best performer? Twitch. Who followed us in Twitch? Ethan at Bessemer. Okay, let's talk fund two. What was number one in fund two? It was Lyft, who followed us, uh, Naveen at Mayfield Fund, uh, Founders Fund, A-Six-Teen-Z. Okay, what was the second biggest winner? Okta, who followed us, you know, we did that with A-Six-Teen-Z, then Sequoia came in, Greylock at Sequoia. And so, one way to think about it is your follow-on dollars might be best thought of as a subset of where the best firms follow. Because we've had the best firms follow and the companies not do well. Verage sale. Sequoia aggressively followed and it didn't, didn't do well. So one, one way I think about follow-on investing is For a seed fund, it's closer to index investing than people think. And if you say, okay, I'm going to index off of the very best funds, as you kind of point out, more often than not, if that's all you did, you'd, you'd have massively better follow-on returns than most, most firms. If, if the LPs knew, like if they, if they tracked, what's the return on follow-on checks versus first checks, there'd be pitchforks and like, Revolts in the street. It's so bad.

AI assessment note: “No, but, but that's closer to right than not.”

Q Do you agree with the ethos that every check has to be a fund return?

A Um, ish. Here's the way I would phrase it. Um, our business is hard in seed, but not complicated. Five percent of our checks need to be a hundred X cash on cash on the first check, and about 10 to 15% need to be 20 X cash on cash on the first check. You achieve that, you're 10 X fund. And so the loss ratio is about the same between a three X fund and a 10 X plus fund. What matters is the magnitude of your big winners, but it kind of goes back to this Pareto idea. If your best company returns, say, 64% of your fund, The follow on check in that company is gonna probably be a 20 bagger.

AI assessment note: “Um, ish. Here's the way I would phrase it.”

Q Do we underestimate the capabilities of Russia and Iran specifically?

A I mean, they're, they're, they're quite clear for everyone to see. Iran is producing a large number of drones already. They've been, um, you know, using and working on the Shahad, for example, for a long time. They've licensed that design to Russia. Russia is now manufacturing it itself. The software is getting better over time. Russia has the Lancet, uh, the, uh, the Zala Lancet, which is a capable strike drone, uh, quite, quite different from Rashad, which I think they've developed themselves. And the software for all of these is getting better as well. And so we're going to be faced, um, either, um, through Russia alone or through partners like Iran with adversaries that are committing to precise mass, large number of autonomous systems that we're going to have to counter one way or the other. And You can counter them, um, but you can't counter them with the current systems that we have. You can't just have exquisite, exquisite, um, systems like tanks or artillery guns that are not particularly well connected that take a while to, to take a shot. You need to work basically at the speed of software. You need to interconnect all of these systems, but crucially you need to have precise mass on your own side as well. You need to have the ability, however horrible that sounds, to have 1010 of thousands of strike drones. To deter.

AI assessment note: “they're quite clear for everyone to see. Iran is producing a large number of drones”

Q You said there about kind of digital labor and human labor. Will Salesforce have more employees or less employees in five years time?

A I think we'll probably be larger. You know, we, it's a good, it's a good question. Number one, we're doing our business plan for next year for 2025 right now, and we're not adding any more software engineers next year because we have increased the productivity this year with AgentForce and with other AI technology that we're using for our engineering teams. By more than 30% to the point where our engineering velocity is incredible. I can't believe what we're achieving in engineering. And then we will have less support engineers next year because we have an agentic layer. We'll have more salespeople next year because we need to really explain to everybody exactly the value that we can achieve with AI. So we will add another probably one to 2000 salespeople in the short term.

AI assessment note: “I think we'll probably be larger.”

Q Uh, but a thousand dollars donation or you answer it, okay? Okay. And there's no, and there's no skirting out of it, okay? So question number one, what was the worst investor meeting you've ever had?

A So there are two to come to mind. Uh, one, I pitched Peter Thiel, and I was so green, and I'd just gotten back from Afghanistan, and I literally would go to work in slacks and leather shoes, like a business lawyer-looking type person, and the Founders Fund guys, at least in those days, did not respect people who wore button-down shirts, and I got looked at, like, literally I laughed at. Um, that hurt. Number two, I had a few meetings with Mike Moritz, and I was very excited. I think there would have been great investors, and I was on maybe the third or fourth meeting, went to kind of partner level meeting, and I thought this was going to be the one, and I walked in, I could just see something on his face, and, and I go through my spiel, but I'm like, something's not right, and I just knew, like, he had, you know, he just decided against it, and he was like, what have I done scheduling this meeting? And he walked me out and shook my hand without looking me in the eyes, And, and then just really turned and walked off and, and that brought out like very, very bad feelings in me. Like, you know, high school fisticuffs level feelings. Um, so those would be, those would be two.

AI assessment note: “So there are two to come to mind. Uh, one, I pitched Peter Thiel”

Q Wow. Ok, first off, like, why are we burning cash like a drunken sailor, and what are some lessons from that?

A Spend less, grow faster. It's a weird law. Um, is probably my net out. We were single product essentially. And in that August, 2019 round, we bought a company in the permitting and licensing space. And we did probably ninety million dollars of transactions in like 45 days. And that worked very well. And as we broadened our product suite, Things started to work. The economics of the business started to work. Basically, you're paying all this money to market and sell. You're even paying a bunch of money to deploy. And if you have more product, more arrows in the quiver, you get higher ASPs for the same, essentially, cost. And everything started unfolding there. We ended up doing an acquisition, you know, one each year, basically, as we broadened our portfolio suite. And I learned this a little bit from John Chambers. Um, M&A can be innovation. It's not just buying for customers or revenue. We don't even do that. We buy for product quality and adjacency, and it jumpstarts the innovation.

AI assessment note: “Spend less, grow faster. It's a weird law. Um, is probably my net out.”

Q Wow. Ok, first off, like, why are we burning cash like a drunken sailor, and what are some lessons from that?

A Spend less, grow faster. It's a weird law. Um, is probably my net out. We were single product essentially. And in that August, 2019 round, we bought a company in the permitting and licensing space. And we did probably ninety million dollars of transactions in like 45 days. And that worked very well. And as we broadened our product suite, Things started to work. The economics of the business started to work. Basically, you're paying all this money to market and sell. You're even paying a bunch of money to deploy. And if you have more product, more arrows in the quiver, you get higher ASPs for the same, essentially, cost. And everything started unfolding there. We ended up doing an acquisition, you know, one each year, basically, as we broadened our portfolio suite. And I learned this a little bit from John Chambers. Um, M&A can be innovation. It's not just buying for customers or revenue. We don't even do that. We buy for product quality and adjacency, and it jumpstarts the innovation.

AI assessment note: “Spend less, grow faster. It's a weird law. Um, is probably my net out.”

Q Can I ask on a macro level, how do you think venture is more misunderstood Today, if that's on a micro, where it's like, it's not about avocado toast and cappuccinos and thrill tobacco, you know, Klaus. On a macro level, how is it misunderstood?

A So the macro level, it's pretty simple. For me, the progress of a society is the way how they can handle risk. And entire Europe has had societal and economical progress, especially in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. And we were basically very good At financing innovation at the magnitude of four percent of GDP. So the banks financed it because they were in a regulatory framework where they were allowed to, to do this kind of investments. And the innovation at that time was Bosch, Siemens, Porsche, you name it. Um, so today the regulation has changed. Banks do not finance innovation and startups anymore. So, and Today, the only regulatory compliant way of financing innovation is venture. And in Europe, we are at all .5% of GDP. So we are under financing innovation by factor eight in comparison to the levels that made us wealthy in the fifties, sixties, seventies.

AI assessment note: “Today, the only regulatory compliant way of financing innovation is venture.”

Q I didn't like the category, something else other than the founder. And so now I have this, and I'm kind of intrigued to hear your thoughts because, you know, You're much wiser than me. I just have this obsession on founder, um, I don't care what they do. If they're an amazing founder, they get a check from me. How do you prioritize the stack between founder, market, and traction?

A Um, in that order, uh, founder number one, uh, because ultimately at our stage, I think it's the only thing that matters. We've seen, uh, great starts get bungled badly because of, uh, founder problems. Character problems, ethical problems, values. So the founder trumps all. We've passed on a few very interesting, promising companies because we just could not see ourselves partner with the founder across the table. Secondly would be market, because everything we do ultimately needs to be able to return our fund if all goes well. We're in a sort of a high return business by taking high risk, so the high return should be there. So if it's a small market, if it's a Crowded market will pass. Uh, the traction at our stages tells us something in some cases, but it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's a distant third.

AI assessment note: “in that order, founder number one”

Q So why make the transition to venture then? You're a super successful angel and you're liquid.

A Great question. It was out of getting nervous because what I saw is I was able to syndicate the first couple of million dollars into these companies, but then the moment they needed anything above five, ten million dollars, there was no, uh, nobody that targeted that stage, uh, in, in our region. So I'd have to come to Silicon Valley or New York or London and convince people who didn't really understand Uh, our part of the world. So I thought if I raise a fund to focus on opportunities in, in Eastern Europe and Turkey, then, uh, I can follow on and maybe support these companies for the couple of rounds after my initial entry. Uh, because I thought if I couldn't do that, some of these companies might actually go bust. So it was out of fear.

AI assessment note: “It was out of getting nervous because what I saw is”

Q So why do you paid period? Why do people do paid?

A Well, okay, let's, let's flip that Lyft scenario. So then you have the passenger side, not incremental at all. The supply side, it's really hard to get drivers in a ride sharing network. And guess what? You're a marketplace. You need to balance supply and demand. You need to acquire the drivers. And so I think this is where we did run a lot of paid at Lyft to acquire the supply side. And part of that is Well, if we acquire the supply side, we can balance the marketplace. Balanced marketplace is going to be much more efficient. Lyft will grow because of it. And that spend will pay back much faster. So I think it makes sense as like a very intense balancing lever for marketplaces. And then if your unit economics support it, I do think there are advantages to using paid acquisition to go after audiences that you're under indexed in. So right now, like the only paid acquisition we've ever touched and it's so lightweight are some just like simple TikTok ads testing different value propositions with 18 to 24 year olds. Very specific marketing.

AI assessment note: “advantages to using paid acquisition to go after audiences that you're under indexed in.”

Q We said about optimizations, about kind of squeezing as much value out as we could. A cool way to do that is in A-B testing, determining what works, what doesn't, and then doubling down. What is the role of A-B tests today in your mind and growth? How do you think about that?

A You know, I'm coming from a data science background. I'm pretty biased here. Uh, there's a good, a bad, and an ugly. The, the good is we, we are using A-B tests to understand impact, to understand how every metric changes. Are we accidentally bringing down certain metrics? Do we really understand what is incremental and what is not incremental? That is like a well-scoped AB test teaches you what you should work on next. It adjusts your direction. It adjusts your cadence. A bad AB test is poorly scoped. You're not going to get any information out of it. It's, it's a messy thing with a low minimum detectable effect. You're going to run it and you're not going to get anything out of it. You just wasted a week of your time. And then the ugly, the ugly is I'm running an AB test. So that I can put something in my performance review about a number I moved, or I can like say something to my manager. And you see that as companies get bigger, right? We're running A-B tests just to like be able to say, oh, I increased activations by 12%.

AI assessment note: “The, the good is we, we are using A-B tests to understand impact”

Q So we identify that retention is the problem then. We've got amazing acquisition. We've got these partnership teams that's driving top of funnel. What do we do then when we know retention is the problem?

A There are finite, there are finite ways to move retention. Um, one, you are setting up your milestone metrics. Okay. What correlates with deeper retention earlier in the funnel, right? So that three queries in your first session, and now how am I really trying to move that, but at a higher level, mostly playing with mix shift, right? So One, you can optimize channel distribution. So organic and referrals is always going to have higher retention than paid acquisition and partnerships. Okay. That's, you know, because of so much of our growth is word of mouth and partnerships led, like we don't have much channel distribution optimization to make. Two is you can target different audiences. Perplexity is incredibly horizontal. My grandmother uses it. My doctor uses it. Everyone uses it. So can I find different segments? Different audience segments that have really high retention. And then can I specifically go after them? So I'm changing the mix shift of new cohorts to that new audience, which increases that retention for those cohorts.

AI assessment note: “There are finite ways to move retention. Um, one, you are setting up your milestone metrics.”

Q Listen, dude, I want to discuss like building the team before we do a quick fire. It's really hard by hiring for growth. What is the right first hire in a growth team?

A It depends what you need. Do you want a marketer that can juice the top of the funnel, but can still get in the weeds, run experiments, think about onboarding flows, or do you want a product person that can run marketing campaigns? I, I obviously fall into more of the latter, right? I want to like spend time in the data. I want to be turning over stones. I want to be holding onto that data. It depends on the makeup of the current team and the founders. If you're feeling good from a top of funnel perspective and you have a complex funnel that is cross device, go for the product person that has built these funnels before.

AI assessment note: “go for the product person that has built these funnels before.”

Q I spoke to Dara at Uber before the show. And he said, I just want to make sure I get this quote right because he might be a little bit upset if I don't get it right. Um, it's something along the lines of essentially you are often second or third in a market. How do you feel about that? And is that an okay strategy?

A Well, I'm a facts and numbers based guy. So let's look at that. Um, today we operate in about 50 countries around the world and Bolt is the number one most popular platform in more than 20 of them. So we're feeling pretty happy about where we are. And when we look at the trend of most of those other 30 where we operate, we are continuously taking share for the reasons I mentioned earlier. Uh, we offer a better value proposition to the customer. We offer better value proposition to the driver. And in a lot of those places, we're confident that over time, even though we're a second mover, uh, we've, we've done that before. I think we can catch up and actually become the most popular platform.

AI assessment note: “Bolt is the number one most popular platform in more than 20 of them.”

Q You've expanded well beyond the core category now. Talk to me about the decision to expand to other categories. And how you thought about that?

A We always had the ambition to build a replacement to your private car, and we knew that ride-hailing alone is not gonna do that. Ride-hailing is gonna be a huge business, but, uh, there needs to be other modes of transport we're gonna offer on the platform as well. Uh, but the first five years, we were just having no resources whatsoever. So ride-hailing consumed all of our attention, all of our money. And then probably in 2018, we for the first time realized that we actually have enough Budget that we can take on one new bet. And then we debated internally long. What is that going to be? And then we, um, took a gamble on micro mobility. So we decided we're going to be the first ride hailing company in the world to launch electric scooters on the platform as well. And that was actually quite a controversial decision, both from the employee point of view, but also from some of the investors, because they were thinking that first of all, it's a hardware business, so it's very difficult. Um, and second, you're going to be cannibalizing your own very profitable ride-hailing trips because there's a big overlap. Um, about 40% of the ride-hailing trips in a lot of these countries are, um, less than four kilometers long. So you're going to be cannibalizing that and pushing people instead of taking a ride-hailing car to taking a squatter instead, and you will have much worse margins the…

AI assessment note: “We always had the ambition to build a replacement to your private car”

Q How did you come to three hundred and fifty million being the right size fund? And stage wise, this is seed and A?

A That's, it's seed and A. It's lead checks at seed and A. And it was really a bottoms up exercise. We thought about what is the right pacing for each, each GP. And for us, when we looked at our investment history over the last 10 to 15 years, it was about two to three investments per year. There were years that, you know, in 20, 21, I did far more and, you know, which was the wrong decision at that point. But when we looked at what was the right number, it was about two or three investments per year. And that's how we built the fund, which is, that's about the pace that each GP should have in the fund. Um, it's about a three-year fund, and we'll have, you know, about 25 investments in each fund.

AI assessment note: “it was really a bottoms up exercise. We thought about what is the right pacing”

Q On that, sorry, let's just start on that. Sales segmentation, does that need to change as you move upmarket?

A Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, when I, when, you know, when I came into, at both Slack and Glean, when I joined Slack, I immediately, after we got to about ten million in revenue, Cut the team into SMB and enterprise, and I basically said enterprise is a thousand employees and above, SMB is below, and that way we just sort of put the resourcing, the more expensive sales resourcing, on those bigger accounts. Now, at Slack, it was a lot of inbound, but even that segmentation is important to do, so you at least get your true, like your sellers starting to think about upmarket Inbound at a minimum. At Glean, when I joined, we had real great success in that mid-market segment. We had strong sellers, about like eight of them, and we decided very quickly with the team to say, we've got to move up market, let's cut it at 2000 employees and above, and, and the below will be serviced by a smaller subset of the team. And that helped us start to accelerate moving up, but you're right, it's not like, because you only have eight AEs or 10 AEs, you're not all of a sudden touching every Fortune 100 and able to do deals overnight, and so what we did was strategically pick one or two key bets that we wanted to get to prove success in. T-Mobile became that account for us at Glean. Not just a sales team, as a company and leadership team, we said, we are going to prove success at a Fortune 100, Like T-M…

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, when I, when, you know, when I came into”