Only 10 internet companies globally had achieved $10B GMV by 2017
Rahul Mehta · 20VC: Investing $200m In Facebook, The 3 Stages of Founder Development & Why Creating A New User Behaviour Can Be Unit Economics Inefficient with Rahul Mehta, Managing Partner @ DST · Jul 24, 2017 · at 15:20
Rahul Mehta, Managing Partner at DST, explains the rarity of massive global scale when discussing late-stage venture sourcing.
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“There are only 10 internet companies globally, public or private, which have ten billion GMB, and there are less than 15 companies It's globally with a million orders a day.”
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More from Rahul Mehta
Startups with capital and product-market fit should aggressively pursue market share
“If you have access to capital and the product idea fundamentally makes sense, then I would say it overall is the right thing to do to be pretty aggressive early on and try and take as much market share as possible.”
DST's initial $200M Facebook investment came directly from Mail.ru's balance sheet
“The first investment in Facebook actually happened from the mail balance sheet. And then when this was the first two hundred million dollar round that we did in May, 2009, that all came from the mail balance sheet.”
DST has exclusively invested in founder-led companies since its inception
“So our investment thesis has always revolved a lot around the founder, and we've only invested in founder-led companies from the very beginning.”
Creating new user behaviors often causes temporary unit economic inefficiency
“If you're creating a new user behavior, it can be unit economics inefficient for some time.”
DST deliberately keeps some late-stage portfolio investments unannounced in stealth
“And we have a few companies in the portfolio, which were given as late stage investments We never announced them for a long time.”
Poor deal selection damages a venture firm's future access to elite founders
“You would not be able to pick the best company unless you have access to it, so you need to have access first, and if you've made a lot of type one, type two errors in picking, then you wouldn't have The same access to high quality founders in the future eithe…”