Schalit: Sequoia's Jim Goetz convinced Dashlane to raise equity over debt
Emmanuel Schalit · 20VC: Why Raising A Mega-Round Makes Your Life Harder Not Easier, Why Your Board Is Not Your Boss and Lessons on Successful Board Management & The Biggest Breakpoints in Company Scaling with Emmanuel Schalit, Founder & CEO @ Dashlane · Dec 6, 2019 · at 32:30
Emmanuel Schalit, CEO of Dashlane, describes his most memorable investor pitch meeting, in which Jim Goetz of Sequoia Capital persuaded him to raise equity.
0:00 / 0:29exact quote · 30.0s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“You know, we had just raised a thirty million round of debt with no plan on taking equity, and in the meeting, Jim made me see the opportunity I was potentially missing by not considering an investment from Sequoia, and he convinced me in that meeting to rethink, because I had essentially decided we would not ever raise equity again, because we had a very powerful access to debt, and we didn't want any more dilution, but Jim forced me to rethink that by focusing me on the bigger picture, and it's a meeting I'll remember.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Emmanuel Schalit
Schalit: Lack of diversity in tech is a hard-to-cure cancer
“Diversity. More women, more people of color. That is a cancer running through the tech ecosystem today, and it's one that's really hard to cure.”
Schalit: Pure SaaS margins beat tech-enabled physical businesses on profitability
“When you think about some of the very large public or non-public companies like, you know, ride sharing and office space sharing, these are tech-enabled companies for which technology is somewhat important, but that structurally have very low gross margins bec…”
Schalit: Warehousing cash without fast growth puts equity underwater
“If you're not growing at an incredible rate, if you are not guaranteed to be worth way more money without using that capital, then you must deploy it because otherwise you will have raised your exit bar. You will have a lot of money in the bank, but you will n…”
Schalit: A startup board is not the CEO's boss
“With VCs, because your board is not your boss. You are running the company and you're running the board and you have to really understand that because you become effective at working with your board and your VCs. The moment you understand that the board is the…”
Schalit: Dashlane needs multi-billion dollar exit to justify $110M Sequoia round
“For us, you know, we need to build a multi-billion dollar company for this to make any sense, and when you look at the history of companies, not many people succeed doing that, so that's the first part.”
Schalit: New York is the top US hub for European entrepreneurs
“But today, the New York ecosystem, thanks to, you know, some of the investors we're fortunate to have, Has become, for me, the best destination for European entrepreneurs that want to expand or start in the US for the reasons I just mentioned.”