Hefetz: Early-Stage Startups Cannot Afford to Let Employees Learn From Mistakes
Adena Hefets · 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes · Mar 13, 2020 · at 23:11
Adina Hefetz is the co-founder of Divvy Homes, a real estate platform. She is discussing leadership styles and why hands-on involvement is critical during early startup fundraising cycles.
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“With a startup, you're living year to year. I mean, this isn't a, I have 10 years to build a company, because maybe if you're cash flow positive as a startup, you do, but today with Divi, you know, we're a capital intensive business. We are kind of managing in shorter term periods, but you don't have that time to fall on your face, and then get back up and learn from it, because you only have, if you're raising almost every year, which is what Divi has done historically, you've got 12 data points, which is the 12 months In between each capital race that you have to prove things out.”
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More from Adena Hefets
Hefetz: Divvy Homes Maintains Positive Unit Economics on Every Home
“At Debbie, we build a really scalable model with positive unit economics for every home that we end up bringing onto our portfolio”
Hefetz: Headcount Is a Flawed Vanity Metric for Startup Growth
“Isn't the best case scenario that I've hired no employees and my revenue has 10 X'd? Like, why is the mark of a growing and successful company the number of employees they have? Which to me seems rather off.”
Hefetz: Raising Debt Capital Is Tremendously Harder Than Raising Equity
“So yeah, debt is tremendously harder than equity.”
Hefetz: Divvy Homes Aims to Acquire 100,000 Homes Within Five Years
“I mean, for our company, we have a singular focus, which is a 100,000 homes for Divi families. The largest read in the U.S. Is about 80,000 homes, so we want to Topple that. And our clear path is just create an easier way to move into homeownership for a large…”
Hefetz: Diminishing Paid Returns Require Startups to Build Proprietary Distribution
“So I'd say paid is hard because I think that there's definitely diminishing returns. And the way you adjust that is by finding a proprietary distribution channel that really lets you scale up with lower costs.”
Hefetz: Silicon Valley Is Shifting Away From Growth at All Costs
“I think we are starting to feel the switch towards instead of just growing really quickly at all costs, grow more thoughtfully. You still have to grow, but grow more thoughtfully, which I think more and more folks kind of getting their head around.”