Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

VCs cannot oversell themselves or show too much excitement to founders

Merci Victoria Grace · 20VC: Lightspeed Partner, Merci Victoria Grace on The Future of Collaboration Tools, Bundling vs Unbundling, Synchronous vs Asynchronous & What It Means To Productise The S*** Out of Venture · Jun 8, 2020 · at 32:01

Merci Victoria Grace is a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and former Head of Product at Slack. She reflects on lessons learned after transitioning into venture capital.

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“You can never be too early or too excited to work with the founder. And at first I was nervous about coming on too strong or being too aggressive, but it's really not possible to oversell.”

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Opinion
Venture capital needs more female and diverse check-writers
“Venture-backed companies are this outsized engine of wealth creation and societal change relative, right, to the dollars at work. Venture funding changed my life, and it changes the lives of founders and employees. And venture-backed companies have the scale a…”
Merci Victoria Grace Jun 8, 2020 ▶ 32:15 20VC: Lightspeed Partner, Merci Victoria Grace on The Future of Collaboration Tools, Bundling vs Unbundling, Synchronous vs Asynchronous & What It Means To Productise The S*** Out of Venture
Insight
Silicon Valley actively rewards certain types of startup failure
“Silicon Valley really rewards some types of failure.”
Merci Victoria Grace Jun 8, 2020 ▶ 3:44 20VC: Lightspeed Partner, Merci Victoria Grace on The Future of Collaboration Tools, Bundling vs Unbundling, Synchronous vs Asynchronous & What It Means To Productise The S*** Out of Venture
Opinion
Venture funding must rely less on exclusive operator networks
“I hope that venture funding becomes less of a closed circle, and actually that these networks become less important, and that access to this life-changing financial tool is democratized for many more people who didn't have the incredible luck That Jana and I h…”
Merci Victoria Grace Jun 8, 2020 ▶ 15:22 20VC: Lightspeed Partner, Merci Victoria Grace on The Future of Collaboration Tools, Bundling vs Unbundling, Synchronous vs Asynchronous & What It Means To Productise The S*** Out of Venture
Insight
Collaboration startups fail by targeting managers instead of end users
“I think the next thing that I see is selling into managers instead of individual contributors. At the end of the day, it can be counterintuitive to approach it this way, but the end user is your customer, even if they're not the person who's taking out their c…”
Merci Victoria Grace Jun 8, 2020 ▶ 18:53 20VC: Lightspeed Partner, Merci Victoria Grace on The Future of Collaboration Tools, Bundling vs Unbundling, Synchronous vs Asynchronous & What It Means To Productise The S*** Out of Venture
Insight
Great collaboration tools need 60% DAU/MAU and 140% net revenue retention
“Over 60% of your monthly active users should be daily active users. You should have a power user curve showing customers using the product every workday and net revenue retention of over 140%.”
Merci Victoria Grace Jun 8, 2020 ▶ 21:26 20VC: Lightspeed Partner, Merci Victoria Grace on The Future of Collaboration Tools, Bundling vs Unbundling, Synchronous vs Asynchronous & What It Means To Productise The S*** Out of Venture
Insight
One human interaction can turn low NPS users into promoters
“And people move from being a zero or one NPS to being a nine or a 10 off of one human interaction, and that's It's unchangeable, because that's about human nature.”
Merci Victoria Grace Jun 8, 2020 ▶ 29:11 20VC: Lightspeed Partner, Merci Victoria Grace on The Future of Collaboration Tools, Bundling vs Unbundling, Synchronous vs Asynchronous & What It Means To Productise The S*** Out of Venture
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