Messerschmidt: Netflix culture deck values were actively lived by employees
Jana Messerschmidt · 20VC: How Founders Can Gain Leverage in Fundraising Negotiations, The Metrics You Need To Raise Your Series A in Consumer & What We Have To Change About Cap Table Construction with Jana Messerschmidt, Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners · Sep 2, 2019 · at 9:25
Jana Messerschmidt, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, reflects on her operational background at Netflix and the impact of its famous culture document.
0:00 / 0:08exact quote · 8.6s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“These weren't just values that were thrown up on a wall or mentioned it in all hands once or twice. They really embodied what it was like to work there.”
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 Jana Messerschmidt
Messerschmidt: Employee underperformance is always the sole responsibility of their manager
“My general, like, managing philosophy around why people don't perform is it's really the sole responsibility of their manager. You've either failed to give them the context of what you're trying to achieve, or you've hired a person with the wrong skills in the…”
Messerschmidt: Women hold just 9% of equity value in tech companies
“Women make up roughly 33% of the workforce of tech companies, yet they hold just nine percent of the equity value. Men hold the other 91%.”
Messerschmidt: Early founders must focus exclusively on metrics for next round
“So at the early stages of company building, like when you're pre-seed, seed, series A, you really shouldn't be focused on anything else other than do I have the right tactics in place to hit those metrics that are going to give you more money.”
Messerschmidt: Growth velocity beats overall revenue when raising a Series A
“So we'd much rather back a company who's gone from like zero to 500 K in a few months with strong organic traffic than a company who hit a million dollars a month rate, but the growth has slowed significantly.”