The Ledger
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Spike Lipkin predicts the next tech era will be defined by services
“If the last phase of technology was characterized by companies selling technology, I think the next phase will be characterized by technology companies selling services.”
Newfront CEO Spike Lipkin met with only one external investor in 2019
“Last year in 2019, I think I met with one investor who's not on our cap table right now.”
Newfront accepted Kevin Hartz's investment offer despite it being 30% lower
“When Kevin invested, we had some other offers that were materially higher than his. I think his was 30% lower than the next offer.”
Startups should ignore secondary problems because scaling unlocks resources
“The nature of startups is that if they start working, you unlock resources and talent, and so, so many problems that seem hard today get easier over time, and I think Opendoor was kind of ruthlessly focused on solving the most important problems at the time, k…”
Lipkin: Founders should solve zero-to-one problems before delegating them
“And so we try not to delegate zero to one problems. We try to solve those ourselves and then very quickly find capable people to delegate those things to.”
Exposing operational flaws to candidates attracts top executive operators
“What we've found is that if we go talk to an incredible operator and expose all the things that are broken in our business, but also show the things that are working. What gets them excited is the fact that they probably can solve the things that are broken an…”
Lipkin: Startups shouldn't reinvent the wheel on building operations organizations
“We think a lot about the risks we're taking as a business, and we want to innovate on client experience and broker experience. We didn't want to innovate on creating a best-in-class ops org. We felt like this was not an area where we needed to reinvent the whe…”
Lipkin: Investors add top value by helping founders isolate key business priorities
“One of the advantages investors have is this bird's eye view where they can help founders identify, you know, the two or three most crucial elements of the business that need to be addressed.”
Lipkin: Tech-Enabled Service Startups Can Achieve Differentiated Margins in Huge Markets
“In our experience, if you leverage technology to provide a differentiated client experience, you often can also leverage technology to provide differentiated margins. So I think it may not be the world of 99% gross margins that Google experience, but it will b…”
Lipkin: Commercial insurance is vital to the economy but understood by no one
“Insurance was crazy. Crucial to our society, crucial to our economy, crucial to entrepreneurship, and really understood by no one.”
Newfront mapped executive energy levels to divide leadership responsibilities
“We did this exercise early on where a lot of the execs on my team wrote down a list of things that gave them energy, and that they loved doing, and felt like they were very good at, and things that took energy from them, and they Didn't enjoy doing and didn't …”
Newfront scaled customer service without ticketing systems or SLAs
“And so we were running a scaled customer service org without a ticketing system, for instance, we didn't have SLAs in place.”
Spike Lipkin: Newfront's last three funding rounds were preemptive insider-led rounds
“We've been lucky that our last three funding rounds have been preemptive, and mostly it's been insiders wanting to lead subsequent rounds”
Spike Lipkin: Newfront met weekly with Kevin Hartz for years during scaling
“We were lucky enough to work with Kevin Hartz and met with him once a week for a number of years to think through some of the common challenges of scaling.”