Joe Thomas
Co-Founder and CEO, Loom. On 2 shows, 2 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestor@yoyo_thomas ↗LinkedIn ↗loom.com ↗
Joe Thomas co-founded Loom in 2015, pioneering asynchronous video communication for workplace productivity. He served as CEO through several rounds of venture funding, leading up to the company's acquisition by Atlassian in 2023.
2shows
2appearances
40statements
1resolved
1supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
4said about them ↓ Everything Joe Thomas said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Thomas: Enterprise PLG startups must reach a 50-50 sales-to-self-serve revenue split
“When you're a PLG self-serve business, you at some point need to actually have sales led, especially after you're going after enterprise organizations, be approximately fifty-fifty of your net new revenue that you're generating, and we are far from that ratio,…”
Thomas: Async workplace video will match consumer scale within ten years
“We think that over the next decade that Async video will be as big as it is in the consumer landscape at work.”
Thomas: Early-stage founders must commit to a single product distribution channel
“Now you end up adding on channels over the course of time, but when you are an early stage founder and CEO, you truly only have time for one, right? And there should be one that's as directly aligned with your company as possible, and just go after that one as…”
Thomas: Loom raised its Series A with zero revenue despite 80% rejection
“So we went to go raise our Series A as a B to B SaaS company, and it's not like we were below the revenue standards that you typically hit. We had no revenue at that point. And the Series A fundraise actually took a long time. It took about four months, five m…”
Joe Thomas: Required Meetings Correlate With Project Delays on Upwork
“They also said that any companies that provided a required meeting as part of their process actually significantly correlated to delays and slower project finish times, and so they even built a synchronous video conferencing product into their offering, and 57…”
Thomas: Remote-first policy was essential for hiring Loom's leadership team
“Six of our 11 members of our leadership team, which is VPs or directors, are remote, and five of six of those would not be at Loom if we didn't have remote first as part of our DNA as a company.”
Point Nine issued Loom a seed term sheet after one 45-minute call
“Our seed round that was co-led by .9 Capital, Christoph and the .9 team, Had a ton of conviction around Loom after only meeting one of the co-founders, Shahid, and after 1:45 minute conversation, they put a term sheet on the table, and we ended up working toge…”
Loom raised Series A from Kleiner after Index rejected their seed
“Now, we ended up fundraising from Ilya, who had moved over to Kleiner at that point from Index, but we were worried, even though he individually had a ton of conviction about Loom, we weren't able to get the seed round done with Index, and so there was no guar…”
Thomas: Co-leading venture rounds reduces individual investor involvement
“Co-leads are tough because there isn't the clear incentive for one individual to kind of like be that, that guiding hand and be super involved.”
Thomas: Startups only need one yes while corporate ideas require consensus
“Why startups win is that corporations end up saying no a lot to really good ideas. You actually have to probably get yeses all the way up the chain, whereas startups only need one yes, one percent of the time over the course of a year in order to build somethi…”
Thomas: Pre-seed investors pressured Loom to verticalize for a Salesforce acquisition
“From our pre-seed investors, they wanted us to verticalize specifically with the sales persona, because they're like, you need to build this set of features, and then you do it over the course of the next couple of years, you get to this ARR, and you get acqui…”
Thomas: Loom probably should have verticalized its product in year five
“I think that we could have started going vertical sooner. I think we probably could have started doing that at year five or six versus year seven”
Thomas: Loom eliminated seat pricing negotiations with fixed rate cards in 2022
“So the big change that we made starting in October of last year is that we reset to high velocity sales model, which is like standardized price card. Like this number of seats gets you this price per seat. It like removes the negotiation part.”
Thomas: Video is highly efficient for encoding knowledge but inefficient for decoding
“Video is very efficient from an encoding perspective, but inefficient from a decoding perspective for the person receiving”
Thomas: Loom avoided building a dedicated video inbox for five years
“For us, for the first five years, one of our, like, core product principles is nobody wants another inbox to check. Like you already have Slack, you have iMessages, you have email, like, when does Loom reach a threshold of being another inbox, and even if we c…”
Thomas: Consumer asynchronous video apps failed due to decoding inefficiency
“There's been plenty of consumer products out there over the course of time that allow for async video conversations. It's like, you record, then somebody records next, and the next person records, and None of those have reached mass adoption, and I think it's …”
Joe Thomas: Synchronous Communication Is Best for Rapid Idea Exchange
“Studies show that it's best utilized for bursty communication. If you can imagine having a ball in your hands, and when you're in a meeting, you want to pass that ball to as many different people as frequently as you can, because that means you're exchanging i…”
Joe Thomas: Asynchronous Communication Is Best for Deep Work
“And what it's best used for is for deep work, and it's also best used for information dissemination. How do I get an idea from one person to another?”
Joe Thomas: GitLab Handbook Provides Copy-Paste Templates to Decline Meetings
“They actually go as far as to provide copy and paste text in their handbook to turn down meetings, saying that this just isn't useful for us to do synchronous, we should do asynchronous.”
Joe Thomas: Async Video Submissions Boosted Loom's Interview Pass Rate 50%
“And what this leads to is a 50% higher pass-through rate versus when we've done live take-home presentations during our super day process, and the reason being is that we take some of the interview process and we make it async, is that we review that take-home…”
Joe Thomas: Loom Attains a 72% Job Offer Acceptance Rate
“So our acceptance rate is 72%, which is 11% above industry standard in a really tough market.”
Loom holds a patent for instantaneous video rendering technology
“The most important thing, and this is Vinay's technical wizardry that we now have a patent on, is that he was able to make videos render instantaneously, which was the most important component of building a day-to-day communication tool.”
Thomas: The best board members ask questions instead of mandating solutions
“I've found that the best board members just very simply ask the best questions. They obviously have opinions about where it is that the company should go. But they don't mandate solutions. They don't mandate their thinking because the thing is that founders an…”
Thomas: Investor advice is just one data point for founders
“Your investor's perspective is an important data point, but fundamentally, you're never going to have Perfect information to make a perfect decision. And so it boils down to, of all the data that you've collected, including an investor opinion or advice, what …”
The other half of the tape: Joe Thomas's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 3 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 4
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 4
2023 2 mentions in 1 episode
2020 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: What Is Founder Narrative Fit and How to Detect and Invest In It, How To Avoid Consensus Thinking When Investing, Price Sensititivity; When To Pay Up vs Stay Disciplined & From New York Times To General Catalyst; Why Venture and Journalism are Not S
- 20VC: Steve Jurvetson on 20 Years of Friendship with Elon Musk, How To Analyse Market Timing, Why Venture Does Not Scale & Why He Has Never Sold A Share in Any Company He Holds
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Joe's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 SAASTRLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Loom | 1 +1 | 28 | — | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Loom | 1 | 12 | 100% 1/1 | full record on 20VC → |