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: Early-stage startups need former founders and operators on their cap table
“I'm not saying to exclusively fundraise from former operators or funders, but certainly have them on the cap table because you want your earliest investors to be those who have been on the other side of the table. They will have deep empathy for the early jour…”
Thomas: VCs aim to maximize ownership without hurting startup trajectory
“All investors, you have to, as a founder, see this with eyes wide open because while your partners in the business, their business model is to maximize their ownership in your company while not harming the trajectory of it.”
Sequoia partners recorded 20 Loom videos to win Loom's Series B
“He sent an email that had 20 Sequoia partners and team members, including Rulof, Doug Leone, Michael Morwitz, who all recorded a Loom talking about why they were so excited to join Loom on our journey.”
Thomas: Loom survived on $25,000 and mere weeks of remaining runway
“We were truly a few weeks away, not just in terms of the 25,000 dollars that we had raised in angel money, but all of our personal savings as well.”
Thomas: Product-led virality remains the core growth engine for Loom
“This is still the core growth engine of Loom today, which is that people record videos, they send them to others, and they get so much value out of it that they talk to one another about how they end up using Loom, and that's the core engine of Loom's growth t…”
Thomas: The average Loom video recording lasts two to three minutes
“Looms tend to be about two to three minutes in length on average, so it's a long form message, it's not A five-second message that you're sending to others”
Thomas: Loom faced a 98% investor rejection rate across 100 pitches
“We had done about a hundred investor pitches, and again, only had gotten 25 K from two people, so that's a two percent hit rate. 98% were just straight-up no's, including from friends and family”
Thomas: Re-recording single-sentence mistakes is Loom's top user complaint
“We're working on cam and voice avatars that you'll be able to edit via the transcript, so if you want to delete a sentence and retype it, You don't have to re-record, which is the number one pain point that we hear from users, is that, damn, I nailed that five…”
Thomas: Loom links expand into inline playable videos across 2,000 platforms
“When you paste a Loom link, there's 2000 platforms in the world that expanded into Loom video in line, because we replicated the YouTube model, where it's like, you don't always want to click a YouTube link to go to YouTube to watch it, you just want to watch …”
Joe Thomas: 85% of Workers Report Higher Stress Due to Message Overload
“That 85% say that their work stress is greater today than it was five years ago because you have message overload.”
Joe Thomas: 52% of Workers in Back-to-Back Meetings Experience Loneliness
“And the counterpoint to that, which is kind of crazy, is the fact that 52% say that even though they're in back-to-back meetings, that they're experiencing workplace loneliness.”
Joe Thomas: GitLab's Employee Handbook Spans 13,000 Pages
“This quote, this question underpins the async mindset, and their employee handbook is 13,000 pages. That is not an exaggeration. It's an open code repository.”
Joe Thomas: Figma Built FigJam End-to-End in Just Six Months
“What ultimately became the idea of FigJam that launched in twenty-twenty-one Is the opposite of what they did with their original products, their flagship products, which took years to build in stealth. They built from end to end in six months. That was out in…”
Thomas: 80% of early Loom power users used it for remote work
“When we were five people in an SF office slash apartment, We ran a survey that found that 80% of our professional power users were using it to communicate with folks that they weren't sitting right next to, aka remote communication.”
Thomas: Executive long-form writing creates multi-purpose organizational value
“You can take a weekly CEO note and share it with a VIP candidate to give a true lens into how you think and what's going on in the company. You can share a letter to the board with the broader investor base to get help with the key issue. When you do long-form…”
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 → |