Silicon Valley, every mention
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every year anyone Brett Berson 33Eoghan McCabe 13Qasar Younis 11Amjad Masad 9Anil Varanasi 7Abhinav Asthana 5Todd Jackson 4Imad Akhund 4Steve Blank 3Matt MacInnis 3
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Silicon Valley comes up
Playing it safe with marketing is the riskiest thing you can do | Sheila Joglekar Vashee (Figma CMO)
- ▶ 16:48 Sheila Joglekar Vashee There's also the Silicon Valley clock, right? 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 27:15 Brett Berson It seems like Silicon Valley hasn't done an amazing job of telling an optimistic story of AI in the past few days that I'm sure you were very attuned to, which is Notion had a brand campaign around Think Together.
How to build a company when you’re not an optimist | Jay Kreps (Co-founder and CEO, Confluent)
Snowflake’s first sales hire on scaling from $0 to $3.5B | Chris Degnan (Former CRO, Snowflake)
- ▶ 8:27 Chris Degnan And it's a combination of that and what Slutman says is, you know, Slutman, Slutman said to me is like, hey, people in Silicon Valley
- ▶ 58:38 Chris Degnan You can, I mean, dude, Silicon Valley is full of super arrogant people that are successful, but man, I enjoy working for great people.
Building Meter for decades, not an exit | Anil Varanasi (Co-founder and CEO)
- ▶ 15:10 Anil Varanasi And, you know, if you look at between 2000 and sort of 2015, all the rage in Silicon Valley was like sass.
- ▶ 34:20 Brett Berson Mainly in Silicon Valley's product and technology.
- ▶ 36:18 Anil Varanasi And I don't know why that is, but I have a worry that actually, particularly in Silicon Valley, that this sort of thinking has accelerated, which is make a point solution as fast as possible to get to some revenue as fast as possible.
- ▶ 47:57 Anil Varanasi That we have a long way to go, and I suspect there'll be a lot of mistakes we'll make and et cetera, but whatever baseline you think of as a large Silicon Valley company, that we would have to actively mess up from this point.
- ▶ 49:50 Anil Varanasi And majority of Silicon Valley today doesn't even know what the channel is. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:01:12 Anil Varanasi And if you look at what has America shipped to the world, management is one of the things that we have sort of shipped culturally.
- ▶ 1:09:03 Brett Berson One of the last things I wanted to ask you, I think that one of the dynamics in simple Silicon Valley, where there's so many founders that start new businesses is
- ▶ 1:10:51 Anil Varanasi I think this is why in Silicon Valley for so much of the software businesses, it's been true than the generation prior is if you look at all these SaaS and software founders, they are much more prolific investors than a generation before…
Go hard early: How lessons from Verkada shaped this AI-native IT platform | Jake Stauch (Serval)
- ▶ 14:02 Jake Stauch So two Silicon Valley tech companies, and then one, a 150 year old French company is part of the bill of materials for all these massive projects.
The pivot that paid off: How fal found explosive growth | Gorkem Yurtseven (Co-founder and CTO)
- ▶ 4:21 Gorkem Yurtseven And we were working at, you know, big Silicon Valley companies, completely independent from each other.
- ▶ 42:18 Gorkem Yurtseven I think one of the advantages of working at a big Silicon Valley company for five plus years is you get to meet a lot of other very talented engineers.
Saying yes to everything: How customer obsession built Samsara | Kiren Sekar (CPO)
- ▶ 6:28 Brett Berson Or was it just a, you're having lunch and you had noticed when you were talking to this customer, wow, that's pretty different than a Silicon Valley company.
- ▶ 21:13 Kiren Sekar And, you know, this was a, a set of industries that had really not been focused on by Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 27:12 Kiren Sekar And actually it's interesting in our space, most of the technology providers, again, weren't Silicon Valley companies.
From Chrome extension to $5B platform | Postman’s journey | Abhinav Asthana (Co-founder & CEO)
- ▶ 13:27 Abhinav Asthana And a big part of me actually coming to Silicon Valley, I think I could trace it kind of back to that.
- ▶ 54:07 Abhinav Asthana I think the climate in, in the valley and Bangalore actually changed quite dramatically over the last 10 years. 4 times in the scene
How Canva leveraged unconventional growth levers to grow to $42B | Cameron Adams (Co-founder & CPO)
- ▶ 2:05 Cameron Adams So we decided to go to Silicon Valley from Sydney, Australia.
Ignoring Silicon Valley advice to build a $3B fintech unicorn (Mercury)
- ▶ 5:18 Brett Berson At the same time, like you look at most 50, a 152 hundred person, really good Silicon Valley companies. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 14:22 Imad Akhund And there was this, there's this feeling in Silicon Valley sometimes that, yeah, you know, if the entrepreneur is good enough, they'll figure out the idea or something.
- ▶ 21:56 Imad Akhund Again, like not Silicon Valley, but wisdom, and something that I fell for, like we talked earlier about like,
- ▶ 32:10 Imad Akhund Uh, so I feel, I think that's actually the power of Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 41:54 Imad Akhund And I was also like, Hey, actually a lot of Silicon Valley companies are immigrant founders, but it was kind of an annoying requirement, like getting a, getting the infrastructure around, like supporting a non-US person.
Inside the ex-YC partner’s $15B self driving car company | Qasar Younis
- ▶ 2:34 Qasar Younis So then, you know, we, so it was at Silicon Valley. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 32:46 Qasar Younis Automotive is different than, than other businesses, but we knew, we know those things, and so I think we, we organize our go-to-market motion, and we organize our, our products to fit into that, and, and so first, you know, bootstrap with…
- ▶ 33:41 Qasar Younis So it was, uh, in that way, like a very traditional Silicon Valley company.
- ▶ 34:41 Brett Berson Like how, how did you go from a 20 person Silicon Valley company to, to really what you would consider your first important customer? 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 39:58 Qasar Younis And it's something that is talked a lot about in Silicon Valley, but often the reason it's not implemented well, it's kind of like, why doesn't every founding team do a good fundraise?
- ▶ 44:46 Qasar Younis I mean, I think, uh, number one, where the valley is really perturbed on compensation 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 51:36 Qasar Younis We are when the Carnegie's, you know, that it's Silicon Valley has, has become this institution which runs the company and the country in a very, very real way. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 56:46 Brett Berson Does it make you think that, that the, the sort of broad topic of domain experiences is somewhat undervalued in Silicon Valley, that there actually is goodness that comes if you know a space backwards and forwards? 3 times in the scene
What Braintrust got right about product-market fit | Ankur Goyal (Founder and CEO)
- ▶ 27:07 Brett Berson And I think it's the opposite of a lot of Silicon Valley wisdom, which is great founders have this vision for the future
- ▶ 47:59 Brett Berson Is there anything interesting to share as you had your first few customers that were not at the cutting edge of Silicon Valley sort of scale up? 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:01:03 Ankur Goyal We've mishired, I've mishired and misfired for a very long time now, maybe longer than I would be willing to admit, working in, in the Valley, um,
How Gusto built a $9.5 billion company by identifying a burning problem
- ▶ 4:42 Brett Berson What was your path from there to coming to Silicon Valley?
- ▶ 17:09 Tomer London Most people outside of Silicon Valley, like, like small businesses and, and real, you know, industry and people don't get to speak with technologists often that can build products.
How rejecting conventional wisdom grew Sentry to a $3 billion company | David Cramer (Co-founder)
- ▶ 7:09 Brett Berson And what's the path from high school dropped out to like your first, what you would consider real Silicon Valley.
- ▶ 22:50 Brett Berson Meaning, I think that there's sort of this Silicon Valley narrative that
- ▶ 37:30 David Cramer And I remember we had all these customers, like every great Silicon Valley logo using Sentry.
- ▶ 1:13:28 David Cramer I think this is why Silicon Valley is like super helpful for building these companies because it is this
Inside Linear: Why craft and focus still win in product building | Karri Saarinen (Co-founder & CEO)
- ▶ 1:14:54 Karri Saarinen Working in the Silicon Valley companies and, and, uh, we do a lot of stuff like they do, and that, that's kind of like the model we follow, but there's also stuff that we do differently, and that's maybe like the, some of the Finnish or… 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:21:12 Brett Berson And because you've chosen to build the company in a very specific way, oftentimes deviating from what Silicon Valley companies would do.
From reluctant founder to $2B valuation: The story of Persona | Rick Song (Co-founder and CEO)
- ▶ 4:05 Brett Berson What I always have been curious about your story is it's the opposite of Silicon Valley lore. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 39:08 Brett Berson On this theme, I think conventional Silicon Valley advice is sort of, as you begin to scale, you want to get out of the consulting and customizing business.
- ▶ 52:47 Rick Song I think like, you know, another thing I think that was very common within, or just an observation I think about sometimes like so common within the Valley for founders is this obsession with frameworks.
- ▶ 56:31 Rick Song Cause you know, again, that's another like Silicon Valley line, which is you just have to hire the best people.
1Password’s growth story | How they went from bootstrapped to $6B company | Jeff Shiner (CEO)
- ▶ 11:55 Brett Berson You joined as CEO in 2012, and that very rarely works, at least in, in terms of statistically in Silicon Valley, if you think about founder-led companies that bring a CEO in that early in particular.
- ▶ 19:07 Brett Berson The sort of traditional Silicon Valley company is you have some visionary founder and they explain
Inside Guideline's mission to modernize 401(k)s | Kevin Busque (Co-founder and CEO)
- ▶ 1:04:32 Kevin Busque There's so much to unpack there, but I learned a lot about Silicon Valley in general and like what not to do, what not to get caught up in, how to focus on delivering and staying true to kind of who you are. 3 times in the scene
Inside Braze’s blitz to $500M in CARR | Building broad, going global, and outfoxing the competition
- ▶ 1:04:50 Bill Magnuson And so there was, there were moments where then the noise and we were in New York, we weren't in Silicon Valley, you know, we weren't a YC company.
How Figma taps into taste, simplicity, and storytelling | Yuhki Yamashita (CPO)
- ▶ 29:06 Brett Berson Why do you think there haven't been more mega successful companies of the last decade in Silicon Valley that were started by designers?
Shifting Career Altitudes: Insights from a CPO That's Led Nearly Every Function | Anneka Gupta
- ▶ 38:57 Brett Berson A lot of times they work at shiny Silicon Valley companies.
How to find — and keep — product-market fit | Bob Moore (Crossbeam, RJMetrics, Stitch Data)
Rebooting Intercom: Eoghan McCabe on Defying Silicon Valley Orthodoxy | Co-founder & CEO
- ▶ 3:07 Eoghan McCabe Um, Silicon Valley as a culture and a place and a community is a, is made up of a phenomenal amount of young people doing what they do for the very first time. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 9:25 Brett Berson One of the few things that makes Silicon Valley so special. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 16:07 Eoghan McCabe I will say that as you get a little older, you start to find certain standard practices in Silicon Valley or the corporate world.
- ▶ 26:59 Eoghan McCabe You know, we, we, we, uh, Silicon Valley is over intellectualized, in my opinion. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 55:22 Eoghan McCabe The only way to enter them in a way with where you can make progress on, you know, at Silicon, at Silicon Valley speed and adventure pace is to disrupt.
- ▶ 1:11:10 Eoghan McCabe They're not Silicon Valley. 6 times in the scene
How to build and scale winning marketplaces | Casey Winters (Eventbrite, Pinterest, Grubhub)
- ▶ 27:37 Casey Winters And then this competitor comes along that's losing two dollars per order and raising hundreds of millions of dollars fairly quickly in Silicon Valley. 2 times in the scene
Lessons from Sentry on scaling DevTools and finding product market fit (again) | Milin Desai (CEO)
- ▶ 4:37 Milin Desai If you asked folks in the Valley, they would say,
How to be effective up and down the org chart | Matt MacInnis (Rippling, Inkling, Apple)
- ▶ 32:10 Matt MacInnis I mean, that's like mostly what you get in Silicon Valley when you ask someone for advice is the five cent version.
- ▶ 54:21 Matt MacInnis Culture is a big word that people misuse a lot in Silicon Valley, and so I like to define it when we use it, which is that culture is the set of behaviors that are acceptable in any given context.
- ▶ 1:14:48 Matt MacInnis I will say being in Silicon Valley in 20, 23 is a lot being what I imagine being in Florence in the Renaissance must have been like just so much creativity, so much productivity, such a high concentration of brilliance.
Building products that delight customers | Adam Nash (Daffy, Wealthfront, LinkedIn, eBay, Apple)
The secret lever Replit pulled to scale ahead of its competition | Amjad Masad (Co-founder and CEO)
- ▶ 2:26 Todd Jackson And where Amjad thinks Silicon Valley is heading next.
- ▶ 6:58 Amjad Masad There was this MOOC revolution that was happening in the US in Silicon Valley, where 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 17:38 Amjad Masad I didn't think we're going to be able to raise again, and I was trying to go for, like, some kind of bootstrap profitability, and we actually did do significant amount of revenue from, from education customers, and we weren't able to get…
- ▶ 28:01 Amjad Masad It's, it was an agonizing decision because the Silicon Valley, I want to call it dogma is do one thing and do it right. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 48:37 Amjad Masad During the SaaS boom period in Silicon Valley, which I think is coming to an end, is the idea of like tinkering and the idea of following your passion and interest without an immediate potential for commercialization and for VCs to be able… 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 52:25 Amjad Masad But, you know, we talk a lot about moats in Silicon Valley.
Lessons from Gusto & Square on Finding Your Product Wedge | Michael Cieri
- ▶ 56:57 Michael Cieri One of those guys in the Valley, that's like a hub.
Mastering modern entrepreneurship | Steve Blank (Author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany)
- ▶ 3:24 Steve Blank You know, so far the, the data says the, the world-class ones, at least the ones that make it in Silicon Valley and the ones that get funded are completely antisocial and probably come from usually dysfunctional families. 3 times in the scene
Winning with open and closed source products | Neha Narkhede (Co-founder at Confluent and Oscilar)
- ▶ 8:40 Neha Narkhede Yeah, we just thought, you know, we'll put it out in the world and tech companies like LinkedIn would use it, you know, Silicon Valley tech companies that are technology forward.
- ▶ 16:40 Brett Berson At the beginning and then kind of build outwards or the roadmap in the early version of the product, the goal was to be extensible, whether you are a hundred person, Silicon Valley company or a bank in New York or whomever.
The Bard blueprint | Creating value, shipping fast, and advancing AI | Jack Krawczyk (Google)
- ▶ 12:21 Jack Krawczyk Part of what's so exciting around this time is I've been in Silicon Valley for 16 years now, and I'm feeling that excitement of it's not just one company doing things that are amazing.
- ▶ 14:25 Jack Krawczyk I've worked at many companies across Silicon Valley, and I've never been at one where I can recite the mission statement, organize the world's information to make it universally and easily accessible and helpful.
How Vercel found extreme product-market fit by focusing on simplification | Guillermo Rauch (CEO)
- ▶ 13:18 Guillermo Rauch One fun fact is when I first came to the Valley, I became one of the earliest users of AWS. 2 times in the scene
Contrarian takes on growth, hiring, and fundraising | Wade Foster (Co-founder & CEO at Zapier)
- ▶ 2:58 Brett Berson So you raised very little money before that kind of became a meme in Silicon Valley. 2 times in the scene
How young outsiders changed the shipping industry | Laura Behrens Wu (Shippo)
- ▶ 2:21 Todd Jackson Laura and her co-founder took big swings in a game they previously knew nothing about, coming in as outsiders to Silicon Valley and outsiders to the shipping industry, and it paid off exponentially.
- ▶ 49:25 Todd Jackson You, you had come from Germany, you, you wanted to be in Silicon Valley, you wanted to stay in Silicon Valley, so you had to make this work. 2 times in the scene
How to supercharge your engineering org | Kellan Elliott-McCrea (Adobe, Dropbox)
- ▶ 16:29 Brett Berson It's also interesting because obviously, you know, what has made technology companies, or when I use the term Silicon Valley, I mean, this way of, you know, the types of companies that you and I have spent time with the idea of giving…