Crazy Until It's Not: Startups, Venture Capital & Big Ideas
Crazy Until It's Not: Startups, Venture Capital & Big Ideas
My firstminute | Jess Lee, Polyvore, Sequoia
The consumer sector has seen a decline in VC funding. This is due to many factors such as the high churn rates and difficulty in find product market fit often saturated markets.
Jess Lee knows both sides well having been co-founder and former CEO of Polyvore and currently a Partner at Sequoia Capital.
Over her illustrious career, Jess has spent time working as Product Manager at Google, as CEO at Polyvore, and most recently as Partner at Sequoia Capital, where she became the youngest partner as well as the firm's first female Partner in the United States. We spent time exploring the many aspects of Jess' journey, her focus on consumer and community, and her outlook for the future of venture and startups in this episode from June 2020.
00:00:01:02 - 00:00:27:21
Speaker 1
First minute capital is $100 million seed fund, proudly backed by a number of tech founder Elkins, including 13 unicorn families. Part of our DNA to take wisdom and lessons learned from one generation of successful entrepreneurs and share those lessons and pieces of advice with the next generation of successful founders. And that's really what this webinar series is all about.
00:00:28:04 - 00:01:06:22
Speaker 1
My first minutes is a fun opportunity to informally speak to some of the world's top founders on the first minutes of their careers, how they see the world in general, leadership advice. My name is Steve Crosson. I'm a venture partner at first minute capital. And today I'm speaking to Sequoia's Jess Lee. And welcome, Jess. Super excited to have Jess here with us today to talk about learnings from her storied career, current interests and and perhaps hopes for the future as well.
00:01:07:11 - 00:01:33:29
Speaker 1
Jess and I met when we both worked at Google and Products in the early days of Google Maps. She went on to be CEO and honorary co-founder at Polyvore, who was one of the pioneers in curated, community driven commerce in fashion and which executed exit exited to Yahoo! In 2015. And in 2016, she joined Sequoia Capital as one of the youngest ever partners.
00:01:35:07 - 00:02:05:24
Speaker 1
She has notable investments in Mavin in the wing. The wing background. You can see that behind Jess showing showing off the portfolio in Restore and Remix among others. She grew up in Hong Kong before coming to Stanford and falling in love with computer science. And she's one of the most thoughtful products and organizational thinkers around. As anyone who's followed her work will know, and I can't wait to get into all of that with her.
00:02:06:00 - 00:02:07:21
Speaker 1
Welcome, Jess. How are you?
00:02:08:19 - 00:02:16:19
Speaker 2
Good. Thank you for such a nice intro to see you again after so many years of Google Maps. A long time.
00:02:16:19 - 00:02:59:28
Speaker 1
Ago. Exactly. Many, many years ago. We're going to do about 35, 40 minutes Q&A before we open up to questions from the audience. So audience members don't hesitate to reach out on chat to dispense with that burning question. The first thing I wanted to ask you about was kind of going back to Polyvore and and really sort of the core my first minute question, which was sort of what was what was 0 to 1 like on Polyvore and in particular, you know, when did you feel that you really had the demonstration going, that this was going to be real, that this was going to work, that you knew that it was now about it was
00:02:59:28 - 00:03:06:16
Speaker 1
now about execution. But the the core piece of it was was really going to take off.
00:03:07:07 - 00:03:28:24
Speaker 2
That's a great question. So the 0 to 1, the way I came into Polyvore was I, I was Phillips at Google Maps, one of my cube mates, Ty Tran, who, you know, Steve said, Hey, my friend is working on this product. Polyvore you like art, you like fashion. Why don't you check it out? And then I started playing with the product.
00:03:28:24 - 00:03:56:18
Speaker 2
It was pretty nascent at the time. It was a tool that lets you mix and match products to create outfits. And I was like, Wow, this is a lot of fun. I spent a couple hours every night using it because it was so addictive, and I think that was the moment I knew there was something there. It's like in consumer, it's very rare to find a product, that novel that really invokes that magic, like that moment where you're like, I haven't seen that before.
00:03:56:19 - 00:04:18:00
Speaker 2
Wow, that that was clever. It could be some small touch in your user experience, a little design flair. It could be a completely new way of thinking or doing something, but you just know that you see that magic. So I saw that magic and I just I got frustrated because there were all kinds of other problems. So I wrote a note to the co-founders with my feedback and my complaints.
00:04:18:15 - 00:04:44:06
Speaker 2
They wrote back and said, These are great ideas. Why don't you just come work here and fix it yourself? And so I, I joined as the first PM. And when you're for people and you're the first hire, there's a lot of things to do beyond just being a PM. And I think the best early employees are the folks who step outside of what they're supposed to do and figure out what else needs to be done.
00:04:44:06 - 00:05:05:22
Speaker 2
And so I did everything from washing dishes to writing code to selling ads, and with each new department or job that I took on, I found that I was not that good at it and that I needed to find someone else who's better, who actually knew what they were doing to run marketing or, you know, run people ops or h.r.
00:05:05:22 - 00:05:23:25
Speaker 2
And so that's kind of what happened. And a few years after that, I'd hired a whole bunch of great people who, you know, because I was the one non pure engineer person. They were all reporting to me. And that was the moment at which the co-founders came to me and said, Hey, we've always thought of you as a co-founder.
00:05:23:25 - 00:05:42:23
Speaker 2
You've always acted like one. So we're going to start calling you a co-founder. We're going to give you some of our shares, and we'd like you to to be a true partner and running the company together. And eventually after that, I became CEO. But the magic along the way continued because of organic growth. And I think that's in consumer the key.
00:05:42:29 - 00:06:11:18
Speaker 2
You find that kernel of delight. People are so excited about it that they go and tell a friend like they're so happy about your product. Happy to be associated with it that they tell a friend and then you see organic growth throughout and you don't purely. And obviously you can layer paid monetization on top of that. But if you don't have that organically growing product, I think you're sort of it's your a little it's it's not clear if you really have consumer product where you consumers so hard.
00:06:11:18 - 00:06:29:12
Speaker 2
It's like consumer founders are crazy. That's where you go, especially consumer social, consumer entertainment. That's where the odds are the absolute lowest. And so you have to have that in order to survive. And then even if you do have that, at some point, people kind of get tired of it, like they get used to it, not no longer novel or interesting.
00:06:29:12 - 00:06:49:13
Speaker 2
And so they move on to the next platform. So you're on this treadmill of constantly finding that magical kernel of delight, and you have to keep going. And, you know, you could be riding high one day and then the next day Kylie Jenner says this is not cool anymore. And then, you know, you you're yeah, it's consumers a tough place to be and how.
00:06:49:17 - 00:07:12:26
Speaker 1
On that particular question about sort of organic and layering on marketing on top of organic love and that moment of delight, how do you how do you judge when that moment is right? How do you judge when? Okay, now, now we have something. We have enough that we know we can accelerate this in the right way with a mark with marketing spend rather than just buying traffic.
00:07:13:16 - 00:07:37:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, well, there's sort of a few different things, right? One, when you actually talk to your users and you see their eyes light up because of something that just happened in your product when they're using it. So I think speaking to users is always like baseline. You should be spending a lot of time doing that. Another is, I think there's a question you often ask, like, how disappointed would you be if this product disappeared tomorrow?
00:07:38:13 - 00:07:46:11
Speaker 2
Or the NPS question, how? How likely are you to recommend this product to a friend, which is literally asking about word of mouth?
00:07:48:17 - 00:08:14:17
Speaker 2
But then the other question is that like, does it delight people? And then the other question is, does it delight enough people because you don't want to find and this is, I think, something I learned being more on the other side of the table is you also have to pick the right market, the right large enough set of users like you could be delighting very tiny fraction of users and then have something that's great, but maybe not venture back because it can't reach the scale needed to drive venture sized return.
00:08:14:17 - 00:08:16:18
Speaker 2
So those are sort of the things I would think about.
00:08:16:27 - 00:08:27:10
Speaker 1
What was the what was the hardest moment on that journey? The flip side of that, which is when did you when did you feel it wasn't going to work out and how did you get past that moment?
00:08:29:01 - 00:08:46:17
Speaker 2
I feel like that was I can't even pick one moment because there were so many. I feel like almost the entire time I wasn't sure we were going to survive or thrive. You know, there were a lot of we we pivoted our business model three times, you know, figuring out how to make money. Once you have in consumer, it's not always the easiest.
00:08:46:27 - 00:09:15:03
Speaker 2
Do you run ads? Do do CPC or CPA? Do you do you know, do we sell stuff ourselves like there was one point at which we were testing shipping product ourselves and I was like packing stuff in our office. Is this what we're really going to do? And, you know, I ended up not being the right one, but it was one of many that we tried, you know, there were like when my co-founder departed, that was one of the most heartbreaking moments for anyone who's had to go through that.
00:09:15:03 - 00:09:39:28
Speaker 2
I mean, it's just it's it's so rough, right? It's like you're the person that you most count on that is you're like rock. Like leaving is I mean, it's so traumatic. You know, there were moments where I thought we weren't going to be able to raise money during the 2008, 2009 financial crisis. I just feel like there was this constant struggle.
00:09:40:29 - 00:09:59:02
Speaker 2
I don't think we were ever a company that was like in the top, you know, in like all set Airbnb. I mean, even Airbnb actually is a great example of something that was riding high and now like travel just stopped. So again, consumer, it's just a wacky place to be.
00:09:59:18 - 00:10:12:01
Speaker 1
There are always headwinds. How do you how did you what got you through those moments? What what was it that kind of what what set of things helped you keep going those those trickiest moments.
00:10:12:14 - 00:10:39:02
Speaker 2
Yeah, a combination of things. I think, one, just this greater sense of purpose around what I was doing. Being one, helping women honestly with fashion, it might seem like it's, you know, that trivial, but it's not. I think making people look good, feel like they look good and feel confident about themselves. Like shows up in all the other parts of your life, you know.
00:10:39:02 - 00:11:06:02
Speaker 2
And then on top of that, I knew that I was in the minority of being a female CEO and that if I succeeded or could help the next generation of female founders succeed, that would make a big difference. And that's been a big part of of my work to date. Cofounded a group here in the US called All Raise, which is a organization started by 30, 30 plus female VCs and founders to try to improve diversity in the tech ecosystem.
00:11:06:02 - 00:11:35:01
Speaker 2
Right. And so that's always been a mission. And then the other things were, you know, yoga. Sometimes I would just sit and binge and Netflix and just completely try to check out. I think the thing that's in common about yoga and like sitting there and binging Netflix is for just a moment, if you can clear your brain of thinking about your company because I think its founders we like think about it 24 seven like you're supposed to be paying attention to this conversation.
00:11:35:06 - 00:11:51:05
Speaker 2
You're supposed to be eating dinner, you're supposed to be doing something else. And the metrics and the concern just creep back into your head. And there's like no moment where you're not or just it's hard to separate. And so there are certain activities that you can do where you just for a moment, those thoughts go away. And that could be yoga.
00:11:51:05 - 00:11:58:10
Speaker 2
That's meditation. For some people. It was, you know, watching a lot of YouTube or whatever. It works. But, you know, those are some of mine.
00:11:58:25 - 00:12:21:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I know that you're a big advocate of SEO peer support networks as well. You've talked about this. I wanted to ask, what's your best what's your best practice in building one of these networks? What's what what are your top tips for doing that? Should you look for CEOs at a slightly later stage of the journey than you are in a different sector?
00:12:21:08 - 00:12:26:11
Speaker 1
Do you have any kind of rules of thumb about how to how to get these great peer networks going?
00:12:26:11 - 00:12:46:08
Speaker 2
Yeah, I should have mentioned actually, that was probably one of the most important things to do is find your cohort, your peer group of people that you trust. You can be vulnerable around, that you can share and trade tips where I have a group that I have stuck with now for many, many years. Some are founders, some are VCs.
00:12:46:09 - 00:13:13:03
Speaker 2
Actually, very few are busy, but we all mostly, I think, started as founders, and we've just grown together across like, you know, selling companies, exiting out of the acquirer. Like, I mean, having kids. I mean, it's just been wonderful to have that steady group. I would say the key to getting it going was to find the right chemistry of people who were open and willing to share.
00:13:13:03 - 00:13:32:26
Speaker 2
And sometimes you have to be the one to break the dam and say, you know, instead of doing this whole I'm doing great, life is wonderful, my startup is doing great. How is your you know, just every startup has its problems. And if you're the first one to say, I had the worst day ever and I need to fire a VP, and I don't know what I'm going to do.
00:13:32:26 - 00:13:46:18
Speaker 2
Like sometimes someone will be like, that happened to me a week ago and here's what I did and I'm going through the same thing, whatever it is, like just admitting that you have a problem and then finding other people who are willing to connect on that. Sometimes you just need to be the first.
00:13:48:01 - 00:14:01:00
Speaker 1
If you build that network in a very intentional way. Did you know it was a thing you were going to need and did you go out and sort of say, okay, I'm going to I'm going to put this together and this is going to be my seed of the people that I trust? Or did it happen in a kind of more organic way?
00:14:03:11 - 00:14:24:19
Speaker 2
To be honest, I did not think about it enough or plot it carefully enough, advance it. I was lucky in that I think the the network of female founders tends to be a little smaller, a little tighter, and there's more of this, like, I will help you because someone helped me, like I have to pay it forward for, you know, all the good of womankind.
00:14:24:19 - 00:14:41:23
Speaker 2
So I think I naturally fell into that. If I could go back in time, I would tell my younger self to focus more on this and try to find people like it can be so tempting to just work harder, spend your time internally. It's really, really important to get outside, go external, spend some time talking to other founders.
00:14:41:23 - 00:15:01:08
Speaker 2
It just brings all kinds of new perspectives and ways of doing things that you hadn't. You know, it's much harder to trial and error your way to success on your own versus learning from everyone else's mistakes and successes. So I would say building that network cleverly, intentionally is very, very important. And I wish I'd done more of it, to be honest.
00:15:01:22 - 00:15:25:25
Speaker 1
A big part of your work now is like cultivating these networks and, you know, with things like Female Founders Office hours and so on, this is this is this is a big part of what you're doing right now. I was actually going to ask you specifically about that project and because I know that has actually led to some investments that you've made at least to to to restore, I think, in May.
00:15:27:22 - 00:15:37:17
Speaker 1
Could you talk about that idea and genesis of that idea, how it operates and how you can run a great office house program? Because I think it's something that we all as investors would like to do more of.
00:15:38:10 - 00:16:05:09
Speaker 2
Yeah. So to be honest, my transition into venture was a little rough. I have to quit is wonderful. The culture is wonderful. The team is wonderful. But I found myself just not having as big of a network as I thought. You know, I had spent nine years completely heads down at my company, had barely reached out or gone to any of that, and then I just didn't have like a huge Rolodex of other founders or investors to call on.
00:16:06:21 - 00:16:29:21
Speaker 2
And so so I remember I was sitting in a meeting, a meeting about fish farming with a founder, and I was like, this is a really cool company, but I don't know anything about fish farming and I don't know, is this really the best? Like, am I just going to randomly have coffee forever and hopefully stumble into the right company like this?
00:16:29:21 - 00:16:47:24
Speaker 2
This is just not going to work. I'm not going to be successful this way. So I really thought it went back to like first principles and thought, okay, I'm a product manager at my heart. I've been a CEO. How do I that I'm a founder? How do I found something? How do I do it differently in a way that's natural to me that leverages the strength that I do have.
00:16:48:07 - 00:17:13:29
Speaker 2
And at that time, I'd been an idea had been percolating around doing office hours for female founders. Like if I could just give advice or help the next gen, if I could gather other people, or now that I'd been on the VC side of the table for a while, like all the things I'd learned about how to pitch correct and all the mistakes I personally pitching, I could just share that, you know, maybe that would be a way to pull together a group of founders and, you know, build up something programmatic like a product.
00:17:14:25 - 00:17:35:17
Speaker 2
And so that that was the genesis of it. I thought I was going to do it inside of Sequoia. And then after all the MeToo incidents surfacing in Silicon Valley, there was a dinner where a bunch of women, VCs, got together and said, Hey, what should we do about this? And then I said, I had this idea of female founder office hours, and then we shipped it.
00:17:35:17 - 00:17:55:28
Speaker 2
And instead of it being Sequoia alone, it was Sequoia and Benchmark and Spark, and a whole bunch of firms came together with women partners to just offer their time. It was, you know, a small it started with a small event, you know, 3 hours and then ten, ten women partners and surprisingly got a huge amount of press. It got a huge number of applications.
00:17:56:13 - 00:18:15:15
Speaker 2
And then that was the light bulb for me. It was like, Oh, I will solve, I will attack venture capital like a product person, right? And then so, you know, it's grown and grown since then. We've done thousands of office hours. You know, it isn't proprietary to me. It's like for the entire community and for the many people who participate.
00:18:16:12 - 00:18:39:24
Speaker 2
But overall, I would say it's been a good thing and it's really helped me figure out my style. And it's actually led to, I think, four of the investments that I've done have been in some way touched by all Razer female founder office hours, also by working together with other female investors on shipping, something like that built that trust and that bond where we actually genuinely want to talk to each other about companies and share deal flow.
00:18:40:11 - 00:19:12:29
Speaker 1
Coming back briefly to talk to Polyvore as I said at the top and you know, Polyvore was really a pioneer in sort of curated, community driven commerce and that theme has really flourished in the last few years. We've seen a lot of sort of great and notable companies coming out with that, with that flavor. And one of the most and some CEOs represented here with us today, what were the most important lessons you felt you learned from that experience about how to do it well?
00:19:12:29 - 00:19:21:13
Speaker 1
And which companies do you look at now as the sort of best in class that you look to?
00:19:21:13 - 00:19:25:05
Speaker 2
Do you mean specifically in fashion and lifestyle or just I mean.
00:19:25:05 - 00:19:32:27
Speaker 1
Really in fashion, but perhaps a little bit more generally in in kind of community driven, curated commerce, I would say.
00:19:33:16 - 00:19:33:28
Speaker 2
Got it.
00:19:34:10 - 00:19:34:17
Speaker 1
Okay.
00:19:34:29 - 00:20:00:20
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I feel like still no one has won the space. I mean, we definitely, certainly didn't either. And I it's been a little puzzling. I think, you know, Instagram is a is where everyone goes for outfit of the day, but they've yet to really pull off shopping. So I think the opportunity still exists. I think there's one company in Europe, I can't remember the name something buttons.
00:20:01:10 - 00:20:02:17
Speaker 1
You know, 21 buttons.
00:20:03:01 - 00:20:26:07
Speaker 2
Yeah, that I think is also very interesting. 21 But that's right. The probably numbers in your name is sometimes you forget the number, but yeah, I mean, I think the trends are still all there, right? Like we are we care more about what our peers and influencers are wearing than we do about what Vogue tells us to wear anymore.
00:20:27:18 - 00:20:52:25
Speaker 2
There's still, you know, the rise of Shopify powered, you know, so many people to create their own brands. There is still no one place to go and find like and shop the best of all those brands and have that be personalized and tailored to your tastes. Yeah, I think it's also a very difficult it's also very difficult recommendation problem.
00:20:52:26 - 00:21:15:29
Speaker 2
You know, when I think about the Netflix challenge of like recommending movies versus the fashion challenge, like the fashion challenge is a million times more complicated because your taste is very personal. It doesn't really make any sense why you like certain things. And then you're, you're, you're taste change all the time, right? There's a combination of function combined with form.
00:21:15:29 - 00:21:35:04
Speaker 2
Like it's some style substance. I mean, it's just like the most difficult soup of recommendation problem out there in my opinion. Yeah, so many unsolved challenges I think with, you know, I with being able to like take a picture and identify where did this thing come from? Would the shirt come? I mean, I think there's lots of possibilities, but I would say nobody has solved it yet.
00:21:35:04 - 00:21:36:14
Speaker 2
And it's it's it's interesting.
00:21:36:23 - 00:21:46:14
Speaker 1
You know, I agree with you. I mean, there are so many categories that are still unsolved. I feel like I feel like maps is still massively unsolved, especially local like local shopping. Totally broken. Still, too.
00:21:46:15 - 00:21:47:06
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's true.
00:21:47:15 - 00:22:10:11
Speaker 1
That the easiest place and in some ways for similar reasons because we have such an enormous choice of of where we could go, what we could do and all of that choices available to us, that it's just overwhelming. It's very hard to see how how to how to scale it. One of the things I loved about Polyvore was that it was had this aspect of curation around it.
00:22:10:26 - 00:22:33:01
Speaker 1
It was like there's a, there's a there's a there's a there's a smaller set of the universe here that is that it's it, you know, it's, it's our opinion. And I think I think somehow that that sort of curated opinion and finding ways to, to to scale that, whether it's in fashion or in local, is part of the answer.
00:22:33:01 - 00:23:01:03
Speaker 1
It's still still a hard thing to do. Definitely. If you've talked in the past a lot about the importance of building a good culture at a business and I, I think many of us agree that that's sort of foundational for any business. And I wanted to ask you, what does a great culture look like to you and how how did you build it and how do you maintain it?
00:23:01:03 - 00:23:05:22
Speaker 1
As as a company grows?
00:23:05:22 - 00:23:30:28
Speaker 2
You know, what I think about culture is kind of the operating system for the company internally. When there's no data and there's not clear what to do, there's like a certain set of guiding principles you tend to fall back on. And some maybe there are stated, maybe there unstated, and maybe your team tends to favor going faster rather than moving with like perfect quality.
00:23:31:09 - 00:23:58:17
Speaker 2
Maybe you prefer to try many things rather than focus on one thing. Like whatever it is, it's many times it's often the manifestation of the founder's best and worst personal traits is what I've what I've learned. And when you don't write it down or don't make it clear, it just leads to people not not sort of behaving in the way that you expect.
00:23:58:17 - 00:24:18:25
Speaker 2
Right? So many times it was like, why is the team doing this? Like, why, why? Why would you do it this way? Like, what's going on? Like, isn't it obvious? The answer was that it's not obvious. It's obvious to me because I have a certain framework of how I think about things. Explaining that framework like explaining what the expectations are, is really, really important.
00:24:19:14 - 00:24:42:03
Speaker 2
And so every time I was like, Where are you? Why are teams doing something wrong? It was often my fault for not explaining what the guidelines are. So I think that's something for for CEOs to think about. You know, the way we did it was we wrote it down. We had a culture deck. And I teach sort of a with seed program, like a boot camp inside of Sequoia for our new seed founders.
00:24:42:03 - 00:25:02:10
Speaker 2
And we teach a one of the weeks is even though it's like seed pre-seed like you know you're still trying to find product market fit. We teach a culture class. We think that's one of the most important things to to get right right away. And we talk about writing your core values with three things in mind. One is like, what is the statement?
00:25:02:10 - 00:25:26:03
Speaker 2
What is the belief? Just write it out, make it crisp, make it memorable, make it your own. Yeah. Then what are the behaviors you want to see that are associated with that value? And then third, and most importantly, what is the legendary story or anecdote or thing that exemplified that behavior that has actually occurred at the company? It may take your time to finesse that that might that story might change over the years, but it's really important.
00:25:26:11 - 00:25:41:00
Speaker 1
A huge part of the job is just, you know, telling your organization what you think and, you know, do it again and again and again and again and, you know, try to try to be reasonably consistent and make it clear so that everybody knows.
00:25:41:21 - 00:25:57:28
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, we made it. We picked it at the first day. Your first meeting, first day of work. Your first meeting was with me as CEO and I spent my entire time just talking about the culture and like a little bit about the product which they would figure out over time. But the culture of hearing it from the CEO day one is like very clearly it's important.
00:25:58:09 - 00:26:16:00
Speaker 2
It was baked into our performance review process. So we asked like, what way has this person contributed to whatever our three core values? It was written on the wall really big. It was referred to every all the time in our all hands. It was just it just became part of the vernacular.
00:26:16:27 - 00:26:26:25
Speaker 1
Now that you are on the other side of the table, what's what's the what's the biggest piece of advice you'd go back and give your younger found itself, would you say?
00:26:28:06 - 00:26:52:04
Speaker 2
Well, so many things now that I understand and how investors think about the world, I realize I made a lot of mistakes in my time or just, you know, you know, honestly, when I was the founder, I think I thought about it very transactional, like, okay, this person is going to give me some money and I will talk to them when I'm fundraising.
00:26:52:04 - 00:27:11:26
Speaker 2
And I think I wish I'd thought about it more as this person is going to be a board member who's going to be on my cap table and with my company for ten years because it takes ten years to build a great company. Like the selection of that person is of utmost importance. And just like I would be recruiting for candidates, I need to and interviewing very deeply.
00:27:12:00 - 00:27:31:09
Speaker 2
I need to do the same thing with my investors. Like I need to feel like I can trust this person, that they're true believer. And what I'm trying to do that they care at least a little bit about me. Like you just need to, you should explain the part of your team, right? And so I would go back and like reassess like all the term sheets through that lens.
00:27:31:19 - 00:27:49:24
Speaker 2
And I've spent maybe a little bit more time building those relationships ahead of a fund base. I was always way too transactional about it. The other thing I'm pitching is, you know, I don't think I realized how VCs evaluate companies. You know, as the CEO is the founder, you're always thinking, okay, I know what my problem is. Here's the solution.
00:27:49:24 - 00:28:08:16
Speaker 2
What's the best solution? I spend all your time thinking about the solution and not as much time thinking about the problem, because many ways you've chosen that right from the get go of the founding of the company. And I think what VCs do is they spend all their time assessing problems. They're not looking, they're not they don't care if you're going to be the winner in your space.
00:28:08:16 - 00:28:28:01
Speaker 2
They care about what are the best spaces that I should be investing in and then who is the winner? And so, you know, I didn't realize I was trying to convince them that not just my solution was interesting, but that my problem was interesting. And I definitely did not spend enough time thinking about that. I think I inadvertently ended up doing that.
00:28:28:01 - 00:28:55:11
Speaker 2
My favorite trick for fundraising was because we were in women's fashion, and I think a lot of VCs just didn't think women's fashion was a very big category, like didn't know much about how much money, which is it wasn't a personal problem for them to shop really, or wasn't a personal passion. I would go into a pitch meeting with a stack of fashion magazines like the Vogue September issue, which at the time was like a thousand pages thick.
00:28:55:25 - 00:29:16:29
Speaker 2
And I would go and I would slam all the magazines onto the table and they go boom. And they would say, Sitting on this table is hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue just in this these issues alone once a year. Now, imagine that on the Internet. And then that way you don't have to be a user. I don't have to convince you like that.
00:29:17:00 - 00:29:30:10
Speaker 2
You don't like you. You imagine you wanted to shop and it was so annoying and you can't figure out what to wear it like. That's not something they could all connect with, but they could connect with the concept of like, you know, I don't read these. I know a lot of people do. I know they make a lot of money.
00:29:30:11 - 00:29:37:00
Speaker 2
This is an interesting problem. And that was the thing I needed to convince them of. More so than my specific solution.
00:29:37:23 - 00:29:51:01
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Did you find that your best investors or the ones that were most helpful to you, were the ones who were kind of most personally invested in, you know, who who really had a passion for the space and.
00:29:55:13 - 00:30:26:13
Speaker 2
I don't think any of my investors had a passion for the space, really, to be honest. Yeah, they just didn't. And there were very few people who at the time had any interest in that space. I mean, I think a lot of people thought that, you know, women's fashion or women were maybe not an investable category. And I would always have to say, you know, women are 50% of the human race and at least 99% of us probably wear clothes.
00:30:26:13 - 00:30:32:03
Speaker 2
Right. So that's a pretty big you know, it's hard to believe that this is like I mean.
00:30:33:22 - 00:30:38:07
Speaker 1
I was gonna say it's hard to believe this is only ten years ago that that perspective was was like everywhere.
00:30:38:25 - 00:31:09:17
Speaker 2
Yeah. I mean, I don't think it was until Pinterest that people realized like, oh, I could have a really big business targeting mostly women in tech. At least that's obviously not true in many other categories. But my best board members were the ones who took the time to counsel in the highs and in the lows. Right. I think one thing we said, Sequoia, is we want to be your sparring partner in the highs and your shock absorber in the lows.
00:31:10:21 - 00:31:33:11
Speaker 2
The best board members know that the founder journey is really hard and shit hits the fan every once in a while and you can't panic. The worst are the people who panic and make those moments even more stressful for you right? Or provide unhelpful advice or just harass you to come up with an answer versus like, I've seen this problem before, let's look at this calmly and thoughtfully.
00:31:33:11 - 00:31:52:04
Speaker 2
Let me connect you to this person. Let me connected this person because what I've seen, let's problem solve this together versus a how did you let this happen? Like sort of you don't want that. Like you're looking for a board member. You're not looking for a boss to yell at you. Right? So I think that that's sort of the tone and the vibe that I look for and try to be Sergei.
00:31:52:04 - 00:32:24:08
Speaker 1
Sergei Brin, which is to say a lot was never waste a crisis. I remember him saying this a lot around sort of two 8009 time. And, you know, we're clearly in a time at the moment where multiple crises have hit with force this year. I'm what do you what sort of needs and opportunities in our society do you think have been sort of hidden in plain sight but have suddenly come to the fore and that you would really like to be seeing entrepreneurs addressing more, more than more than they are right now?
00:32:26:03 - 00:32:56:02
Speaker 2
Well, if you're thinking about the crises that are going on, there's two of them happening here in the United States, two pandemics. One is obviously coronavirus and the other is, I think racism is coming to the fore. And so I'll talk about each of those on the coronavirus front. I think interestingly, the coronavirus has been the shock that seems to be accelerating some of what was coming in the future and making it happen now.
00:32:56:11 - 00:33:35:27
Speaker 2
Like we're already trending towards a more global, more remote workforce that now has instantly been accelerated as everybody is now remote worker or everybody in many white collar tech jobs is a remote worker. So, you know, trends around trends around, you know, video conferencing, the way we hold events virtually collaboration, productivity, software, all of that is obviously an interesting trend and one where a lot of it's, you know, what the software we would have been using in 2030 as the norm is now going to happen in 2021.
00:33:37:13 - 00:34:06:02
Speaker 2
Similarly, you know, health care people are not they're afraid to go to the doctor. Elective surgeries are canceled. And so telemedicine has been on the rise. I'm lucky to work with a telemedicine platform called Maven's Clinic made in clinic. And we've seen like huge acceleration in that business because, you know, the large customers that would normally like take their time and have a very long sales cycle like I need telemedicine ASAP and so lots of innovation changes and regulation happening there.
00:34:06:02 - 00:34:32:20
Speaker 2
I think those are some of the more interesting categories related to COVID on the racism front and the you know, I think that's a much more subtle and much more ingrained systemic sort of issue. And no matter where you are on that spectrum or how you feel about the issue, I think one interesting opportunity is the chance to sort of talk about it at work.
00:34:33:07 - 00:35:14:17
Speaker 2
And what we've been finding is many of our company leaders and at Sequoia ourselves as well, just the opportunity to have the conversation, to listen and to learn from the black community. And just hearing there was a very powerful event yesterday hosted by black DC where they just talked about, you know, the challenges and the advice, what to do and just seeing those, you know, I think any change starts with small personal changes and like your individual actions and how you feel and just sort of listening, it's an interesting moment to listen and to learn.
00:35:14:17 - 00:35:35:13
Speaker 1
And now it's time for Q&A. But first of all, to Tanya, who is the founder of For Good, one of our portfolio companies in York City, using cell culture technology to produce clean meat. Yeah, take it away.
00:35:36:11 - 00:36:02:11
Speaker 2
Yes, we actually grew up in Hong Kong at the same time. So at some other time we can have a discussion about what's going on there right now. Oh, but this your last comment is a great jumping off point for my question, which is so diversity is clearly at the forefront of everyone's minds right now. You are ahead of the curve and all the stuff.
00:36:02:11 - 00:36:33:10
Speaker 2
I quickly glanced up on all raised seem super cool. But I find personally this kind of tension and this balance with like my responsable. So being asked to be like a visible role model, being asked to educate or lead a diversity workshop or show up to a conference versus being completely absorbed in my heads down, trying to be a stealth mode startup.
00:36:33:10 - 00:37:00:08
Speaker 2
Yeah, I've even had, like, pressure to not be stealth because of all people. You can't be stealth because you're the only, like, nonwhite founder in the space I am. I don't think there's an easy answer to this one, but I'd be really curious to hear both how you've managed that yourself and your career. But also there's like a ton of investors in this call and like, ideas you might have for them.
00:37:00:28 - 00:37:15:02
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's a great question. I think I similarly and I think this was a mistake I made for the first four years of Polyvore. I was like, I'm going to be very head down. If we win, it's going to be because of the product being better. And I just need to get my job done and keep my head down.
00:37:16:06 - 00:37:41:19
Speaker 2
And then I realized, like, you know what? Everyone, every founder out there has to use the advantages they have at their fingertips to do the best thing they can for their company. And sometimes, like, because you are an interesting story, right? Like you are unique and you are doing something really interesting with your company. Like people do want to write about you and you should take it.
00:37:41:19 - 00:38:01:13
Speaker 1
Next up, we have delfina from Nabila who are in in paris. Nabila are wonderful air for health care company who are transforming the way that we we receive and and response to health care. Delphine, take it away.
00:38:02:04 - 00:38:30:05
Speaker 3
Hi. Hi. Just thank you very much. That was super interesting. Yeah, I have a question because I know that you are on the board of Maven and I was wondering what made you what is the special thing that made you trust them, that made you think that they will succeed in having a strong community of women, of family, using and loving that their service, which was the thing.
00:38:30:24 - 00:38:59:11
Speaker 2
So I had a thesis to start with, which was that if you if you think about how care and health care decisions are made, there's a stat out there that between 60 and 70% of health care decisions are made by by women. And I think part of the reason for that is oftentimes the mother becomes the mother, at least in a straight household, often becomes the primary caregiver who ends up becoming the chief medical officer of the home.
00:38:59:11 - 00:39:22:17
Speaker 2
And so I this is something someone pointed out to me, and I was like, that's kind of interesting. Let me let me dig into that a little bit more and just found that, you know, despite that, there's actually women's health in particular is actually quite underserved. You know, we tend to die in hospitals more despite being healthier. There's just like also, I mean, with you dig it, it's very fascinating.
00:39:23:02 - 00:39:41:22
Speaker 2
So I was just like, okay, well, what what's the journey of the decision of how women go through health care and felt that maternity was the point at which you most would never want to go to the doctor? Right. It's just like you only go when you're absolutely sick. But there's one point at which you become very proactive about health care.
00:39:42:00 - 00:40:03:07
Speaker 2
And that's usually when when when you're when you're woman is pregnant or trying to conceive. And so I just thought there was something interesting about that journey. And then you eventually you grow with the pediatrics and then eventually take on maybe more of the health care decisions for the family. And I just thought that that was fascinating. And so I spent my time for 18 months just like looking at everything in women's health.
00:40:03:23 - 00:40:25:00
Speaker 2
And because I was looking for like, what's the best entry point? What's the most interesting angle, what's the best business model? And then ended up investing in Maven. And what spoke to me about Maven was they had the right entry point. They had the vision, the big vision of becoming more than just a women's health platform, but a family health platform.
00:40:26:05 - 00:40:43:22
Speaker 2
And then I just found Kate, the founder, to be incredibly compelling. It was I missed the series A and at that time she was saying, I built a consumer business. Trust me, I'm going to pivot into employee benefits. And then I was like, wow, that's really that's a big pivot. And she came back after that for the B and was like, I did exactly what I said I would do.
00:40:43:29 - 00:41:11:15
Speaker 2
And I landed Bank of America, which here in the U.S. is like one of the top customers you could possibly land in that space, very like discerning care about benefits. Like I was very impressed and she just had that combination of grit, personal passion, execution, and I felt like she could be a really great face for this kind of company, which interestingly crosses from over health care and consumer, which is what I found so interesting.
00:41:12:06 - 00:41:37:20
Speaker 1
Ali, from a system who's in Vancouver billing something that we spoke about, naming a complete community based consumer brand, and in this case, in a in a men's betterment space. Hi, Jess, how are you? Thank you. So we we communicated via email, I think back in the day when I was CEO of an agency business called Wednesday in London, in New York, I looked after a lot of brands.
00:41:37:20 - 00:41:44:29
Speaker 1
I think we were trying to do a campaign with H&M and Polyvore at a time when, you know, a blast from the past.
00:41:45:08 - 00:41:45:19
Speaker 2
Yeah, I don't.
00:41:45:19 - 00:42:14:16
Speaker 1
Know and congrats on everything you've been up to. It's super impressive to see. So very inspiring. But yeah, I'm in the self-care health and wellness sector, specifically the men's space right now. So really curious as to your insights on the consumer sector right now and any subset actors in particular that you're excited about if COVID has accelerated any changes within that space in terms of your perspective on how you you're looking at that?
00:42:14:16 - 00:42:36:22
Speaker 2
I think one of the difficult things about brands right now is the customer has customer has changed quite a bit like the next generation of consumers. I feel like before it was cool to conform and now it's like really uncool to conform, which is different than like not being different. It's like actively like as soon as something gets too big, it's really not cool.
00:42:37:08 - 00:42:58:12
Speaker 2
So I feel like sort of like everyone wants to have their own unique niche thing and be special and be different. And you know, people celebrate different now versus only people care about different within celebrate. It wasn't like I have to be different from everybody else. And that ethos means that the half life of brands is shorter than it ever was before.
00:42:58:19 - 00:43:15:22
Speaker 2
Like, I keep wondering, like, will anyone ever create another Nike? Like, everybody knows Nike. A lot of people like Nike, right? But now Nike, instead of making 1 million of the same pair of shoes and selling that, they have to do tons of tiny little drops tied to different individual athletes and artists. And it's just a different way of building a brand than before.
00:43:15:22 - 00:43:36:19
Speaker 2
Right. So I think when you're building a brand, you have to think about how big is your audience? It's actually maybe bad if it's too big. And then maybe how do you build a family of brands in order to capture that? Like the difference? Like, I think it's hard to scale past a certain point. Now, some of the brands that were really hot by traction immediately with a small niche, I mean, look at the K-Pop stans, like that's an interesting group.
00:43:36:19 - 00:43:41:25
Speaker 2
But, you know, how do you how do you grow beyond that? So I think that's one of the challenges for Brand.
00:43:42:22 - 00:44:02:11
Speaker 1
Just this has been amazing and inspiring. Thank you for sharing so much of your time and so much insight with so much energy and enthusiasm. Thank you, everybody, for your questions and for having come along. And Jess, I hope that we catch up soon.
00:44:03:02 - 00:44:06:24
Speaker 2
Yeah. Thank you, everyone, for having me.