In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Gen Isayama, co-founder and CEO of World Innovation Lab, a Palo Alto and Tokyo based venture firm investing in growth-stage companies and serving as a bridge between startups and Japanese corporations. 00:00​​ Intro 01:30 World Innovation Lab 04:10 From Japanese lawyer to Silicon Valley VC 09:10 From DCM to WIL 13:55 WIL investment thesis 19:40 Japanese entrepreneurial culture 26:57 Open innovation Models at WIL 31:57 Raising Fund I 37:00 Full spectrum of WIL Activities 42:16 Investment strategy and portfolio construction 48:06 Outlook for WIL III 51:23 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Dan Ahrens, founding partner at Left Lane Capital, a New York based venture capital and early growth equity firm that invests in high-growth internet and consumer technology businesses. 

00:00​​ Intro 

02:43 Consumer vs. enterprise tech 

05:09 Getting into venture 

07:54 Raising Left Lane I 

10:35 Investing while fundraising 

13:09 The Left Lane Capital playbook 

17:09 Due diligence in a hot market 

18:52 Scaling Left Lane Capital 

21:36 Deployment pace 

23:28 Focus area 

26:04 Hard conversations 

28:10 Arc 

32:53 Exo Freight 

35:28 Supply Chain Tech 

37:04 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Divyang Arora, founder and CEO of Byte Kitchen about cooking up the future of digital food halls with Byte Kitchen founder Divyang Arora.  

0:00 Intro 

1:24 2 minute elevator pitch 

4:27 Going all in 

8:07 Business Model 

14:52 The Byte Kitchen playbook 

18:52 Optimal Partner Restaurant Profile 

25:39 End customer benefits 

27:25 Raising the Seed Round  

30:14 Early traction 

31:54 Byte Kitchen's Use of Tech 

34:50 Call to Action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Michael Crandell, CEO Bitwarden about scaling open-source password manager Bitwarden.  

00:00​ Intro 

00:50 What is Bitwarden 

03:22 From side hustle to venture-backed 

06:36 Joining a Bootstrapper at Series A 

09:58 Open-source GTM 

13:25 Open-source defensibility 

15:35 Community vs. enterprise edition 

17:37 Revenue traction 

19:51 Competition 

22:25 Fundraising journey 

25:46 Use of funds 

28:25 Go-to-market strategy 

31:40 Building a remote-first company 

35:11 Arbitrating talent 

36:00 Next steps for Bitwarden 

38:28 Not the first time at the rodeo

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kyle Harrison, general partner at Country about everything from the economics of whale hunting, the venture product offering to his recent joining of Contrary.  

00:00​ Intro 

01:11 Way into venture 

04:58 Time of reflection 

07:24 The under-innovated venture model 

10:46 Your fund size is your strategy 

16:16 The nature of the general partnership 

20:38 Rethinking the org chart 

25:13 VC product vs. VC service 

28:31 VC product industry practice 

31:13 From monolithic brands to solo capitalist 

37:18 The future of venture tribes 

39:52 Joining Contrary

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Doug Ludlow, co-founder and CEO of MainStreet, which helps startups and small businesses uncover tax credits.   

00:00​​ Intro 

01:05 Hipster 

05:09 Happy Home Company 

07:10 Starting MainStreet 

11:22 The nature of Tax credits 

16:03 The Path Act 

17:52 The MainStreet Product 

19:14 Customer success stories 

20:41 Customer profile 

22:40 Audit protection / guarantee 

24:13 Moats 

25:37 Whitespace vs. Switching 

26:30 MainStreet traction 

27:47 Fundraising  

28:17 Pre-empted Series A  

30:22 MainStreet layoffs 

32:42 Unit economics 

33:42 Unit economics 

34:50 Vision for MainStreet  

37:42 Fast five 

39:01 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kelsey Bishop founder and CEO of Candor, which is a nexgen, authentic social network.  

00:00​​ Intro 

01:02 What is Candor 

03:25 Single player mode 

03:56 Kelsey’s background 

06:19 Employee-culture fit 

08:31 Getting started 

10:31 Migrating from bubble 

11:38 Raising the Seed 

12:42 Getting pre-empted 

13:50 Raising from angels 

15:23 Solo founder journey 

16:58 Product + traction 

21:47 Business model 

23:03 Talking to users 

24:51 Remote first company 

26:25 Becoming a CEO 

27:03 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Abhishek Nayak the co-founder and CEO of Appsmith, which is an open-source, low code internal tool builder.  00:00​​ Intro 

03:15 Entrepreneur in Residence at Accel 

05:52 Third time at the Rodeo 

09:55 Validating a startup idea at his wedding 

11:38 Built for Internal  facing apps 

13:48 The Appsmith Customer Persona 

15:06 From Dataset to app  

15:42 What Appsmith is replacing 

17:07 The Appsmith killer feature 

18:29 Getting to the first 100 users 

21:40 Customer love + product iteration 

23:07 Competition 

25:24 Open source vs. closed source 

27:53 Open source applications vs. infrastructure 

31:07 Open core model 

34:12 Traction and metrics 

36:43 Metrics tracked over time 

37:43 Fundraising for 3rd time 

39:27 Fundraising journey 

43:50 Remote company discounts 

45:27 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Chon Tang, the founding GP of the Skydeck Fund. Chon is an experienced Silicon Valley engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He was formerly founding partner and Managing Director of Junzi Capital Engineering, a leading quantitative hedge fund investing in the commodity space. He has been actively investing in Silicon Valley startups for 12 years, and has personal investments in over 25 deals with multiple IPOs and exits.   

00:00​​ Intro 

03:40​​ Starting a tech company in 2000 

09:27​​ Founder-investor transition 

17:51​​ The art of talent arbitrage 

22:09​ Raising Fund II 

27:00​​ Portfolio construction 

30:40​​ Skydeck Fund entry point 

32:50​​ Success stories 

37:00​​ Skydeck Accelerator Program + Challenges 

41:00​​ The accidental VC 

45:00​ Next Skydeck batch

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Richard White, the serial entrepreneur behind Uservoice and Fathom.video. Richard is a design engineer and product visionary who has been in the first YC batch with Justin Khan and Emmett Shear for Kiko (YC S05) and most recently came back to the YC W21 to see how startup kids are doing the tricks today.   

00:00​​ Intro 

00:51​ Who is Richard White 

03:40 The power of cold emails 

05:09 Kiko (YC S05) 

08:53 The UserVoice journey 

12:09 Traction and funding 

16:09 UserVoice today 

$18:16 Starting Fathom 

22:28 The Fathom product 

27:35 Fathom customer profile 

30:27 Fathom in remote orgs 

32:03 Richard's own use of Fathom 

33:57 Fathom integrations 

36:14 Zoom Marketplace + platform risk $

39:20 Going through YC (again) 

42:57 Fathom seed round 

46:11 The fun of fundraising 

47:28 Vision for Fathom

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Shmulik Fishman, founder and CEO of Argyle, about raising the Series A through an investment memo and the firm’s mission of making user-permissioned employment data ubiquitous and reinvent credit decisioning for lenders and consumers.    00:00​​ Intro  00:56 What does Argyle do?  03:17 Experiencing the pain point  06:48 Raising the Series A with an investment memo  11:41 Automated form population  14:05 Real-time income/employment verification  17:52 Status quo: credit bureaus  22:18 Technical/data moats  26:59 Standing on the shoulders of giants  28:40 API integrations  30:28 Screen scraping vs. API scanning  32:41 Traction and metrics  35:26 Pricing Strategy  38:36 Argyle Team  41:36 Remote-first valuation discount/premium