Crazy Until It's Not: Startups, Venture Capital & Big Ideas

Julia Collins is not only known for co-founding Planet FWD and Zume Pizza , but she’s also known for her kindness and what she calls ‘realistic optimism’.  In conversation with Pam Kostka , Julia shares her secrets on how she stays kind and positive throughout the founding journey in this special edition of my firstminute alongside Pam Kostka from July 14th 2020.  Pam was the CEO of All Raise whos...

As we wrap up 2022, we’ve looked back at firstminute capital’s first podcast “ My firstminute ” from 2020 and 2021.  My firstminute talked to some of the world’s top investors, founders and thought-leaders about the first minutes of their careers, some of the battles they’ve overcome and their advice on navigating the world today. When discussing ‘the world today’, many guests addressed the effect...

What makes a great entrepreneur turn into a great investor?  David Sacks started his career in the ‘PayPal Mafia’ as one of the company’s earliest members as COO and product lead. During his time as COO in 2001, payment volume grew from 0 to $3.5 billion per year and revenue saw equally tremendous growth from 0 to $100 million.  After a stint as a film producer on Thank You For Smoking which was n...

What is it like being the CEO of a company with 300,000 employees? 🏢📊 We asked former CEO and Chairman of General Electric, Jeff Immelt in June 2020.  Jeff Immelt is the former Chairman and CEO of General Electric, which he stepped down from in 2017 after 16 years. Jeff was the 9th Chairman of GE, and has been named one of the ""World's Best CEOs"" three times by Barron&...

What is the recipe for successful co-founders? 👨🏻‍🍳🥣 How do you make marketplace economics work? 🔂 We dig into all this as well as the future of commerce, contrarian ideas, COVID tailwinds, how to make marketplace economics work with Niraj Shah , Co-founder, Co-Chairman & CEO of Wayfair .  Niraj co-founded the company with Steve Conine back in 2002 and the pair rapidly grew the business t...

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 a...

Do entrepreneurs need talent agents like movie stars? Is the future of the entertainment industry equity based?  How do you become a better leader? These are just a few of the questions Jeremy Zimmer answers in his episode of my firstminute from June 2020.  Jeremy Zimmer is the Chief Executive Officer and a co-founder of UTA. One of the industry’s leading agents for decades, he has been instrument...

What has Peter Fenton learned from his experience as one of Benchmark’s General Partners?  Nurture relational curiosity  VC is a youthful business  Business logic doesn’t age well but human nature does  There are just a few of the things he discusses with us in this episode of my firstminute from June 2020.  Peter became a General Partner at Benchmark a little more than a decade ago after graduati...

How did entrepreneurs fund businesses before venture capital? 💡💸 Dr Hermann Hauser tells his story of how he co-founded Acorn back in 1978 with £50 of his own money. The computer company went on to become the “British Apple”. He was also co-founder of ARM ($31bn acquisition by Softbank), co-founder of Amadeus Capital, Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Royal Academy of Engineering, Fello...

Mental health and sports have never been more intertwined. As conversations grow and taboos dwindle, mental health, or mental fitness as it’s increasingly being called, is an essential of our greater health.  In this episode of myfirsminute podcast, we spoke with Rio Ferdinand (Former England and Manchester United Captain ) and Michael Acton Smith OBE (Co-founder & CEO of Calm ) in May 2020. ...

Three great marketplace unicorn founders turned investors were brought together in this episode of myfirstminute from May 2020:  Cristina Fonseca (Talkdesk  [$1bn private valuation] and Venture Partner at Indico Capital Partners) Fabrice Grinda (Co-founder & Co-CEO OLX [acquired by Naspers], Founding Partner FJ Labs) Paul Forster (Co-founder & former CEO Indeed.com [$1bn acquisition by Rec...

Happy wife investor, happy life Many say an investor-founder relationship is like a marriage. That includes David Helgason and Bing Gordon. In this episode of myfirstminute from May 2020, we covered everything from the earliest days of their careers, as founder and CEO of Unity Technologies for David and Chief Creative Officer at EA for Bing, to how they now enjoy helping and backing founders. Dav...

What do history and tech have in common? More than you would think.  An example is that most people are either Greek or Roman.  Greeks are great thinkers, philosophers and architects. 🏛 Romans are road builders, executors and operators. 🔨 Finding the combination of greek and roman in one individual is very rare but not impossible. An example is Elon Musk, said Kevin Hartz, Co-Founder & Chairm...

The power of a crisis, where to spend your startup budget and how do people learn. We discussed this and much more with Spencer Rascoff in May 2020.  Spencer is Co-founder & former CEO of Zillow, Board Advisor at Tripadvisor, Co-founder & Executive Chairman of dot. LA, Co-founder Hotwire.com and Co-author of the New York Times' bestseller "Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estat...

What are the elements which have driven Nico Rosberg to success in Formula One and in business?  Nico Rosberg became Formula 1 World Champion in 2016 with Mercedes AMG Petronas and has since embarked on a career as a sustainability entrepreneur and investor in green technologies. Nico Rosberg's drive as an entrepreneur is fuelled by the will to drive positive change for society and mankind. H...

Ever wonder what open-source software and jazz music or free pizza and wordpress have in common? We’ll give you a clue, Matt Mullenweg , the founder and CEO of Automattic ($3bn private valuation; makers of WordPress and Tumblr ).  During the episode of myfirstminute from the 20th of May 2020, Sam Endacott, Partner at firstminute capital, covered Matt's journey of founding and growing Automatt...

Jennifer Fleiss is an entrepreneur who has founded and scaled two digitally native businesses from scratch: Rent the Runway and Jetblack. Rent the Runway was co-founded in 2009 by Fleiss and Jenn Hyman. In 2009, they disrupted the trillion-dollar fashion industry and changed how women get dressed forever by pioneering the ‘Closet in the Cloud’: a dream closet filled with an infinite selection of d...

Not only are emotions and data NOT opposites, emotions actually ARE data. They are something to be studied and understood.  Sir Martin Sorrell discusses data and emotions from the point of view of how to harness both in advertising. In May 2020, we hosted Sir Martin Sorrell, Executive Chairman of S4 Capital and Founder of WPP. Sir Martin Sorrell remained its CEO for 33 years, building it from a £1...

This holiday period, with the extra downtime away from work, we’ll spend more time playing games than ever!    So what exactly is the recipe for creating a successful game?  King co-founder, Riccardo Zacconi discussed the secret recipe behind the success of Candy Crush and how to create stickiness in games (pun intended).  We also delved into Riccardo's depth of experience in running King dur...

What do you think the average for a startup to reach product-market fit is? 📊 The answer: 2-3 years.  Ross Mason took 6 years to reach product-market fit with MuleSoft but it was worth the wait when he sold the company to Salesforce for $6.5bn. Ross discusses his journey as Founder of MuleSoft. From the search for product-market fit to the changes in his confidence between 10 million and 2 millio...