Sand Hill Road

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Henry Shi, co-founder of super.com an all-in-one savings super app for everyday Americans. Having recently raised a $85m Series C led by Inovia Capital, the company is trusted by over 5 million customers worldwide and has helped them save over $150M to date. Super.com is backed by Tier 1 investors including NBA superstar Steph Curry and has raised over...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kshitij Grover, co-Founder and CTO of Orb (www.withorb.com), a billing platform provider that solves usage-based billing needs. The SF based startup has to date raised a total of c. $19.1 million across its Series A ($14 million led by Menlo) and seed ($5.1 million led by Greylock).

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 Japanes...

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&n...

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 ben...

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...

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...

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 storie...

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&n...

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 Perso...

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 ha...

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...

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 inv...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Drew Oetting, founding partner of 8VC, about building a multi-billion venture firm from the ground up with Joe Lonsdale.    00:00 Intro  01:05 Operation Mask  06:33 Resilience  12:54 Views on Venture  20:06 Building 8VC / Addepar  26:30 Raising the maiden fund  30:48 8VC Investment Thesis  40:01 Drew as a VC...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Seth Sternberg the co-founder and CEO of Honor, which is a managed marketplace for in-home care that has recently announced a USD 370m Series E led by Baillie Gifford.   00:00 ​​ Intro  01:19 Elevator pitch  02:19 Original inspiration  05:28 The Meebo experience  08:06 Serial founder problems  09:06 Getting the founder tea...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kimberly Shenk of Novi Connect, B2B marketplace to help brands build and manufacture transparent products, which recently announced a $10.3M Series A led by Greylock 00:00​​ Intro  02:04 Getting started with Naked Poppy  04:09 From Naked Poppy to Novi Connect  05:17 Sustainable Chemicals Market  07:30 Kimberly’s data science background  09:19 The Novi...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Jordan Nof of Tusk Venture Partners, a venture firm that invests in early-stage consumer technology startups operating in heavily regulated markets.   00:00 ​​ Intro  01:39 Investment thesis 2022  02:36 Lithic  05:02 Tusk Venture Partners  08:46 Meeting Bradley Tusk  12:52 Regulatory investment thesis  14:58 The role...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Casey Fenton, founder of Couchsurfing and Upstock, about the early days for Couchsurfing when Casey was pioneering what has since become known as the “sharing economy” and how is is now bringing the sharing economy to the cap table with Upstock.     00:00 ​​ Intro  01:13 The Couchsurfing proof-of-concept  02:46 The first Couchs...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Andrew Gazdecki, founder of MicroAcquire. The episode was recorded when MicroAcquire was still a fully bootstrapped one person company. A few weeks later MicroAcquire announced that it had raised a $6.3m Seed round led by Bessemer Ventures.   00:00 Intro  01:09 What is MicroAcquire?  02:55 Buying a micro-SaaS as a learning experience&nbs...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Queenly co-founders Trisha Bantigue and Kathy Zhou about building a consumer marketplace and tackling the formalwear industry.   00:00 Intro  00:56 The Queenly Elevator Pitch  01:52 Launching Queenly during lockdown  04:04 The pageant dress market   08:06 Formal wear resale market microstructure  10:16 The Queenly minimum...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Didomoi co-founder and CTO Jawad Stouli about building consent management platform Didomi for the perfect privacy wave.   00:00 Intro  00:46 Early days of Didomi  03:29 Fighting a US patent troll  08:14 Building the Didomi MVP  12:18 Developer-centric platform approach  14:46 Early costumers: self-service vs. SDRs  18...

00:00 Intro  00:24 Welcome to Miami  01:08 Operators Podcast  03:21 Finding the right guests  06:54 Delian’s founder/operator  08:22 Cohort analysis with Keith at Square  10:30 Nightingale   12:24 Operating experience at Teespring  14:24 Varda Space  17:45 Splitting time between Varda and FF  19:45 Varda Space incubation  23:50 Delian as an in...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Remote.com founder Job van der Voort about building the future of remote work. 0:00 Intro  00:49 The first two years of Remote  02:19 Preparing for the perfect Storm at Gitlab  06:17 Leaving Gitlab  10:47 Business model  14:10 Legal war chest  15:20 Fintech-payment layer  16:20 SaaS layer  17:52 Pricing  19:...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Sheel Mohnot, co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures about his journey as a founder, angel investor and co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures.   00:00 Intro  01:11 Guest appearance on a Justin Bieber/Ariana Grande music video  03:16 The “pronoia” mindest  03:16 The “pronoia” mindest  05:04 Sheel’s background  07:56 The Pi...

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Reeves Wiedeman, author of "Billion Dollar Loser: the epic rise and fall of WeWork".   00:00 Adam's intro  01:11 Intro  01:38 Adam Neumann  04:11 Adam's art of persuasion  05:41 Book title  08:10 Writing process  13:01 WeWork evolution and business model  16:21 Tech vs. real estate company  19:25 WeWork comm...