Harry Stebbings’ Post

I think Linktree is one of the most underestimated companies in tech. Simple fricking link in bio it is not! This company is a fricking machine. 👥 45M creators & SMBs 🤩 Hell, they even have Halsey, Robert Downey Jr as users My top 6 lessons from their CPO Jiaona Zhang (JZ) 👇 1. The Best Product Leaders are Chameleons They lean into different functions to build the best product. They are able to wear different hats & act as a glue to the exec team They are able to spot what needs work & go fill that hole. 2. Why Planning Should Not Exist You should spend 80% of your time on “strategy” instead. “Strategy” is a 2-page document on what gives you advantage.          It’s all the valuable parts of planning without any of the fluff. 3. The Three Levers of Product Speed, quality, and scope. It is impossible to get all three. Scope is usually the first to go. 4. How We Use Scorecards to Track Projects  We grade every week in 3 colors: 🟢 Green: On-track 🟡 Yellow: At risk 🔴 Red: Off-track Great teams should be able to spot potential issues before they become problems. 5. Biggest Early Stage Hiring Mistakes Hiring a product leader too quickly. You need to delegate & stay close to your product for as long as possible. Product leaders should bring the best out of you so understand yourself first. 6. Advice to PMs Who Want to Get Promoted    Stop thinking about promotion. Do great work on areas that have high impact. Be known for being incredibly good at one thing. (link in comments) #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #seed #funding #product #airbnb #linktree

One piece of advice if you are creating content today: In a world where content supply is infinite and discovery is the core challenge. Go more niche. Be super verticalised on the topic you cover. Get 1,000 people to truly love your work. #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

On 22nd Feb, Dan Siroker and I disagreed about funding round dilution on Twitter. In this episode we hash it out 🥊 ❌ Fundraising rules that are BS 🗣️ What VC’s really mean & want 💸 Getting Peter Fenton to invest for less than 10% My key lessons from winning this fight 👇 1. The Importance of Focus I worked on thousands of things at my first company & thought everything was important. In hindsight, there were only 3 or 4 things that made a difference. Founders need to distinguish between which tasks are truly important & focus on them. 2. The Big Secret When An Investor Asks How Much Are You Raising? They are actually asking how much you think you’re worth. Instead of giving a number, say you’re selling a certain percentage & letting the market decide the valuation. This annoys investors because they don’t get what they want. 3. Elad Gil on When and How to Pivot  The things that work tend to work really fast. Sticking it out & being perseverant doesn’t always work. You have to see some glimmer of hope in the early days. 4. Contrarian View on Selling Stock as Employees Founders should let employees sell their stock at any point. I’ve let my employees sell up to 25% when we were oversubscribed in our series A. My theory is more liquidity = more retention. 5. When They Bring up Title It Is a Bad Sign It shows you where their values are. The best people I’ve hired never brought up titles during the interview. They care about the problem & the company. 6. Why Always Be Raising is Total BS You need to have an on & off switch on fundraising. I have all my investor meetings in a week every two quarters. This removes any distractions when I’m building the company. 7. The Best Question Peter Fenton Asks Founders "What will excite you about being at this business in five years?" Great founders need to be perseverant. They have to stay in love with the business in 5, 10, or 20 years. (links in comments) #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #seed #funding #fundraising

It is harder to get into Y Combinator than it is Harvard. It is insanely hard to build a unicorn. Tom Blomfield has built 2. 🤩 How to master YC interviews 🔎 What YC looks for in founders 🧠 YC’s fundraising advice pre demo day My key lessons from Tom 👇 1. Founder Matters Above Everything Else Picking the highest quality founders trumps everything else, even if the idea is stupid. Work with the best founders & everything else is easier to fix down the line. It’s something I learned over and over again at YC. 2. The Key Skill of the Best Founders They are able to hold two realities in their head: The best outcome, what this could become if everything works out. The next top priority for this week & this month. Only having 1 makes you a bullshitter. Only having 2 makes you too execution focused. The best founders need to have both. 3. Biggest Mistake Founders Make in the Batch Process  Being afraid to launch too early. Keep your initial product super narrow & quality bar super high. Too many founders launch products with many mediocre features. 4. Are All the Best YC Companies Funded at Demo Day The best YC companies always raise before Demo Day. We’ve set a rule where founders are allowed to raise 2 weeks before the event. They will get better terms with a competitive process & lots of people bidding. 5. Why Founders are not Likeable People Founders have to be contrarian. I was not likeable in my first job & I tried to fix everything. If you agree with everything, you’re never going to create something different. 6. Biggest Risk to YC Today Being complacent & resting on our laurels. Falling into a cycle of recruiting bad partners & giving bad advice. It would be a ten year long decay before we realise it’s fucked. 7. Positive Mindset of US vs EU Nobody believed in me when I was starting Monzo in the UK. I tell people about it in the US and everyone wants to help. Americans have this optimism that is antithetical to British culture. In the UK, there is a ‘know your place’ mindset. (links in comments) #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #seed #funding #YC #YCombinator

One of the worst pieces of advice on firing: "When there is doubt, there is no doubt. Let them go." Total BS. People are like relationships, they carry the scars of their formers bosses, cultures and it takes time for some people to show their true talent and potential. #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

To have exceptional outcomes you have to invest in the exceptions, the anomalies. “We need more data”. Come on. Time to grow up and get some conviction. #Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

Today’s show is a fricking masterclass in sales & hiring. Larry Shurtz has been a go-to-market OG for 3 decades. 👥 Salesforce: Led a 1,300 team to $2.1BN revenue 💰 Genesys Cloud: Record growth to $1.4BN ARR 📈 Confluent: Led them to record $600M ARR My 6 key takeaways 👇 1. Why Verticalization Requires More Than an AE Industry Nerd You can’t truly verticalize & deliver value to customers with only an AE. There cannot be a disconnect between them and the technical team. Every single person that touches the account has to be involved. 2. Those That Say They Do Not Have CS Is BS A lot of companies say they don’t need CS. Someone is playing that role under a different title. They are responsible for correcting architecture & aligning use cases. 3. What it Means If You Cannot Forecast Well You don’t truly understand your business. You’re not doing the right amount of diligence with customers & opportunities. We might not be asking the right questions & talking to the right people. 4. Why I Hate Panel Interviews When Hiring I prefer one-on-one interviews. The relationship between the leader and employee matters  It’s hard to get that out of a 5-person panel. 5. Why I Don’t Do Case Studies The real value is to understand their mindset & thought process. It gets to the what & the how. I could easily get that out of a 45 minute chat. 6. One Question I Ask Every Interview I would ask which culture did you prefer out of all their previous companies. The range of answers I’ve gotten have been shocking. Understanding their culture is important to value alignment. (links in comments) #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #seed #funding #hiring #sales #B2B

Everyday young people ask me about what it takes to get into VC. Passion and love for tech is table stakes. Venture is: Sourcing Selecting Servicing How do you move the needle for a firm in at least one of these? If you don’t, it’s hard to make the case to get a role. #Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

I’ve been doing 20VC for 10 years. There have been good times, there have been bad times. Through all of them, Tom Hulme has been there for me. He is one of the greats, and this show was a result of years in friendship. My top lessons 👇 1. Three Types of Investors Those who are smart & add value. Those who are passive & stay out the way. Those who are passive, think they’re smart & try to interfere. You NEED to avoid #3. 2. Biggest Advice to Angels Starting Out People think they need to write $200k checks to become an angel investor. The amount you invest is almost irrelevant. Your job is to learn & demonstrate you add value. Writing small, $5k checks is the best way to learn. 3. What Questions Should Every Investor Ask? Unfair advantage: What is their unique insight & why are they uniquely placed to solve it? Timing: Why now? Why do they need this difficult thing to happen now? Concerns: What might go wrong? What’s keeping them up at night? 4. Foundation Models are Like Power Stations The training time is the power station & the inference is the power. Everyone is building similar power stations with little edge. They have to depreciate those assets in foundational models over a few months & I can’t see it happening. We have not invested in foundational models. 5. The Three Core Pillars of Venture  1. Sourcing deals 2. Selecting deals 3. Supporting deals VCs commonly move into more supporting & less sourcing through their career. The best VCs are good at all of those. 6. Being a VC is Being a Founder on Anti-Depressants  You have all the highs (just not as high) & all the lows (just not as low). You are feeling the ups and downs all the time & every day is a roller coaster. Roelof Botha: “Great board members are like shock absorbers. They reduce the highs and they will cushion the blows and let founders know.” 7. Why Complete Conviction is BS I can’t understand how anyone can have complete conviction on any investment. I was skeptical of physics concepts in uni even with solid proof. I can describe a bear & bull case for every one of my portfolio. 8. Why You Have to Have a Fund Returner Advice is BS    A lot of VC strategy is a lagging indicator of what worked in the past. There’s a lot more ways to be successful at the growth stage. Have a strategy & stick to it. 9. Why I Do Not Trust Ambitious Young People Who Insist on Remote Being in office is a ridiculously important learning opportunity. You can’t shadow & learn from colleagues on a Zoom call. I can’t understand why people are more efficient working from home. (links in comments) #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #seed #funding

Navigating the world of investing in this wave of AI is HARD. Today we sit down with Sarah Tavel to discuss: 💽 Will foundation models be commoditised? 📲 Where is there value in the application layer? 🔓 Open vs closed: Which will be dominant? My top 7 takeaways 👇 Will Foundation Models Commoditise? There is a tremendous amount of investment to progress these models. Each successive model will get more & more expensive to train. This suggests a world where we will get an oligopoly Frontier Models Will Be Closed Source  The frontier models today are all closed-sourced. What Meta is doing with LLaMA may change the game. Open-sourcing isn’t rational in the short term but will be beneficial in the long run. Why It Is Rational to Pay More for AI Startups on Valuation Selling work as an AI startup could have a 50x market vs selling software. You're selling against the cost of the headcount as opposed to a productivity improvement for that headcount. This makes a higher entry price more rational. Value Is in the Application Layer Not the Infra Layer The application layer will be where most of the value will get captured and created. You have to imagine who owns the user over time. Whoever owns the end user will be able to provide more value. What I Know Now That I Wish I had Known: The Importance of Why Now In Venture A great “why now” story becomes a strong current that pushes the company forward. This builds crazy resilience & great founders will maximize that opportunity. Without one, it feels like you’re paddling a boat really hard with no progress. Why Benchmark Does Not Do Reserves We are very oriented towards our initial investment. But once we invest, we are 100% aligned with the founders. We don’t believe in pro-rata. The Best VCs are Recruiters and the Best Firms are Headhunters  Executive recruiters are great at what they do because they do it a lot. I’ve recruited & closed so many candidates it’s now a superpower for me. We aspire to be the best recruiting firm compared to all others. #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #seed #funding