Stripe x Adyen + AI + IPO Talk. Don't miss.

#9.2023

Mar 10, 2023

Bill Gates made dropping out of college a rebellious act for entrepreneurs. In 1975, William Gates III, along with co-founder Paul Allen, created Microsoft, now a trillion-dollar company whose impact is impossible to overstate.

I want to point out two things about Bill.

As we all know, BG attributes much of his success to the fact that he is an avid reader and here he shares his top five books of all time - read it here.

On another note, Bill Gates had a full documentary on Netflix which I personally think was worth watching - a journey inside his brain.

Share Daniel’s Newsletter

Bonus!

I'm aware that I often share articles that people click on but can't fully access because of a paywall. I recently got a tip on a solution for this - 12ft

Prepend 12ft.io/ to the URL of any paywalled page, and we'll try our best to remove the paywall and get you access to the article.

With 12ft you can fully access all of the material I share here with you.

Best from Linkedin

A list of top investors in generative AI today. - Read it here.

10 Super Cool web3 Newsletters - Read it here.
[I loved this one!] 10 psychology principles that will make you a better marketer. - Read it here.
[Great for Founders raising or about to raise Venture Capital] One of the best lists I have come across to assist founders to raise funds, from pitch deck designing, to financial modelling, investors and document management. - Read it here.
Kieran Hill, a seed partner at 20VC share details on how to approach The 1st call between a pre-Seed startup & investor 📞 - Read it here.

Best to Listen

In this amazing episode, you will learn how Jamie went from $60 million in debt to selling his company to Amazon for $1 billion in 45 days! Just before that, he had raised money from Sir Richard Branson.
Another point that I think stands out is that for Jamie, the mission of the company is it's true North Star.
All in all a great episode and an inspiring story for founders going through a tough moment in their business.
Jamie Siminoff is the Founder and Chief Inventor @ Ring, with Ring Jamie, created the world’s first Wi-Fi video doorbell while working in his garage in 2011.

This one is shorter, but just as powerful. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi talks with Greylock General Partner Reid Hoffman about his decision-making strategy.
This one is GOLDEN! Claire Johnson, the former COO of Stripe - she joined the Stripe brothers when they were just 130 people and helped them scale to become the largest private startup in the world. She is the guest at Lenny's podcast.
She is a beast - and a great speaker. This was a great episode to listen to and eventually I migrated to youtube because I wanted to see her body language and process the content as well.
She is coming out with her very first book and I can only imagine it will be a must read for all entrepreneurs out there.
Two highlights from me:
From minute 10 to 15, she talks about how asking for advice made her a better operator - she was humble enough to reach out to companies like Airbnb and ask for guidance.
At the 27 minute mark, she pitches the book and what it's about. I can't wait to read it and I'm going to make sure I send a copy to all the founders I work with.

Special Material For Founders and Investors

This one blew my mind and I want to thank my good friend Braulio Medina - founder of SigmaGeek [ 10.000 Brazilian top developers and growing!!! ] - for sending it to me.

Last week I shared a video of Chamath Palihapitiya - which got 4 clicks on it - and this week I bring his podcast "All in" episode #117 and it's just a must watch debate with four very smart guys talking about everything from AI to Stripe's down round and the current mood in the venture capital world.

“Stripe should have gone public in 2018/2019” - Chamath Palihapitiya

Very interesting points:

After introductions and catching up, they spend the first 15 minutes talking about Stripe's down round and comparing Stripe's numbers to Adyen's - very interesting approach when comparing GMV generated per employee and Adyen is a clear winner... (few days prior I had just listened to Claire and Lenny and it was interesting to see Stripe from a totally different angle)
At 11:40 they explore one of the most common debates among B2B founders - should I go enterprise or SMB? If you are currently having this doubt, you better pay attention to this.

“When you are in a boom they only three things that matter are growth, growth, growth. And when you are in a down turn, the three things that matter are growth, burn and margins.”

One thing stood out for me. Chamath keeps saying "principles", I mean he keeps going back to the basics. Not super fancy, but he analyzes everything in a very simple equation - I've seen this repeatedly with Naval Ravinkat as well.
Despite being pessimistic about the class of 2020/221, Chamath is still bullish on venture capital investment in this must-have asset class - and I quote: "It's the future of how GDP is created."
As for AI, I think the conventional wisdom is that everyone is bullish on it, but there is a big question mark on how AI will make companies more valuable, mainly because AI will commoditize some of the services these companies currently provide and generate revenue from it. It's interesting how they look at how AI will impact SAAS companies to the point where most of them may disappear from the market. I think it is too early to predict, but I agree that AI is here to stay and will have a huge impact in the short and long term. As with any inflection point, it will be good, but it will also create pressure and destruction.

“I think that this AI revolution is gonna do for SAAS what mobile did for web 1.0 companies. Disrupted or turbo by it”