Sarah Tavel — Consumer & Marketplace Investing (Invest Like the Best EP.168)

Sarah Tavel on marketplace liquidity and Benchmark’s owning-a-slice-fast thesis: get network effects working for you in one part of a market rather than spreading thin. Tipping a market means CAC starts falling and the market comes to you (Bill Gurley’s framing). And the line worth keeping — there are no niches too small in software; GOAT out of sneakers, Uber out of black cars in SF.

Notes

• Koyfin - Koyfin.com - Bloomberg alternative , compare to atom finance Atom Finance
• Marketplace liquidity
• Benchmark focuses more on how fast you can own a specific part of a market because then you can see network effects work for you (e.g. Hipcamp)
• Tipping a market: your CAC starts to go down and the market is drawn to you (Bill Gurley)
• There are no niches that are too small in software; they can grow so much bigger than you expect (e.g. shoe marketplace with GOAT, black cars in SF with Uber, etc.)
• Ignore feature requests from your power users because they won’t use but their requests make the product more complex. Build for the next 1M users, not the users you have now
• “Earned insight.”
• #KPI
  • You have to identify the most important metrics for your business; everything else is empty calories
  • If you attach your ego to a specific metric and it isn’t the best metric for your business it can be so damaging.
• Nicest thing: anyone who took a bet on me; for her that was Jeremy Levine at Bessemer - ask yourself: who has taken a bet on you? My Mentors
• “Creating a Kingdom of Ends” - Kantian philosophy; a friend is someone who adopts your ends as their own. That’s what an early stage board member is. Immanuel Kant #Philosophy