UGTTW2017 Final
Which company did Apple acquire to compete with Spotify?
Beats
Describe SVB's startup accelerator program called Commerce Innovated.
Established in 2014, this program allows SVB to invest in finance technology, giving them exposer to new developments to their industry at an earlier age.
T/F: Customers of online retailers always know when their payments are being processed by WePay.
False: WePay provides their API to businesses, who are able to process payments using their own branding and within their own software.
What is a rule by which Madison Reed follows? In other words, what is its motto?
"Color with a conscience". Its products are made from natural ingredients.
What is the motto of Google's corporate code of conduct, first introduced around 2000?
"Don't be evil."
What was the original name given to Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg when he first wrote the program on October 28, 2003?
"Facemash"
What is Sequoia Capital's famous slogan?
"The Entrepreneurs behind the Entrepreneurs"
What was the original name for the search engine which utilized page ranks and was started as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford?
BackRub
Who founded Fanatics and which team's apparel did it sell first?
Mitch and Alan Trager founded the company and began selling Jacksonville Jaguar apparel which become an official team a year before the company incorporated.
Who are Fanatic's founders?
Mitch and Allen Traeger.
What company did Intel acquire this year that focuses on vision-based driver assistance and hopes to help Intel pioneer their driverless car initiative?
Mobileye
What is the name of Google's cellular service?
Project Fi
What about the nature of hair-coloring did Madison Reed CEO Amy Errett hope to capitalize on?
The fact that it's repetitive.
How has the shift to mobile hurt Zynga's business?
Their games were designed to be compatible with Facebook via computer and were not easily transferred to a mobile interface.
Which firm founded by BC alum was acquired by True's portfolio firm Automattic?
Thianh Lu's startup CloudUP.
What is one of Sequoia Capital's most famous investments that was headed by Jim Goetz and led to incredible returns when the company was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $22B?
What is cross-side exchange benefit?
When an increase in the number of users on one side of the market (e.g. console owners) creates a rise in the other side of the market (e.g. software developer)
What is peering?
When different ISPS (Internet Service Providers) connect their networking equipment together to share traffic.
Name one of the programs that True Venture has that exemplifies its value in Power of education.
a. True Entrepreneur Corps b. the Priya Haui Fellowship, True University
What are some qualities of enduring companies that Sequoia capital looks for in an investment?
a. clarity of purpose b. large markets c. rich customers d. focus e. think differently f. team DNA g. agility h. frugality - Emphasis on data driven companies: Data is the "new oil"
What are Fanatics' future long-term prospects?
exclusive partnerships, global presence, expanding technology (web and smartphone), regional distribution warehouses, and data analytics with personalized shopping experiences.
What are the distributive channels of Madison Reed?
heir website; Sephora, Ultra-Beauty (Retail); QVC (TV); Madison Reed Color Bar; Salon Sale
Explain briefly what Equinix does. (Give an analogy).
"International airport where passengers from many different airlines make connections to get to their final destinations." OR "Hilton" of the Internet OR Landlord of the Internet. Equinix is a data center and colocation provider, hosting data centers called Internet Business Exchanges (IBX) that connect ISPs (internet service providers), content providers like Facebook and Netflix, and other enterprises, allowing them to physically exchange data over the Internet in a neutral facility.
How did Phil Schiller describe the TechTrek program?
"The single greatest undergraduate tech program in the country"
How valuable is Airbnb? And what is it's position in terms of private firms?
~$31 billion. 5th largest private company.
How much did Apple invest in Didi Chuxing, Uber's Chinese rival?
$1 billion
Around what number is Equinix's revenue? $4B, $10B,$ 3B, $2B?
$3B
What is Facebook's Q1 2017 revenue?
$8.03 billion
What are two characteristics of disruptive technology?
1. It comes to market with a set of performance attributes not initially valued by existing customers 2. The performance attributes that customers do value improve to the point where the new tech invades the established market
Who are the top two competitors of Airbnb?
1. Tripping.com 2. FlipKey
What is Airbnb's China branch called?
Aibiying
What does the acronym Airbnb stand for?
Air-Bed and Breakfast
How did Airbnb pitch its solutions in its original pitch deck?
Airbnb described itself as a web platform where users can rent out their space to host travelers to save money when traveling, make money when hosting, share culture through local connections to the city.
What was the most recent event in India (pertaining to Apple), and why?
App Accelerator opened in March to help software developers "accelerate" the apps they are already innovating.
Does Apple have an open or closed ecosystem, and why?
Apple has a closed ecosystem because it strongly believes in improving devices so that they can connect seamlessly.
What is an important aspect of Apple's cash overseas?
Apple has a huge amount of cash overseas. It has invested $1 billion in Didi. Didi invested $1 billion in Uber, which makes Apple an indirect investor of Uber as well.
What other products other than phones is Apple working on?
Apple tv, automated cars, iTunes
Why does Apple own $14.5 billion in taxes to Ireland?
Apple was in compliance with Ireland's rules. It was Ireland's rules that were out of line with the EU's taxation policies, which don't allow member states to act as tax havens.
Although Microsoft was the first mover and came up with a phone before Apple, how did Apple have the ability to beat Microsoft?
Apple was valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and non-substitutable (characteristics that Microsoft did not have at the time when they came out with a phone that did not work as well as Apple's).
What are some of Facebook's biggest acquisitions?
Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus, Internet.org
Who is Apple's main smartphone competitor?
Samsung
What is true strategic positioning?
True strategic positioning means that a firm has created differences that cannot be easily matched by rivals
Who is Airbnb's first investor?
Y Ventures (Y Combinator)
Has Airbnb faced any controversy from governments?
Yes, in Berlin, German officials passed a law banning short-term rentals due to rent increases.
What product comprises the majority of Apple's revenues?
iPhone
What is ARPU?
Average Revenue Per User
Are tech products highly price elastic or inelastic?
Elastic
Who is Twitch's CEO?
Emmett Shear
What does Equinix stand for?
Equality, Neutrality, and Internet Exchange.
Who is Peter Van Camp?
Equinix's former CEO and current Executive Chairman, and a BC alum.
What industry does Twitch belong to?
Esports and streaming.
Is SVB a public company?
Yes, they are listed on the NASDAQ as SIVB
Who are considered the "whales" in Zynga's gaming industry, and why?
"Whales" are players who pay money to gain certain advantages or reach other levels faster than the normal, non-paying player. They are considered "whales" because Zynga relies a lot on these people for their revenue intake, yet less than 3% of players actually pay to play the game.
What is Facebook's ARPU in US & Canada as of Q1 2017?
$17.07, $2.74 drop compared to Q4 2016.
How much did Didi invest in Uber?
$1B
How much did WePay raise in their latest round of fundraising (Series D)?
$40M
What is Uber's valuation?
$70B
What is SVB's market cap?
$9.5B
Name two customers of talkdesk?
- Dropbox - The Weather Channel
Why do start-ups need the venture capital industry?
- Lack of access to capital markets - Guidance
List two features of the product that create competitive advantage for talkdesk
- Short set up time - Deep integrations with customers-facing systems
List 3 industries that SVB provides service in.
- Software and Internet - Hardware and Infrastructure - Life Sciences and Health Care - Private Equity and Venture Capital - Energy and Resource Innovation - Premium Wine
List two benefits provided by a cloud based contact center
- Substantial cost savings as a cloud based contact center software is subscription based - Continuous upgrades and new features available
What are some challenges/criticism that Google has had to face? Name 2.
1. Censorship: Google has had various instances of censoring its search results. 2. Aggressive tax avoidance
Give an example of something that companies like Apple and Amazon could capitalize on in order to compete with Spotify.
1. Distribution channels: Spotify's business model is dependent of the user downloading its interface, whereas Apple and and Amazon have products (IOS devices, Amazon Echo) that come with music streaming software. 2. Size: Spotify, comparatively, is a smaller company with not as much financial or marketing power as companies like Apple and Amazon
Give 3 sources of strong network effects.
1. Exchange 2. Staying power 3. Complimentary benefits (products or services that add additional value to the primary product or service that makes up a network).
What is the Fanatics affiliate program?
A Fanatics program that builds partnerships with sports blogs to promote Fanatics merchandise. Affiliates get commissions up to 10% depending on how many active followers they have.
Name a unique service that Spotify offers its users
a. Discover Weekly b. Release Radar c. Your daily Mix
What are five strategies for competing in markets with network effects?
1. Move early 2. Subsidize product adoption 3. Leverage viral promotion 4. Expand by redefining the market to bring in new categories of users or through convergence 5. Form alliances and partnerships 6. Establish distribution channels 7. Seed the market with complements 8. Encourage the development of complementary goods -this can include offering resources, subsidies, reduced fees, market research, development kits, and training 9. Maintain backward compatibility 10. For rivals, be compatible with larger networks 11. For incumbents, constantly innovate to create a moving target and block rival efforts to access your network 12. For large firms with well-known followers, make preannouncements
Name one of two primary reasons Madison Reed outsources their manufacturing to Italy.
1. Outsourcing manufacturing requires less startup capital. 2. The EU has more strict rules on what chemicals can be used in products, ensuring a more natural product.
Rank by order on the top three things that Highland Capital looks at when they evaluate an idea?
1. Team 2. Market 3. Product
What are the four primary valuation methodologies?
1. Trading Comparable Analysis 2. Transaction Comparables Analysis 3. Discounted Cash Flow Analysis 4. Leverage Buyout Valuation
What are four critical characteristics of the resource-based view of competitive advantage?
1. Valuable 2. Rare 3. Imperfectly imitable 4. Non-substitutable
What is the relationship between technology and market-entry timing?
A company may have a cutting edge technology now, but if they can't differentiate itself in the market quickly, then that first-mover advantage is essentially useless. Timing and technology aren't the sustainable competitive advantages of a company, but they are enablers. It's what the firm does with that timing advantage and technology that really differentiates themselves.
What are two major reasons Zynga's stock price rapidly dipped in 2012?
1. Zynga had grown too dependent on Facebook as their primary platform, and although this helped them gain users, it made Zynga vulnerable to the performance of the social media company. As a result of Facebook volatile IPO, Zynga shares fell over 13% on the day of the offering. 2. Then CEO Marc Pincus and other executives did a secondary offering, flooding the market with Zynga stock and lowering the overall price. 3. Zynga was facing challenges internally. According to several reports, the corporate culture had deteriorated, and they faced many lawsuits from other developers with claims Zynga stole their ideas. 4. There was an overall industry shift from online games to mobile games, hurting the company significantly since the vast majority of their titles were online.
What is Facebook's 2017 Q1 MAUs?
1.936 billion
How much revenue did Facebook make from Zynga before it changed it's payment system?
12%
In total, how many total guests has Airbnb hosted? How many listings worldwide do they have?
150,000,000+ travelers. 3,000,000+ listings.
When was Apple founded and by whom?
1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne
When did Steve Jobs make a return to Apple?
1997, when Apple bought his company, NeXT Computer
Thanks to streaming services like Spotify, the music industry saw growth for the first time since when?
1999
What is the 2/20 Rule?
2% of the investment becomes a management fee, and 20% of the exit becomes the return fee.
How much is WePay's transaction fee?
2.9%+$0.30 per transaction
Greater than 50% of Twitch's DAUs watch approximately ___ hours per week.
20+
When was Palantir founded?
2004, although SEC filings say 2003. Both answers are acceptable.
How is the music industry doing as of the end of 2016?
2016 was the first year since 1999, the peak of CD sales, that the music industry has seen a growth and not a decline. Many contribute this growth to the prevalence of music streaming.
Sequoia Capital has partnered with companies that have an aggregate public market value of over $1.4 trillion, which is equivalent to __% of the Nasdaq.
22%
What is Equinix's most recent important acquisition?
29 data centers from Verizon
As of 2017, Spotify hit an incredible milestone of hitting ___ paying subscribers.
50 million
What percent do iPhone sales comprise of Apple's revenue? 30%, 45%, 70%, or 60%?
60%
What percentage of the revenue generated by an Uber ride goes to the driver?
80%
How many countries or how many cities is Uber operating in?
81 countries or 581 cities
What percentage of Google's $24.75B revenue in Q1 2017 was derived from their advertising platform?
86.5% ($21.411B / $24.750B)
What percent of Madison Reed's sales are direct-to-consumers?
90%
Why the switching costs for Facebook are extremely powerful?
A move to another service means recreating your entire social graph. The more time you spend on the service, the more you've invested in your graph and the less likely you are to move to a rival.
What is the Greyball tool?
A program it used to deceive regulators into entering new markets where its services were not permitted
What is an API?
A set of routines, protocols and tools for building a software application
What is a warrant?
A warrant is a security that entitles the holder to buy the underlying stock of the issuing company at a fixed price called exercise price until the expiry date
What is "White Label"?
A white label product is manufactured by one company and packaged and sold by other companies under various brand names. In the case of WePay, with Clear, they're allowing their clients to brand the checkout platform in their own way, without any WePay branding or actual interaction with WePay's website.
Who is one of Intel's competitors in the server market that is considered the "Intel clone" for having compatible architecture to Intel's?
AMD. It holds around 20% of the market share for servers, while Intel holds the other 80%.
Google's software library for machine learning, Tensor Flow, has open-sourced its ____.
API (application program interface)
What is AR (Augmented Reality)?
AR is the technology which overlays digital text and objects on the real world through a lens.
Why is ARM considered a disruptive technology for Intel?
ARM has dominated the smartphone market with their cheap, low-power chips. But, as Moore's Law continues ARM technology is becoming "just good enough", or faster and more efficient, for them to invade the server market which is Intel's stronghold.
Who is one of Intel's competitors that dominates the mobile market, why do they dominate?
ARM. ARM licenses their efficient designs to competitors who tweak them in their own products. ARM technology is known for being more energy efficient and cheaper than Intel's, allowing them to capture the mobile market.
What is Investment Banking?
Assist in large complicated financial transactions. Advise companies on how much they are valued at and how to best structure a deal depending on the need of clients
Moore's Law refers to chip performance per dollar. What does Kyder's Law refer to?
Advances in hard-drive storage
Who is the CEO of Palantir?
Alex Karp
What are some criticism that Uber has had?
Alleged cancellation of orders to disrupt competitors, Increased pricing during disasters, Classification of drivers as contractors or employees
What is Alphabet?
Alphabet is the parent company for Google, as well as Nest, Google Fiber and X.
What is Waymo?
Alphabet's self-driving car company
Who acquired Twitch for how much?
Amazon bought Twitch for $970M in cash.
Who is the CEO of Madison Reed?
Amy Errett. She was a former venture capitalist and founded Madison Reed in 2013.
What are two prominent investors that funded Fanatics?
Andreessen Horowitz and Alibaba
What is AngelList and why is it "good news" for the venture capital community?
AngelList is an online investing firm and its emerging group of syndicates forgo fees in favor of carry, such that the investment upside and downside are shared by VCs and LPs alike. The absence of fees puts VCs and angels on the same footing as their investors and more perfectly aligns interests.
Name 4 Highland Capital portfolio companies (either previous or current):
Any of these are acceptable answers: handy LevelUp WePay thredUP Lululemon Athletica Jaunt Rent the Runway VMTurbo Gigamon RapidSOS ZeroFOX Datiphy Enjoy Freshly nuTonomy Catalant
Who are Spotify's competitors in the music subscription space?
Apple Music: While Spotify has 50 million paid subscribers, Apple Music has 20 million subscribers, not to mention the Apple brand backing it up. Amazon: Bundled with a Prime Subscription, Prime Music offers 2 million songs, ad-free and on-demand. Spotify, however, offers 30 million songs. Pandora: Pandora just launched the new Pandora Premium in April. For $9.99/month, Pandora Premium higher-quality music on demand with no ads and unlimited downloads. Pandora users have typically been those in their 40s-50s but this subscription is a direct competitor to Spotify. Tidal: A more pricey subscription service, Tidal combines lossless (original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data) music and higher quality exclusive music videos.
Who is Spotify's biggest competitor and why are they struggling to compete with Spotify's large market share?
Apple music is Spotify's biggest competitor. Spotify has many switching costs and a first-mover advantage that contribute to its market success. Spotify's technology that caters to the user is hard to compete with and the more you use Spotify, the costlier switching is. Because of this, Spotify already has a vast customer base that competitors are struggling to break into.
Which three portfolio companies of Sequoia Capital will we be visiting?
Apple, Google, Airbnb
Describe Palantir's general clientele, including at least three specific current clients.
Approximately 40% are government clients, including the CIA, DOJ, FBI, Marine Corps, IRS, Immigration and Customs, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the State Department. 60% are business clients, including Hershey's, Bank of America, BP, Kimberly Clark, Standard Chartered, JPMorgan Chase, Zurich, Walmart, and Comcast.
What is Uber's current valuation?
Around $70 billion
Why were payments an issue at Airbnb?
As Airbnb scaled, they had to deal with currency exchanges (as they are international). Also, users were to pay Airbnb directly; this resulted in a large number of checks that Brian Chesky needed to sign and send everyday. This was inefficient and not able to scale.
Why does Highland focus on team over products/markets when evaluating a portfolio firm?
Because markets and products can change, but the team rarely will. Partners at Highland need to know that they can have critical conversations with these founders that they may be working with for 8-10 years. Additionally, at some point a company may have to manage a pivot and in order to achieve this the firm must have a solid team in place.
What are Palantir's three guiding ideas?
Best idea wins, nothing is permanent, and keep focused on the mission.
What is Uber's equity stake in Didi Chuxing?
Between 17%-18%
Who is the CEO of WePay?
Bill Clerico
What is brand?
Brand is the symbolic embodiment of all information connected with a product or service, and it can be an extremely significant point of competitive advantage.
Who are the founders of Airbnb, and what are their positions? Also, who are we meeting and what is his/her position?
Brian Chesky (CEO), Joe Gebbia (CPO), Nathan Blecharczyk (CSO). We are meeting with Mike Liberatore (CFO-Airbnb Payments).
How can technology help creating and reinforcing assets for sustainable advantage for a firm?
By enabling an imitation-resistant value chain; strengthening a firm's brand; collecting useful data and establishing switching costs; creating a network effect; creating or enhancing a firm's scale advantage; enabling product or service differentiation; and offering an opportunity to leverage unique distribution channels.
How does Spotify leverage the long tail?
By offering over 30 million songs, Spotify allows all listeners to find music they like. This vast collection appeals to the niche genres like ska punk to bubble gum pop like Top 40 radio.
What is the mantra of True's investing strategy?
Capital efficiency: "more venture; less capital"
What is the carried interest tax loophole and why is it important?
Carried interest is the income flowing to the general partner of a private investment fund (e.g. general partners of Highland Capital Partners), and it is currently taxed at the 20% tax rate of capital gains, rather than the 40% tax rate of regular income. The use of the lower tax rate is controversial, because many think it is unfair that these partners are being given a lower tax rate for these incomes. It is an important issue, because it is uncertain whether or not this rule will change under the Trump administration.
What are two countries that are currently important to Apple?
China and India
Is the US or China the largest iPhone market?
China as of last year
What is Moore's Law?
Chip performance per dollar doubles every 18 months. Or, every 18 months a chip with the same performance will become cheaper by a dollar.
About how many MAU are there on Facebook?
Closing in around 2 billion worldwide.
What is a 'colo'?
Colocation facility: a data center facility in which businesses can rent space for servers and other computing hardware.
Funding from the venture capital arm of what major corporation helped Madison Reed push into television?
Comcast
Describe Frank Gibeau's strategy at the company thus far
Coming in, Gibeau's main criticism of Zynga was that they were very good at releasing games, but after let their titles 'coast' off. In order to counteract this, Gibeau has refocused talent towards Zynga's more established hits in mobile, with the goal of increasing long term retainment. Since 2016, Gibeau and his employees have been able to inject fresh, periodical features into their older hits, in order to reinvigorate more consistent engagement. This has proven successful: Both Zynga Poker and Words with Friends hit record annual bookings and sales in FY 2016.
What's the significance of Talkdesk offered as a software-as-a-service (SaaS)?
Companies can run the program on any computer with an internet connection - no special software, headsets, or plugins are required. Additionally, everything is stored in - and is accessible anywhere from - the cloud.
What are WePay's main products?
Connect (enable your users to accept payments using WePay) and Clear (process payments for your users under your own brand)
What is CPM?
Cost per thousand. CPM refers to the price of 1,000 advertisement impressions on one webpage.
In 2016, what company did Twitch acquire, who were an operator of online video gaming communities and gaming-oriented VoIP software?
Curse, Inc.
Through which does a company like Apple build its brand?
Customer experience
Give an example of how Equinix benefits from network effects.
Customers experience low latency (fast communication) with other Equinix customers, so the more enterprises that are inside Equinix, the more benefits a customer will experience. (OR) Equinix Marketplace, which is often referred to as an 'ecosystem.'
What are some main competitors of Equinix?
CyrusOne, Coresite, and Digital Realty.
What do the following metrics stand for, and what do they represent: DAU, MAU, MUU, MUP, ABPU, Payer Conversion
DAU (Daily Active User) - Number of individuals who played one of the games during a particular day MAU (Monthly Active User) - number of individuals who played a particular game in a 30 day period MUU (Monthly Unique User) - number of unique individuals who played any of the games on a particular platform in a 30 day period MUP (Monthly Unique Payer) - number of unique individuals who made a payment at least once during the 30 day period ABPU (Average Booking Per User) - Average booking per DAU Payor Conversion (MUP / MUU) - Percentage of unique individuals who pay for a Zynga game per month
Who led the Highland Capital Partners investment in thredUP and why is he notable?
Dan Nova, BC alum/sits on the thredUP board
Who is the current CEO of Spotify?
Daniel Ek is a co-founder and CEO of Spotify.
What is Fanatics gathering a lot of and trying to analyze? Why is this analysis important to the company's business?
Data have become crucial to Fanatics' operations. Deciphering trends in customer purchase allows the company to personalize the online shopping experience.
What are economies of scale?
Economies of scale exist when the cost of an investment can be spread across increasing units of production or in serving a growing customer base
What three main industries does Google have a majority market share in?
Desktop/Mobile Search (Google Search), Mobile/Tablet Operating System (Android), Desktop/Mobile Web Browser (Chrome)
What company did Uber lose to in China?
Didi
What is Madison Reed's predominant sales model?
Direct-to-consumer
What is one of the most unique features of Spotify that help with customer retention and differentiating themselves among the music streaming market?
Discover weekly playlists, developed through Echo Nest Technology
What are Airbnb's competitive advantages?
Disintermediation, Lack of Variable Costs, Network Effects, Switching Costs, Big Data, and Brand.
What gives Airbnb a competitive advantage in their industry?
Disintermediation, no variable costs, network effects, access to data, brand recognition
Which of the following types of ads does Facebook have a majority market share in: Search Ads, Display Ads, or Mobile Ads?
Display Ads
What is one of the biggest issues that results from Moore's Law?
Disposing of the electronics, because they contain harmful chemicals.
The remarkable growth and success of what disruptive, subscription-based startup got Madison Reed CEO Amy Errett thinking of the next big idea in the personal care industry?
Dollar Shave Club
Who is the founder of Sequoia Capital, also known as "The Grandfather of Sequoia Capital"?
Don Valentine
Who is the CEO of Fanatics?
Doug Mack
Name two companies that Fanatics acquired. What spaces did these companies help Fanatics expand into?
Dreams Inc. and Kitbag; these companies enabled Fanatics to expand its e-commerce presence and sell European soccer apparel in Europe, respectively.
When a firm does an IPO, founders are able to retain majority control of voting rights through ______.
Dual class shares
When do Fanatics' online orders skyrocket? Why is this and give an example of a time when this has occurred?
During immensely popular sporting events such as the Super Bowl or March Madness, Fanatics orders skyrocket. This is because fans become very passionate about their team and begin to follow specific players who perform well. When South Carolina upset Duke, orders for SC went up 320%.
What is the stereotypical difference in culture between east coast venture firms and west coast investors/venture firms?
East coast investors are more conservative, analytical, and play very close attention to the financials, stricter when it comes to valuations, invest in more "practical" deals. West Coast investors are more care-free and value the idea of the company over hard financials, more flexible when it comes to valuations, look for huge returns in huge markets and may be easier to negotiate with in exchange for that opportunity.
Which company did Spotify acquire that uses big data analytics to create user taste profiles?
Echo Nest
What is Echo Nest and why is it important?
Echo nest is a SaaS company that was founded in 2005 with BC alum Jim Luchesse as the CEO. It is considered a disruptive technology and it offered music intelligence and analytics to music companies. This is the software that allows for Spotify to have personalized playlists that comes from technology rather than from expertly curated playlists (such as with Apple music.)
How does Facebook follow through with its dedication to innovation?
F8 conference where there is a big emphasis on promoting the development of future technology. Development of services like Messenger Chatbot.
What was Facebook's interest in maintaining an API for companies like Zynga?
Facebook Credits, a virtual currency, and display ads shown on these games, generated significant revenue for Facebook at the time.
In terms of sharing news articles, what is becoming a problem with certain articles circulating around Facebook?
Fake news. There are many websites that are coming under criticism for dishonest reporting and falsified information.
Talkstart focuses on providing contact center solution for big enterprises only?
False
True/False: Calico is the subsidiary of Google that is experimenting with driverless cars and is competing with Uber.
False
True/False: Google has a majority market share in cloud infrastructure services (IaaS, PaaS, Hosted Private Cloud)?
False
True/False: Google has the majority market share for display advertising (advertising on websites).
False
True/False: once a disruptive technology is spotted, this innovation will become dominant
False
True/False: venture capital investing is within the reach of the typical investor
False
True/False: Tim Cook wants to make Apple more visionary
False, Cook wants to make Apple more socially responsible than visionary
True/False: Eric Schmidt is the current CEO of Alphabet
False, Schmidt is the current Executive Chairman of Alphabet and former CEO of Google. Larry Page is the current CEO of Alphabet
True/False: thredUp was able to model their business on existing department stores and sites like eBay
False, no one had ever operated a used clothing site and this large of a scale and do it efficiently.
True/False: thredUp was able to utilize existing imaging systems for displaying their products?
False, they had to build their own
True/False: Airbnb is the most valuable startup in the world.
False. Airbnb is the third. Uber is the most valuable one.
True/False: When Facebook went public, Mark Zuckerberg no longer retained majority voting control?
False. He controls more than 50% of the voting process.
True/False: Madison Reed targets mostly younger audiences.
False. Madison Reed's customers mostly comprise of middle aged women and above.
Madison Reed doesn't have retail store of their own.
False. They opened a Madison Reed Color Bar in NYC at the end of 2016, and they are going to open another one in San Francisco in June this year. At Color Bar, you can buy all their products and also get you root touch-up.
True/False: Carl Icahn holds a position in Apple.
False: Icahn sold his stake in Apple in 2016
How does Uber use both the market forces of supply and demand and big data in determining its pricing?
Fares are automatically calculated using GPS, street data, market demand and algorithms, and are also based on how much time a journey is estimated to take. Uber uses predictive modeling to estimate demand in real time, and its surge pricing is big data-informed dynamic pricing that increases fare prices when rider demand is high, in order to increase the supply of drivers.
What does FPGA stand for, and what does it do?
Field-programmable gate array. It's a device that can be configured or programmed in order to meet more specific or efficient needs.
Give an example of an industry in which Equinix sees huge network effects.
Financial Industry (NYSE trades in an Equinix IBX in New Jersey).
What are three of True Ventures' most notable investments?
FitBit, Automattic, Blue Bottle Company, Brava, Mylestone, and Orreco
What notable wearables company did True Ventures invest in?
Fitbit
What is True's first and only investment that went public? And when is the IPO date?
Fitbit went public on June 18, 2015.
Name one competitor of Talkdesk.
Five9
Outside of ridesharing where else is Uber attempting to expand their business into?
Food delivery, self-driving cars, Helicopter services
What's the value behind UberPOOL?
For customers, you get to share the cost of an uberX ride with riders going in a similar direction. It's Uber's guaranteed cheapest option. For drivers, it's the "perpetual ride", meaning drivers are constantly serving riders and having new riders added to a queue, so they can make more money and offer even faster pickup times. For cities, it has the potential to fundamentally change how cities operate, as it can supplement, replace, or function as public transit systems.
Name something Jay Adelson has done since founding Equinix.
Founded Revision3, Digg, Opsmatic, venture capital firm Center Electric, TV show "Ask Jay"
When and by whom was Uber founded by?
Founded in 2009 by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp
Who is the largest Apple products manufacturer?
Foxconn is the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer
Explain the freemium business model
Freemium (Free + Premium) is a business model that offers both free and premium entertainment or services
What are fundamental and relative analysis?
Fundamental Analysis: the intrinsic value of a company based on its future cash flows Discounted Cash Flow Analysis Leveraged Buyout Valuation (LBO) Relative Valuation - comparing the price of an asset to the market value of similar assets Trading Comparables Analysis Transaction Comparables Analysis
What happened to Uber's operations in China?
Gave up on its costly battle for China's car sharing market and sold the Chinese business to Didi for 17.7% of the company. Along with a $1 billion investment in Uber by Didi.
What is the process of selling used clothing to thredUP?
Go onto the website or mobile app and request a Clean Out Kit. Send your used clothing to thredUP and wait for their evaluation. They will either accept your clothing or reject it and send it to their recycling partners. This evaluation is based on the quality and trendiness of your clothing. If they accept your clothing, you will either be paid upfront or as consignment, depending on the value of your clothing.
What does Uber call the technology that allows them to see all active Ubers at once?
God View
Who was originally planning to acquire Twitch in 2014, but backed out of the deal due to potential antitrust concerns?
What is a significant barrier to entry for Google's competitors?
Google operates from a massive network of server farms containing hundreds of thousands of servers built from standard, off-the-shelf parts. The cost of doing this/imitating a similar server farm would be extremely costly. Fortunately, Google has the economies of scale over their rivals, allowing Google to make similar investments but with better results.
What does the term "color with a conscience" mean to Madison Reed?
It means their products are free of harsh chemicals, good for the consumer, and good for the environment.
Alphabet's portfolio encompasses several industries. Name four of its subsidiaries and what they do:
Google- Technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. X- Semi-secret research-and-development facility that invents and launches "moonshot" technologies. GV- Google's venture capital investment arm. CapitalG- A growth equity fund that draws on advisors from Google to help portfolio companies. DeepMind- An artificial intelligence company. Waymo- A self-driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to move around. Nest Labs- A home automation producer of programmable, self-learning, sensor-driven, Wi-Fi-enabled systems. Jigsaw- Technology incubator tackling geopolitical challenges. Sidewalk Labs- Urban innovation organization aiming to improve urban infrastructure through technology. Verily- Healthcare and disease prevention research. Calico- Research into longevity, life expansion. Access- Energy and internet access.
Who is the CEO of SVB?
Gregory Becker
What is the difference between massively parallel computing and grid computing?
Grid computing software uses existing computer hardware to work together and mimic a massively parallel supercomputer, while massively parallel processing uses computers designed to work together with many microprocessors, simultaneously, to solve problems. Grid computing can save a firm millions instead of the firm buying a conventional supercomputer, giving organizations massive computing power to a firm that would otherwise not be able to do so.
What is guerilla marketing and which company prides itself in successfully doing so?
Guerilla marketing is an advertising strategy that focuses on low-cost Unconventional marketing tactics that yield maximum results. Uber attempts to conquer guerilla marketing through very effective, targeted local marketing.
In addition to capital, what other critical resource do venture capitalists also provide to their portfolio company?
Guidance and mentorship
What was Highland's strategic move in relation to its Massachusetts and California offices?
Highland moved their offices to Cambridge and Palo Alto so that they would be closer to entrepreneurs
What is Apple's "Internet of Things" platform for homes?
HomeKit
Which company was Apple making a jab at when adopting the marketing slogan "Think Different."
IBM and their slogan "Think."
What do IBX, Colocation, and Latency mean?
IBX stands for Internet Business Exchange. Colocation stands for the data centers in the rented space. Latency stands for the delay between connections.
What is Equinix's term for their Internet Exchange Points (data centers)?
IBX- Internet Business Exchange
59% of the startups that Sequoia has invested in have had at least one ____ cofounder.
Immigrant
Why is it difficult for one company to overcome another with established network effects?
In order for a new product to win customers away from a leading product that has network effects, the new product must offer a superior generation of technology that exceeds the exchange, staying power, complementary benefits, and technological functionality of the incumbent product. The incumbent product also must not be able to easily copy any of the new product's innovations, otherwise the leading product will quickly match any valuable improvements.
What is the concept known as the wisdom of crowds?
In this concept, a group of individuals (the crowd often consists mostly of untrained amateurs), collectively has more insight than a single or small group of trained professionals.
How does Instagram prove that having the first mover advantage doesn't necessarily mean that you will be the market leader?
Instagram copied Snapchat when it added Instagram Stories (its own version of a live 24-hour video). However, although it entered this market later than Snapchat, Instagram Stories has surpassed Snapchat in number of daily active users. This is due to Instagram having a larger user base (leading to greater network effects, greater switching costs, and greater staying power) and providing its users with a more convenient experience, as they can now have the functionality of Snapchat without ever having to leave the Instagram app.
List 3 reasons why someone would watch another person play video games on Twitch?
Instruction from the best players in the world (most streamers are former eSports stars), a quick alternative to playing, or simply to enjoy humorous content (some streamers are personalities as opposed to professionals).
What is one IoT-focused subsidiary of Intel and what does it focus on?
Intel Curie - wearable tech, Wind River - industrial IoT, MobileEye - driverless cars
What does Intel hope to shift their focus to in the future? What do they hope to rely less on?
Intel wants to continue to be the leader in powering 99% of the cloud, and wants to rely more on their IoT, programmable solutions, and virtual reality markets. They want to have less dependence on the PC market, as this is a waning market in general as mobile phones take over.
How does Intel's size allow the firm to gain competitive advantage?
Intel's size allows the firm to pioneer cutting-edge manufacturing techniques and invest $7 billion on next-generation plants, or "fabs", ensuring that no newcomers will invade their market share. This is considered economies of scale.
Name Porter's Five Forces
Intensity of rivalry among existing competitors, threat of new entrants, threat of substitute goods or services, bargaining power of buyers, and bargaining power of suppliers
Who is George Boutros?
Is a BC parent and the CEO of Qatalyst. Boutros was a managing director at Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank. He has advised on more than 450 banking transactions
What was the purpose of the reorganization of Google to Alphabet in October 2, 2015?
It allows Google more management scale, as they can now run things independently that aren't very related. In addition, the holding-company structure is set to provide more financial transparency. In summary, according to Larry Page, it makes Google "cleaner and more accountable."
How does Madi, the chatbot of Madison Reed work?
It applies artificial intelligence to interpret and act on visual data. You send Madi a picture of your hair, and she will reply the best match to you within seconds.
What is a con of venture debt?
It creates leverage, which also increases risk. Also, the debt needs to be repaid.
Besides streamlining and improving the customer experience, what positive "side effect" has Madison Reed's chatbot and questionnaires created?
It has given them a treasure trove of valuable data on consumers.
What is disruptive technology?
It is a technology that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market leading firms, products and alliances
What is Internet.org and its purpose?
It plans to bring affordable access to selected Internet services to less developed countries by increasing efficiency, and facilitating the development of new business models around the provision of Internet access. nearly 4.9 billion people are not connected. Most people, do have Internet access available to them, but they can't afford to pay for it.
What is the program Talkstart about?
It provides three free Talkdesk call center software licenses to tech startups for a year
How big is True Ventures's initial investment?
It target initial investments is $1-2 million.
How does UberPOOL work?
It uses big data to connect UberX riders going in the same direction so they can ride together and split the costs
What problem did Madison Reed run into when their customers began sending their selfies to Madison Reed customer service agents? How did they solve it?
It was difficult to scale, so they created Madi, an AI chatbot.
Where does the name Madison Reed come from?
It was named after Madison, Amy Errett 's daughter
How will higher federal funds rates affect SVB?
It will allow them to increase their net interest income, which will make them more profitable.
How has Spotify essentially changed the way music and artists are being discovered?
It's not about breaking into the Top 40 Hits radio anymore, even the most unknown artists can end up on a listener's Discover Weekly or Daily Mix playlist. Instead it's about being featured in high-trafficked playlists like Today's Top Hits (15.3 million followers) or Rap Caviar (6.6 million followers) by either creating enough buzz organically or through an official pitch process where anyone can fill out details on their music and their dreams of success.
Where was Fanatics founded?
Jacksonville, FL
Who are the founders of thredUP and what are their current responsibilities?
James Reinhart (Co-Founder, CEO, BC alum), Oliver Lubin (Co-Founder, CIO, BC alum), Chris Homer (Co-Founder, CTO).
Who are the founders of Equinix?
Jay Adelson and Al Avery. It was founded in 1998.
Where is Mobileye located in?
Jerusalem, Israel
Who is John Bacon, and for what game is he the technical lead?
John Bacon is a proud BC and UGTTW alum who now is a principal software engineer for Zynga. More recently, he has served as a technical lead on Words with Friends.
Who is Twitch's CFO and our BC contact?
John Sutton
Name three of True Ventures' competitive advantages besides their primary investing strategy?
Joint entrepreneur/investor executive board, proactive commitment to new technology trends, True network (reliance on founder-sourced opportunities and deep relations with entrepreneurs).
Who is the BC contact at Qatalyst and what is his background?
Josh Coyne prior to joining Qatalyst, he worked in Investment banking at Deutsche in the technology sector group. He also interned at Apple while attending BC.
In June 2011, Twitch.TV was launched as a spin off of _________________'s gaming content.
Justin.tv
What is Kitbag and why did Fanatics acquire it?
Kitbag is a UK sports retailer that is popular in Europe. Kitbag was acquired by Fanatics for a few reasons: - Helped Fanatics enter the European market - Helped Fanatics to fulfill the demand for European soccer apparel in the USA - Both firms have overlapping efficiencies, as Kitbag runs the EU platforms for the NFL, NBA and NHL
What two American venture capital firms led Google's Series A funding round and how much money was raised?
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) & Sequoia Capital at $25M
Who owns Fanatics?
Kynetic
In what city did Fanatics just open a new distribution center?
Las Vegas
What is the most popular video game on Twitch in terms of number of viewers?
League of Legends
What are two notable deals that Qatalyst has advised on?
LinkedIn acquired by Microsoft for 28,100,000,000. Advised LinkedIn and secured them a premium of nearly 50% on its stock price. NXP acquired by Qaulcomm for 46,800,000,000. $110 a share and 27% premium on its stock price.
What BC alum is a Priya Haji fellow at True Ventures and where is she currently placed? (Hint: it's another firm we're visiting)
Lisa Bai, Growth Marketing at Madison Reed
What is Venture debt
Loans that are tailored to the needs and the risks associated with investor-backed start up company
What is one challenge that Apple is facing in China?
Local phone manufacturers are performing well in China and outpacing iPhone sells
What is the general theme of Palantir's office culture?
Lord of the Rings
What were the issues with the taxi industry in San Francisco that Garrett Camp wanted to solve by creating his own private car service (which became Uber)?
Low availability, low reliability, poor customer experience, poor driver experience
What are venture debt's benefits?
Lower cost compared to equity capital, lowers WACC; allows founders to keep original equity, unlike traditional loans, it focuses on relationships with companies not based on collateral or cash flows which is unsuitable for early staged startups.
What is the name of Amazon's AAA game engine that has deep integration with Twitch?
Lumberyard
Who are Uber's most notable competitors domestically and internationally?
Lyft, Didi, Grab, Curb, and Ola
What are MAU and DAU?
MAU (monthly active users); DAU (daily active users)
Name two of Fanatics largest partnerships. Why are these partnerships important to the company?
MLB and NBA. These partnerships give Fanatics exclusive rights over distributing officially licensed and authentic sports gear, thus enabling the company to reap tremendous profits.
Name two features of TalkDesks product.
Make and receive costs, advanced routing, business tools integration, and monitoring and reporting.
Why do managers at big firms fail to see disruptive innovations?
Managers fail to see disruptive innovations because they listen to their customers who do not initially want new disruptive technology, and the focus on the bottom line.
Sequoia Capital has many Limited Partners who invest in the firm. What is so unique about these Limited Partners?
Many, if not all, are non-profit institutions.
In 2016, _______ left his post as CEO and retained his seat as Chairman of the Board of Directors, and __________ replaced him as CEO.
Marc Pincus, Frank Gibeau
In relation to Moore's law, special price elasticity allows whole new ____ to form where things that are impossible today are not impossible tomorrow.
Markets (VR, Apple / Android Watches)
Who are we meeting with at Google? Name 2.
Marvin Chow and Richard Gingras.
Who are we meeting with at Uber?
Matthew Hearns and Patrick Twomey
What type of investment banking does Qatalyst specialize in?
Mergers and Acquisitions in the technology sector
Who are we meeting with at Airbnb?
Mike Liberatore, CFO Airbnb Payments, Inc. at Airbnb
Who is the majority owner of Fanatics and what did he think had no potential related to the retail industry? Hint: he later changed his mind.
Mike Rubin is the majority owner and he thought that the internet, specifically e-commerce, had no future potential.
Who is thredUP's core customer?
Mom shopping for herself or for her kids. More likely than not, this mom is also working and trying to balance her family/personal life with her career and has an income over $125,000. She also is more likely to use the mobile app to shop from thredUP.
Which two organizations led Uber's last fundraising round?
Morgan Stanley and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund
What is Google's largest acquisition to date, which is also regarded by many as its largest financial mistake?
Motorola Mobility
What game developer did Zynga purchase in 2014 that now creates titles like Dawn of Titans and CSR Racing 2?
NaturalMotion, acquired for 527 million dollars
What neuroscience companies have True invested in?
Neosensory, SonicSensory, Tuild, and an MIT project.
What are Equinix's competitive advantages?
Network effects in latency and Equinix marketplace, first mover advantage in geography, "best of both worlds" - the cloud, and financial industry.
What role do network effects play in thredUP?
Network effects occur when a product/service gains additional value, as more people use it. thredUP itself gains more value when more individuals send them used clothing, because this leads to them having a greater inventory and a higher likelihood of getting high quality clothing from highly valued brands. Simultaneously, customers gain more value from this too, because there is a larger inventory from them to choose from and thus they will gravitate toward thredUP.
Did Peter Bell enter entrepreneurship/VC immediately after graduating from Boston College?
No, Peter worked for EMC for 10 years before starting his first startup.
What are NPEs and what do they do?
Non-practicing entities, commonly known as patent trolls, are firms that make money by acquiring and asserting patents, rather than bringing products and services to markets.
What are some examples of limited partners?
Non-profit institutions like university endowments, foundation, and pension funds.
What is Oculus VR?
Oculus VR is a tech company specializing in virtual reality hardware and software products that was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $2.3 billion in cash and stock.
Pat Grady refers to data as the new _____.
Oil
Which of Pat Grady's investments had a recent exit?
Okta, enterprise software.
What threat is SVB facing with regards to the Dodd-Frank Act?
Once SVB reaches $50B in assets, they will be more heavily regulated.
Is a messaging service a one-sided or two-sided market?
One-sided: it has a single class of users, and you would choose the service based on how many of your contacts you could potentially reach.
thredUP is a company that has gone through many pivots before ultimately becoming what it is today. What was its original business model?
Online peer-to-peer sharing platform for men's dress shirts
What is operational effectiveness?
Operational Effectiveness refers to performing the same tasks better than rivals perform them
What self-driving car company did Uber recently purchased for $680 million dollars?
Otto
How many MAU does Spotify have as of March 2017?
Over 100 million
How much of total revenue does Spotify pay to major labels in the form of royalties?
Over 70%
What percentage of Facebook ad revenue is from Mobile?
Over 84%
What are Palantir's two products and what do they do?
Palantir Gotham and Palantir Metropolis. Gotham provides a full-text analysis with its model fundamentally being a graph and it is enterprise based. Metropolis is structured around a time series and its model is for more large scale quantitative analysis.
What are Palantir's two main software products?
Palantir Metropolis and Palantir Gotham
Name at least two industries Palantir is used in.
Palantir is in the healthcare, financial, cyber security, legal research, and defense industries.
Name one thing that Palantir's employees are required to do or not to do, or what something else interesting regarding their employment there (not including culture).
Palantir's employees must sign NDA's, cannot speak to the press, and have pay caps.
Explain Palantir's "5 Whys" philosophy.
Palantir's strategy with the "5 Whys" pertains to the fact that you can get to the root of any problem by asking yourself a question, answering it, and then ask why the answer happened. By the time that is done five times, you have found the root of the problem and can solve it.
Which music company did Uber partner with?
Pandora
What is the name of the BC alum at Sequoia Capital that we will be meeting with that is a member of the Growth Team and has headed investments in Hubspot and Okta?
Pat Grady
Which metric is Twitch ranked 4th behind Netflix, Google, and Apple, but ahead of Hulu, Facebook, and Amazon?
Peak Internet Traffic
How the network effect benefit Facebook?
People are attracted to the service because others they care about are more likely to be on Facebook than anywhere else online. And that large user base has also attracted all sorts of firms and organizations looking to connect with Facebook's masses.
Name three products of Madison Reed.
Permanent color, Root Touch Up, Color Reviving Gloss
What two Boston College alum are partners at Highland Capital Partners?
Peter Bell is in their San Francisco office, whereas Dan Nova is in their Boston office.
Name the first significant outside investor of Facebook?
Peter Thiel
Who is the founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies?
Peter Thiel
Who was Facebook's first big investor with an initial investment of $500,000?
Peter Thiel
Who are the founders of True Ventures?
Phil Black, John Burke, and Jon Callaghan.
Who are the two Apple executives we're meeting with?
Phil Schiller and Joan Hoover
Explain one of thredUP's pivots.
Pivot 1: peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing platform for men's dress shorts --> men and women's clothing swap Pivot 2: men and women's clothing swap --> kid's clothing swap Pivot 3: kid's clothing swap --> kid's consignment platform
What is Palantir Gotham?
Platform that integrates, manages, secures, and analyzes all of one's enterprise data, both structured and unstructured.
How do platforms and APIs benefit a company?
Platforms are products and services that encourage a company to integrate their own goods and services to connect. Companies achieve this by providing application program interfaces (APIs) that let third parties integrate with the companies products and services. Apple's App Store allows other companies or individuals to create apps that Apple users can download and use on their Apple products.
Other than music, what other media does Spotify feature?
Podcasts, audiobooks, language-learning playlists, comedy show recordings, and video series.
What are Peter's 5 tests for evaluating an entrepreneur?
Poor communication, not a winner (founder), poor team builder, asks for too much money before a market exists, and business potential too small
What are Intel's two biggest sources of income?
Providing chips for PCs/servers and providing chips for data centers/cloud services.
What does Qatalyst not provide that other bulge bracket investment banks provide?
Qatalyst does not participate in issuance of securities
One of Zynga's most important metrics can be remembered as the 3R's. What are they and which one do they primarily focus on?
Reach, Retention, Revenue. Zynga says that its first focus when introducing a new game is on retention (in particular Day 1 retention), because the other 2 R's will follow this.
What is REIT short for?
Real estate investment trust
Name 3 characteristics of the Summer@Highland program
Receive up to $30,000 in capital to help launch your business, free office space in one of Highland's domestic offices, teams paired with seasoned mentors, exposure to notable speakers, and at least one member of the team of up to 4 must be enrolled in college
What are the 3 subscription models Spotify offers and what services do they offer?
Regular premium: 9.99/month, family plan: 14.99/month, student: 4.99/month for 6 months. With all of these plans, users are able to listen to higher-quality, unlimited ad-free music whenever and wherever they want.
What is cloud computing?
Replacing computing resources— either an organization's or an individual's hardware or software— with services provided over the internet.
Social media policies revolve around the three R's, which are:
Representation, responsibility, and respect.
What metric is thredUP currently focused on increasing?
Retention rate
How was the idea for Airbnb conceived?
Roommates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia struggled to pay their rent in San Francisco, so to get some extra cash they set up three inflatable mattresses in their apartment when a large event was going on and charged renters $80/night with home-cooked breakfast in the morning.
What are the three major divisions of SVB Financial Group?
SVB Capital, Global Commercial Bank, SVB Private Bank
Describe Silicon Valley Bank's competitive advantage.
SVB has a diversified business portfolio, a liquid balance sheet, invests in later stage startups (which have less risk), and have a global network.
Integration with this popular CRM (customer relationship management) product serves as a competitive advantage for Talkdesk.
Salesforce
What advantage does Intel have over ARM?
Scale - pioneers do things at lower costs and are more price competitive. Intel's dominance caused IBM and AMD to sell off their chip manufacturing businesses.
What famous ecosystem of previous Sequoia portfolio company founders and academics allows Sequoia to funnel millions of dollars in new on-the-ground investments?
Scout Program
Who was the first investor in Facebook?
Sean Parker. Eventually, Peter Thiel invested too.
What assumption Frank Quattrone made about the tech industry has allowed Qatalyst to succeed?
The company's platform based on the prediction that fewer tech startups would go public and that large companies would acquire small ones to gain access to their innovations
Who are the two founders of Google?
Sergey Brin and Larry Page
What type of investing does Highland specialize in?
Series A (early)
What round of funding does Highland focus on and why?
Series A, fueled by a desire to be first large institutional investor in a firm and the desire for seat on the company's board.
Explain why Intel has switching costs in relation to its server business.
Servers run on Intel's x86 instruction set and conversion to ARM could cause bugs. Firms manufacture first for Intel.
How does Airbnb make money?
Service Fees. 3% from hosts, 6-12% from travelers, 20% from experiences.
What does Apple hope to rely on in the future?
Services
Name at least 2 notable investors of teams in the eSports industry.
Shaq, Paris Saint Germain, Miami Heat, Philadelphia 76ers, Milwaukee Bucks, Joe Montana, Alexis Ohanian (Reddit co-founder)
What observation about the hair coloring market inspired Amy Everett to start Madison Reed?
She saw a huge gap in the market. Customers could buy a box of color with unknown chemicals from a drugstore for 4.95 and apply it themselves, or spend hours and $200-300 at a salon for a higher quality product with no option in between.
What did Madison Reed CEO Amy Errett do before founding Madison Reed?
She was a venture capitalist for Maveron Ventures.
Who is the COO of Facebook?
Sheryl Sandberg
What 3 problems are the result of packing pathways closer together in chips?
Size, heat, and power
What are the four categories of Zynga games?
Social Casino, Casual, Action Strategy, and Invest Express
What does SMART stand for?
Social Media Awareness and Response Team
What is SaaS short for?
Software as a service
What is Palantir?
Software for data integration, information management, and quantitative analytics. It discovers trends, relationships and anomalies, including predictive analytics.
What are some of the companies that Fanatics competes with? What competitor did Mike Rubin critique for its sometimes inauthentic apparel?
Some of its competitors are: Nike, Steiner, Dick's Sporting Goods, Adidas, Lids, Nike, and Amazon. Mike Rubin criticized Amazon for accidentally selling inauthentic apparel. His interview is in the readings.
Which company did Spotify acquire in 2014 and how has it revolutionized the music industry?
Spotify acquired EchoNest, and has used their data analytics and intelligence tools to recommend new music users are most likely to actually enjoy based on their listening data.
What advantages does Spotify have over Apple Music?
Spotify has the first mover advantage, and has used that to successfully expand their market share. Unlike Apple Music, Spotify has more paid subscribers, created high switching costs, and has apps available on all platforms.
How does Spotify make money?
Spotify makes money one of two ways. The first is through ads when they have a nonpaying customer. The second is through charging users for a premium membership that does not have ads.
Despite artists like Taylor Swift boycotting Spotify, many artists are incredibly excited about the growing prevalence of streaming in the music industry and the technology that Spotify uses. Why is that?
Spotify uses its technologies to pair artists with listeners. Streaming allows for a whole new world of audiences to be opened up to artists because of the reality that Spotify aims to introduce the best music to the most ideal listeners. Spotify gives the example that if there was a band that would only appeal to 2 people in the entire world, Spotify wants to be able to allow for those 2 people to discover the band.
Fanatics CEO Doug Mack definitely has lots of experience working in e-commerce. What are the three principles that he mentioned during a keynote address at Shop.org Digital Summit in Philadelphia?
Stay agile, know your fan, reward innovation.
During investment evaluation, what does True Ventures believe as the most important ingredient to a startup's success?
The entrepreneur.
What is staying power and why do network effects lead to a longer staying power?
Staying power refers to the long-term viability of a product/service. Network effects increase the value of a product and thus create switching costs for customers that will prevent them from wanting to switch to another product/service, thus causing them to want to stay with the product for as long as possible.
What is the name of the company that Peter Bell co-founded and as CEO, took public?
StorageNetworks
What is strategic positioning?
Strategic positioning refers to performing different activities from those of rivals, or the same activities in a different way.
Twitch's success is due to the two-sided network effects between:
Streamers and the community
Name 2 of WePay's competitors.
Stripe, PayPal, MangoPay, Square, Braintree (acquired by PayPal), Authorize.net (acquired by Visa)
What product line is Apple advertising to investors now as a future growth channel?
Subscription services
Why did Equinix convert to a REIT?
Substantial tax savings
Who are the BC alum we're going to be meeting?
Sue Igoe, Head of Global Software and Tech Partnerships. Shane Tobin, Head of Creative Insights and Activations (was the VP of Business Development at EchoNest), Charae Tongg, Android Engineer.
Who is the current CEO of Google?
Sundar Pichai
Who wrote a blog about her poor experience as a female engineer at Uber?
Susan Fowler
When and where did Spotify launch?
Sweden in 2005
When do switching costs exist?
Switching exist when consumers incur an expense to move from one product or service to another
What is the product of Talkdesk?
Talkdesk provides a cloud-based contact center
What is Spotify's relationship with major music labels?
Tenuous, because most of Spotify's revenue is funneled right back to these labels, up to 70% of their total revenue. Spotify is also the major player in disrupting the music industry as these major labels don't want their music to be offered for free without any catch.
What is the "market standard" for VC's to personally invest in their fund size?
The "market standard" is for VC's personally invest 1% of the fund size, and investors contribute the remaining 99%.
What is the Fanatics affiliate program? What prospects does the company look for in its potential affiliates?
The Fanatics affiliate program enables bloggers and social media users who are passionate about sports to promote Fanatics merchandise for a 10% commission. Fanatics looks for bloggers and social media users who have lots of attraction/following.
How would you describe True Ventures' stance on Hardware and what are some examples of their involvement?
The Hardware Revolution trend is a marriage of machine and software. Hardware is the foundation for software and data and is the black diamond of startups. True Ventures has been early and big investor in the hardware and device wave exemplified by investments in Fitbit, Marketbot, 3D Robotics, and Pelotion.
What recent product did Phil Schiller and other top executives recently do an informal media session about?
The Mac Pro
What are the two teams that Sequoia Capital uses to evaluate investments, both early stage and more mature startups?
The Venture Team (early-stage) and the Growth Team (more-mature)
What is social graph?
The ability to collect, express, and leverage the connections between the site's users. The global mapping of everyone and how they're related.
What is crowdsourcing?
The act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.
What is the fast follower problem? Name an example.
The fast follower problem exists when savvy rivals watch a pioneer's efforts, learn from their successes and missteps, then enter the market quickly with a comparable or superior product at a lower cost before the first mover can dominate. An example would be first mover, TiVo, who seemed to have a revolutionizing new technology, but was soon trumped by rival devices offered by cable and satellite companies who offered the recording technology along with their television subscriptions. TiVo could not rival this packaged deal, as consumers didn't want to pay for two separate devices from two different companies.
What is a threat to SVB?
The financial cyclical is cyclical (down over 80% in '08); banks entering the industry
What is Frank Quattrone's background?
The founder and Executive Chairman of Qatalyst. Step down in 2016 as CEO. Spearheaded the technology programs at Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse.
In what way did Apple try to compete against smartphone manufacturers offering lower-priced devices?
The iPhone 5C, which was sold at a lower price and had older-generation hardware
How is Spotify losing money by delaying their IPO?
The longer Spotify delays its IPO, the more money they continue to lose at dramatic rates. As they go into negotiations with major record labels for new royalty contracts, it remains to be seen how much of the revenue is going to be given to the labels and how much is kept in the company. Spotify's $1-billion debt financing with investors TPG and Dragoneer in 2016 is contingent on Spotify going public. This continued delay and no prospect of an IPO does not bode well for Spotify.
How does Facebook's new messenger ChatBot help smaller businesses? What company are we visiting that has successfully implemented this ChatBot?
The messenger ChatBot can be used by smaller businesses with less resources as a tool to automate their customer services, thus allowing them to provide a better customer experience despite having less resources. We can see the value of this ChatBot in Madison Reed's Madi.
What is a Fab?
The place where Intel manufacturers its products.
Describe two-sided Network Effects and give an example.
There are two distinct groups of users. More numbers from one group attract more numbers from the other group. Uber with drivers and passengers and Ebay with buyers and sellers are examples.
How are Uber and Airbnb similar?
They are both part of the sharing economy and have similar market strategies.
Where is Spotify headquartered and where is the biggest market?
They are headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden but their largest market is the US where they are currently expanding offices in New York City.
How is Airbnb integrated in the Chinese market?
They are integrated into WeChat and Alibaba. Moreover, they are pushing very hard through their Chinese rebranding.
Why are large companies often slow to adjust to disruptive technologies?
They are often slow to adjust because they do what shareholder dependent firms should do: listen to their customers and focus on the bottom line
What is true about funding series?
They are typically syndicates; very rarely does one company contribute 100% of a round of funding.
How does Madison Reed help their customers find the right products they need?
They have a 7 question color-match quiz on their website, and a color-recognition chatbot - Madi, to help their customer to find the right color.
How much has Airbnb raised in fundraising? And what is the breakdown?
They have raised ~$4.4 billion. ~$1 billion was in debt financing.
What are the advantages of Madison Reed comparing to some traditional ways to color hairs?
They provides high quality natural ingredients without harsh chemicals, and it's much cheaper than hair salon.
What do Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg all have in common in regards to taking their companies public?
They retained majority control of the firm's voting rights. Zuckerberg holds 3/5 of Facebook's seats on its board of directors and has full control over any decisions made.
What is Fanatics' competitive advantage?
They sell officially licensed merchandise; their competitors who sell knock-off products cannot compete with the authenticity of Fanatics' products.
How did Airbnb raise money (bootstrapped) in 2008 during the Democratic National Convention?
They sold 500 cereal boxes at $40 each. This totaled $30,000 in revenue.
In what way did WePay pivot during its initial stages?
They started out focusing on peer-to-peer payments (like Venmo) and pivoted to instead focus on e-commerce payment platforms.
How does the 2/20 rule incentivize VC's to underperform?
Through the 2/20 rule, VC's pocket 2 percent of the fund that they carry, regardless of how many investments they make or the success of these investments. As a result, VCs earn a generous amount of personal income from fee compensation based on the size of the fund they raise, not the quality of their investments.
Name the current CEO, who is also one of the co-founders of Talkdesk?
Tiago Paiva
Who is the CEO of Apple?
Tim Cook
What is Airbnb's mission?
To connect the world and allow anyone to "belong anywhere."
Who are the three key venture partners of True and their business?
Tony Conrad, about.me; Om Malik, GigaOm; Toni Schneider, Automattic (WordPress).
Who is the CEO of Uber?
Travis Kalanick
True/False: A VC Fund can be successful with just one large exit, even with dozens of other failures
True
True/False: As of Q2 2016, Google has the largest year over year (YOY) revenue growth in cloud infrastructure services (IaaS, PaaS, Hosted Private Cloud)?
True
True/False: In WhatsApp deal (Acquired by Facebook), walks away with $3.5 billion, a 60-fold return on its $58 million investment.
True
True/False: Phil Schiller is now in charge of the App Store.
True
True/False: The "True" in True Ventures means alignment.
True
True/False: The majority of Sequoia Capitals LP's are non-profit organizations
True
True/False: Virtual Reality (VR) is the use of computer technology to create a simulated environment. Instead of viewing a screen in front of them, users are immersed and able to interact with 3D worlds.
True
True/False: WePay is an online payments service provider that went through seed-accelerator Y Combinator.
True
True/False: customers of disruptive technologies care about different features and attributes than the incumbent's customers
True
True/False: when a merger or acquisition has a predominantly cash structure, it signifies that the acquiring firm is very confident in the target firm and it's projected future cash flows.
True - For public firms, if the acquiring firm recommends some sort of stock swap, this is likely a red flag that signals it is overpriced in the market. Additionally, if debt is used to finance the acquisition this may also be seen as a sign of distrust.
Name True Ventures' two fellowship programs and briefly describe them.
True Entreprenur Corps: undergraduate summer internship; Priya Haji Fellowship program: targets new college graduate interested in technology and startups, particularly women.
Name one investor of Madison Reed.
True Ventures
Why does True Ventures focus on investing during a firm's seed and series A funding rounds?
True Ventures aims to be the first institutional investor in a start-up, and it was founded to support early stage founders and their teams.
What are the three things True Ventures evaluates when deciding on investments, and which is the most important to them?
True Ventures looks at the team, the product, and the market in evaluation. It prioritizes the team because of possible business pivots.
True/False: Amazon has never made a larger acquisition than Twitch outside of its vertical?
True, although Amazon acquired Zappos for $1.2B v. the 970M spent on Twitch, the Zappos acquisition was seen as a reactionary buy within the market to squash a competitor that was winning. The Twitch acquisition was outside of its traditional market, but offered its core business notable synergies.
True/False: Apple has more cash available to them than the US government.
True, in 2014 Forbes reported that Apple has twice as much cash as the US government.
True/False: Most customer shop on thredUP using their mobile app.
True. 71% customer use mobile.
What industries other than video gaming is Twitch attempting to break into?
Twitch IRL and Twitch creative are attempting to reach out to a broader demographic and attempt to break into a more creative streaming and blogging world.
What "social experiment" by Twitch went viral in February 2014, reaching over 6.5 million total views in five days?
Twitch Plays Pokémon
What premium Twitch service is included in an active Amazon Prime subscription?
Twitch Prime
How does Twitch make money?
Twitch mostly makes money off of ad revenue, but also makes money off of subscriptions, selling games, and donations.
Out of the over 200 pitches that Sequoia Capital hears a month, how many investments do they typically invest in?
Two
What is two-sided market? Give an example
Two-sided markets are network markets that comprise two distinct categories of participant, both of which that are needed to deliver value for the network to work. e.g. video game console owners and developers of video game
What are Twitch's competitive advantages?
Two-sided network effects, switching costs, viral marketing, and integration into other platforms (PS4).
What are Silicon Valley Bank's global locations?
US, UK, Ireland, Israel, and China
Why does the taxi industry have a problem with Uber, specifically with driver eligibility?
Uber is outcompeting the taxi industry through its intuitive, mobile platform. That Uber drivers do not have medallions upsets the taxi industry especially since well-established taxi companies have paid a lot of money in the past for medallions.
When Uber first started, what was their only riding option?
UberBLACK
What was Uber originally called?
UberCab
What is the prototype of Uber?
UberCab. It's a Black car service that would pick you up through the app or a text message. It's initially just for Travis, Garett, and their friends.
Uber just launched a service in Boston. What is it?
UberEats
What is the name of Uber's cheapest riding option?
UberPOOL
Name at least two partnerships Fanatics has.
Under Armour, MLB, and NBA.
What are some of the switching costs involved when switching from Spotify to one of their competitors?
User history in creating curated playlists, inputing one's credit card again, saved playlists, learning how the competitors' products work.
In the gaming content space, Twitch has lower _____ than Youtube, but greater _____.
Viewership, revenues
What are Zynga's two revenue drivers?
Virtual goods economy and advertising
What other companies has Madison Reed drawn comparisons to and why?
Warby Parker because it's high quality but affordable, and Dollar Shave Club because it capitalizes on the repetitive nature of hair-coloring.
Who is currently suing Uber and Otto over a self-driving car IP dispute?
Waymo, the self-driving car division of Alphabet
WePay's key features of fraud protection?
WePay Veda and Machine Learning algorithms
What two portfolio companies of Highland will we also be visiting?
WePay and thredUP
What type of company is WePay?
WePay is an online payment service provider that offers a white-label solution (WePay Clear) for their platform customers.
When you sell used clothing to thredUP, what is the difference between being paid upfront versus consignment?
Whether you will be paid upfront or as consignment for your clothing, depends on the perceived value of the clothing. thredUP analyzes historical pricing data to determine the optimal prices for its clothing. Generally, if an item is worth less than $60, then you will be paid upfront between 10-40% of the price thredUP will sell it for. If the item is worth $60 or more, then it will be sold on consignment and individuals can bid for the clothing, and you can be paid up to 80% of the price that the item is eventually sold for on thredUP.
Why would a firm prefer venture debt compared to equity capital?
Why would a firm prefer venture debt compared to equity capital?
What is the name of the company that Intel acquired in 2009, and is where BC Alum Keith Shea now works, also what does this company do?
Wind River is a leader in embedded software for intelligent connected systems. They focus on IoT for industrial, automotive, defense, and aerospace industries.
Through what new product does Twitch plan to expand to a new market?
With Twitch IRL, the company plans to target more relaxed and creative customers looking to share everyday events (the irony is, this is how Twitch started, with Justin.tv).
What start-up incubator does Sequoia Capital often use to source deals?
Y Combinator
What are the three ways that you can use your payout from thredUP, and how is this related to Supply and Demand?
You can receive your payout from thredUP as store credit on thredUP, a donation to a cause, or transfer the cash to PayPal. This is based on the forces of Supply and Demand, as thredUP is trying to turn sellers into buyers in order to make supply and demand more equal. If thredUP has too many sellers and not enough buyers, then this oversupply of inventory will drive down their prices, thus leading to less sales revenue for thredUP.
What is Twitch's main audience, and why has this become so profitable?
Young male viewers- Twitch can charge about 85% more for ads shown to this audience.
Name at least 3 of Twitch's competitors in the video game streaming space.
Youtube Gaming, Azubu, ESL, MLG
What is Ztracks and why is it important?
Ztracks is Zynga's in-house data analytics package, which lets them measure performance measures like day 1 retention, virtual goods revenue, and installations per day. Analyze the success of these metrics allows Zynga to identify and adjust any problems within the game design, from the first time user experience to the pricing of the virtual goods economy.
Upon Facebook's IPO in 2012, what 3rd party company was responsible for 12% of their revenue?
Zynga
What percentage of deals does Palantir walk away from due to them being unethical? a. 10% b. 15% c. 20% d. 25%
c. 20%
What autonomous driving company did Highland recently invest in?
nuTonomy
What is Fanatics competitive advantage over other sports apparel companies?
officially licensed shirts, exclusive partnerships, expanding tech, data analytics to predict supply and demand
Give an example of how thredUP uses social media to reach its target audience.
thrEDIT Blog (Advice, tips, and style guides targeted toward moms), #badassmoms campaign, #secondhandfirst (environmentally conscious millenials)
What role does big data play in thredUP? What is an example of how it is used?
thredUP is considered a mash-up between secondhand clothing and big data. As an online business, the company collects much data on its users and translates this data into metrics -the foundation of thredUP- in order to evaluate how they are doing and figure out how they can succeed. Data is also greatly being used to deliver personalized experiences and thereby increase customer satisfaction and retention rates, such as through 'My thredUP', which uses explicit (e.g. purchase history) and implicit data (e.g. browsing history, what items you click on but don't buy) to recommend clothing items to customers.
What caused thredUP to pivot and alter its business model so many times?
thredUP pivoted for many reasons. Its first two pivots from an online peer-to-peer sharing platform for men's dress shirts to a clothing swap for men's and women's clothing to a focus on children were due to having insufficient demand in its first two tries and finding greater demand in the children's secondhand clothing market. Its pivot from a clothing swap to its consignment platform was driven by a desire to offer a better customer experience, as its clothing swap platform had issues with quality control, efficiency, transparency, and was more inconvenient for customers.
What are four critical characteristics of resources for them to yield sustainable competitive advantage?
valuable; rare; imperfectly imitable; non-substitutable
How much cash does Apple have on hand?
~$250 billion. Most of it is overseas, which causes Apple to raise debt in the US.