The Peel with Turner Novak

Nakul Mandan is the founder of Audacious Ventures. Prior to Audacious, he was a partner at Lightspeed, joining from Battery, which he joined in ‘09 in the middle of the financial crisis while living in India. This conversation explores his journey immigrating to Silicon Valley and building an early stage venture firm from the ground up. We get into why most VCs aren’t helpful with recruiting at the zero to one stage, his thesis on starting an early stage venture firm to help founders hire A+ teams, a crash course on early stage recruiting and building a sales team, and how COVID hit right after he left Lightspeed to raise Audacious Fund 1. Timestamps:(00:00) Intro(03:43) Evolution of VC platform teams(09:53) How Audacious runs in-house recruiting processes(15:16) The reason large firms can’t help with Seed stage recruiting(17:06) Immigrating from India to the US mid-financial crisis(21:59) Silicon Valley's secret weapon(25:59) The opportunity to start a recruiting-focused Seed firm(30:14) Raising Audacious $90m Fund 1 in April of 2020(36:58) The new guard of Seed firms(39:23) Why $50-75m is the minimum viable institutional fund size(41:48) How to work with the best founders(45:30) Navigating deal dynamics, term sheets, and valuations(52:24) The two hardest parts about starting your own fund(54:32) Lessons applied raising Audacious $125m Fund 2 in 2023(58:46) Evolving from a PMF-first to Founder-first investor(01:02:09) Five traits of force of nature founders(01:07:05) How to build an A+ team(01:11:46) The importance of backchanneling(01:13:54) Why everyone thinks they’re a good people reader(01:14:35) Two most common mistakes in recruiting(01:20:59) Determining urgency of a customer’s problem(01:22:55) Hiring and scaling your first sales team(01:25:55) Why marketing is the hardest role to hire for(01:31:59) What good sales people look like(01:35:43) How to move up market + how to do pilots(01:43:40) Why Nakul admires Rafael Nadal Referenced:Audacious: ⁠https://www.audacious.co/ ⁠ Nakul’s immigration journey: ⁠https://www.nakulmandan.com/blog/2024/an-immigrant-living-the-american-dream⁠ Force of nature founders: ⁠https://www.nakulmandan.com/blog/2024/traits-i-look-for-in-founders⁠ Early GTM hiring: ⁠https://www.nakulmandan.com/blog/2023/initial-gtm-hiring-for-saas-startups⁠ Follow Nakul:Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/nakul⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/nakulmandan⁠ Follow Turner:Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: ⁠https://www.thespl.it⁠

Jenny Fleiss is the Co-founder of Rent the Runway, and more recently started Roll Rider with her three kids. We get into the early insights that led to Rent the Runway, building the company with no fashion or tech background, fundraising advice, what she’s thinking about the future of AI and commerce, and the latest company she’s building with her kids, Roll Rider. For full show notes, visit: https://highlightai.com/share/9bc59c07-05ab-41aa-b37e-f35a7c92092d  Timestamps:(00:00) Intro(05:31) How social media was Rent the Runway’s first tailwind(07:21) Being early to sustainable fashion(09:21) Starting the company at HBS in 2008(12:36) Launching with no fashion or tech background(14:49) The three biggest early surprises(18:44) Using “show don’t tell” to fundraise(20:06) Why customer social proof was so important(23:04) Spending only 10% of revenue on marketing(25:12) Getting the NYT to cover their launch(29:43) Early mistakes(31:29) Re-building the product a few weeks before launch(33:11) Why building their own logistics was so important(38:59) Subscriptions, retail, and other key product decisions(45:15) How the internet makes it harder to shop(49:30) Building conversational commerce at Walmart(53:48) Lessons from starting a company with her kids(58:38) Favorite startups in AI and commerceReferenced:Rent the Runway: https://www.renttherunway.com/ NYT’s Launch Coverage: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/technology/09runway.htmlCheck out Roll Rider: https://rollrider.com/ Use code TURNER15 for 15% offFollow Jenny:Twitter: https://x.com/Jenny_RTR LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-fleiss-18577314Follow Turner:Twitter: https://x.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/ 

Daryna Kulya is the Co-founder of OpenPhone, the world’s best business phone This episode is a masterclass on startup marketing, chronicling the first six years of OpenPhone, how they acquired their first customers, and inside all the different channels they used to scale the business to over 100k customers, including FB Groups, Reddit, SEO, and cold outbound.We also get into why founder-led content is so important today, and why design is a crucial core competency. For full show notes, visit: https://highlightai.com/share/28b95226-9936-4ae9-882d-6c68a1b578d5  Timestamps:(00:00) Intro(02:10) OpenPhone’s new API launch(06:41) Why a better business phone is a big deal(13:18) Immigrating from Ukraine to the US and building OpenPhone(15:39) Hacking a custom business phone(25:29) How OpenPhone got its first customers from Facebook Groups(33:02) Tricks for unlocking word of mouth(39:11) Transitioning from free to paid users(43:05) How OpenPhone cracked word of mouth on Reddit(46:29) OpenPhone’s YC experience(49:01) Why the Seed round was hard to raise(53:49) Using Slack to aggregate all customer feedback across the internet(57:38) How YC helped redefine their ICP(01:01:33) Tactics for sending cold emails(01:06:24) How to get and benefit from press(01:12:18) Daryna’s “behind the scenes” approach to founder-led content(01:16:26) Using long-tail keywords to kickstart an SEO strategy in 2020(01:23:05) When to do founder-led content vs SEO(01:28:38) How your customers should pull you up-market(01:30:18) Why OpenPhone cares about design Referenced: OpenPhone: https://openphone.com/ Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/ Follow Daryna: Twitter: https://twitter.com/darynakulya LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darynakulya Follow Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/

Lisa Rapuano outperformed the market 15 years in a row in the 90’s and 2000’s. We go deep on how she did it, including early investments in AOL, Dell, and owning 24% of Amazon in 2002. She shares what she learned from Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell, what makes a good investor, plus her experience as a startup CFO and how it influenced how she thinks about investing. For full show notes, visit: https://highlightai.com/share/883f2cc9-9771-4331-9a42-6ae236f50344 Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (03:18) Growing up middle class while dad worked at NASA (12:31) Moving to Baltimore to work for Bill Miller (18:12) What Lisa learned from Bill (19:41) How value investing changed over the last 30 years (26:40) Investing in internet stocks in the 90’s and 00’s (29:50) Thinking a 13x win on AOL in 1996 would be the biggest of her career (37:33) Teaching Barry Diller about the internet (41:30) How Dell reinvented PC manufacturing and created a negative cash conversion cycle (46:46) How Amazon survived the Dot Com Crash (51:53) Buying 24% of Amazon in 2002 (53:15) Why companies get the investors they deserve (57:22) What Lisa learned from Jeff Bezos (1:04:31) Lessons from raising too much money (1:07:57) Running her own fund from 2006-2016 (1:13:32) Why fees in asset management are too high (1:15:20) Joining Facet out of retirement 2017 (1:20:20) What she learned about investing from operating (1:23:47) Why women are better investors than men (1:26:43) How to hire outlier candidates (1:35:06) Why no one can be the next Warren Buffett (1:39:54) When to sell your winners Follow Lisa:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-rapuano/ Follow Turner:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovakLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/