20VC: Tom Tunguz on Why Now Is The Best Time To Be Investing and The Effect of Late Stage Valuations on Startups

Tom Tunguz is a Partner @ Redpoint Ventures, where he has invested in Axial, Dremio, Expensify, Electric Imp, Looker, and ThredUP. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google’s AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. Tom is also the author of the world famous blog and newsletter which can be found at http://tomtunguz.com

We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here!

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In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Tom made his way into startups and the investing industry?

2.) What does the huge drop in late stage saas valuations mean for the early guys? Does Tom expect them to hunker down? Take more time? Spend less cash?

3.) In recent years with the likes of Zenefits, we have seen the rise of Free Saas Enabled Marketplaces, why have we seen this rise, what are the benefits of adopting this strategy? Does the lack of predictability and lower (30%) gross margin not generate concern towards the model?

4.) Where does Tom see room for real innovation in SaaS? Is Tom excited about mobile enterprise?

5.) Question from Javier Soltero @ Microsoft: How have you approached developing your ‘personal’ brand and how that has made an impact in your development as an investor?

6.) Question from Eric ver Ploeg (episode 70) and Tak Lo (Episode 37): Where does Tom generate the ideas for articles and what does the idea creation process look like?’ What does the scheduling look like to churn our such high quality content on a daily occurrence?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:

Tom’s Fave Book: Narcissus and Goldmund

Tom’s Fave Blog: Saastr, David Skok

Tom’s Most Recent Investment: Dremio

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