This Week in Startups

Slice CEO Ilir Sela answers questions from founders: tips on selling into scattered markets (like Mom & Pop shops), COVID's impact on the restaurant industry, scaling Slice's $43M Series C & more! Join the TWiST Slack: https://launchevents.typeform.com/to/kLq5Bi Check out Slice: https://slicelife.com/ Follow Ilir: https://twitter.com/IlirSela 1:05 Knyck: You mentioned Slice being a platform to provide the technology and buying power of scaled companies to small pizza businesses. Do you think that mom and pop stores in other industries like retail or services could use a similar platform, or is this type of structure specifically fitted for the economics of the pizza industry? 3:32 Michael: How do you see the restaurant industry changing in NYC post-COVID, and where do you see the growth opportunities to create a new type of offering? 5:17 Chris: I’m building a loyalty program startup for restaurants. We’re specifically targeting non-chain ethnic restaurants and customers who may have ethnic nostalgia for cultural foods. What do you think the opportunity looks like nationwide for this demographic? Are most restaurants using mainstream food ordering apps already, or is there a large segment of ethnic restaurants who are off-grid? 9:01 Graham: Mom & pops are such a scattered customer base. Can you shed some light on how you started to get momentum in the early days as a small business yourself? Did early customers have any trust issues with something as important as payment? 14:22 Laura: What is the biggest point of friction you have with adding new pizzerias to Slice? Do you experience many/any pizzerias that don't see the benefit of joining the Slice community? If so, how do you handle these? 18:50 Henry: Have you thought of doing the same for other ethnic food restaurants like Chinese, Indian, Thai etc. and what challenges do you foresee? What would be your approach to tackle? 22:04 Matt: With all the vacant retail that's about to become available, have you thought about helping pizza brands expand into ghost kitchens or helping existing pizzerias launch virtual brands (a la Chuck E Cheese)? 24:33 Ian/Andrew (similar questions): What is this funding round helping your business and platform do for the Pizza shops and their customers? How do you plan on scaling your $43M Series C? How have your plans changed since Slice has gone mostly remote? 31:10 Charles: Please expand on the apparent disparity in pricing across platforms/instore. How can food often be cheaper through a middleman? Our family often finds the most frictionless experience for our regular pizza place is to call in as it's often a single dish. How can this be simplified further? One push pizza? 37:58 Matt: Can you speak to "why pizza” and not Chinese food? At the end of the day, are you limiting yourself by picking one category? 40:32 Mahreen: Curious to know more about Slice's marketing. What marketing channels have been most effective for your platform (in acquiring both customers/new businesses)? 42:14 Ian: What response did you get from companies to sign up, was the take up easy? Or did you have to convince them in a specific sales pitch, how did you frame it? 43:51 Presh: You seem to have a curated following list on Twitter, curious to know your favorite accounts to follow that have impacted your business thinking.. top 5 accounts you recommend following? 45:31 Presh: Where does Slice need to be in order to see an IPO? 47:31 Ian: What are your plans to develop your branding and web/mobile app

0:51 Jason intros Zach Coelius & Sam Parr 2:28 Barstool Sports vs. Call Her Daddy 6:49 Penn National Gaming stock soaring, Dave Portnoy winning this controversy 13:17 SoftBank reports $17.7B annual loss, worst figures in 39-year history 17:19 Does SoftBank's involvement typically include a loss of focus for the founder? 21:43 TikTok’s parent co. Bytedance trades at a $140B valuation, poaches Disney’s former Head of Streaming as new CEO of TikTok 25:08 Was Kevin Mayer wrong to take this role? Are TikTok's recommendation algorithms the best in the world? 28:52 How do Chinese companies grow so rapidly? 32:06 Facebook launches Shops, is Zuck trying to kill e-commerce giants? Zach on his experience with Facebook slowly killing his business 40:06 How does Facebook's product organization work? 47:13 Jason on the future of social networks 49:56 Amazon potentially acquiring AMC Theatres, could this be an Amazon Prime upsell? 53:52 Everyone gives their best idea for Amazon's first move after buying AMC 59:59 Zach on his quarantine deal flow

Angel investor Jason Calacanis (Uber, Calm, Robinhood) interviews the world’s greatest founders, operators, investors and innovators. Get an insider’s look into venture capital, learn how to start and scale your own startup, and ride the cutting edge of technology in today's headlines and beyond.

0:35 Jason intros Capital Factory CEO & Founder Josh Baer 1:47 What is Capital Factory in its current iteration? How are they transitioning to remote? Loss of serendipity of random in-person connections 5:38 Josh takes Jason through the SXSW cancellation 10:29 Issues conceptualizing COVID's impact 15:35 Transitioning to rolling cohorts & optimizing their Slack community 21:36 Capital Factory's standard deal terms, why founders join, how returns are divvied up 27:30 Starting Capital Factory during the last economic downturn, how millennials will react to this crisis 30:45 Josh describes his 5 buckets of how companies are weathering the COVID storm 35:09 Remote work's effect on startup collaboration 41:01 COVID's effect on children, getting back to work 47:37 What investing mistakes has Josh made, and how has he learned from them? 56:00 What founder traits does Josh look for? 59:14 Moving to Austin, SXSW history

0:31 Jason intros today's news roundtable guests Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal 6:54 Clubhouse raises Series A from a16z at a $100M valuation pre-launch 11:12 How do $2M in secondary shares play into Clubhouse's situation? 14:08 How Clubhouse achieved "VC-Market Fit" 18:49 Was this investment worth it considering massive former outliers in the consumer social space (Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat)? Or did a16z pay too high of a price? 26:08 Bull/bear cases for founders selling secondary shares pre-launch 33:29 What impact did raising $100M for Mahalo pre-launch have on Jason? 37:18 Joe Rogan to Spotify, guess the acquisition price & macro-impact on the podcast industry 46:09 How massive is this for Spotify's position in the podcast industry? Did Apple drop the ball? 51:28 Jason to Dara: Uber should buy Dominos 52:16 How much podcast market share will Spotify have in the coming years? Will this be viewed as the landmark deal? 57:03 Uber layoffs, potential GrubHub acquisition, does the food delivery business model work? 1:04:57 Why the on-demand food delivery industry has a product-market-price fit issue, should life-long bureaucrats impact capitalist policy? 1:12:03 Who emerges victorious from the food delivery dog fight? 1:15:28 How being too reliant on one revenue stream could kill many ad-based media publications 1:24:38 Facebook's GIPHY acquisition 1:25:55 Twitter thread by GIPHY crowdfunding investor who never received their return, why Syndicate/Crowdfunding leads need to stand up for their investors to downstream firms THREAD: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1262574661239312384.html 1:37:20 How GIPHY's weak relationship with their DAUs led to little negotiating leverage 1:39:05 Predictions for Clubhouse's eventual business model

Hustle Fund Co-Founder & General Partner Elizabeth Yin answers 50 questions from founders!

Range CEO & Co-Founder Dan Pupius answers questions from founders: meeting & collaborating with Evan Williams, divvying up time while building a remote team, product development advice, benefits of co-founders & more Join the TWiST Slack: https://launchevents.typeform.com/to/kLq5Bi Check out Range: https://www.range.co/ Questions: 0:50 Laura: Interested in learning more about what made you want to build a company that focused on remote work? Do you personally find it challenging not to be in the same physical space as your team/the companies you work for? 2:46 Knyck: What advice would you give around developing and sticking to a product development roadmap as a first-time founder? What’s a good way to establish and calibrate sprint lengths when looking at various aspects of the build? 5:48 Henry: What are best practices around building a tight mission-driven culture when working remotely given people are not interacting face to face physically on a daily basis and focus may be impaired? 8:10 Kevin: Have you received any downstream investor interest since the start of mass quarantine across the US? Do investors see this as an opportunity? 8:57 Ciara: Can you share a little about where you want to be in 18-24 months with Range? How are you planning on scaling and what does your product roadmap look like? 10:51 Nick/Presh: How did you meet Evan Williams, what’s the story of you leaving Google for Medium, and what are some amazing insights/lessons you learned from working with him? What makes him stand out as a founder? 13:41 James: Really like the use of daily check-ins and achievement tracking within Range to keep people on track. How can we encourage these actions in important areas outside of work, where people aren't directly incentivized/forced to do so (fitness, eating, learning)? 15:52 Charles: What do you look for in a co-founder and what advice would you give to founders looking for one? Do they even need to? Also, Marmite, love it or hate it? 18:23 Lizette: What should self-funded startups be thinking about right now and 24-36 months out? 20:45 Sean: Any tips on joining a (small) tech team as a new leader? Especially fully remote? 23:24 Amanda: How did Google change in the 7 years you were there in terms of culture and product roadmap? What was it like when you joined and when you left? 25:41 Ian: How has being an Industrial designer and software developer given you insights for Range and remote working? Are you a leader or a co-founder, can you be both. 28:58 Ian: What are people expecting from a question about "culture", what are they expecting others to give them. For me, If you don't know what culture you want, you simply don't know what you want or where you are going. 32:20 Sanford: How do you split up your day starting a remote company? Do you have days when you do certain work? 34:36 Jason: What do we lose by being remote and how do we get it back if we stay remote? 37:25 Nick: You said you met Evan Williams at The Grove, what’s your go-to meal? (My favorite breakfast burrito in SF)

0:42 Jason intros SOSV's Sean O'Sullivan 4:19 How is operating in China during COVID? 5:22 Origin of SOSV, thoughts on in-person accelerators over remote accelerators, why hardware/life-science accelerators need in-person cohorts 9:02 Sean describes SOSV's typical deal terms, unique follow-on strategy & cohort size 14:27 What stage company are SOSV accelerators looking for? Does it vary by industry? 17:58 Sean describes SOSV portfolio company Memphis Meats & how they utilize bioreactors to create cell-based meats 23:06 When will we see plant/cell-based meat being cheaper than the real thing? 29:25 Will the issue of food-availability will be solved in our lifetime? 33:16 Will modern food science revolutionize taste & what is the holy-grail food that will be produced? 42:15 What is being done in the ingredients space? 48:58 How is running an accelerator in China different than running one in the US? 53:39 Embracing hardware, thoughts on Hardware-as-a-Service 1:00:44 Micro-terraforming

0:36 Jason shares thoughts on his portfolio activity, getting back to work, leadership & more 4:20 Jason intros Slice Founder Ilir Sela 7:14 How has Slice been helping local pizzerias and front-line workers during the pandemic? https://sliceouthunger.org/pandemicpizza 9:12 What are the economics of an average privately-owned local pizzeria? How are the majority fairing during COVID-19? 13:24 What is Ilir building at Slice? What is their "reverse-franchise model" that helps local pizzerias compete with Dominos & other large chains? 15:32 What is the user-experience on Slice? 18:49 Who is Slice's average customer & how are their pizzerias handling the virus in 3 segments 29:10 Raising a $40M+ Series C during COVID pandemic & leaning on long-term relationships 32:49 Viral GrubHub invoice response - valid or overblown? Unit economics of delivery apps & how Slice's fees compare to GrubHub, DoorDash, UberEats & more 40:12 Huge delivery fees creating the need for two different menus (with higher prices on third-party platforms), how Dominos digitizing their order volume created maximum efficiency & allowed them to keep the same prices for over a decade 45:28 What is Ilir planning on doing with Slice's excess office space, how will the pandemic effect in-person work going forward? 50:10 Which groups of employees perform better under isolation? How is Slice helping employees deal with working remotely? How is New York responding to the crisis, and what will reopening look like (hybrid offices)? 1:06:53 Do business leaders have a responsibility to go through the testing process to understand how to help employees get tested efficiently?

0:56 Jason intros Keith Rabois and checks in on his quarantine, Zoom's heightened exhaustion factor & more 5:46 What will the lasting impact of COVID be on Silicon Valley & the startup funding landscape? 8:18 How the early 2000's dot-com bust paved way for a generation of new founders & why the PayPal mafia of outsiders thrived in chaos & became the establishment 14:23 What has happened to intellectual debate during COVID-19? What are first principle thinkers and why are they important to problem-solving? 20:53 Is domain expertise overrated? 22:39 Keith's on his pinned tweet about his perceived recipe for startup success 26:50 In which verticals did Keith find outliers using his low-NPS/fragmented/vertical solution strategy? 32:15 History on US relationship with China, has Trump been right on China threat, should US try and bring manufacturing back from China? 44:41 China's involvement with whistleblowers, benefits of litigation knowledge as a VC, world's reaction to China mishandling COVID info 50:40 Has Biden been soft on China? How will that play into the 2020 election? 1:00:51 Why is the stock market bouncing back so quickly with record-setting unemployment numbers? Will there be another correction? 1:03:59 What is Keith seeing across his portfolio? M&A opportunity for companies like Lyft? 1:09:34 Keith shares thoughts on the right time to go public 1:13:50 Impact of 20% unemployment on startups over the next year, mental impact of lockdown & social isolation 1:20:40 Keith's most positive outlook going forward