In this episode of "20 Minutes VC," host Harry Stebbings interviews Julia Dewal, a former Bain consultant and early Opendoor employee who has transitioned into a prominent angel investor in the Silicon Valley community. Julia shares insights from her experiences at Opendoor, from scaling operations to the importance of founder-market fit and the necessity of owning the vertical solution for end-to-end customer experience. She also emphasizes the value of customer development from the start, the use of paired metrics to avoid sacrificing important aspects for growth, and the significance of maintaining a growth mindset for scaling with a company. Julia's angel investments include innovative companies like Primer, and she advocates for investing in solutions that are ten times better than existing alternatives, wary of "vitamin" products that may falter during economic downturns. Additionally, Julia is setting up a women's cycling apparel line, paralleling her dedication to building and investing in ventures that endure and excel.
"Now Julia is one of the rising stars of the Silicon Valley angel investor community, with a portfolio including the likes of Linear, Sequoia backed, modern fertility backed by USV, and Prime, backed by founders Fund."
This quote highlights Julia DeWahl's current status as a prominent angel investor with a notable investment portfolio.
"I first heard about Opendoor through a TechCrunch piece in the summer of 2014 and was really compelled by the idea."
Julia describes her initial attraction to Opendoor and her subsequent involvement with the company, which laid the foundation for her angel investing career.
"People solve problems with the tools that they have."
Julia explains that a startup's success depends on the founding team's ability to address core problems with their existing skills and tools.
"Oh, I'm a big believer in owning the vertical solution, the end to end customer experience, because ultimately you have control that way."
Julia advocates for businesses that control the entire customer journey, as it leads to a better and more consistent experience.
"I would encourage everyone to begin with considering the start a startup path. I think it's like, why not?"
Julia encourages graduates to explore the possibility of entrepreneurship, emphasizing the personal growth and opportunities it presents.
"I'm a huge advocate for talking to customers as much as you can." This quote emphasizes the importance of frequent customer engagement to gain valuable insights and refine the product concept.
"Are there other customers like this who are going to become power users? Or am I risking building something that's a bit too niche?" This quote highlights the need to evaluate whether there is a broader customer base for the product to ensure it is not too specialized.
"You really can't go wrong there. This allows the customer to actually more proactively bring up areas of concern or frustration that they have just to share what matters to them." This quote suggests that open-ended questions are effective in eliciting genuine customer feedback that can reveal key concerns and values.
"That really transformed the way we saw ourselves and we saw the Opendoor product selling was often in combination with buying." This quote reveals how customer feedback led to a pivotal change in Opendoor's product marketing strategy by understanding the interconnectedness of selling and buying homes.
"I find that this allows you to really understand how someone else would describe the value proposition or the positioning of your company better than a realtor for XYZ reasons, those sorts of things, they really end up emphasizing what's important." This quote underscores the effectiveness of understanding customer language to refine marketing strategies.
"The customer is not meant to be the one coming up with the vision for your product." This quote clarifies that while customer feedback is crucial, the responsibility of product vision and innovation lies with the developers.
"Building systems is really important to allow other people to come into the company and start operating." This quote highlights the importance of systems for enabling new team members to contribute effectively.
"It depends on how complex your operations are." This quote indicates that the decision to code a process should consider operational complexity and business growth.
"Moving metrics usually means they're stuck, right?" This quote implies that when metrics are not progressing, it signals a need for investigative action to identify and address underlying issues.
"Keep it simple, make it memorable, and explain the why." This quote advises on effective communication strategies for disseminating company goals and priorities.
"I am not a perfectionist or overly detail oriented person, so this is absolutely a hack." This quote suggests that checklists serve as a compensatory tool for those who may not have a natural inclination for meticulousness.
"Checklist manifesto with the subtitle how to get things right. And that's exactly what they're so checklists are really about delivering consistent quality."
This quote emphasizes that the primary purpose of checklists is to ensure consistent quality in processes or tasks.
"Nobody wants a checklist if it's not actually useful. This is not one of those things where the manager writes it and hands it down to the team."
This quote highlights the importance of practicality in checklists and the need for the team to be involved in their creation to ensure their usefulness.
"Absolutely not. You need to have one person accountable."
This quote stresses the importance of having one person accountable for each task to maintain clear responsibility.
"I've seen some people scale remarkably well with the growth of fast growing companies, and I think they all typically possess a really strong growth mindset."
This quote suggests that a growth mindset is a common trait among individuals who can adapt and scale with a fast-growing company.
"But oftentimes people really do end up learning a lot from that person who is hired to be their new manager."
This quote acknowledges that while being layered can be difficult, it can also be an opportunity for professional development.
"Yeah, I think it's important to actually bring the person in on the fact that you are going to be hiring someone in above them."
This quote advises on the importance of informing team members about management changes to manage expectations and maintain trust.
"With scale, generalists tend to thrive in environments where there are a lot of nebulous problems to solve."
This quote points out that generalists are well-suited for the dynamic problem-solving required in the early stages of a startup's growth.
"For what it's worth, I'm also intimidated by financially and operationally complex businesses."
This quote conveys a shared sentiment about the challenges of complex businesses, setting the stage for the importance of certain founder qualities.
"I look for systems thinkers who are detail oriented, but can also think strategically about the structure of their business model."
This quote identifies the key characteristics needed in founders who manage complex businesses, emphasizing the balance between detail orientation and strategic thinking.
"Angel investing in some ways isn't too different from learning anything else."
This quote relates angel investing to the broader process of learning and adapting to new roles, emphasizing the importance of learning from others.
"Talk to me in a decade and I will be able to give you a much better answer."
This quote acknowledges the long-term nature of angel investing and the difficulty in assessing success in the short term.
"Well, there are some people who I've actually never met who have been influential on me."
This quote highlights the impact that thought leaders can have on professional development, even without direct personal interaction.
Mike Maples who has been generous. We've had a couple Zoom calls. Love listening to him on podcasts. I think he has some amazing thinking. Mike Fernando has been amazing over at sequoia.
I think of the vitamin painkiller metaphor as more of a spectrum... I'm very wary of that. I also think that you can risk things like high CaC and low conversion and high churn if you're not really clear upfront about the product being ten x better than the alternatives today.
I think it's hard at the very early stage... I do look for people who have given it some thought... So if someone is being sort of holistic about how they're thinking about that blended CAC, I think that's really important.
The courage to be disliked is one of my favorite books... I love the saying by Maya Angelou... operating and investing are incredibly complementary... cycling and scaling businesses... Joining Bain out of college was a big inflection point for me... My most recent publicly announced investment was in Primer...
You can find her on Twitter at Julia DeWahl... Instagram at Hdebings 1996... Carter simplifies how startups and investors manage equity... Digits... creating the most intuitive financial software... Terminal... connecting you with global talent...