On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Ilya Strebulaev
- Pejman Nozad
- James Joaquin
We asked guests to discuss the most visionary founder that they’ve worked with and what makes them so special.
The hosts of The Full Ratchet are Nick Moran and Nate Pierotti of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in founders outside of the Bay Area.
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Transcribed with AI:
0:19
Welcome back to TFR on today’s special segment, we ask guests to discuss the most visionary founder that they’ve worked with. And what makes them so special. Here’s the segment called visionary founders.
0:36
Today’s special segment we have Ilya Strebel of Stanford, Ilya, if you had to choose one visionary founder or leader that has inspired you most, who is it? And what about their leadership approach resonates with you?
0:50
Gosh, there are so many. But when you say visionary founder, you know, I didn’t want to mention names that everybody already knows. I would like to, to mention that some of my students that nobody knows, because they’re just starting on their path. And who knows, it is a matter of luck, whether they will become visionary founders or not. But I think there are visionaries in their way. And Nick, I know that the time is running out, because I would have spent the next 24 hours talking about my visionary students. Let me just mention one of them. Okay. Who is one of those students who are inspiring me. And, you know, if any professor is listening to us, they should ask themselves how many students inspired them? Because typically think about professors inspiring students, right? So the name of this student is Ron legacy. He is Canadian, he’s actually a doctor, and came and became my student at Stanford Business School. And then he had this amazing idea to develop a platform for rare diseases, where you can get all the data and all the information from patients who seek help, and connect them to the medical centers and to pharma companies, okay? So that’s a great startup. It’s called Med elope you can you can check it out, it’s still a startup, it still might fail. Okay. So therefore, the world still at large does, nobody can see. But why call him a visionary founder is because every single time he comes to my office, and talks to me, so I’m an advisor to him now, you know, I have this feeling is that Gosh, I really would love to like, leave my professorial chair and join him on this on this journey. And in fact, many people did. He had Stanford students join him, he had some senior folks at established companies join him. And they joined him when he didn’t have the money, didn’t have prototype. Okay, he didn’t really have much to show apart from his charisma, his conviction is great idea. And of course, he also convinced fantastic VCs to invest in him. So that is what I call a real visionary founder. And again, I have dozens and dozens of examples like that. And I think that those examples of my students truly inspire me every single day. And kind of you could say that I wrote a book for them, because I really would like more and more people to become venture minded and become as successful as those visionary students from Stanford.
3:50
On today’s special segment, we have Paige mon nose out of pear page, we’re gonna talk about one of the most visionary or inspiring founders that you’ve worked with and what makes them unique. Well,
4:01
there are many of them. But I can talk about Tony Chu, the founder and CEO, co founder CEO of door latch, but we met Tony there were like 20, other food delivery. And the company’s even growing faster than DoorDash. But really, we went to Tony’s office with the team which was home next to Stanford and he went on the whiteboard and explain why does big pain and where he wants to take the company he has never said or that is a food delivery company from day one. He said I’m going to build the most sophisticated logistic companies that move anything from point A to point B last mile. I start with food because people eat three times food and you can see he’s executed the food delivery really well but now you can deliver you know drugs you can deliver goods from Walmart, he’s just like pretty incredible visionary. He is executed and you know, he just did the earning call Few days ago he’s so self critic of what are the potential what he can do better And he has been able to attract some of the most talented people in the business. And he’s like hungry, humble. He takes customer service calls, he delivers food. So it’s a combination of a great visionary and phenomenal executor, who is a, it’s an remarkable leader.
5:22
Was it tricky? The unit economics for DoorDash. For a long time were were tough. Like, how did you overcome that?
5:29
I didn’t do it like at one point, when the fundraising was really really hard and totally switched from growth to just having positive unit economics in certain areas. And that really helped them to grow the company later, obviously. Then he raised more capital and put in the growth, he realized that he has to focus on unit positive unit economics.
5:56
On today’s special segment, we have James Joaquin of obvious ventures James talk about one of the most visionary or inspiring founders you’ve worked with and what makes them unique.
6:07
Oh, this is tough. I work with a lot of inspiring founders. I’m going to pick a CEO that I have had the pleasure of working with since 2017. Her name is Imani, Abu Zaid and she’s the co founder and CEO of incredible health. Incredible health is a labor marketplace that helps hospitals hire nurses, helps nurses find and do their best work. And Yvonne is a really, really inspiring leader. She’s a first time CEO. So it was a it was a big risk for me to back her and her co founder. And you know, I led the seed round of this company. But emot had the best founder market fit that I had seen in a long time she got her medical doctorate in London. And then instead of practicing as a physician, she went to McKinsey then she came to the US. She got her MBA at Wharton, she worked at a COSLA backed health IT startup, that’s where she met her co founder room Portlock. And the two of them set out to solve this nursing shortage problem that is a systemic challenge in the in the US healthcare system. And she’s done an incredible job. This company is now a unicorn. It’s now the leading labor marketplace for healthcare and healthcare is now the number one employment category in the US economy. So it’s a really, really big opportunity. And she’s the breakout leader she and her team. The reason I find her so inspiring Nick is that she has a growth mindset. She is a first time CEO that is focused on learning. She’s always looking for feedback. She’s looking for the best advisors to help her solve problems to stand on the shoulders of giants and learn how other companies have have solved a particular issue. And I find that that growth mindset really inspiring. Amazing.
8:08
That will conclude this installment of investor stories. If you’re enjoying the program and would like to see it continue. Take a moment and leave a five star review in iTunes. Okay, that will wrap things up for today. Until next time, over prepare, choose carefully and invest confidently thanks for joining me
