On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Daniela Binatti of Pismo
- Paul Madera of Meritech Capital
- Nnamdi Okike of 645 Ventures
We asked guests to discuss the most visionary founder that they’ve worked with and what makes them so special.
The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran 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
On today’s special segment, we have Daniela binacci of Pismo. Daniela, 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?
0:48
I would say David is who launched a new bank here in Brazil. He like, we were working with with them when they started, actually, when Nubank started, they were working on the previous So, like they were relying on the previous platform processing that we built. And he was an extremely focused person, like, when everybody there was a lot of critics around the incumbents and how something like that wouldn’t, you know, wouldn’t work in the long term. They like, he was extremely focused on doing first one specific product and then the second one. So I think that discipline and focus is something that is extremely important, because it’s very hard to say no to opportunities that sometimes are comes like as investors, as we just discussed, but also sometimes as clients, asking for things that were not necessarily what you were willing to do. So getting, you know, attached to your mission and what the vision that you built at the beginning, I think it’s, it’s important to to to move on.
2:02
I On today’s special segment, we have Paul Madera, co founder and general partner at meratech. Can you tell us about an exceptional founder that you’ve worked with and what specific thing they do that’s unique to any other founder?
2:15
Certainly, you actually mentioned the name dealer socket early on. Dealer socket, I will tell you, in many ways, was one of the most enjoyable investment experiences I had. And dealer socket, which you have never heard of, was a software offering that was, this must have been 2005 2006 and it was a software offering that targeted retail auto dealers who, by the way, they are the toughest people in America to sell to for all the obvious reasons. And this team, which was made up of four BYU grads, led by Jonathan ord and Brad Perry, were one of many that were competing for what was going to be, obviously, a large market. And so as I met Jonathan and Brad, it was very clear that they had a terrific vision for their company. But even more importantly than that, they had a team building skill that I hadn’t seen before. And thirdly, they had this customer service focus that that was both essential in that space where customers you know, had the magpie problem of chasing after the shiny object that showed up on their doorstep and and leaving you behind, they actually let their customers go, and they took care of them up to the day they left, and they were polite and nice to them, and they made sure their team was and those customers invariably went, Oh, went away to test the new shiny object, and then came back nine months later, and I got to see that, got to hear it from customers as I talked to them, and I knew that that team had something special. Ultimately, they got sold to VISTA and and did very well for the team and well for us as well.
4:03
You mentioned one of their superpowers was team building. Yeah, I’d love to hear what lessons, what key takeaways, what things stand out to you, you know, across the portfolio of investments you’ve worked on. You know, what do the best founders do, whether it’s interview style or sourcing or selection when it comes to, you know, building just a world class team
4:26
for one thing, really great leaders are wonderful, charismatic storytellers about their product and their vision and that they all have that if they don’t have it, they Better have somebody on the team who can do it, because it is essential. And that, really, in my experience, is one of the big differences between great technology that doesn’t make it and great technology that really succeeds where it should. It is. Can you get the right team to take that technology to the market? It, to nurture it, to make it work better every with every rendition, and get the customers to believe in you and and that takes a certain way of articulating a storytelling that is unique and differentiated amazing.
5:19
On today’s special segment, we have Nandi, OK, of 645, ventures. Can you tell us a story about an exceptional founder you’ve worked with and what specific thing they do that’s unique?
5:30
Yeah, I’ll mention, I’ll mention two, you know. So Michael Lucarelli, who’s CEO and co founder of renspreen, which is a software company providing software for rentals. Michael has a really intelligent way to think about partnerships, and he’s been very innovative in striking up partnerships go to market, partnerships for rent, spree that have paid tremendous dividends for the company. Over the course of our investing in the business. It’s gone from about 2 million revenues to now approaching 40 million revenues, and he’s primarily done it through a really creative partnership, different strategy, where he thinks a lot about kind of win win situations, where distribution partners can basically benefit from the adoption of the end users of rent spree software. So really smart approach to partnership, very thoughtful and really kind of like crack to go to market motion that other folks have not been able to really figure out in a category that really unleashed, like a much bigger market opportunity. The second one I’d mention is in the consumer category. It’s a founder. His name is Dan Porter. He’s co founder of a business called overtime. When we first invested in overtime, Dan and Zach had built a business that was basically a soft a mobile app for for sharing, uh, sports videos. If you look at overtime today, it’s it’s a very different business. They’ve got their own sports league. They’ve got their own e commerce business. They have, you know, content that they license to professional sports leagues. It’s a business that you could have never envisioned, like what it became at the seed. But Dan’s superpower is this idea of a deep understanding of his end his end customer, which is kind of like the young sports sports fan, but also a super creative way to capitalize on the insight into the user, and really, the evolution of the product has really been based upon that. So I kind of view Dan as a little bit of a magician, because he’ll kind of come up with these things that look very contrarian. When they said they were going to start a new physical sports league and build a stadium in Atlanta, going from a mobile app business at the beginning, it’s like, how did this company get to that point? But they pulled it off, and pulled it off really intelligently and creatively and were able to monetize that. So I think Dan is somebody that just has a superpower. And again, it’s a combination of like, being able to get people to believe in his vision, and be able to marshal resources and then really execute, which is quite unique, quite unique.
8:02
I 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.
