This Week In Startups Weekly Recap Nov 15-19

Hey everybody!

Last week we had on Twitch Co-Founder Justin Kan, Sam Lessin of Slow Ventures, Kruze Consulting’s Scott Orn, and Bradley Tusk, the startup adviser-turned-investor that helped Uber, Fanduel and others avoid “death by politics.” Plus, our producer Rachel spoke with Meagan Loyst, a Gen Z VC that leads an 11k+ person community. Recap below!

Interviews

Bradley Tusk "The Fixer," Uber, startups navigating politics, mobile voting

For so long, tech took a hands-off approach to politics. Eventually, growth made that no longer tenable. Now, tech seems to be the main focus of congress and politicians.

Bradley Tusk has worked in and around politics his whole career. He entered the startup scene in a major way in 2011, when he led the strategy to help Uber overcome cities trying to ban it. Jason and Bradley discuss crowdsourced customer activism, his mobile-voting project, the advice he would give Mark Zuckerberg and more.

On motivating politicians: "99.9% of politicians are desperately insecure, self-loathing people that can't live without the validation of holding office... and they will never, ever, choose what's right ahead of what's politically expedient." 

Why Sam Lessin is using the VC model to invest in individuals

At Slow Ventures, Sam just placed a $1.7M bet on a YouTube creator. He plans on continuing to experiment with other creators and entrepreneurs. His basic thesis is that businesses are getting smaller & smaller. In some industries, large companies will be replaced by individual creators. Finance should be able to scale down & flex to support these individuals.

Due to the decreased predictability of incomes, Sam believes: "The more we can align humanity around equity-based financing rather than debt, the better off we'll generally be."

Twitch Co-Founder Justin Kan: YouTube, Entrepreneurship, Investing

Justin joins to discuss lessons from entrepreneurship, the traits of exceptional founders, and what he looks for when investing at Goat Capital. They also dig into why he launched a YouTube channel this year. 

Early career advice: "The most important thing is to just optimize for learning. A lot of people have it backward. They think, 'I want to make money first, and then I'm going to do whatever I want.'"

Meagan Loyst of Gen Z VCs

Producer Rachel speaks with Meagan Loyst, a VC at Lerer Hippeau who organized a group of over 11,000 Gen Z involved with tech & startups. They talk about the best way to create meaningful peer relationships online. 

Tactical Startup Advice

How to hire anywhere in the world

Remote work unlocks massive hiring opportunities for startups but also creates new compliance challenges. In this episode, Kruze Consulting COO Scott Orn joins to explain how startups should navigate remote work. They discuss PEOs, sales tax, and tax credits. 

Startup Checklist: Operational best practices

Jason gives his best advice for developing a frugal—but not cheap—culture. He shares how to accurately measure burn rate, runway, how design a forward-looking org chart plus much more.

Jason invests in a startup on air

Jason spontaneously brought on Chris Niblett, who is going through Founder University. They discuss Chris's company Bizzly, which is a "Patreon for small businesses," how the product could improve and more.

News covered this week

• A DAO bids $40M on the Constitution
• Quentin Tarantino sued over NFTs
• Ohio sues FB over "Facebook Files"

Do you have feedback for us? We'd love to hear it.

Best,

Producer Justin

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