20VC: How We Got Fred Wilson, Benchmark and Index to Invest $94M | Why Robinhood's Strategy is Wrong | Why 1-1s are BS and What Every Founder Gets Wrong About Equity | Why Taste Beats AI But How AI Kills Org Charts with Paul Erlanger, CEO @ fomo

**Paul Erlanger** (0:00)
I think we gave non-founders a percentage of the company that usually founders get. For the first eight months to building, no one on our team took any pay. The best people are just so much more valuable now. One thing that I discovered was, if you're trying to raise another round, wait to announce your last round. Everything is about momentum.

**Harry Stebbings** (0:21)
I am Harry Stebbings. This is 20VC. Today, we have Paul Erlanger, co-founder and CEO of FOMO on the show. Now, FOMO is a wild story. For the first eight months of building the business, none of the core team members took any salary. Despite the company being a wild success today, they only have 17 team members, no internal hierarchy, and they have no one-on-one meetings. They've just announced a $75 million Series B at a $550 million valuation led by Index and Fred Wilson at USV. I love non-obvious stories, and when you unpack this one, there are so many gems to uncover. But before we dive into the show today, have you ever felt a little stuck at work? Maybe you're stuck in back-to-back meetings, stuck without clear feedback, or trying to learn a new AI workflow. Well, now you can move work forward with Loom, the AI-first video platform from Atlassian. Use Loom to simultaneously record both your screen and yourself to share a quick update, provide feedback, train a colleague and everything in between. AI instantly adds a title, a summary, and edits to your video so clarity travels with the work. Finally, you'll have more focus time, fewer unnecessary meetings and more effective ones. It's a real team changer and game changer for personal productivity. Try Loom today at www.loom.com. Once Loom gets the message across, Finn keeps the conversation going with customers. As AI agents become more common in customer experience, teams often end up juggling multiple silo tools for every job. Well, Finn was built to change that. It's a single, unified agent that works across your entire customer experience, from service to sales to success and beyond. Finn is the agent making perfect customer experiences possible for thousands of customers. It's powered by custom models, trained on years of real customer interactions, so it understands the nuance and complexity of customer service better than any other agent. That means faster resolutions, more consistent support, and just better experiences for every customer. It's also designed to be fully self-manageable so you can easily improve and adapt it as your business evolves. No third parties required. Leading companies like Gamma, Asana, DoorDash, and crypto.com already use and love Fin to deliver better customer experiences. So for a limited time, you can get $500 a month in Fin credits. For your first three months, learn more at fin.ai/20vc.
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Paul, I am so excited for this, dude. Listen, I'm so thrilled that you're able to join us in person, dude. I want to start with one that I'm always fascinated by, which is, are you more motivated by the thrill of winning or the fear of losing?

**Paul Erlanger** (4:36)
This is going to be a hard take, but I don't think I'm driven by either too much. I think it's more of like doing the thing for the pleasure of actually doing the thing.