20VC: Investing $200m In Facebook, The 3 Stages of Founder Development & Why Creating A New User Behaviour Can Be Unit Economics Inefficient with Rahul Mehta, Managing Partner @ DST

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
You are listening to The Twenty Minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings, and you can join me on Snapchat at hstebbings with two Bs to recommend future guests for the show and suggest questions for future episodes. It'd be fantastic to see you there. But to this week, and this week we're doing a week of opposites. So today we'll be joined by one of the world's leading late stage funds. Then on the alternate spectrum on Wednesday, we'll have one of the new seed funds on the block joining us. And then on Friday, we'll have the contradiction in terms of the founder who argues for the benefits of growing slow, not fast. But to the show today, and I'm thrilled to be joined by Rahul Mehta, managing partner at DST, one of the world's leading late stage venture funds with a portfolio including the likes of, check this out, Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Spotify and Alibaba, just to name a few from the incredible portfolio. As for Rahul himself, he leads the firm's efforts in the US, Indonesia and India, where he led deals in Snapchat, Slack, Ola Cabs, Houzz and Zalando, just to name a few. As a result of this incredible portfolio, Rahul was listed to the Forbes Midas List in 2016 I do also want to say a huge thank you to Eric at Kleiner Perkins for the intro to Rahul today, without which this episode would not have been possible. But before we dive into the show today, I want to tell you about WePay. WePay helps online platforms increase revenue through integrated payments processing, constant contact, equid and GoFundMe use WePay. Why? Because WePay uniquely helps platforms offer ROI positive integrated payments to their users within their UX and without taking on fraud and regulatory exposure. Others make you trade off between UX friction or fraud, not WePay. WePay also offers award-winning support and can even work with your team through Slack or Zendesk. Get the payments revenue you want without getting bogged down every time a user has a payments question. But don't trust me. Visit wepay.com forward slash harry. Oh yes, I have my own URL for a video case study on how equid grew its revenue while better serving customers with WePay. That's wepay.com forward slash harry. You'll also be made eligible for a year of free premium support on wepay.com forward slash harry. And how could we forget Pipedrive? Something we use here every day at The Twenty Minute VC to manage the pipeline for guests. Pipedrive is the sales CRM and pipeline management software to use with the primary view being the pipeline, a clear visual interface that prompts you to take action, remain organized and stay in control of a complex sales process. This is why sales pros and deal makers love it. My words, not Pipedrive's. But it easily lets you find the stats you need and even better, it's fully customizable.
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**Rahul Mehta** (2:44)
You have now arrived at your destination.

**Harry Stebbings** (2:47)
Rahul, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. Huge thanks to Eric Kleiner for the intro, but thank you so much for joining me today, Rahul.

**Rahul Mehta** (2:54)
Hey, Harry, thank you so much for having me on the show. The pleasure is all mine.

**Harry Stebbings** (2:57)
I'd love to get started today by hearing a bit about you and how you made your way into the world of later stage investing with the incredible DST.

**Rahul Mehta** (3:04)
Sure. So actually, there was no DST when I joined. I was at Goldman in London in tech banking, and Mail was a client of ours. So I joined Mail back in late 2008, and the idea was to basically help them consolidate the various companies we had and also work on taking it public over time. It was a super interesting opportunity, and I was very keen to be part of a startup, and the growth potential of Mail was quite attractive. Coincidentally, what happened was the day I accepted the job, that was the day when Lehman happened. So most of my friends, if not all, thought I had either lost my job or lost my mind, and I was leaving Goldman for a Russian company. At that time, even before I had joined, URI already had the vision of being global, which was a crazy idea at the time. And so we got started with DST only in 2009 or so, with a Facebook investment. And then we truly went global, I would say, in 2011, when we first invested in China and Europe with JD and Spotify.