20VC: Jason Lemkin on Why Founders Do Not Care About Their VCs Anymore, Why Zoom Made Us All Worse Investors, Why 80-90% IRR Should Have Been Warning Signs and the Algolia Journey From Seed to $2.25BN Valuation

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
You are listening to 20VC The Memo with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, The Memo is our monthly episode where we sit down with an investor who led a round in one of the breakout companies of the last decade. Now, the show's day is focused on Algolia, the unicorn search and discovery platform. That said, the show is with a very old friend of mine. He was one of the first people to ever believe in me seven years ago, way back when I was at university, if you can believe it. We've been friends ever since, and so we did go a little bit astray. And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome the OG of SaaS, Jason Lemkin, as the founder of SaaStr. He has inspired more SaaS founders than anyone else, building the world's largest community for SaaS. Jason also invests out of the $100 million SaaStr fund, and has led rounds in TalkDesk, Pipedrive, Algolia, Gorgias, Salesloft and many more incredible companies. Prior to founding SaaStr, Jason was the founder of Echosign, an early e-signature business funded by Emergence Capital that was acquired by Adobe for $100 million. Jason is one of the best, and I just love doing this one. But before we dive into the show's day, we will hope we never need life insurance. But for me, nothing is more important than my family and knowing they will be protected and looked after. If you follow my Twitter, you know how close I am to my mother. And mortgage payments and other expenses, they don't disappear when you're gone. And life insurance just gets more expensive as you age, and so now is always the best time to buy. Policy Genius was built to modernize the life insurance industry. Their technology makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes from top companies like AIG and Prudential in just a few clicks to find your lowest price. And with Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $17 per month for $500,000 of coverage. And Policy Genius has licensed agents who can help you find options that offer coverage in as little as a week and avoid unnecessary medical exams. They're not incentivized to recommend one insurer over another, so you can really trust that guidance. Plus, there are no added fees. Head over to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com. And speaking of game-changing tools like Policy Genius there, Gainsight is the world's leading platform for helping companies of all sizes and industries drive durable growth through customer, product and community-led strategies. And did you know that Gainsight launched a new offering, Gainsight Essentials, in early March this year? Essentials makes it easier and more affordable for companies at any stage to reduce churn, drive more expansion and cross-sell dollars, and improve usage and adoption. And best of all, Essentials starts at just $20,000 per year, and you can be live in as little as two weeks. In fact, Essentials has been leveraged by companies like Calendly, Chewy, Dialpad, and nearly a hundred others since its launch in March. Now you can start and scale with Gainsight. Go to essentials.gainsight.com to learn more, and mention 20VC for special pricing when you schedule a demo or sign up. Tell them I sent you, and get that durable growth engine going. But that is enough from me, so now I'm so excited to head into this fantastic discussion with Jason Lemkin, founder at SaaStr.
You have now arrived at your destination.
Jason, I'm so excited for this. I can't believe it. You know, it was seven years since we first chatted, so thank you so much for joining me again today.

**Jason Lemkin** (3:19)
It has genuinely been a delight. If it's been seven years, it's a good reminder that overnight success stories take a long time.

**Harry Stebbings** (3:38)
Fun fact, we get 28% of our engagement because of the hat. We're gonna do the Algolia story here, so I wanna do a little bit of context setting.
How did you meet them? How did that meeting go?

**Jason Lemkin** (3:49)
Every deal I've tried to go out and get is a little bit of a waste of time.
I've been wondering where that hat comes from.
Every deal I've tried to go out and get, I've failed. Every warm referral doesn't work out. Nothing works out except the high velocity inbound email, my round's oversubscribed, would you like to meet? Or I just wanna meet with you. Some of those emails, they're Sony baloney, but the really good ones break through. And every single investment I've done has been a high velocity inbound, including, if we're gonna talk about Algolia today, we'll talk about that, my second venture investment. It's not that I don't think hunting is a good strategy, just not good for me.