20VC: The Radical Changes In Public Market Expectations, The Right Way To Assess Valuation & What It Means To Be A Disciplined & Diligent Investor with Randy Glein, Partner @ DFJ Growth

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
You are listening to The Twenty Minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings with Two B's on Snapchat. And this intro is recorded live from San Francisco. So if you're listening to this and are in the Bay Area and would like to meet, message me on Snapchat at H. Stebbings with Two B's again, and it would be great to have a mojito or ten with you. However, to the show's day and part two of our special feature week of growth stage investing, therefore today, I'm thrilled to welcome one of the most successful growth stage investors of the past decade. So joining us today, I'm thrilled to welcome Randy Glein. Randy is a co-founder and partner at DFJ Growth, where he looks to partner with entrepreneurs that have achieved market validation and are looking to scale rapidly. Randy's investments include the likes of Twitter, Tumblr, SpaceX and Tesla, just to name a few. And prior to DFJ, Randy was CFO at Feedburner, acquired by Google, a business development executive at Directv. Randy was also named to the Forbes Midas List in 2013, 2014 and 2015 as one of the world's top tech investors and to the New York Times CB Insights list of top 100 venture capital investors in 2016 I also want to say a huge thank you to Josh Stein at DFJ for the intro to Randy's day, without which the episode would not have been possible. However, before we dive into the show's day, you must check out Intercom. Intercom is the first to bring messaging products for marketing and customer support together on one integrated platform. With Intercom, businesses can chat directly with prospective customers on their website. They can engage current users with targeted messages based on their behavior and provide personal support at scale with an integrated help desk and knowledge base. All products are powered by live customer data, helping businesses avoid the stiff spammy status quo and have real conversations that build real connections throughout the entire customer lifecycle. This is perfect for businesses that want to help people visiting their website become customers and marketing and growth teams that want to onboard and retain users by sending the right messages at the right time. So simply head over to intercom.com forward slash 20MVC.
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You have now arrived at your destination.
Randy, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. I really appreciate you taking out the time to join me.

**Randy Glein** (2:48)
Thanks very much, Harry. I'm thrilled to be doing it.

**Harry Stebbings** (2:50)
Now, I'd love to get started today, Randy, with a bit about you and how you made your way into VC and a little bit of an intro on you.

**Randy Glein** (2:57)
Sure, happy to do that, Harry.
You know, getting into Venture Capital has definitely not been a straight path for me, for sure. Been, I guess I'd describe it as more of a winding trail on my career journey. There's a few things that I think are relevant to being in Venture Capital that I've had in my background. Over the past 25 years or so, I've gained experience as an engineer, an operating executive, an entrepreneur, and of course, an investor. And everything I've done in my career has been related to being involved in technology-driven businesses, being part of creating innovative high-growth businesses with almost in all cases, a focus on transforming markets through technological advancement and innovation. So that's been, I guess, the foundation for my career. But as I mentioned, it's been a bit of a winding path to get to where I am today.
I started my career as an engineer. And I think the technical and analytical underpinnings have served me very well. There's lots of ways to find yourself in this business. But for me, that was essential to give me that perspective and that underpinnings.