20VC: Upfront's Mark Suster on COVID Redefining What A Great Company Looks Like and What Valuations Look Like, Why Pay-To-Play Is Back On The Table & Why We Will See The Death of Party Rounds

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
We are back for another Week in the World of Venture with me, Harry Stebbings, and if you'd like to suggest questions or guests for future episodes, you can on Instagram at hstebbings1996 with two Bs, and I really do love to see you there. But to our episode today, and I always remember reading this guest writing very early in my venture career, and it was so formative to my thinking, and I'm thrilled to welcome back to the hot seat, Mark Suster, Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures, one of LA's leading and largest venture firms with a portfolio, including the likes of Bird, Goat, Maker Studios and ring.com, to name a few. Prior to joining the world of venture, Mark was the founder and CEO of two successful enterprise software companies, the most recent of which was sold to salesforce.com, where Mark became VP of Products. Mark is also the author of one of my favorite industry blogs, Both Sides of The Table. If you have not checked that out, it really is a must. And I do also want to say a huge thank you to Cara Nordman, Greg Bettinelli and Kobe Fuller for some fantastic questions and suggestions today. I really do so appreciate that. But before we move into the show today, I want to take a moment to mention Hello Sign, a great example of a company that found success in building a product focused on user experience. Hello Sign is an effortless e-signature solution, used by millions to securely send and request legally valid digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of $16 million in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. Check out hellosign.com forward slash 20VC to join the thousands of companies and founders who value fast, secure and simple e-signatures. And speaking of signatures and getting deals done there, you really need to build that relationship and there's nothing like meeting face-to-face and there's nothing like Zoom to make that happen. Zoom lets you connect and do business across town or around the world. Zoom ties together all of your communication needs into one easy platform for video conferencing, phone calls, group chat, webinars and your conference rooms and connect easily from anywhere, your mobile phone, your laptop or conference room. Zoom is how business gets done. Get your free account at zoom.com today, meet happy with Zoom. And finally, I've always been a big history man and so I want to talk about Cooley, the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world with 50 plus years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad of issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public, head over to cooley.com and also check out cooleygo.com. But that's enough from me so now I can't wait to hand over to Mark Suster, Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures.
You have now arrived at your destination.
Mark, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the show. As I was saying to you just before, it's been three years since our last episode. What a three years it's been, but thank you so much for joining me again today, Mark.

**Mark Suster** (2:51)
I'm thrilled to be here, and the three years for you has just been magnificent. It's been wonderful to see how many successful episodes of the show that you've done, and I've enjoyed many of them myself. So thank you for doing the show.

**Harry Stebbings** (3:03)
Well, I mean, that means the world to me, and I just love doing it. It seems very incredible that it's my job, but I really appreciate that. But I want to start staying on you, Mark. So tell me, and for those that maybe missed our first episode, how did you make your entrance into the wonderful world of venture and come to be a GP at Upfront today? Sure.

**Mark Suster** (3:19)
Well, I had previously founded two tech startups.
They were both in a field known as document collaboration. Back when I was doing it, people didn't seem to care that much collaborating on documents. And now it's become the thing. We've seen collaborative tools from anything from a dropbox or a box.
But you also have companies like Slack and companies like Procore in the construction space where I started. And it's become quite a big deal. But having been a two time CEO, after I finished a period of time as VP of product at salesforce.com, the firm that had funded both of my companies asked if I wanted to join as a partner. And so since 2007, I've been a partner at what's now Upfront Ventures.