Kobie Fuller, Upfront Ventures Partner on LA Tech & AI-First SaaS

**Kobie Fuller** (0:01)
Of course. We're live.

**Grace Gong** (0:03)
We are live, yeah. One sec, whatever. There's always a platform that doesn't work, but this morning, it's like, okay, let's just save changes. Okay, done. Okay, hi, Kobie. Welcome to Venture with Grace.

**Kobie Fuller** (0:16)
Thanks for having me. How are you doing?

**Grace Gong** (0:18)
I'm good. I like you have a Barbary T-shirt since you wore the CMOC Revolve, so I feel like it's very fitting to see you here.
Before we dive into our conversation, I wanted to give a quick shout out to our amazing sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Nebius, the ultimate cloud for AI innovators. Nebius provides AI infrastructure you can count on, combining reliability and speed with flexibility and engineering support unmatched by hyperskillers. AI leaders like Meta, Shopify, and Higgsfield already partnered with Nebius to run their AI workloads. Plus, venture-backed startup can save up to $150K on compute costs when applied for access. Visit nebius.com or nebius.com/startup to learn more.
I want to also give a huge shout out to front.com. You guys are the best. I'm currently at their ISEF office. I'll announce our secret project later.

**Kobie Fuller** (1:13)
Secret project.

**Grace Gong** (1:20)
Okay, so I want to start with your journey. I feel like in your past podcast, I feel like you have a lot of hustle. So you started your career at Insight Venture Partners by DMing or mailing 100 VCs in Boston. And then you kind of built up your career then. You were the founding member of OpenView Venture Partners and CMO of Revolve and Principal at Accel. And now you're a GP at Upfront.
And you're a board member of L'Oreal. The founder actually came on our show before as well.

**Kobie Fuller** (1:56)
Oh, cool. Right. I didn't know. Yeah, I'm the board. Yeah, he's amazing. That's great.

**Grace Gong** (2:00)
I love it. So I want to start with, I feel like the big thing is you kind of transformed yourself multiple times. And then at the beginning, you started investing in the advertising space and since you are the CMO, I think one thing that you said were really interesting, I mean, a lot of things you said were really interesting, but one of the things that I find really memorable was in the past, the CMO's job was being creative, but now it's being analytical or just able to study the data. I feel like that really resonated with me. But I want to start with, what were some core lessons that you've learned early on as a worker, kind of shape you into who we are today?

**Kobie Fuller** (2:41)
Yeah, so first off, thanks for having me. Excited to share whatever wisdom may be still in this head here.
So in terms of early on in my career, I'd say a lot of what I just focused on is just real hard work. Just roll up your sleeves and not be afraid to do the hard things and do what it takes to actually succeed, which for a lot of folks, they don't want to actually put in the reps and do what it takes to actually get the outcomes you want. So in the early days at Insight Venture Partners, the job at Insight back in 2003 was, and it still pretty much is, as an analyst, you're cold calling software CEOs and your cold calling could be anywhere between 30 plus CEOs day in, day out.
And for anyone who's been cold calling, it can get really fatiguing where for just weeks, weeks on weeks, all you're doing is smiling and dialing and lots of times you're trying to get through receptionists, get through IVR systems to then get a CEO on the phone. And then they're just like, who the hell is this guy and why are you asking me about my business and my revenue and all this stuff? And it's a pretty hard job. And for me, the way I approached it was very similar to how I approached tracking through the sprinter in life. Yeah, it's like, what you put in is what you kind of get out of it. And so for me, it was just continually being able to have the discipline and work ethic to just put in those reps in it. Ended up being me getting lucky finding a company early on in my career called ExactTarget that ended up getting acquired by Salesforce for a few billion dollars is now Salesforce Marketing Cloud and serves as a lot of the basis for how we think about modern marketing automation and marketing technology. And the thing I kind of learned from that lesson was that, well, one, like there's a little bit of luck. I mean, a lot of what we have in terms of like our jobs, ventures, being in the right place, right time, and a bit of chance, but also having a prepared mind to be able to be able to position, to optimize for when chance presents itself, to be able to act in a way that's decisive and you can execute in the right manner. And so from then on, I kind of just looked to challenge myself and find opportunities for growth and also opportunities where I felt I really was doing something that I was uniquely positioned to do, passionate about doing, and like God kind of presented a calling for me to do. And the thing I really am personally motivated by is like trying to find those passions that drive you and doing it in a way where it's not just totally dictated by like me trying to have like some financial success. It's something that really gives me purpose and purpose and passion and hard work. Like once you kind of have those, you're kind of unstoppable in terms of what's possible. So anyway, that's a long-winded answer, but it's a lot of what kind of guides my thinking and how I approach my career.