Transcript
Introduction
Patrick
My guest this week is Andy Rachleff, who is the CEO of the automated investing platform Wealthfront. Andy was also the co-founder and long-time partner at Benchmark Capital, one of the most interesting and successful venture capital firms in the world. We spend most of our conversation discussing venture capital investing and entrepreneurship. Andy coined the now ubiquitous term “product/market fit” and has great insight into how investors and entrepreneurs should think about business. In that vein, we discuss both what we refer to as the value hypothesis: building a product or service that customers love, and the growth hypothesis: scaling that product or service to a large market. We finish our conversation by talking about Andy and his team's mission at Wealthfront, and this conversation is perfectly timed, as Wealthfront just released a new feature that allows investors to buy factor portfolios, similar to Smart Beta ETFs.
Above all, I'll remember Andy's advice to put the gun in the other person's hand - a strategy we explore in the middle of our talk. We start our conversation discussing what has made Benchmark Capital so successful, which started with how the founders thought about their competition. You can find show notes for this episode at investorfieldguide.com/andy. And now please enjoy my conversation with Andy Rachleff.