Invest Like The Best
Episode 101 How to Identify Interesting Markets
Invest Like The Best

Episode 101: How to Identify Interesting Markets

Invest Like The Best

Episode 101

How to Identify Interesting Markets

Elad is a technology entrepreneur and investor with a fascinating background. We cover the importance of finding a great market, how to evaluate or identify interesting markets and why you need to shift from being product-centric to distribution-centric when building a huge firm.

[00:01:31] – (First Question) – Process for evaluating a young business

[00:02:43] – Andy Rachleff Podcast Episode

[00:03:09] – Data factors for evaluating a business

[00:05:08] – Reference checks

[00:06:42] – Advice for companies that are reliant on product cyclicality

[00:07:01] – Where to Go After Product-Market Fit: An Interview with Marc Andreessen

[00:07:31] – High Growth Handbook

[00:09:30] – Lessons learned from marketing and growing companies

[00:12:09] – How do you hire the best people to improve your distribution

[00:13:16] – How does he think about lifetime customer value vs customer acquisition cost

[00:15:57] – Should companies just focus on high margin power users

[00:16:35] – Best ways to organize a company hierarchy

[00:19:16] – His interest and background in the area of longevity research

[00:21:52] – Changes he has made in his own life as a result of this longevity research

[00:22:56] – Most effective use of a CEO’s time

[00:24:58] – How he evaluates or identifies interesting markets for potential businesses

[00:28:03] – Any markets that fit his criteria that are under-appreciated by investors

[00:30:02] – Worst practices for businesses

[00:32:19] – Kindest thing anyone has done for him

[00:33:20] – What would be the topic of his next book

[00:34:40] – Biggest lessons he’s learned about markets

How to Identify Interesting Markets

Introduction

Patrick
My guest this week has a fascinating background. He's a PhD in biology, but has split his time as both an investor and an operator. As an investor, he's involved in companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart, Opendoor, Stripe, Square, and Pinterest - not too shabby. As an operator, he helped both Google and Twitter scale their businesses. In the case of Twitter, from 100 employees to over 1,500 in a two-year span. He's just written a book about these experiences called the High Growth Handbook, which is largely the topic of our conversation. Our talk is centered on what makes for a good investment and even more specifically; how Elad identifies an interesting market. Operators and early stage investors will find lots of nuggets in this fun conversation. Please enjoy.

Evaluating a New Business

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