This content was created by Avlok Kohli. This content was uploaded by Avlok Kohli. This is a YouTube video titled "AngelList CEO: How We Compete with Carta" (published May 16, 2023). The excerpt is an English interview-style conversation between an interviewer (labeled Speaker A) and Avlok Kohli (AngelList CEO), with a brief mention of Brett. They discuss AngelList's cap table product, how the company thinks about competing with Carta, the team's product-focused approach, and customer acquisition (both net-new customers and customers switching from other providers).
You mentioned the cap table product, Avlok. Again, I kind of swim for the warning sign. It's kind of like a— well, let's be blunt. It's like a fuck-on direct competitor to Carta. How do you think about competition? What's the right way to embrace it? And bluntly, how have you been able very quickly to catch up and level with them in such a short space of time?
So the way we think about competition is really having an eye towards competition, but we're not really focused on the competition. There's actually this great quote. I think it's from YC, but it may be from somewhere else where startups die of suicide, not homicide. And I believe that for every single company. And candidly, I've, you know, my first company died by suicide. I basically killed it. It had nothing to do with competition. And so as we think about running AngelList and the products we build, we really stay focused on how are we delivering an amazing experience for our customers and what makes sense for us to pursue and grow regardless of the competition, regardless of, you know, whatever market share someone may already have. And if we think that we have a unique view on something and we can create a significantly better product experience, we will just go do it. And the thing we have working for us is we are very product-focused. We are a team of pretty ambitious tinkerers, product builders, and we move incredibly fast once we're clear on the direction. And so I don't really think about competition in terms of focusing on it. I think about it more as how do we build something amazing for our customers with an eye towards competition, meaning, you know, you can't just ignore competition, but that's more of a secondary thing. Our main focus is on building an amazing product and just, you know, owning that market.
Are you taking customers from Carta or are these net new companies created? What's that, Brett?
It's all of the above. We are, we're definitely taking on net new customers. We're taking on customers that are using other providers. And so we are just sucking in companies and customers from everywhere at this point.
