Secrets to Spotting Early Winners in Billion-dollar Exits

Name: Secrets to Spotting Early Winners in Billion-dollar Exits
Uploaded: 2024-05-01T13:03:53+00:00
Duration: 53 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: Venture capitalist Jason M. Lemkin says most of his billion-dollar exits were surprises, even when he backed great founders. Talkdesk was the exception…

1 May 2024 · 1 min

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Venture capitalist Jason M. Lemkin says most of his billion-dollar exits were surprises, even when he backed great founders. Talkdesk was the exception: he spotted it early because it grew from $1M to $15M revenue in a year with a tiny team. Early traction rarely predicts massive winners.

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You don't think you make a lot of money on one? Oh no, I totally think you do. But do you know your winners early? For those that are the Figmas and the Hashicorps or the Saleslofts or the Algolias. Yes. Do you know it early or are you ever surprised? I can only share my experience. I think people have different experiences. I think, you know, that they are operationally successful early. You know that they're going to grow. I had no idea that any of my cash unicorns, right, the ones that were exited for billions, I didn't. Think any of them would except for Talkdesk. I did. I— and it's not that I didn't love the founders, it's just, it's just so hard, right? It's just so hard to build these companies that I would not have predicted that Pipedrive, Algolia, Salesloft would get that big. I knew Talkdesk would, just because going from, you know, $1 to $15 million with so few employees in a year with so much product market fit in there that you're like, okay, well, this is going to be worth a billion but not more, right?