Sand Hill Road
Sand Hill Road
Recent Episodes
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Dan Ahrens, founding partner at Left Lane Capital, a New York based venture capital and early growth equity firm that invests in high-growth internet and consumer technology businesses.
00:00 Intro
02:43 Consumer vs. enterprise tech
05:09 Getting into venture
07:54 Raising Left Lane I
10:35 Investing while fundraising
13:09 The Left Lane Capital playbook
17:09 Due diligence in a hot market
18:52 Scaling Left Lane Capital
21:36 Deployment pace
23:28 Focus area
26:04 Hard conversations
28:10 Arc
32:53 Exo Freight
35:28 Supply Chain Tech
37:04 Call to action
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Divyang Arora, founder and CEO of Byte Kitchen about cooking up the future of digital food halls with Byte Kitchen founder Divyang Arora.
0:00 Intro
1:24 2 minute elevator pitch
4:27 Going all in
8:07 Business Model
14:52 The Byte Kitchen playbook
18:52 Optimal Partner Restaurant Profile
25:39 End customer benefits
27:25 Raising the Seed Round
30:14 Early traction
31:54 Byte Kitchen's Use of Tech
34:50 Call to Action
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Michael Crandell, CEO Bitwarden about scaling open-source password manager Bitwarden.
00:00 Intro
00:50 What is Bitwarden
03:22 From side hustle to venture-backed
06:36 Joining a Bootstrapper at Series A
09:58 Open-source GTM
13:25 Open-source defensibility
15:35 Community vs. enterprise edition
17:37 Revenue traction
19:51 Competition
22:25 Fundraising journey
25:46 Use of funds
28:25 Go-to-market strategy
31:40 Building a remote-first company
35:11 Arbitrating talent
36:00 Next steps for Bitwarden
38:28 Not the first time at the rodeo
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kyle Harrison, general partner at Country about everything from the economics of whale hunting, the venture product offering to his recent joining of Contrary.
00:00 Intro
01:11 Way into venture
04:58 Time of reflection
07:24 The under-innovated venture model
10:46 Your fund size is your strategy
16:16 The nature of the general partnership
20:38 Rethinking the org chart
25:13 VC product vs. VC service
28:31 VC product industry practice
31:13 From monolithic brands to solo capitalist
37:18 The future of venture tribes
39:52 Joining Contrary