Beyond The Series B

Back in 2012, we decided we’d end every interview by asking investors and entrepreneurs what they believe that few other people believe. In this episode we listen in on some of the best… and strangest answers over hundreds of hours of interviews, featuring Marc Andreessen, Stewart Butterfield, Dennis Crowley, Jerry Yang, Aneel Bhusri, Tom Conrad, Tim Westergren, Daniel Ek, Neil Blumenthal, Fred Wilson, Naval Ravikant and more.

In this episode, we deal with a universal question almost every entrepreneur faces, whether you company is exploding in the good way, the bad way, or is just kinda limping along: At what point do you give up, cash in, pull the plug, or refocus your capital, time and talent on something else?

Leaders of Silicon Valley give us the dirt on Netscape’s battles with Microsoft, Foursquare surviving a Facebook clone war, Uber v. Lyft, Buzzfeed v. Gawker, Workday’s ten year revenge on Larry Ellison, the end result of the E.pinions lawsuit, the times when the PayPal mafia didn’t all get along so well, and Andreessen Horowitz picking a fight with much of the venture capital establishment, as told to Pando by Ben Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, Max Levchin, John Zimmer, Jonah Peretti, Dennis Crowley, Annel Bhusri, and Naval Ravikant. 

In this episode we weave together stories of high-growth hell as told to us by Reid Hoffman and Max Levchin at PayPal, Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen at Opsware, Elon Musk at Tesla, SolarCity and SpaceX all at once, Dustin Moskovitz at Facebook, Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler at Soul Cycle, Chad Dickerson at Etsy, and Drew Houston’s hilariously botched TechCrunch50 debut.

No matter what you are going through right now, this episode will make you feel better about it.

Host: Sarah Lacy.

Featuring: Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Marc Andreesen, Kevin Systrom, Stewart Butterfield, Ann Miura-Ko, Brian Chesky.

Entrepreneurs consider themselves scientific. Data driven. Like the robots they are building to replace us all.

So why are they so obsessed with LUCK?

The haunting specter of luck is one of the main drivers behind serial entrepreneurship. And a belief in the power of luck is one of the reasons that even failed CEOs will get funded again the next time.

Each week, we’ll explore a topic and we are starting with luck because around Series B is when you have to start showing real numbers, a real business, real momentum. You can no longer raise money on connections, on charisma, on a cool drawing on a napkin. It’s the time a lot of people’s luck runs out.

But, as the stories in this podcast show, luck isn’t as accidental or uncontrollable as people think...