Yeah. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. It was incredibly difficult. Sujal Patel On Selling His First Business For $2.6 Billion And Now Raising $108 Million From Jeff Bezos And Others To Improve Medical Diagnostics, Cap Table: Everything Entrepreneurs Need To Know, He Cofounded A Business Of 4,000 Employees That Just Sold For $2.6 Billion To Delivery Hero, Sacha Michaud On Cofounding A Business Of 4,000 Employees That Just Sold For $2.6 Billion To Delivery Hero, His Previous Business Is Worth $1 Billion And Now Raised $54 Million To Create A Cloud-Native Database Service, Nikita Shamgunov On Building A $1 Billion Business And Now Raising $54 Million To Create A Cloud-Native Database Service, How to leverage your network for introductions, The importance of your metrics leading up to the, Expectations from investors during the different. And were they like obviously now youre opening here the cap table to a different breed and I guess when that happen probably at a strategic level lets say from a board perspective or something you know, maybe you receive some type of recommendations whether it was with this corporation or with other corporations as to what perhaps to look for and what to avoid. In terms of investors, I guess two comments. How did you find these investors? So seed, series A, series B, series C, I was always the point person in the fundraise. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. So we want to be the first ever kind of full stack rental platform for long term leases and we monetize that two ways. We also actually had a really wonderful fourth cofounder whos no longer with us. Got it. Alejandro: Got it. So M&A are strategic [33:48]. He runs all the background of operation and he came from the real estate industry, two completely different background and neither of them was an obvious pick when I started the company at grad school. And it was just [22:11] during the process that its a startup, were at growth stage but not to expect to be able to predict our courses like that public company again. And you know I think hiring is definitely tough but retaining is even more complicated so is there any things that you for example seen yourself that work on that front? It is your job not just to do the day to day but once or twice a year you should be doing stuff that has a completely linear outcome where one day youre doing you know 3 million users a month and the next day youre doing 5 million users a month. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. Theres never like an exact number you need like when Uber raised money or you know Zillow raised money, theres never like a number they have to be at. So how did you meet your cofounders? Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below. In the early days, youre going to need to take all the capital you can get. So it was never I want to be an entrepreneur journey. Saying that, I have connections through both business school and previous people that have gone through BCG venture capital and most of your listeners and entrepreneurs will know so much of this is about like getting warm introductions to VCs so I did have a couple of cheats to get in through the network or through the BCG network. And investors love that story because its easy to believe that you can continue to do that. In the early days, youre going to need to take all the capital you can get. How much respect is there? Budget in my opinion perhaps should be allocated to something else. And I mean its quite a few cofounders. One is I wouldnt be too pressured about it too early. So I wouldnt be too picky early. How flat is the company? Make sure tenants understand why things are . Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. And were just a little earlier than obviously a public company so our gross is spikier. So in terms of timeline, you were mentioning that the C round, you guys closed this 46 million a couple of months ago. The company was incorporated in California, Texas, and Florida ten years ago. Unluckily weve made some phenomenal early hires so the company that have all scaled to leadership roles, thats fantastic for retention because those people know that we could have hired from outside but we bet on them and it worked and so Zumper is a place to build theyre career not somewhere else. Well help you prequalify renters and actually get the renter in to a lease, signing the documents, paying the first month deposit but well charge you a percentage of the lease fairly. We didnt go that route because I have the network but if I didnt have the network and some people have the network and still do it, they are really good cheap in to getting scaled quickly. He has grown the Zumper team to 50 and counting and successfully completed the acquisition of apartment search platform PadMapper. So it doesnt always work out and I think thats fine. Youll get terms sheets and yeses hopefully quicker than that but this process takes a while and as the money increases and a few rounds become more complicated, it can take more than three months as well. 1. Retention is something I think about every day. The reality is often in the early stages, youre going to want to take all the capital thats given to you and you may not have multiple term sheets. Alejandro Cremades leads the vision and execution for Panthera Advisors as its Co-Founder and. Anthemos Georgiades is the co-founder and CEO of Zumper, the largest startup in the rental industry, used by more than 26 million renters last year alone. So we have several million users using our platform every month now which is great and next year we wanted tens of millions of users a month and were poised to doing that. Two sided marketplaces are so difficult. I think its easy not to set those expectations and get caught in the relationship where neither side is being clear on what they expect. I think if you set these expectations from the very beginning that are super important. We both wanted to be entrepreneurs. Anthemos and Russell met in London while working at a consulting company back in 2006, but it was after they moved to the U.S and experienced the pain of finding a place to live that they decided to found Zumper along with Taylor Glass-Moore and Leah Jones. I think the startups end up wasting a lot of cash that could really extend runway but thats a different conversation. So if the story has changed in a way that merits the focus of the company but what is consistent every single time weve raised is that for six months in a row, we had really, really quick growth. To give you odds, at the seed stage and the series A stage of growth cuts, all about supply side where a two sided marketplace chicken an egg, on day zero you have no renters and no landlords, how do you solve that? I think if you hire four cofounders like yourself, thats difficult and luckily we didnt have that problem. So tell me your story a little bit here, Anthemos. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. I didnt think that either of them originally. I mean if you could give some kind of like tips you know both fronts it would be really fantastic. My friend have had to camp out overnight outside the property management office to get access to the new apartment and this is [01:09] you know things coming online, you can order a cab via phone, you can book a hotel online. Shalin Amin Chief Experience Officer. I think if you hire four cofounders like yourself, thats difficult and luckily we didnt have that problem. We want investors who look at $100 million in revenue as table stakes but they wont agree to a billion. Got it. And so when you think about AB testing frameworks, you think about how many started [03:43] that is a [03:44] grad school taught me. I kind of looked through in Crunchbase which connections I have into which fund. anthemos georgiades net worth; wedding max minghella wife; private beach airbnb california; antique english double barrel shotguns; tuscany faucet cartridge removal; primeweld cut 60 machine torch; glendale, az setback requirements. We love our investors. And frankly, the process is a pain in the ass. Got it. There could be investors who are fantastic. And at one point I just told one I just feel like I want to step on the egg and shoot the chicken because it was so repetitive. Saying that, I have connections through both business school and previous people that have gone through BCG venture capital and most of your listeners and entrepreneurs will know so much of this is about like getting warm introductions to VCs so I did have a couple of cheats to get in through the network or through the BCG network. For us, I think they fully understand the entrepreneurial journey and were really excited to have them on board. For us, I think they fully understand the entrepreneurial journey and were really excited to have them on board. I mean youre doing various jobs, head of sales, head of finance, head of fundraising, head of like DZ. Then behind the scenes, Zumper will close the transaction with the landlord and set the renter up with kind of rent payment. Now my cofounders were phenomenal in bringing them to meetings. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. Like many of our most successful entrepreneurs, Anthemos Georgiades was drawn into startup life to solve a burning problem. He remains a huge Tottenham Hotspur fan, and wakes up painfully every Saturday morning to tune into the live English soccer games. Because I speak with a ton of founders that are perhaps opening up the possibility of bringing on corporations and I think that you need to really do it right. Everyone in Boston, everyone in New York were straight nos and [25:15] didnt get second meetings but then a month later we came to Silicon Valley and we found a much better product market set for the kind of investor who was prepared to come early and invest early and we got a lot of yeses very quickly. So I think as your company matures, you look for investors that have something that you dont have and so for us, were not yet doing $100 million in revenue. How does the day to day at Zumper work? After that, it changed to more consumer. In the first two or three years you will kill your marketplace if you create any barriers to entry from either side. Yeah, I think its probably the DNA of your culture is I think a lot of it is built in the tough times. Alejandro: Got it. So when you go in to a fundraising in terms of preparation the most important thing is that your last six months are great and your most important metrics are all growing really nicely so kind of five, six months in a row that is a fantastic story to tell to an investor. Got it. Anthemos Georgiades CEO and co-founder. Yes, weve raised $90 million in capital including a series C that we just closed three months ago. How did you find these investors? And so I didnt really think about it too often because this is kind of 15 years ago but then I moved to another six or seven times into an apartment rentals in London, in Boston, in New York and the process is so bad every time, not just in searching but also in actually like getting the apartment. Were very clear with Axle Springer that we have a lot of consumer scale so a lot of people use our platform on a monthly basis but were still building the [21:55]. How do you scale like 20 million in revenue to 200 million in revenue and we didnt need the more product set investors because we already have fantastic people at that. Alejandro: Got it. Tanguy Le Louarn Chief Product Officer. I was also doing, Ive been doing marketplaces for I think like 10 years now and I remember in the last company, I would go and meet with investors and they kept asking me for the chicken and the egg. You know its interesting that you mentioned the chicken and the egg. Back to Meet the San Francisco Business Times' 40 under 40 Class of 2018. Since 2012, Georgiades has grown Zumper to over 200 employees, 178 million annual visits, and raised $178 million in venture capital for the company. Your second month you spend getting term sheets and documents signed. This show is about storytelling and all the elements that go into telling the perfect fundraising story. How many listings do we have on the site? I think Id say forget everything you think you know and everything, your education [38:28]. At the end of the day though, whether its senior people, junior people, interns who we want to bring back is all under pinned by culture. So I guess without further ado, Anthemos Georgiades from Zumper, welcome aboard. Stay informed using all the free online rental data out there (like Zumper's national rent report). And then my other cofounder Kurt Taylor I met through his mother who was an [04:43] and it was another example of just pure hustle. I was also doing, Ive been doing marketplaces for I think like 10 years now and I remember in the last company, I would go and meet with investors and they kept asking me for the chicken and the egg. Were incredibly grateful for everything she did and she remains kind of shareholder in the company. And so I finally just gave in and thought no one is going to build this. It was just purely hustling my network for six months to find people who are really great cultural fit but also have very different skill sets to the one I have. Culture is everything and so investing in people making sure I as the CEO spend a lot of time as much as possible with people who dont report to me is absolutely critical and that is ultimately like the fabric on how most companies are run. Everyone filling gaps where they could and it [07:02] fulfilling gaps in to where youre skilled and so I think the most obvious thing to do for that is to hire people with very different skill sets to you that allows you to never really have awkward overlap and egos because everyone is kind of skilled at something very unique. So for the business, Anthemos, how much capital have you guys raised today? Yeah. Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. So Id say your first month you spend like getting first, second, third meeting. Got it. It seemed crazy that the real estate industry wasnt moving towards on demand. It is not closely married to [14:55] and thats where its still on [14:58] I think Silicon Valley has a long way to go where when I got my first introductions to VCs to Kleiner, to Andreseen, to Graylock, to NEA, it often came through my graduate school network where someone was like, Hey, this guy is leaving HBS. Your email address is 100% safe from spam! At scale you get to do that and have those teams. So watching board members from the early investments are [19:38] who now runs Good Water but was originally Kleiner and then Eric [19:42] from Kleiner and theyre both experts at product market set. And as you know as and your listeners know, youre going to get a lot of nos on the way. Yeah. Now we have supply so the six months curve at the series B was all about users and millions of monthly users and then at the series C it was much more revenue curve. In terms of the dynamics, I think in the early days, you kind of through osmosis graduate towards like the things that are important. Absolutely. Got it and before we actually dive in to the journey here, so consulting and. Alejandro: So I guess like I have one thing to follow up on this. I guess the question that I would ask you and perhaps some advice for some of those that are listening, that are building a business that is more around the network effects, the marketplaces, should they walk the other way if the investor is asking too much about revenue early on on the financing cycles? You can filter down by city and . The most important thing is to surround yourself with an amazing support group because it is so much harder to build a company than I thought it was and the emotional resilience you need to get through the dark days and come back to the bright days even now is what [38:54] just get harder like yeah, we have more revenue now but with that there are people [38:58] and like huge revenue targets we have to attain and so the most important thing is surround yourself with a network of family, friends, mentors, peers, your team, your investors, whoever is an emotional crutch for you where you can take from them but also maybe get back to them as well when theyre having a tough time, thats the single most important thing is look after your mental health because it is lonely and it is stressful and if youre able to kind of be resilient you have a great outcome but it is really hard on some days to push through, so build that around just [39:35] and you can be happy while running your company. Anthemos Georgiades: Its just part of the game and it doesnt [24:30]. And to be fair, some of these 20 did indeed come back later to invest but in Boston and I pitched all of the east coast investors first because I was on the east coast and they were straight nos. So lets talk about Zumper here. Get a custom action plan and all the help that you need to start raising more capital. You look at your cofounders and you know that they understand that and that theyre not freaking out, that is where you build real institutional culture and then you try and grow that across the team. For every successful fundraise, every single company have a lot of nos. A lot of it was completely bottom up. And talking about hustling the network, was there any because I mean those networks that you have I think the network of Harvard is really fantastic and then you know the BCG as well but is there like any process that you followed to really like leverage the network? @zumper Stories Uncategorized . Saying that, in the early days you kind of need to bring on all the capital that you can. Raising money first, marketplace businesses is still really difficult and Ive raised $90 million and Im still saying it is difficult. Your third month is getting kind of diligence done and getting the wires in to the door. Im so glad I did it. Alejandro: Just out of curiosity, Anthemos, like how many nos did you get for example on your seed round if you have to count it? Anthemos Georgiades: Yeah. A lot of that is in the bank. So one is weve always promoted within so whenever we needed a role, we always prefer to promote someone instead of hiring from outside. We also actually had a really wonderful fourth cofounder whos no longer with us. Anthemos Georgiades: So Zumper is the vision for the company is to make renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel. And for you I guess personally and professionally because I think they both come together, so how has your leadership and management skills changed over the time from leading the company of lets say four to ten folks initially to a company of over a hundred employees? Look how quickly our revenue are scaling. Its so hard to get marketplaces liquidity so correct, the beautiful thing as you know is when you have it, it took us three years to get to that, it just runs and you just grow naturally when you have both sides but its so hard to get to it. They were [sexy 23:47] company and really fantastic fundraisers but the rounds just take a long time, due diligence take a long time. Great question. It is not suppose to be easy. Got it. So cofounders are difficult especially if youre not technical as really hard to find a good technical cofounder but the great thing is once you do and it takes a long time, they are able to attract the next generation of talent in to the company and thats how you kind of build your engineering team out. And so I didnt really think about it too often because this is kind of 15 years ago but then I moved to another six or seven times into an apartment rentals in London, in Boston, in New York and the process is so bad every time, not just in searching but also in actually like getting the apartment. So strategically that was a good marriage where they had a great consumer brand and we have really fantastic supply side inventory. I mean at the end of the day, building and scaling companies especially when youre at the early stages is all about survival and its all about learning to be with each other behind the trenches and really going to war and having each others backs. You can set the expectations and then see what happens and if its not a good fit upfront, you can go with the different option on the table. Two sided marketplaces are so difficult. Yeah, I mean BCG I think you get access to the 23 year olds CEOs who had been working for 40 years and kind of crazy in consulting you take the shortcut in your careers to being in the board room. And we were talking about the $46 million round which was the C round, C as in cat and basically what you were talking about I mean what Ive seen is that you guys have shifted a little bit the strategy. Like what have you seen that really works? Youre supposed to try six things that dont work. So I as British person moving to Silicon Valley in 2012 I have never run a startup before. Every company is completely different and theres no gold standard. I really enjoyed it and great stuff. We both had ideas to be entrepreneurs but neither of us have the guts to actually go for it. Im the CEO and Ive always felt that it was my responsibility to do the fundraising. I grew up in London. Anthemos Georgiades is the co-founder and CEO of Zumper. It is not suppose to be easy. Anthemos Georgiades: Its part of the game. So what is the best way, Anthemos, for people that are listening to reach out and say hi? Alejandro: And talking about hustling the network, was there any because I mean those networks that you have I think the network of Harvard is really fantastic and then you know the BCG as well but is there like any process that you followed to really like leverage the network? True to its reputation, Comfortbilt's HP22 pellet stove comes with a heating capacity of 50,000 BTU. You kind of just all in [06:39] I think where the carving of the rose start to happen for me around 10, 12 people where you no longer just have [06:49]. We saw it would take three to six months to integrate Pat Mapper and their backend that engineering project we worked really hard and quickly just over a year to integrate so we underestimated like how much work was required to integrate them by 3x. I think at that stage it makes sense. A lot of that is in the bank. At scale you get to do that and have those teams. Additionally, Anthemos Georgiades has had 2 past jobs including Consultant at The Boston Consulting Group. Youre exactly right. I mean I called it like a cheat [33:33] my team. And I mean its quite a few cofounders. A lot of business schools was how to make decisions with imperfect information. But I guess you were saying then here the shift, kind of like shifted more from like growth of users perhaps retention to more kind of like deep revenue growth. You know marketplaces and liquidity is king like you were pointing to finding what you need in the shortest period of time because otherwise theyre going to go elsewhere. And it was just [22:11] during the process that its a startup, were at growth stage but not to expect to be able to predict our courses like that public company again. So it doesnt always work out and I think thats fine. I knew the CEO for a while. At the end of the day though, whether its senior people, junior people, interns who we want to bring back is all under pinned by culture. Since 2012, Anth has grown Zumper to over 100 employees and raised $90 million in venture capital for the company. Just enter your email below. I mean I think at seed round its like an [26:02]. Thank you so much. Saying that, if you do have multiple term sheets the second point is of course, like before you get to liquidity, revenue is irrelevant and if revenue gets in the way of bringing either the consumer on to your platform or the supply side person on to your platform, you should not be trying to charge. Because I speak with a ton of founders that are perhaps opening up the possibility of bringing on corporations and I think that you need to really do it right. A lot of business schools was how to make decisions with imperfect information. All photos courtesy of Forbes Councils members. Your job as the CEO and the founder is to convince your investors of the reason to do this. So Id say your first month you spend like getting first, second, third meeting. Dave Costantino Staff Engineer - Backend. So the series B, weve done story now look at how quickly the renters are growing on the platform. It seemed crazy that the real estate industry wasnt moving towards on demand. Obviously they knew and I think for us it was like telling Axle and the rest of our investors that there are going to be months where we massively beat plans and there will be months where were behind plans. So cofounders are difficult especially if youre not technical as really hard to find a good technical cofounder but the great thing is once you do and it takes a long time, they are able to attract the next generation of talent in to the company and thats how you kind of build your engineering team out. At series A, you got to show product market set in a sub vertical. So you acquire not long ago Pat Mapper and how did this come together? anthemos georgiades net worth; wedding max minghella wife; private beach airbnb california; antique english double barrel shotguns; tuscany faucet cartridge removal; primeweld cut 60 machine torch. And so I wouldnt be too pressured. Zumper CEO & Co-Founder Anthemos Georgiades makes renting an apartment as easy as booking a hotel, shares insights on monetizing marketplaces, diversifying r. I mean at the end of the day, building and scaling companies especially when youre at the early stages is all about survival and its all about learning to be with each other behind the trenches and really going to war and having each others backs. But oh we must have had like 20 persons or 20 people say not now or later. His passion for relieving the stress for others in . And then when I moved out to America, Russel was software engineer at Google and I had no technical background so I basically hit up my network for anyone with a technical background living in the US who might be interested in joining and Russel and I really hit it off and he was the perfect cofounder. At series A, you got to show product market set in a sub vertical. Never thought Id be an entrepreneur. And it is the culture that keeps people here, not the compensation or anything else. You look at your cofounders and you know that they understand that and that theyre not freaking out, that is where you build real institutional culture and then you try and grow that across the team.
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