20VC: Bessemer's Byron Deeter on The Commonalities Of Truly Great Founders and Learnings From Investing In Box, Twilio and GainSight

Byron
Deeter is a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Prior to being a VC,
Byron himself was a veteran cloud CEO &
Founder returning to venture capital in 2005 to lead
Bessemer’s global cloud practice where he has been actively
involved with over 100 cloud investments representing a third of
the market cap of all public cloud companies. Byron has lead
investments in the likes of Box, Twilio, Intercom, Cornerstone On
Demand and many many more. Byron's pedigree is recognised globally
as he is consistently ranked one of the top global investors
across all industries.

1.) How did Byron make his way into VC from being a veteran
cloud CEO and Founder?

2.)  What are the commonalities angst the truly exceptional
operators that Byron has worked with? What is it that makes the
likes Aaron Levie so special?

3.) We saw a $63bn drop in late stage SaaS valuations, so what
does this really mean for the early guys? In these markets should
founders be placing greater emphasis on unit economics?

4.) With the increasing importance of customer retention will we
see further increased growth in the field of customer success?
How important is it really now for startups?

5.) How does Byron define efficient growth, what does cash is
king mean? Where does Byron stand on the bottoms up sales approach,
is this the new sales method of the 21st century?

6.) What have been the biggest takeaways for Byron of watching
Box, Sendgrid, Twilio go into hyper growth mode and scale into the
rocketships that they are

Items Mentioned In Today’s
Episode: 

Byron’s Fave Book: The Everything Store 

Byron's Fave Productivity Tools: Clutter

Byron's Fave Blog: Bleacher
Report, Techcrunch 

Byron’s Most Recent Investment: Rainforest
QA

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