If you like startups and you listen to podcasts, youโre probably familiar with Redpoint Managing Director Logan Bartlettโs podcast, the Logan Bartlett Show. We reflect on how it first got started, plus all his tricks for growing the podcast, including his canonical episodes in 2022 that helped pop the web3 bubble.
We also talk market cycles and bubbles, what Loganโs seeing in the data today, especially in AI, plus Loganโs philosophyโs on venture capital as an asset class, his favorite under the radar investors, and advice for his younger self.
๐ Stream on Apple and Spotify
Timestamps to jump in:
1:33 Not getting invited to Michael Rubinโs white party
4:20 Meeting on Twitter during COVID
12:36 How Logan and I benefited from Twitter
16:55 Early days of the Logan Bartlett Show
22:10 Why podcasts are so hard to grow, and how Logan did it
24:50 Learning YouTubeโs the best for podcast growth
29:02 Inside Loganโs web3 episodes with Zach Weinberg
32:07 Lessons from studying history and market cycles
33:15 Producer Ben fact checking Logan's historical railroad statistics
39:42 How to invest in and around bubbles
51:00 Market data from Redpointโs 2024 AGM update
55:12 Differences between companies valued at 100x and 5x ARR
1:00:04 The Barbell Theory of asset management and why Logan disagrees it will happen in VC
1:09:40 Ways VCs can actually add value
1:12:27 Redpointโs founding story + greatest hits
1:18:14 The most underrated investors and founders
Referenced:
Acquiredโs TikTok episode
Redpointโs 2024 AGM Update
Find Logan on Twitter and LinkedIn.
๐ Find on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube
If you donโt want to miss an episode, subscribe to get new ones in your inbox each week.
Transcript
Find transcripts of all prior episodes here.
I didnโt quality check this transcript to the same extent I usually do. If you usually read these instead of listening to the episodes, let me know if you found this one particularly harder to read.
Turner Novak:
I feel like we're wearing the exact same outfit.
Logan Bartlett:
Almost.
Turner Novak:
It's good. It stands out.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. We found one time ... Are we recording? I think we could just-
Turner Novak:
We can-
Logan Bartlett:
We can just decide to use this or not.
We found one time we were on this couch and I wore white and I think the guest did, too, and we were totally melted into the couch. It was just like a terrible look. So, Ben here and Rashad have insisted that I wear dark colors when I do it on this couch, just to give you better contrast, so I pop a little bit more.
Turner Novak:
Amazing. It's like the white party, Michael-
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. The Michael Rubin's party.
Turner Novak:
Parties.
Logan Bartlett:
One day. One day. I think there's been some VCs there. I don't want to give them the credit of shouting out any individuals as cool enough to be at the white party, but I know of one or two that definitely think they're-
Turner Novak:
Yeah. So, you're saying we could get on that level at some point.
Logan Bartlett:
If nothing's play out correctly for us, then yeah. I mean theoretically, all VCs dream of going to Michael Rubin's party one day.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. Both of our podcasts continue to exponentially grow. I feel like I'm probably a year behind you. So, three years you'll be there in four.
Logan Bartlett:
When did you start?
Turner Novak:
June of 2023.
Logan Bartlett:
'23.
Turner Novak:
When I published the first episode.
Logan Bartlett:
Okay.
Turner Novak:
I've been thinking about it for three years.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, of course.
Turner Novak:
I've heard you kind of talk about it. I was like, "Man, I could probably do this." Everyone talks about there's so many podcasts, but there's not very many good podcasts.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, I mean, it's a funny thing when people complain about podcasts. It's like, it reminds me of do people complain about there being enough websites or something? It's free content and so don't listen.
Hey, people are putting work into something and you actually don't need to listen. It's not like we're taking shelf space from someone else or a 3:30 television slot or something. It's like we live in the world of infinite scalability of digital goods, and so you actually just don't need to listen to the incremental podcasts.
And so, when people complain about it, I'm like, "Yeah, I think there should be as many podcasts as there are people that are interested in doing it. And if you're just doing it for your own edification or enjoyment, who's to say that you shouldn't do that?"
So, I don't know. I think the whole thing is a weird narrative about people pushing back on that stuff.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. I think it just became a meme of everyone starting a podcast to make fun of it almost, but-
Logan Bartlett:
Totally, totally. And that's fine. I enjoy the joke as much as anyone.
Turner Novak:
You always make that joke on Twitter, too.
Logan Bartlett:
I know. I know, I know. I do make the joke a lot, but it's because other people have. But if anyone asks me for help with their podcast or anything, I'm always willing to ... First, I'll direct them to some of the stuff I put out publicly about how to make a podcast and then I try to be as helpful as I can. I want other people to succeed or at least not make the same I've made along the way.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. I want to get into it a little bit. I think the first thing I want to start with was we kind of just got to know each other from I guess being funny on Twitter.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, fuck around. You still do it more than I do.
Turner Novak:
Okay. So, people have told me that I've fallen off for the last two years.
Logan Bartlett:
Of course. I mean, you're putting time into this, so you're definitely spending less time doing that. That's sort of what I found is I didn't have enough time. When COVID was going on, I had enough time to do it infinitely, right?
Turner Novak:
Yeah. And there were so many amazing things happening,
Logan Bartlett:
So many amazing things. And we all sort of lived in the same world during COVID because we were all trapped in our homes. And so, our entire existence was some portion of just what was going on locally within your house, but then the rest of it was mostly a shared online experience for the most part. And now people have gone back to their regular lives of going out to dinner with friends or going to sporting events or going to a movie or going for a walk.
And so, we're now going back to some of the fragmentation, but it felt like you could make much more mainstream jokes that would broadly appeal to everyone was hyper online at that time. And so, I enjoyed doing that. Now as I've done this stuff more and more, it's like I don't totally get paid for either of those things and I only have time to really do one.
Turner Novak:
And you get paid for Twitter now, right?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah. Have you ever gotten a check?
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I get 30 to 100 bucks every two weeks.
Logan Bartlett:
That's not bad.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, it's enough where it's like, "Man, I should do this more." But it's always like, "Eh."
Logan Bartlett:
My peak was well before they started paying, so I'm not getting any royalty checks from Uncle Elon.
Turner Novak:
Okay. I think Chris, Chris Bakke. Chris Bakke on Twitter. I think he said this publicly on the podcast that Elon on my podcast, he said that Elon just funds the payouts. It makes no economic sense. He's just paying people.
Logan Bartlett:
That's pretty funny.
Turner Novak:
I mean, it checks out, I guess with Twitter.
Logan Bartlett:
I mean, in some ways, Elon's just funding the totality of all activity on Twitter right now, or at least a very large portion of it. So, why not the incremental payouts as well?
Turner Novak:
I mean, he's totally molded the platform. You remember the day that the Mr. Beast video was a sponsored video?
Logan Bartlett:
Oh, yeah.
Turner Novak:
And you saw it every time you open the app.
Logan Bartlett:
Totally.
Turner Novak:
And you would scroll and it'd be like every 10th video would be this Mr. Beast video.
Logan Bartlett:
It also feels like every 10 days or so, he isn't getting enough likes or mentions of his own account and his own tweets, and so, you'll go through a 24-hour period where it's just nonstop, your entire feed is just like stuff ... I don't even follow him and stuff he's replying to, stuff he's doing. And then they'll dial back down the algorithm once he forgets about it for a little while.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. Well, they change the algorithm every couple of weeks I feel like if you noticeably feel a change.
Logan Bartlett:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe it.
Turner Novak:
So, I think that's partially why for me, I've just kind of, I mean I still do it. I use it for information.
Logan Bartlett:
Did you sort of feel like you figured out some formula of what works?
Turner Novak:
Somewhat, yeah.
Logan Bartlett:
And it became a little templated in some ways. And I found my mind was drifting more and more to what would be received as a good tweet rather than what I found to necessarily be funny or interesting on my own. And I was keeping score in some weird way about the number of likes it got and all of that and deleting it if it didn't work the way I wanted it to. And that's just kind of an unhealthy way of operating. It's literally like you're just pursuing validation from masses.
Turner Novak:
Performative.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, you're pursuing validation from random people you don't actually know. And so, that was the point that I realized my brain was kind of broken.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I would say there's probably some element of it. You kind of know when you tweet something, you kind of know how it's going to do.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, I agree.
Turner Novak:
I think I have a couple templates that always do well. VCs adding value to portfolio companies is probably my most used tweet. And just a video with someone pretending to help someone and not doing anything.
Logan Bartlett:
It plays every time.
Turner Novak:
It just slaps every time, as long as it's a good video. It's just the self-deprecating. You just make fun of yourself.
Logan Bartlett:
Totally, totally.
Turner Novak:
It just works, I mean.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, the self-reflective VC humor stuff, definitely, there was a large portion of that over the course of the pandemic, and I think it still plays. I think it was probably funnier when the market was just up into the right and it was so absurd. And now it's like, it feels like we've made some version of that joke so many times over the last four years that finding new and novel ways to do it is harder and harder, I think.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I probably got, I don't know, 100 million timeline views, whatever you want to call it from just tiger jokes in 2021.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah. But now you can't.
Turner Novak:
No one cares. It's kind of sad.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, exactly. Beating a dead cat.
Turner Novak:
Well, actually they're back now.
Logan Bartlett:
Are they?
Turner Novak:
They closed the new fund.
Logan Bartlett:
Good for them.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, they're in the market.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah.
Turner Novak:
They're doing some stuff. Who knows? Hopefully it's good stuff. You always want to root for people.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. Do you? Do you always want to remember?
Turner Novak:
Okay, so that's the thing with Twitter, I don't know how you use it, but maybe I've done it accidentally before, but I never talk negative about someone. There'll be a high-profile startup that launches. It's a product and it's obviously not going to work.
Logan Bartlett:
Sure.
Turner Novak:
I generally choose to just not-
Logan Bartlett:
Oh, I mean, I think punching at founders or startups is just a terrible look as a venture capitalist in general. I find there's somewhat of an open season on a few, and it rotates who, but a little bit of different venture firms and how antagonistic you want to be based on your firm's posture to that stuff. I think further upstream you are and more vocal you are, the more willing you are to call out other firms when you're a downstream growth investor like me, you don't want to anyone off.
And so, I think that VCs are always somewhat fair game. And even named VCs I think is fair game. I also think there's probably, there's a group of companies that are so established that it's almost crossed a chasm that you can make a Elon joke or a Zuck joke or whatever equivalent thing it is. I feel like that's probably fair game, but I agree, there's some taste in what joke you're making and whether or not you're punching down or up.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I mean definitely, I think about it a lot, but to the extent I don't really think about it. It's just kind of avoid it. And then when it comes to tweeting, how do you do it? Do you still do it much or what is, or was your process?
Logan Bartlett:
Not really. I'll see something. I've set timers on my phone now with, I downloaded an app called Clearspace that my friend showed me, and it'll lock you out of your phone. It's better than the native stuff that you can do on Apple. So, I've spent less and less time on Twitter. But when I go on, I'll do it for quick bursts.
And if in that I get a 15-minute window that I can log on three times a day, and if in that 15 minutes something comes to mind, then I'll fire it off. The problem is, because I'm not living on it now, I'll think of a joke and I'll text it to a friend. And now, I need validation that someone else hasn't already made that joke. And they'll be like-
Turner Novak:
That's worst. You get called out and you're like, "I didn't even see it."
Logan Bartlett:
Totally. When Kristen Faulkner, the woman that was at Threshold in Bessemer that just won the gold in the Olympic cycling or whatever. Four hours later, I was like, texted one of my friends. I'm like, "Who said VCs can't do it all?" Or something, like vice president in Olympic medal. VCs got it. I forget what the joke was. And he's like, "You're six hours late on that joke." I was like, "Got it. Yup. No, I appreciate that." So, not being hyper online to the extent I was has led to some decay in my readiness to make the jokes.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. Was there, or is there any benefit from a Twitter presence?
Logan Bartlett:
I think so. I mean, it's hard to say. I'd be curious your perspective on this, but I think there's something about name recognition that's sort of hard to define exactly what it is. It's kind of like brand-based advertising. It's probably hard for, is it Apple that now does the halftime shows? Pepsi gave it up. It's probably hard for Apple to come up with what the value of hosting the Super Bowl halftime show is for their brand, but I'm sure that intuitively, they feel like it's advantageous. And not to compare tweeting to Super Bowl shows but-
Turner Novak:
VCs, like competing-
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, my Twitter was basically the Super Bowl of halftime shows or the halftime Super Bowl show. So, I think that I innately know it was advantageous and it's given me access to people that I wouldn't have otherwise. But it's hard for me to point to if not for this, I wouldn't have something, but I know it's there.
Turner Novak:
Because you were already a VC. You're already in the game. I mean for me, it was like how I got my first job.
Logan Bartlett:
So, quite literally, yeah, it changed the trajectory. Yeah, no, for me, I had already reached the inner circle of Redpoint before I really started tweeting in Ernst. And so, it was a little latent, but the name recognition is definitely a thing for sure.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. What was it like letting them allow you to say things that weren't like, "Hey, guys, here's top five startup tips."
Logan Bartlett:
It's funny. So, I was at Battery Ventures for six years. And Battery is a registered investment advisor. And so, what you can say at when you're registered as much more limited than what you could say when you're not. And so, I accepted job a Redpoint December 19, and then I came over right as the pandemic was getting going. And so, at that point in time, there was a lot more latitude for me to say and do more things. And so, I don't know if they totally knew what they were getting into when the pandemic hit, and I just started doing it, but it wasn't like a purposeful thing.
And to be honest, sans one time a very prominent person in our ecosystem emailed the founder of our firm asking about a specific tweet I made and if I was making fun of him. Other than that, there was really no blowback that came. And so, yeah, it was really that one situation. And for the most part, I threaded the line pretty well on, not too many people off, although inevitably I'm sure there's a bunch.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, you never know. I always come across one and they just have me blocked.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, that's right.
Turner Novak:
Like whatever.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Turner Novak:
It's one out of a million people or whatever. It's super small.
Logan Bartlett:
Well, it's a funny thing. If you have a 90% approval rating and a million people came across that tweet you made and 90% of people liked it, that means that 100,000 people disliked it. And that's a high number of people. And so, inevitably I think with that amount of reach, you're going to off a lot of people. It's just inevitable. And so, it doesn't surprise me just statistically that there'd be a fair number of people that block you for whatever random reason or tweet that you said along the way.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I remember, this is probably one of my favorite ones you had, it was near the beginning of COVID. It was really unfortunate for all the hedge fund managers with multiple families or something like that.
Logan Bartlett:
There was some story, I forget what it was. I forget even what the impetus was at the time of that. I think I would need to go back and check. But that was one of the all-time, most viral ones that-
Turner Novak:
That you had.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it's funny, whenever, I'm sure you've been in that vortex many more times than I have, but when something's just sort of, the algorithm has clearly taken it, and what often happened to me is I would make a joke and then it would land with people that got the joke and then reach a different rung of people didn't get the joke.
Turner Novak:
Like a rung of the algorithm.
Logan Bartlett:
And then more people are mad that I'm making that they don't get it. And so, it ends up being this very meta layer cake or whatever.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. Is that maybe part of the reason to start a podcast to get a different, I don't know. Why'd you do it in the first place?
Logan Bartlett:
I would say yes. That was a very one-dimensional format of communicating that I feel like I figured out elements of how to make it work. And I wanted to be more three-dimensional and not one-dimensional. And so, I wanted to be able to be more known for more than just whatever, 140 or 280 jokes that making fun of the VC industry. And so, that was kind of the impetus to do it. I didn't have a great idea otherwise, but of how to execute on it or to what end I was doing it. But yeah, that was the original thing was I was kind of tired of just cracking jokes on Twitter and thinking of, "Hey, what else could I do?"
Turner Novak:
So, how'd you do it? What was the initial go-to-market context?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, honestly, the simple thing was I reached out to ... Well, so All In was having a lot of success and I thought, "Hey, these guys, it was a really not, well-thought-through idea, but these guys are richer and older than I am. What if we had something similar, but it was younger and-"
Turner Novak:
So, less rich, less rich.
Logan Bartlett:
Less rich and young, yeah, and more relatable was I think how I pitched the less rich part of it. And that was kind of the simple thing. And so, I reached out to a few people and we got going and doing anything, I mean, it makes you somewhat, again, not to actually overly extrapolate this analogy, but it makes you empathetic for a founder's journey when you have three different people trying to solve different things for themselves and trying to coordinate across different areas and all that. It was hard. And so, I did it with three people and it just didn't totally work.
And it was funny, we actually built up the infrastructure to be able to do a podcast and we figured out some of the elements of how you do it. And so, I felt like I committed to some people that I would keep going some way. We had signed on audio engineers to help us edit it, and we had built some design around it, figured out how to publish and do videos and all this stuff. And so, I felt like I figured out some of elements of it, and so I didn't know what to do, and I decided that interviews were something that I would find more interesting.
Turner Novak:
This was roundtable sort of.
Logan Bartlett:
It was roundtable. Yeah, exactly. I found that the three different formats for podcasts seem to be like the two, three, in some cases, four people talk about something and those tend to be a little bit more ephemeral in nature. You need something topical that's flowing through, so you're like whiffing on-
Turner Novak:
Yeah, so it's like worth based on something that's happening.
Logan Bartlett:
What's going on. And then there's the interview style, which I think is probably the most saturated as we sit here and do an interview. And then the third one that's emerging that I think is interesting is what the Acquired guys are doing or the Founders podcast, or there's some around history and stuff, where there's one individual that synthesizes a bunch of work or information or one or two or whatever it is, and they present to you some major deep dive or some insight or opinion on some topical area. It feels like those are the three different buckets-ish.
And the third one's maybe the newest, but also I found super interesting. It's almost like explainers on YouTube, but in podcast form in some ways. And so, I think that's kind of the new emerging one.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I've always liked the Acquired ones.
Logan Bartlett:
They've done a great job. They're good guys. They've been very gracious in helping me out with stuff or helping me think through stuff. So, I mean, it's amazing. They just sold out, or I don't know, sold out, but did a big show in San Francisco, I think at the Chase Center, maybe with Mark Zuckerberg, which is wild it's gotten to that scale. I know they had a Wall Street Journal article recently, which I think they were already trending towards a new echelon, and now they're at an even bigger echelon than what they were in before, which is impressive.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. I remember once I did a call with them doing research on an episode. I think it's actually when I first came across them. It was probably like 2019 or '20.
Logan Bartlett:
Oh, is that right?
Turner Novak:
Yeah. And they just wanted to pick my brain about it was the ByteDance episode.
Logan Bartlett:
Oh, cool.
Turner Novak:
About TikTok. Because that's one of the ways when I first started tweeting a lot, I was tweeting a lot about TikTok. I was like, "This insane app. It's a great product. No one's talking about it." And then now, it's become a pretty big thing.
Logan Bartlett:
It's crazy.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Logan Bartlett:
Did you ever do videos in a meaningful way?
Turner Novak:
Like the lip-syncing and dances.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. I remember you had it for, I don't know if you still do, but I remember there were some videos I recall of you playing around on it.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I've made some dumb meme videos.
Logan Bartlett:
But not as a purposeful...
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I've started with a podcast cutting up clips and putting it on, but it's kind of like the same playbook-
Logan Bartlett:
Podcast distribution sucks as you well know. So, it's just hard. You're sort of trying to figure out any way to reach people.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I describe it to people as literally the hardest medium of content to grow, but probably the most valuable.
Logan Bartlett:
I think that's right.
Turner Novak:
How do you grow the podcast? What was your strategy?
Logan Bartlett:
Be personal?
Turner Novak:
Yeah.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. So, I only learn from making all the mistakes in the world. I think that initially I sort of thought get the biggest guess you possibly can, and then it will grow. And the problem with that strategy is you suck when you first get going. I mean, you're really bad. You don't know how to do it. Your titling is all wrong. How you edit the episode is all wrong.
Turner Novak:
Your camera positioning is bad.
Logan Bartlett:
The question you ask is bad. All that stuff. So, you're terrible initially. And so, your inclination to bring on the biggest guests actually is a bad one because you're not going to be very good when they come on. And so, of course I was like, "Let me get the biggest guests or the people that I know that will do it." So, I did that and all of it was bad. And so, that was one of the things I was like, "Oh, I can keep getting bigger and bigger guests to come on and that'll be how I'll grow," and didn't totally work. And since, we tried all this stuff, Twitter.
Turner Novak:
So, why didn't it work? Because it was just bad and no one listened?
Logan Bartlett:
I think the quality is bad is one. When you're first getting going in general, it's bad. I also think you're not building a base of listenership, you're building a spike of listenership. And so, people will come in only for that individual guest and not for anything about you. And so, I think that it's much better in a topical or thematic way to build cohorts of listeners over time and retain them. And it's kind of a crutch to cling to to have a big blast of people coming in and then they don't stick around. And I would much rather have that at a later stage when the product's a lot better.
I've thought it through in different ways. I figured out the types of questions I'm going to ask, what the product market fits, so to speak of the podcast actually is. And so, then your questions are better. The angle that you're pursuing or where you're trying to disseminate from an information standpoint to guess is better. Yeah. So, it would spike for an individual episode and then totally fall back down. And then it would spike for an episode and totally fall back down. And so, we tried all the stuff. We did all the TikTok clipping and Instagram clipping and all that, and I don't know if any of it actually really worked.
The single thing that has been best, and it took 18 months to figure out, and I think we talked about this when you were first getting going here, was being YouTube first and how we were building it. And I think originally, we thought, "Let's just solve for Spotify and Apple and then load a video up to YouTube." And YouTube is such a big canvas of stuff that you can do, how the intro is, the thumbnail, the title, the editing, the camera angles, the lighting, the whatever, all these different things. And you're rewarded for all of them because the app is so algorithmic and how it disseminates it.
Versus Apple Podcast is a dumb RSS feed and you don't get rewarded for any ... There's the shares and the subscribes and that's kind of it. And there's no algorithmic promotion that really happens from that. And doing a incrementally better intro, you're not going to have a higher viewership or listenership on Apple versus on YouTube, the click-through rates and the fall offs and all of that. If it's good, it shows more people. If it's bad, it doesn't. And so, I think that that was a big mistake that we made early on. And so, refining and iterating on that has been super helpful in growing the base for sure.
Turner Novak:
So, it's basically just if people watch it, the algo will put in front of people
Logan Bartlett:
Basically. I mean, it's more complicated than that as I understand it.
Turner Novak:
Well, that's the simple-
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, there's the thumbnail, there's the title, and then the percentage of people that see it and click on it, then that informs it, but then it actually ties into watch time. And so, how long the people that click through, they don't want you to say, whatever I'm interviewing Mark Zuckerberg or Sam Altman, and then you click in and it's like some whatever, someone in a mask as Mark Zuckerberg-
Turner Novak:
Which is not actually.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. And so, you click off and you're like, "What the fuck was this?" They don't want to reward that. And so then it actually ties into watch time as well and how long people actually stay on it. So, are you validating what it said in there? And then the algorithm's really good. I've had some that have just gone totally crazy. And I did one with Sam Altman and it just took off.
Turner Novak:
339K, I think was the last I saw. I looked at it a couple days ago.
Logan Bartlett:
Oh, it's like 700, 800 now. Oh, yeah. It's crazy.
Turner Novak:
Oh, shit. Okay. Yeah, it's amazing.
Logan Bartlett:
And it just totally took off and it was like 400K in, or I don't know, it was 200K in three days or something. It was just the algorithm just totally blasted it into outer space. And so, now that was a unique moment in time for sure, with a unique person. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting how that can really work.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I mean, I've definitely seen the same thing. Sometimes I'll put an episode up and the data shows that it did not perform and just that algorithm just doesn't push it.
Logan Bartlett:
Totally.
Turner Novak:
And sometimes I'll get way more views on Spotify and Apple and then fewer on YouTube, and sometimes the opposite. I have some YouTube that I think ... I think my best is almost 10,000 views on YouTube and it just-
Logan Bartlett:
Who was that?
Turner Novak:
It's a podcast about building newsletters.
Logan Bartlett:
Oh, nice.
Turner Novak:
So, it's a guy, he wrote the Sports Internet. I was Kendall Baker. Did you ever subscribe to him?
Logan Bartlett:
I grew up in the same town as him.
Turner Novak:
Oh, nice.
Logan Bartlett:
I've known him for a long time.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I've been a big fan of his since he started it. I just kind of came across it.
Logan Bartlett:
That's funny.
Turner Novak:
And always read it.
Logan Bartlett:
Our parents were friends when we were in elementary school.
Turner Novak:
Oh, amazing.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. So, he's been my best performing-
Logan Bartlett:
What do you think you hit with that? What do you think the unique thing was?
Turner Novak:
The title was The Business of Newsletters, and then the thumbnail was "How I scaled to 300,000 subs" or something. It was just-
Logan Bartlett:
Enticing.
Turner Novak:
... perfect. Yeah. It was just the perfect like, "Oh, this is kind of interesting."
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, I need to say something salacious so that this thumbnail really pops that you get some CTR, click-through rate on this one ends up really.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. What could we say? Every VC sucks.
Logan Bartlett:
Every VC sucks. That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Turner Novak:
I'm the best.
Logan Bartlett:
Elon Musk pays out of pocket for Turner's tweets.
Turner Novak:
That's how it works. So, I think the reason I asked you to come on was because I was just listening to some of the old crypto episodes and I was like, "Oh, man, I should just have Logan come on." It would be funny.
Logan Bartlett:
You know what's funny. So, I recorded a podcast with Dara Khosrowshahi from Uber the other day. We did the episode, and as he was leaving, he was like, "By the way, were you that anti crypto guy?" I was like, "That's not how I introduce myself, Dara. But yes, I think you're thinking of me." And he was like, "I like that stuff." And it was pretty funny. I was like, "Oh, that's funny." Getting on the CEO of Uber's desk for being anti-crypto. So, it was funny. I texted Zach that, and Zach got a real kick out of it.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. I just remember thinking it was so ridiculous that time period.
Logan Bartlett:
Oh, totally. Weinberg's so good at that stuff too, man.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, it was amazing.
Logan Bartlett:
He's uniquely talented. He doesn't care and he's smart and he's opinionated and he's credible. And so, all of those things just lead to a perfect storm, which I rode for some short period of time.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. I mean, they were just great conversations because when I go back and I've listened to some of those old, not your crypto episodes, but Web3 podcast and the stuff that people were saying, you're like, "This makes no sense."
Logan Bartlett:
Totally.
Turner Novak:
Well, you're listening to it then, but also listening to it today, you're like, "These people had no idea what they were talking about." And then when you listen to just the episode, especially with Zach, he's just like-
Logan Bartlett:
He was so good.
Turner Novak:
"Wait, so you're saying this already exists. You just get a mortgage or the government does this."
Logan Bartlett:
There's a point that most people back off and they recognize that they're making the situation uncomfortable and that the other person is stammering for stuff and-
Turner Novak:
He just goes with the [inaudible 00:29:27].
Logan Bartlett:
I innately just pull back when that happens. And Zach goes into heat at that moment. He's just like a feral animal ready to go at that when he sees someone stammering and doesn't know what they're talking about. That's just his moment to shine.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. And it was always so simple. It wasn't like he tried to outcomplicate anything. He was just like, "Wait, just so I understand, I'm making sure I get this."
Logan Bartlett:
I will say, one of the things I learned from that is if you keep asking people why or keep probing further and further into stuff, you'll find if people can truly articulate what it is they're saying. And I think most people want to be agreeable and keep the conversation going and don't want to acknowledge that they don't understand something, and so they don't probe any deeper. It's like they give you a satisfactory answer and you're like, "Okay, that makes sense."
Turner Novak:
I got to move down the list.
Logan Bartlett:
Just like, "Okay, I got to keep going and I don't want to expose myself for not understanding what was just said." And he's smart enough to know that whether or not what was said was cogent. And if not, just keep asking why over and over again.
Turner Novak:
So, one thing I think you probe going deep on history market cycles, why is that so important? You're a VC. You should be thinking about the future. You should be projecting where the world is going. Why is history and understanding how the market works? Why is it so important?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. Because I'm a cynical asshole I think is the short answer. No, I think that everything has been tried in some form before. Literally, every idea that anyone ever has, someone's already thought of it. We have whatever, seven billion people on the planet, infinite amounts of venture dollars seemingly at these days, a lot of smart people pursuing ambitious ideas.
And there is no novel idea. Literally, I don't think there's a single one. It all comes down to that moment in time and whether or not it's possible in some way that wouldn't have been in the past, and are you the right one that's capable of executing on it? And then you start asking yourself, "Okay, so what if it goes right, how big can it be? Or what the outcome can be?" And so, I think that if you don't understand history of how things came to be, you're not going to recognize when there are similarities that maybe you can draw on in some way, shape, or form.
And so, an example I talked about or thought about recently is with trains when the railroad was being built, a lot of people died. A lot of people died.
Turner Novak:
They died?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. Steam engines would explode. And laying the train tracks, there would be stories of hundreds of people that would die with trains and trying to build the infrastructure for the railroads. And it was something that as a society, we weren't as well connected. And maybe we didn't value human life to the extent we should have, but I think the net benefit of trains were worthwhile. And I don't know how many people died. Let's make up a number. Let's say it was 30,000 people died for trains.
Turner Novak:
That sounds horrific, today.
Logan Bartlett:
Today.
Turner Novak:
You throw that number out.
Logan Bartlett:
By today's standards, it's insane. It's insane, right? Absolutely insane. But that was worth it. And it sounds very crass to say that, but the impact trains had on society were amazing and similar with flight. When flight got going, initially people just crash all the time. People just die all the time flying. And we got better and we got safer with it. And now we're at a point that actually works.
And so, as we're looking at autonomous vehicles now, it kind of becomes a question of like, "Well, what are we willing to tolerate as a society to get to some end that is much better." 30, 40, 50,000 people a year die in car accidents. That's insane. Every year, car accidents, mostly healthy people dying car accidents. And we've accepted that as society, if an autonomous vehicle kills, let's say for if they can take that number from 30 to 3000, that'd be amazing
You know what the headlines would say? It would say, "Autonomous vehicle kills 3000 people." People would lose their minds. They would absolutely lose their minds, right?
Turner Novak:
Well, what happens when there's one? If there's one death?
Logan Bartlett:
Ten people a day dying by autonomous vehicles, people go insane. And so, I think that understanding some of these things and how social behavior plays out, obviously we live in a far more connected world. We value life in a much better way than I think we did during trains and airplanes. But understanding some of these precedents and stuff and how these markets come to be, I think is helpful. And also understanding where people have failed, why AV was impossible 10 years ago or five years ago, why now might be the right time for AI in some way, shape or form. Why XYZ company is capitalizing on this trend.
I think understanding those things is super important. And I don't know, I enjoy it. So, maybe I just justify it so I can spend time pontificating on it.
Turner Novak:
I mean, it's kind of fun and interesting.
Logan Bartlett:
Totally.
Turner Novak:
I think, I forget the exact stat. This is a podcast so I can make things up.
Logan Bartlett:
Totally.
Turner Novak:
But it was something like the investment into the UK railroads was like 23% of GDP for a couple of years.
Logan Bartlett:
I believe that.
Turner Novak:
It's like an absolutely insane number.
Logan Bartlett:
I believe that.
Turner Novak:
And when you go back to, or were you fast forward to today, it was like, how much were we investing in crypto? I don't know if you can compare crypto to real trade.
Logan Bartlett:
I would say no, but...
Turner Novak:
But maybe to AI, maybe AI is maybe more comparable or data centers or whatever for the cloud.
Logan Bartlett:
Nuclear.
Turner Novak:
These astronomic numbers that you're investing percentages of GDP to transform the economy, so it's necessary.
Logan Bartlett:
What is the percentage of, I mean, I'm sure it's small percentage points, right?
Turner Novak:
For today?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. Of what we're investing into AI, or is it significant?
Turner Novak:
Didn't we invest 600 billion in AI last year?
Logan Bartlett:
Is that right number?
Turner Novak:
Well, yeah. I don't know. Over the past couple of years, just like chips. I think it was David Cone at Sequoia put out some-
Logan Bartlett:
Cahn, yeah.
Turner Novak:
... David Cahn.
Logan Bartlett:
You said that. Yeah.
Turner Novak:
I think so. It was 600 over a certain period that we'd invested in AI infrastructure.
Logan Bartlett:
Sarah Cone, David Cahn. Although there was a David Cahn. David Cone was the pitcher for the Yankees way back then. You pictured I think a perfect game.
Turner Novak:
We're cutting out the mispronunciation.
Logan Bartlett:
No, I think we leave it in. I think we leave it. Ben, by the way, will you look up how many people died? Will you look up how many people died for train?
Ben:
1200.
Logan Bartlett:
That's it?
Ben:
In the Continental Railroad.
Logan Bartlett:
But look up-
Ben:
Estimated 1200 to 4000.
Logan Bartlett:
To 4,000. Will you look up how many people died?
Turner Novak:
You're getting fact check.
Logan Bartlett:
Leave this in. No, no. I yelled it. Look up how many people died in developing trains?
Turner Novak:
Well, you got to think, have you ever seen those videos in India when people are sitting on the train? There's a million people on the train or Bangladesh in some of those markets.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Turner Novak:
How many people die from that too?
Logan Bartlett:
I bet a lot.
Turner Novak:
It's insane.
Logan Bartlett:
Give me some stat. If it's 1200 to 4000, fuck, all right.
Turner Novak:
Logan's entire thesis.
Logan Bartlett:
I still think it stands. I mean, 4,000 people dying by train is still a lot. That was for Transcontinental. That was just one railroad.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. That's fair.
Logan Bartlett:
What do you got? Give me a stat that's closer.
Ben:
There's nothing here that is really close.
Logan Bartlett:
Wow. We've gone off camera folks. And Ben acknowledged. He just said he has some sources that say it was exactly 30,000 on the dot is what he said. I got the number exactly right.
Turner Novak:
Amazing.
Logan Bartlett:
It's amazing.
Turner Novak:
Wow.
Logan Bartlett:
Wow.
Turner Novak:
You must be a VC.
Ben:
It said-
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, hit me.
Ben:
How many fatalities have resulted from the highway rail grade construction collisions in the last 10 years in the United States?
Logan Bartlett:
What is that?
Ben:
23,350.
Logan Bartlett:
Just from developing highways, 23,000 people?
Ben:
Resulting from highway rail grade crossing collisions.
Logan Bartlett:
Highway rail grade crossing collisions.
Ben:
Just the intersection of trains themselves on highways.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. That's what I was thinking of. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Turner Novak:
Wow.
Logan Bartlett:
Validated. Yeah. And we mixed that in with Transcontinental last 10 years, 150 years ago, we're there. Yeah, there we go.
Turner Novak:
There we go.
Logan Bartlett:
Some fact-checking.
Turner Novak:
330,000, whatever the number was.
Logan Bartlett:
I said 30,000, right?
Turner Novak:
I think you said 30. Yeah.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I stand. I'm going to dig up enough, and I'll send to you. I'll piece together-
Turner Novak:
We'll put in the show notes if you're curious.
Logan Bartlett:
I'll piece together some sources, cherry-pick information to get me to the 30,000, whatever. Fuck it. The point stands. I agree. I stand by what I said.
Turner Novak:
Well, so another thing that's interesting is just bubbles and how they form and how do you invest through into beyond a bubble? How do you think about that?
Logan Bartlett:
It's crazy. From a pure incentive standpoint, your job, or the most capitalistic pursuit of it would be to lean into it and raise as much as you can, deploy as much as you can. And if you're right, you get to say, "I told you so." And if you're wrong, you get to justify it as the mania of the markets. And the technology just didn't prove itself out right.
Turner Novak:
Like it was everyone else's fault, basically?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or basically, you hope that enough people did it, that it's forgivable along the way. And I mean, that's what happened in internet in '99, 2000, 2001. People made a lot of money doing that. And that's what happened with crypto. And it feels kind of like that's what's happening with AI in some ways as well. And so, I tend to think that if everyone is saying something is true and there's so much enthusiasm for it that it's getting covered on CNBC on a daily basis, then it's generally something I want to stay away from.
Now, you can't be ignorant about what's going on. And usually at the stage I play, you can let the markets speak and you can check the validation of the traction or validate the traction that exists in that. And so, I tend to try to stay away from anything like that, but it's not a totally capitalistic pursuit. It's more a, I sort of feel like it's more a fiduciary pursuit of how to manage risk appropriately. And if you just YOLO into stuff all the time, you'll be right sometimes. And when you're right, you'll make a ton of money. And when you're wrong, hopefully people forgive you for it.
And if you're right early in your career, then you get a lot of forgiveness for being wrong over the course of your career.
Turner Novak:
If you're not, then-
Logan Bartlett:
If you're not, you're out of the industry.
Turner Novak:
... you don't have a career anymore.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. If you're not, you're out of the industry anyway. But some people have a different risk tolerance of all that stuff. And bubbles generally lay infrastructure for enabling technologies. Bubbles can be very true. The internet was a bubble. And I don't think anyone would argue that it wasn't ultimately correct. It's just at the moment in time, it wasn't a great investment. And if you had invested in Google or eBay or PayPal or some of the notable ones, Amazon, Yahoo, you would've done very well. But you had to be in those.
And if you were in any of the other stuff, you were getting totally wiped out. And if you're in Lycos or Ask Jeeves or some of those random search engines that weren't Google, you got totally wiped out. And if you were in Friendster, and some of the ones that weren't Facebook, Myspace, you got totally wiped out. So, you need to be right ultimately, even if you're leaning into the bubbles for anything to be correct. Just right on the tech doesn't mean you're going to be right in the opportunity.
Turner Novak:
The way I've kind of internalized it is all the research people put out the blog posts, whatever, usually they're correct about what that outcome could be. Like for example, the internet, we're going to have 15-minute grocery delivery or whatever. In 1998, it took 25 years. Timing was wrong.
Logan Bartlett:
Totally.
Turner Novak:
So, to your point, it's like, sure, all these predictions about the tech and the technology, and we're going to have AGI, I'm sure we'll get there, but is it in six months or six years or 16?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, it could be even longer than that. Yeah. I actually don't even know. But that kind of goes back to the history point of every idea has been tried in some way. If you don't know the history of Webvan, can you still make an investment in Instacart? Of course you can, but certainly helps to know the failures that existed with Instacart.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, and why they failed.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah.
Turner Novak:
And then why this could be different.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, Webvan, and what enables this technology that wouldn't have been possible in the past. And so, without GPS4 and the near term location that you could get from an iPhone or iOS 4, and the GPS location you get from an iPhone, Instacart wouldn't be possible, which is why Webvan didn't work, but now it's enabled. And so, now it's possible.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. And actually so from what I've heard from people like Webvan actually had pretty good numbers.
Logan Bartlett:
It did. Capex intensive.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, very cap intensive.
Logan Bartlett:
People loved it.
Turner Novak:
Like, it works, but-
Logan Bartlett:
Turns out like the MPS was, I always heard the MPS was super high.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. Well, I think there's another company, Good Eggs-
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah. They just sold.
Turner Novak:
... was more recent. Yeah, they just sold. I think the CEO said that it was super easy to raise money because VCs loved the product, and it was just raising from your customers.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah. Turns out. Turns out we're actually not always the best customer, have unique set of problems in consideration.
Turner Novak:
So, how do you think then about finding the winners? Because you kind of mentioned Amazon, you invested in it through the bubble. Sure. Whatever. I mean, Amazon had drawdowns too. Amazon sound like 90 something percent at some point. We've all seen the tweets about the clickbait. How do you then think about just who usually wins in a bubble? Is it a scale thing? Is it a customer pain point? What have you learned throughout your research?
Logan Bartlett:
I think that winners in general have some compounding advantage that they are able to capitalize on. And they have some insight to the market and the why now that uniquely enables their success with tailwinds at their back that pushes them through. And so, an example of that, just to use what we were just talking about, would be Instacart or Uber or whatever the right example is, maybe we'll use Uber as a straw man or example of this is they had the insight that iOS 4 now allowed very local geo to enable-
Turner Novak:
Very specific GPS
Logan Bartlett:
... for GPS. And so, you had a smartphone, you had an App Store, which allowed the trust. You had Airbnb also around the same time, but you also were built on top of the social infrastructure that Facebook had. And so, now you had, people were far more confident to get into stranger's houses or cars because there was some social verification that had been enabled by Facebook and LinkedIn. And so, you could get some level of confidence or fidelity around trusting strangers. And in the case of Airbnb, initially, it was like you could actually, "Oh, do I have mutual friends in common?" Or you could look up whose house you were renting.
Turner Novak:
Wait, you could do that? Mutual friends?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah. I think that's right. In the early days, you could actually see that. And then ultimately, the trust and the service was built by the business itself. And Uber didn't capitalize on the same social dynamic of that, but there was clearly more confidence with trusting strangers and payments and all of that stuff over the internet in a way that hadn't been possible in the past. And so, all of that stuff sort of built a perfect storm, and it compounded on itself, right? Network effect that existed with Uber.
And there were these tailwinds at its back that was people, we were moving from more of a goods-based economy to more of a service-based economy in general. I think people were much more willing to shift their spend and more operating expenses rather than whatever fixed expenses. And clearly, it hit such a pain point that existed in urban areas of getting around that taxis were not appropriately meeting. And so, all those things kind of came together and compounded into a big startup and now whatever, 130, $40 billion business.
And so, I think usually you have some of those characteristics at its back that leads to compounding advantage in a meaningful way with a bunch of tailwinds and network effects and all that stuff. And I think that's true. There's a great book by Geoffrey Moore called Gorilla Games that kind of talks about the advantages.
Turner Novak:
Gorilla Games, you got it on your-
Logan Bartlett:
Oh, nice.
Turner Novak:
Is it that one right there?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, there it is.
Turner Novak:
Nice. Amazing.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I have three copies of it. I can give you one as you leave here. But yeah, it's always interesting in terms of investing into technology markets.
Turner Novak:
Is this guerrilla warfare or is this?
Logan Bartlett:
No, basically when a company gets big enough that the ... I haven't read it in a couple of years, so forgive me for getting this wrong, Geoffrey Moore. The infrastructure, the ecosystem starts building into it. It leads to what he calls a guerrilla, and that leads to compounding advantages on top of it. And so, it could be everything from you own the API infrastructure that enables the connectivity between you and different apps. And so, an Uber's example, some of the ... Let me think of a better example. The enabling.
Turner Novak:
What about Apple? The App Store?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, exactly. So, for example, Apple and the App Store, now people are building into their file format so that they can distribute apps. And so, that leads to such a compounding advantage. Or Google with web search and Google, people are building web pages now to be optimized for Google, which then compounds on Google's advantage because the sites are actually built towards Google's ends. And so, they talk about database formats and a bunch of different things. The book's probably 25 years old at this point.
Turner Novak:
Interesting. Yeah, we've probably all these '90s examples. It's like the company's in the '90s.
Logan Bartlett:
That's right. Yeah. I think it's Sybase and Oracle and Microsoft and all that stuff. But it still holds for whatever market.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, generally there's just, I don't know if you read any of those business strategy books, there's a couple things every time, a couple different types of real competitive advantages, like network effects, scale. I think there's switching costs and stuff. I forget I had all these memorized in college for classes. But it's the same kind of stuff over and over with different reasons that you might win or not win. I think with Apple, it's you've got a hundred million phones out there, selling one incremental phone at that is probably easier than selling the first phone or something like that.
So, as you get more scale, more people on the network, more developers building products. I'm sure there's some people that only buy an iPhone because the services that now exist on the iPhone that didn't exist when it launched, whatever, 15 years ago, 17 years ago, forget.
Logan Bartlett:
I don't know, 16, I think it was '08.
Turner Novak:
'08, okay.
Logan Bartlett:
Maybe. Maybe they announced it in '07 and then launched it in '08.
Turner Novak:
Oh, that's probably when they launched. I don't know. We're VCs. We're not very good at math.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Ostensibly VCs.
Turner Novak:
Well, speaking of math and VC, so Redpoint put out a report on kind of, it was like state of the market.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah. Infrared report. Yup.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, it was.
Logan Bartlett:
I didn't do a single thing to help that.
Turner Novak:
No, this is a different one. This is the AGM one.
Logan Bartlett:
Okay. I did that.
Turner Novak:
This is the one you sent me. It was like...
Logan Bartlett:
All right. So, I did that. Yeah, yeah. So, I did most of the things on that. Okay.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. Well, what's the story in the data? What's happening right now in the market? How would you describe it to someone? Are we back, I guess?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. Are we back? That's a great question. Well, the last couple days, we're recording this in August, and the market's taking a bloodbath. So, I don't know the answer over the last couple of days. But I would say there's a haves and have nots in the ecosystem right now. The haves that seem to be able to soak up a bunch of capital, there's a few in each different category. And I've actually found that there's not a singular thematic thing that those companies have. It's not like they're capitalizing on this trend or that trend. They're all almost independent of one another that they're doing so well.
And there's a few of those that are raising a ton of money. And so, when you look at it from a pure dollar standpoint, it would seem that there's still a decent amount of funding that's going on. Now, these are mostly, from a dollar standpoint, are going in, I would say far more to businesses that are 2, 3, 4, 5, 50, 75 billion, and they're taking in 500, $800 million plus rounds. That could be-
Turner Novak:
This is like SpaceX raising up to a billion.
Logan Bartlett:
It could be SpaceX, it could be Stripe, it could be Figma, it could be Wiz, it could be Ramp. There's a bunch of companies like that that are obviously doing rippling, that are taking in a bunch of different money. And so, that's from a quantum standpoint. And all those businesses are doing well. And then you have AI, which is a little bit of a speculative market I think right now. It's not a bubble in my mind akin to internet, yet at least, because a lot of these, well, one, most of these companies have monetization. Paths are a little bit more certain of how they're going to figure it out. They're not just selling eyeballs right now.
Two, if you compare Cisco to Nvidia, it's just the Delta in terms of PE and all the stuff that's going on, how these companies are traded is just not even close to what it was in '99, 2000, 2001. There's real sales going on. Nvidia is not just selling to a handful of AI venture backed startups. They're selling to some of the biggest companies in the world that have really large demand for it. But AI, in the venture world, there's definitely elements of frothiness or a bubble that's going on as well. There's secular tailwinds at the back of those businesses, but they seem to be still doing well. And so, those two, I would lump into the haves bucket.
And then there's kind of the have nots, which is, I don't know if it's the bottom 90% or 80% or 70%, where it's really hard to get incremental capital. And those companies are having to really figure out how to be far more efficient and not raise more money, more dilution. And I think you really see that in the valuation data where we ended up teasing it out by AI and non-AI. But I think if you probably did it by another lens of high profile competitive rounds, which is a hard thing to actually tease out in the data itself.
But if I did it qualitatively, I would say high profile competitive rounds are still getting done at 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 times ARR. And then there's other rounds that are getting done at 5, 8, 10, 12 times ARR. And so, there's sort of, which side of the bucket are you on? And where you fall on that is kind of how much of a premium people are going to clamor to pay for your investment.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. So, if I'm raising it 5X ARR and 100X ARR, two different scenarios, what does it usually look like? And I'm just saying-
Logan Bartlett:
The businesses or the stage or what?
Turner Novak:
Maybe both. So, if I'm a founder listening to this and I'm like, "I'm probably going to raise my series B in a year or something," or maybe I'm doing it in six months or next week or something, and I'm just like, I'm trying to hear someone tell me what I should expect and what I should think.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, which group you fall in?
Turner Novak:
Yeah.
Logan Bartlett:
I've seen companies go zero to 10 in nine months.
Turner Novak:
In ARR you're saying?
Logan Bartlett:
In ARR, yeah. And so, the companies that are growing fast are growing far faster than I've ever seen before. And I've seen a lot of companies growing 200, 300, 400% at reasonable scale like going three to 14 or something, like real scale. And so, those businesses are typically commanding, maybe not 100 times, but in some cases actually, you're seeing some really big numbers paid for companies with really aggressive growth.
Turner Novak:
So, you're saying that it's not just insanity from the VCs just deciding there should be a hundred for no reason?
Logan Bartlett:
Maybe it is. Maybe it's some of that as well. But generally, it's a function of growth, I would say. And that growth maybe isn't always ARR, maybe it's users or something. But if you're falling into a camp of growing north of 100% at a real scale, going 50 to 100 or something, if you're growing 200% at a decent scale or three or four or 500% plus at a small scale, you're probably in a good position that you're going to be on the, maybe not the 100 times ARR, but a good premium round.
If you find yourself in the sub 100 percent growth single digit ARR, like you're definitely going to be in the harder camp. Sub about 100% at double digit, things will get done, but not at the super big premium. And so, I think it's sort of, that's usually the triaging and I found that more to the victor goes the spoils in some ways. It's not rational. It's not a linear distribution of 80% growth gets a eight times and 300% growth gets a-
Turner Novak:
Three times or whatever.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, 40.
Turner Novak:
Whatever our math is to get there.
Logan Bartlett:
Like 300% growth might get a...
Turner Novak:
Like 100x.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. It could get something like even crazier and the smaller could get something even lower than that. It just totally depends.
Turner Novak:
Is it a function of, because I think what a lot of people were kind of predicting two years ago, it's basically the best companies are going to get all the money and the worst companies are not going to raise at all. Yeah.
Logan Bartlett:
I think that's generally what I've seen at least. And that's usually what happens in these market cycles. And so I think that's kind of how it's playing out.
Turner Novak:
What's been the most surprising thing that you've just kind of seen in that data when you look at things? I think there was one, it's maybe the third slide. I'll throw a link to the report in the show notes, but it was something like 29% of all stock market returns were from the Mag 7 or something like that.
Logan Bartlett:
It's crazy.
Turner Novak:
I was like, "Holy shit." It seems like the highest ever.
Logan Bartlett:
Totally. Yeah. Or the percentage of the S&P 500, I think 29% of the value in the S&P 500 was comprised of seven companies I think is right, which is the next 493 were equivalent to 71% and the top seven were equivalent to-
Turner Novak:
Okay.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah.
Turner Novak:
And top seven are Meta, Apple-
Logan Bartlett:
I think the list was-
Turner Novak:
... Google.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. Meta, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, NVIDIA, Facebook. Is that right?
Turner Novak:
Meta and Facebook are the same thing.
Logan Bartlett:
Sorry.
Turner Novak:
Microsoft-
Logan Bartlett:
Wait, I'm sorry. Let's do this again.
Turner Novak:
Amazon.
Logan Bartlett:
Let's do this again. It's Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, NVIDIA.
Turner Novak:
Apple. Did you say Apple yet?
Logan Bartlett:
Apple. What are we forgetting?
Turner Novak:
There's a magic like 10% of the market.
Logan Bartlett:
Oh, Tesla.
Turner Novak:
Oh, Tesla's in there. Okay.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Turner Novak:
That makes sense. Yeah. Interesting. So that's like-
Logan Bartlett:
I think it was Tesla.
Turner Novak:
Okay.
Logan Bartlett:
I sure hope so. We're forgetting a very important company if not/
Turner Novak:
Yeah, well I mean, Tesla is super volatile too though. You look at some of these names like the NVIDIA down like 15% in a day and it's like a trillion-dollar company.
Logan Bartlett:
You better cut the shit if it's not Tesla. You got to get this out of here. Not making me look stupid on my own fucking report.
Turner Novak:
Well, another thing that I think I heard you talk with this on another podcast. I thought it was kind of interesting, the barbell approach to venture. I agreed with you on your thinking?
Logan Bartlett:
What did I say?
Turner Novak:
Well, so there's just barbell approach to venture, which is basically-
Logan Bartlett:
You talk enough and you sort of forget what you say to who, I don't know if you found this.
Turner Novak:
You just make shit up and you forget what you told to who.
Logan Bartlett:
Kind of. I sort of forget who I said what to. I'm not very good at lying for this reason because I can't remember what I've said. And so, I have to tell the truth because I know there's a version of events and keeping in my mind what the version I told people is really hard. So, I'm honest for that reason, not for any moral reason. It's just a memory reason.
Turner Novak:
That's probably a good philosophy to just have.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Turner Novak:
I think what you said was, well, there's the barbell approach to venture, which is you must be very small or very large, anything in the middle is going to die. That was kind of the general consensus-
Logan Bartlett:
That's what people said.
Turner Novak:
... throughout the past decade.
Logan Bartlett:
I didn't say that.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, but you're just like, "I just don't think it was ever true." Or it was like, "Actually you could be in the middle maybe."
Logan Bartlett:
Totally. Well, it's a funny thing where people say this and then they compare it to other asset classes and it's like, well actually, there's a very normal distribution in private equity from a fun-size standpoint. And sure, some people got big in a very meaningful way, in scales huge, but there's still a lot of very big private equity firms that, I mean is a $5 billion private equity firm like a midmarket? Is that a no-man's land of a private equity firm? I don't really think so. It's like just because Apollo and KKR and Blackstone got so fucking big doesn't mean that a $5 billion fund is irrelevant.
And so, I always found it to be a funny, it was an over extrapolation I think. I think people pitched as a justification to raising bigger and bigger funds. I really think that's what it was. And I think it's an extrapolation from CAA and Mike Ovitz, and I think Andreessen Horowitz drove this bigger and the middle won't survive narrative, I think. I don't want to blame them in total, but this is definitely a philosophy of Ovitz and CAA. And I just don't think it's true. Maybe I'll be proven wrong in the fullness of time, but I just don't think it's actually the case.
Turner Novak:
Well, so for somebody who doesn't really get why that would or wouldn't be true, why would it be true? Why would the middle pack become irrelevant? Can you not raise money? Can the founders not take your money because they're not big or small?
Logan Bartlett:
So, let me try to steal man the argument is this is how other asset classes or service businesses have played out, the big four accounting firms, the investment banks, private equity, whatever. So, this is the way these things play out and venture it very well could over time. I think the argument is that you stay small enough to be a nimble boutique that can differentiate on some vector and access in some way that can outpace the big players. And so, maybe you pick a theme, maybe you pick a geo, maybe you pick something, but it's not particularly scalable and so you stay small to try to deliver the best returns.
And LPs want to invest because you're small and you're doing a good job delivering returns. Or you should just get as big as you possibly can and soak up as many LP dollars as you can and kind of become an index of the asset class itself. And so, it's kind of like the early stages alpha, the later stages beta, and that's inevitably venture, the LPs are not going to want so many managers to deal with. And so, they'd rather cut a 200, 300, $400 million check to a handful of names rather than break it up into chunks of 30, 40, 50 here and there among a bunch of different firms.
Turner Novak:
Sounds hard to manage, right?
Logan Bartlett:
It's definitely hard to manage, for sure, for sure. And founders, because you're going to get bigger and bigger then you can invest in your platform and your services and founders will want to work with you because you can bring more to bear. You've got a bigger network.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, you have this whole menu of offerings. Do you want customer intros? Do you want recruiting help?
Logan Bartlett:
That's right.
Turner Novak:
Do you want branding? We'll ghost-write your tweets for you.
Logan Bartlett:
Totally. Yeah, yeah, all that. Now, now what I think is, and so the middle will get hollowed out I think is the argument. So, I would say two things to that. One is that at the end of the day, what is happening in this is that you're not ... In private equity, you're selling an asset and you're mostly more often than not moving on if you're a founder, maybe not, but still you're optimizing for price because you're selling 100% of your business or 90% of your business or whatever to who's coming in. So, you're going to be very price conscious.
It's like if a founder is selling secondary, they are very optimized for price. They care a lot about what it is. That is just not the case in the venture capital world, where especially as you get to some earlier stage, you're not singularly optimizing for the highest price that you can get and therefore the person with the lowest cost of capital that's willing to underwrite to the biggest price. Sure, maybe that's the case. But more often than not, you're solving for the individual and also returns are typically driven from where people are not, where consensus doesn't exist.
And so, if it's consensus that a big firm can react to something and throw a bunch of money at the problem, then ultimately, I don't think in general that will prove to be the best investments. And so, there ends up being this paradigm where in the middle of all of this and what is actually middle, we're a big fund in the grand scheme of things, but I think compared to some of the people that are huge, we're definitely much smaller than that and we're sized in a way that we can deliver great returns to our limited partners.
Turner Novak:
My point is basically in the middle.
Logan Bartlett:
We're in the middle.
Turner Novak:
You should be dead according to this philosophy.
Logan Bartlett:
According to this philosophy. We're sized in a way that we can deliver great returns to our limited partners and we can be great partners to our founders. And I think when you get really big, both of those start decaying.
Turner Novak:
There's diseconomies of scale.
Logan Bartlett:
Yes. I think you get so big that your best people are not the ones that are partnering with the companies because it's actually now a huge business. And so, you're getting the number 10, 12, 15 person from the firm and not the number one person from the firm
Turner Novak:
Because that person is fundraising or that person is tired.
Logan Bartlett:
Or they're on a bunch of boards.
Turner Novak:
Or they're involved.
Logan Bartlett:
It's just like, hey, they're doing other stuff, especially at the stage, sure if it's late stage and it's super competitive, but they're just doing a bunch of stuff. And so, your series B company, series C company isn't going to get the attention of the senior most person at the firm.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. And you put 0.1% of your AUM in this company.
Logan Bartlett:
It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. And then from an LP standpoint, you're not delivering, you're optimizing for beta and not alpha. And for some LPs, big sovereigns, they're fine with that. That's actually a great place for them to put money. That's the minority of the LPs that I've interacted with. And so, I think that people actually do care about their returns and they want to seek alpha in the venture asset class. And that's not going to lend itself to scale.
And ultimately the other point is that this very well, but founders aren't optimizing for the ... They're not selling the business. This isn't a negotiation where every dollar is going to go into their pocket. The difference between a $400 million valuation and a $500 million valuation might be $40 million to the balance sheet, might be 50 million to the balance sheet. They might never need that money or they might need all of that money.
But ultimately, it's not $100 million to the founder's pocket. That's the delta in those prices. It's $10 million to the founder's balance sheet, to the company's balance sheet, which is just a very different calculus. If you're giving up 10% of your business either way, you might not totally optimize for the absolute valuation, which is generally what I see at the earlier stage.
Turner Novak:
And is that valuation given or that money coming from Redpoint will just say, "Yeah, maybe you guys had a ..." It's so funny, all the tiers that people have will just say like-
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tier one.
Turner Novak:
... "You're held in a high regard" or does it come from, I don't know, alpha gen capital partners or no one's ever heard of them.
Logan Bartlett:
Totally.
Turner Novak:
There's maybe some weight that comes behind if somebody's looking for a job.
Logan Bartlett:
Totally. Oh, there definitely is. Yeah, there definitely is.
Turner Novak:
Or hiring a-
Logan Bartlett:
There's definitely a brand halo. I think that's the only thing that outside of the people, there's some halo of brand that exists with venture. And as more and more founders get exposure to the 12th, 13th person at a venture firm, inevitably it's just not going to be the same quality of experience as the top most people. And so, the reputation inevitably degradates in some way.
And so, I think pursuing the asset management game, maybe I'll be wrong in the fullness of time and this is where we're going to land and there will only be $50 million funds and $50 billion funds or something. I just don't think that's how it's actually going to play itself out, at least in the medium term.
Turner Novak:
So, when VCs are like, "Oh, we add all this value," whatever, is that complete bullshit or do VCs actually add value?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, I think for the most part, there are a handful of things in a given year or in a company's life of working with a person that are really, really going to matter. And it's probably, it could be the firm that helps you get that customer or helps you hire that incremental person. That could totally be it.
Or it could be helping you an acquisition offer. It could be helping you think through an element of product strategy. It could be evaluating the person that you just got introduced to be your CRO candidate and helping you think through the considerations of that person coming into the organization. It could be a founder disagreement that might blow up the business.
There's a handful of things that matter. And I think a great VC is active enough in the business to have enough information and credibility with the founder to get them to the right answer. And that's a really hard thing to quantify. It could be the customer intro or it could be the talent intro. It could be the events that introduce you to the customer. That could be what makes or breaks it/ Or it could be that relationship that helps you get to the right answer. And I find more often than not it's that is the value add and not the other stuff.
But I think there's value in them both. And I don't mean to disparage one or the other. I enjoy the relationship element of all this and putting in the work to earn the right to be helpful when the situation presents itself.
Turner Novak:
And I think the argument for a "platform team" is that, "Yeah, we actually, we added a million in ARR for the company this year," or something.
Logan Bartlett:
Yes.
Turner Novak:
I guess you can justify that.
Logan Bartlett:
Which is a million in ARR. It could totally make the difference or could not. And so, I think that's much more quantifiable and I think that the stuff that I was referring to is a little harder to quantify. And so, some founders will say, "Hey, I only want to go on what's quantifiable and all that other stuff sounds like bullshit to me." And that's totally fine. That's the prerogative of and find the biggest platform team that you can possibly work with and figure it out from there. But I find that at least a part of the job I enjoy are the founders that appreciate that other element of it as well.
Turner Novak:
So, we're talking about barbell approach to venture getting really big. I think when Redpoint first started, you guys were kind of a little bit of a big or go big type of fund.
Logan Bartlett:
That's right.
Turner Novak:
I heard you talk a little bit once, but can you just tell me the story of Redpoint in early days?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, it obviously predates me, but it was a group of guys from IVP and Brentwood who came together to launch Redpoint. They were all friends. I think it was three and three. And so, six of them came together in '99 and I think it was the first internet fund and they raised $750 million.
Turner Novak:
Wow. That's late for an internet fund. '99?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. I think it was the first singularly internet fund. I think there were firms that had been around, like native internet fund. There were firms that had been around investing in the internet.
Turner Novak:
So, for the younger listeners, this would be when our favorite Web3 fund came on the scene, or AI fund came on scene.
Logan Bartlett:
That's right. That's right. And so, people went all in on it, and maybe I'm wrong, maybe it was just the biggest internet fund, but they raised $750 million in '99 and then I think raised a billion dollars in 2000 or something like that.
Turner Novak:
Isn't your current fund less than there?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah.
Turner Novak:
Okay. So, what happened?
Logan Bartlett:
I think, listen, raising that much money in '99, 2000 wasn't a great vintage to be investing.
Turner Novak:
It's probably fun though to say a billion dollars.
Logan Bartlett:
I imagine it's a great time. I'm sure they did it very right. Yeah. And so, the founding of the firm was in kind of a crazy go-go time. And I sort of think it's a parent where you either do the exact thing that your parents did when you're raising your kid or you do the exact opposite thing. And I think after that, the group oriented to doing the exact opposite.
Turner Novak:
And it was still the same core team?
Logan Bartlett:
Same core, but as the new generation that I have learned under took over, they had seen what happens when you scale really big and they so did not want to do that. And so, they rotated back to very small, very patient and fund deployment cycles. And it's worked out really well. But it was a lesson learned by fire of diving in headfirst into all this stuff. And so, our firm is very adverse to now pursuing all those cycles and then all of that, which I think is a good lesson. I mean, you can't overcorrect on that.
We still are in the game of taking risks, and so we can't be totally conservative in these things, but I think it's led to a discipline of approach. It's led to a respect for the limited partners. It's led to a cost consciousness within the organization. A bunch of things that I think were derived from when we were founded and sort of doing the opposite of a lot of the things that happened in '99, 2000.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I think I remember you and me were texting about Web3 when that became a thing and I was like, "What do you think?" What was your positioning?
Logan Bartlett:
Anti, I couldn't be totally. We had people internally that were definitely intrigued by it. But yeah, I was pretty vocally against it internally and definitely got my digs in externally as well.
Turner Novak:
Oh, yeah, with the podcast stuff.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, podcast especially. But then I definitely had a bunch of tweets and stuff that I would do more tongue in cheek, I would say -ish. And so when I came over, it fit with my personality though. Generally, I am skeptical and cynical of a lot of these things. And so, I think it's been a really nice fit for the last whatever, almost five years.
Turner Novak:
I do feel like the podcast episodes you did, I don't want to say popped the bubble, but I just remember people are like, "Wait, so this is what we're supposed to be-"
Logan Bartlett:
It was definitely spiraling with interest rates and all that. Yeah. I don't take so much credit as Zach deserves for it, but it definitely helped.
Turner Novak:
They were so entertaining. I was texting you.
Logan Bartlett:
They were certainly that. They were certainly entertaining. I haven't gone back and listened to any of them. It would probably make me anxious and uncomfortable to hear myself talk on all that stuff.
Turner Novak:
Oh, yeah. But you feel like you're better at podcast interview conversation?
Logan Bartlett:
I hope so, man. I was like two years ago at this point, so I hope I've gotten-
Turner Novak:
Sure, yeah.
Logan Bartlett:
I think it was summer of '22. So, hopefully I've learned a thing or two along the way here. Who knows?
Turner Novak:
Yeah. So, if I'm listening to this, and I've never heard of Redpoint before, what's the greatest hits or if you're someone's listening, by the way, talk to Redpoint about your company.
Logan Bartlett:
Stripes, Snowflake DraftKings, Twilio, Ramp, Zendesk, Nubank, HashiCorp. I should be more fluent in some of this than I am.
Turner Novak:
So, you're not the type who emails founders like, "Hey."
Logan Bartlett:
I don't have a best ... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sort of going fund by funds, thinking through what were the big drivers in each of the funds. But yeah, so a lot of good names there. A lot of B2B. We do a little bit of consumer internet as well. And so, yeah, we've been fortunate enough to partner with a number of great businesses over the years.
Turner Novak:
So, two more questions for you. Do you have any favorite underrated investors? They can be any VC or anything, or even founders or CEOs like your student history. So, any fun, most entertaining or most reflective you've learned the most from types of founders or investors over the years?
Logan Bartlett:
I'll give one that is incredibly underrated and I think just hidden in a lot of ways. So, Rob Ward from Meritech is a name that a lot of people don't know.
Turner Novak:
I've heard of Meritech.
Logan Bartlett:
B2B software investor, and he's just incredible. He's been like a mentor to me for a long time. Really good person, amazing investor, has been in a bunch of iconic names. And I mean, he invested in Snowflake. He invested in Tableau. He invested in the Looker. He invested in just a number of amazing, amazing businesses. And so, he's been a mentor to me.
I also think Jeremy Levine, who I was fortunate enough to do a podcast with is just one of the more underrated like if you know you know type investors in the industry. Unbelievably smart, cerebral, stoic in how he kind of approaches and thinks about things and not self-serious.
Turner Novak:
So, he'd enjoy your Twitter, you're saying?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah. So, he's just really impressive. People just don't fully appreciate how good he is. So, those are two of them that I think are very under the radar for how successful they've been. On the founder CEO side, I think Dev Ittycheria from MongoDB is as good as anyone in the industry. I think he's the best software CEO out there.
Turner Novak:
Really? Okay.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, I really believe that.
Turner Novak:
Wow. I've never heard someone say that answer before.
Logan Bartlett:
He's the consummate CEO and leader. You meet him and he's inspiring in how he talks. He's intelligent in how he thinks. He's intimidating in his presence, but in a way that you want to seek the approval of. He's just incredibly, incredibly impressive. So, I think he was the founder of BladeLogic before he took over the CEO job of MongoDB. And so, I really hold him in high esteem.
And then from a humor standpoint, I mean Matthew Prince from Cloudflare, he cracks me up and he's very, very bright and he's a quick laugh with stuff. And I think he has a really unique way of thinking about things, and he is unabashedly himself in a lot of ways. And so, I always enjoy listening to Matthew.
Turner Novak:
Interesting. I'm not super familiar with him either.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, I listen to anything those two guys do. I would listen to them talk about.
Turner Novak:
Okay. Well, so listening to people learning, if I'm young Logan, first getting into VC, what advice would you give yourself? If you could go back, what did you mess up on or what did you do really well that you could have accelerated?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. I think the single thing I did best was I picked a lane and went all in on it. And there's an inherent desire to try to pick an area that's hot today, and that's a very natural thing to do. And if you want to do that fine and go super deep and make sure you're better than anyone else at it. What I did was, at the time, it was enterprise software. It wasn't the hottest thing. A bunch of people were spending time in consumer. I wasn't purposeful in pursuing it. It was sort of what I had spent time in already. And so, I just did it and I went all in and learned everything I could about it.
Turner Novak:
Was this banking you did before VC?
Logan Bartlett:
Yes.
Turner Novak:
And you were doing-
Logan Bartlett:
Software.
Turner Novak:
... enterprise software banking?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah.
Turner Novak:
Okay.
Logan Bartlett:
2011 to 2013. And that set me up very well. And I went all in on it and learned everything I possibly could. And so, when there was a firm looking for a enterprise software investor, I was prepared to step up and very credible in that. And there's this counterintuitive notion that people want to keep options open. And hey, when you're pursuing a career, I don't know if I want to go work at a consulting firm or private equity firm or investment bank or a venture firm, or if I want to get a venture firm, I don't know if I want to do seed or if I want to do series A, consumer. AI seems interesting, or maybe I'll do late stage, all these different things.
Turner Novak:
Maybe able to work at a startup.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah. And so, you keep all the options open. And the problem with that in pursuing a wide net is that you come across as unfocused. And if you focus on a singular thing, then two things happen. One, you're much more prepared to talk about it when you go into the conversation. And so, if you come in and you're like, "Oh, a little bit about seed and a little bit about private equity and a little bit about consulting," you're not going to get any of those jobs. And so, you need to pick, in this world of abundance we're in, you need to pick a lane and go super deep into it. You have to. And you go super deep and you come an expert and what that is.
And then what happens is when people ask you for a job or what type of job you want, or if you ask people for a job, you can be very targeted and you can be very specific about what you want to do. And so, if someone came to me and said, "Hey, I want to work for a startup," I'm like, "I don't know what to tell you."
Turner Novak:
Yes, it's so broad.
Logan Bartlett:
Now, if someone comes to me and said, "Hey, I want to work in a New York-based startup that's series B or earlier under 30 people that you really respect the founder, and here's what I can bring to the table," that's a much more narrow thing. And I will remember that, or at least try to think of a next action for it. "Hey, I want to work at a startup." I'm not going to think for any action that after it. If you give me a lot of specific facts, the retention that I have in my mind of, "Hey, maybe I know someone that fits this bill," I'm much more likely to be helpful and try to get you to a specific place.
Because otherwise, if you give me a bunch of generic stuff, or if you give anyone a bunch of generic stuff, the second they close their laptop or hop off the Zoom or leave the meeting or whatever, they're going to forget. They're just going to. But if you give them a very specific thing to remember in their mind or a very specific ask of, "Hey, can I do this?" Then you're forcing an answer. And forcing that answer and getting to some action is all you can really hope for.
And so, that's one of the things that it's counterintuitive to narrow your options, but in narrowing your options, you actually widen your options because you're much more credible and you're much more specific in your ask.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, I kind of think about it like if I were to ask you, "I really want to work at one of your portfolio companies," you need to put me in front of that person and that's using a card, right?
Logan Bartlett:
I'm using a card.
Turner Novak:
You're doing a favor. If I'm a bad intro, you're not going to want to connect with them.
Logan Bartlett:
I'm not going to do it. And if you said, "Hey, can I talk to the CEO of X?" I would be like, "No." But if you said, "Hey, there's a director of communications that I would love to get networked to. She has an open role on her team and here's why it makes sense."
Turner Novak:
Like, "I'd be a perfect fit because of these reasons."
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, then that's much more interesting.
Turner Novak:
You're helping that.
Logan Bartlett:
You're doing the word.
Turner Novak:
The person that you're introducing them to, both people you're helping them.
Logan Bartlett:
You're helping.
Turner Novak:
Like, "Oh, I think this is going to be a great connection to make."
Logan Bartlett:
Or you're forcing me to say no to a very specific tactical thing, that I don't ask the director of communications at our companies that often for things. And so, if you're asking me to the CEO, I get asked all the time for that stuff. If you're asking me to the director of communications, I don't get asked very much for that stuff. And so, it's a different lens or approach. And being as specific you can or as target as you can really helps open up your options.
Turner Novak:
So, somebody is not a VC, you're in the game. You're a couple years in doing whatever the things that Logan does. What was most surprising just once you're-
Logan Bartlett:
In VC?
Turner Novak:
Yeah.
Logan Bartlett:
I was most surprised at how going from banking to venture capital, how much more just changing my email address from a boutique investment bank to a established venture firm, how much people, founders that I would reach out to. I was doing the same thing essentially for my prior job, but just changing the email address made me much more credible in meetings with founders. It made me much more credible to other people in the ecosystem. It made me much more all those things just from an email address change.
Turner Novak:
Really?
Logan Bartlett:
And that was surprising.
Turner Novak:
So, it's like the brand of the firm that you're at?
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah.
Turner Novak:
Interesting. So, you think that the brand really matters?
Logan Bartlett:
I do. Yeah, I do.
Turner Novak:
Why is that?
Logan Bartlett:
I think at the end of the day, you have an opportunity for something next to your name that you can take. You're either adding disproportionate brand value to something or you're taking disproportionate brand value from something. And it changes over time what you can do or what you're doing for it. But initially, when you're starting at a firm, you have no credibility and the firm has a lot of credibility. And so, what it says is really important about you.
Similarly, if you go work at Stripe, that says something about you and it takes you into a different class of conversation. Education historically has been the same thing. What does going to Harvard or going to YC say about you? It's a group that gives people a mental shortcut of, oh, this is some credibility around.
Turner Novak:
You got into YC. That's a hard thing to do.
Logan Bartlett:
Someone qualified a process that vetted you more than the average person. You got into Harvard. Is Harvard the end all? No, but a group of smart people have consistently come out of that organization, that institution and the administration or the admissions office decided that you were of some caliber. It doesn't mean that if you didn't go to Harvard, you're not smart. But it's a clearing hurdle around it.
And so, I found that the same thing existed from a venture brand standpoint as well, that once you walk through those doors, it just said something that someone took the chance and qualified for you. Now, if you're getting your own thing going or building it up, then that's great and you just need to make your brand at an individual level continue to rise. And that will continue to add value to the institution's brand as well. And if you have two of you or five of you or 10 of you, and there's enough people adding things to the brand of the institution, then it should theoretically rise up over time.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. It's kind of like the persistence of returns in venture. People say like the well-known name brand-
Logan Bartlett:
Consistently deliver.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. Because the founders will just know of them.
Logan Bartlett:
They'll opt in at a tie. At a tie, you get the access to the founder. Or at a tie, you get the same price. You get the optionality on it.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. Makes sense. Awesome. Listen, this has been a great conversation.
Logan Bartlett:
Thanks for doing this.
Turner Novak:
Thanks for coming to my house and sitting on my couch.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, it's actually, it's a wonderful place you have here. I'm very impressed with who designed, who decorated this.
Turner Novak:
You know I forget the name of the person, but-
Logan Bartlett:
Funny enough, I seem to recall you decorated it. That's what I remember.
Turner Novak:
Yeah. The funny thing is I keep seeing your podcast episodes. They're like showing up in my living room. I'm like, "Wow."
Logan Bartlett:
It's amazing.
Turner Novak:
I want to get in.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, thank you for hosting me, Turner.
Turner Novak:
Yeah, that was a lot of fun.
Logan Bartlett:
Yeah.
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