Anamitra Banerji
Partner at Foundation Capital. Formerly first PM at Twitter.
Discussion
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anamitra banerji
@anamitra · partner, foundation capital
Hi - I am Anamitra, Partner at Foundation Capital, a board member at Kik and Custora, as well as a board observer at Localytics and SpoonRocket. I was the first PM at twitter, started twitter ads there. I also built bits of Overture and Yahoo. I am looking forward to all of your questions today!
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Welcome, Anamitra. Being the first PM at Twitter, I'm sure you saw some interesting things during its hyper growth. What's the craziest story you can tell from your days there?
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anamitra banerji
@anamitra · partner, foundation capital
@rrhoover thanks ryan for having me here.
the craziest story at twitter...hmm...i joined twitter as the #25 person there, and left when we were around 900 people give or take. in those early days we were growing rapidly across all dimensions - users, employees, infrastructure - and we were also growing in terms of the number of celebrities who wanted to stop by at twitter. i remember the time kanye west came in. for some reason i was pulled in that meeting. it was a small room in our bryant street office, biz, ev, goldman and kanye and his people. kanye's management team was presenting to US! it was about how big a brand he was and how much he could do to market twitter. that was pretty crazy. dustin diaz - JS genius - and an avid photographer, took a photo of him in our elevator...i think we stuck that up in the meeting room he was in as an homage!
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@anamitra Hi - great to have you here today! On your About.me profile you mention that you're looking for the underdog - the crazy ones. Can you elaborate a bit more about the 'wild cards' you're looking for? What has been the wildest company you've invested in to date?
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anamitra banerji
@anamitra · partner, foundation capital
@ems_hodge sure. i think Wut was a pretty wild card investment - information discovery & consumption via push notification. i have great regard for paul and beamer for being the first to try something radical in the way we interact with information in the mobile age.
Theoharis Dimarhos
@theo_dimarhos · Marketing+Biz Dev at AngelouEconomics
Hi! How do you view online schools/education? What is the one element missing that could make them grow exponentially?
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anamitra banerji
@anamitra · partner, foundation capital
@theo_dimarhos i am not too familiar with the space but it's clear from what Coursera and others are doing that there's a massive demand for high quality education that the supply of campus based institutions can not meet. what's harder to solve is the value that students, recruiters, companies put on accreditation (diploma) and branding, and the actual network of fellow students who are initially strangers but then become lifelong friends over time. this network of friendships is pretty hard to solve for because this it is mostly built outside the classroom setting. imho, outside of the actual diploma the greatest long-term benefit of Universities is the network of friends students build.
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
welcome anamitra!
what's something you used to fervently believe that you now see as fundamentally misguided?
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anamitra banerji
@anamitra · partner, foundation capital
@eriktorenberg one thing i used to be biased by early on - i wouldn't go as far as to say fervently believed - is to find a product that's working today (or not working today) and implicitly make an assumption that it will keep working in the future or keep failing. i think that's misguided, it comes down to lack of imagination - being able to imagine a future where the market/users/customers or some other dynamic might change, which might stall traction or vastly improve a product that's middling today.
in a nutshell, having a pov on what could go right is what i am getting better at, instead of focusing on what could go wrong.
Nagesh Pobbathi
@npobbathi · Founder & CEO, GameCommerce
@anamitra Thanks for doing this. What is your investment process - criteria, timelines and typical sizes? Thank you.
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anamitra banerji
@anamitra · partner, foundation capital
@npobbathi early stage investing, focus on big markets. founders ability to articulate a set of problems that are worth solving and the unique and compellingness of the solution.
Lejla Bajgoric
@lejlahunts · Intern, Product Hunt
Thanks for being here Anamitra :)
What's the most applicable/important thing you learned from getting an MBA at Cornell that's shaped your management style?
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anamitra banerji
@anamitra · partner, foundation capital
@lejlahunts mba, the thing about the mba is that i have forgotten most of what i was taught. but the thing i remember are, 1) my network of friends and alumni who helped my find my first internet job at Overture - that means a lot because i was at the end of my rope since no internet tech companies used to come to Cornell to recruit, so i had to hustle and it was an alum that took a chance on me. and 2) learning from cases...what have you learned from one problem or solution, that you can you apply to a problem in a different space. being able to link the dots really helps me today as an investor because e.g a new consumer behavior among teens in gaming can open up my thinking about what's possible in a different space, like VR.
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@anamitra @lejlahunts Do you think an MBA is an important qualification for employees to have in the startup and tech space?
Russ Frushtick
@russfrushtick
How do you think the world of display ads will change over the next 5 years?
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anamitra banerji
@anamitra · partner, foundation capital
@russfrushtick a lot has changed in the removing the friction from buying and selling via programmatic. i think relevance is still unsolved. and authenticity is still unsolved. i think the biggest innovation in advertising companies will come from consumer platforms - such as facebook, twitter etc. because they are forced to innovate with the user in mind, not just the $$
Kate
@katesegrin · Community @ Product Hunt
Anamitra who have been some of the most impactful people in your life?
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anamitra banerji
@anamitra · partner, foundation capital
@katesegrin people who have helped me in true times of need. someone said something to me a while ago that i still remember he said to "love those who love you". words to live by!