Arielle Zuckerberg
Partner at KPCB
Discussion
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
Hello! I’m Arielle Zuckerberg, associate partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers focusing on early-stage investments in consumer companies. Before joining KPCB around six months ago, I was a product manager at Humin, Google, and Wildfire (which was acquired by Google). I also started angel investing in mid-2014. I’m excited to be here again! Ask me anything!
**EDIT:
Thank you so much for all of your thoughtful questions! I'm gonna go check out the rest of the F8 conference, but I'll try to answer more questions later tonight. Love you all!
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Kingsong Chen
@kingsongchen · Founder at Lace, Marketplace for GovTech
Hi Arielle, what are your thoughts on building technology for old industries? Are there any opportunities that excite you?
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
@kingsongchen i think there's a lot of opportunity here! i'm really excited about the future of food, for example.
Justin Chung
@beteramenu
@ariellezuck @kingsongchen what part of the food industry excites you the most?
Jonathan Cohen
@jonathangcohen · Director of UX at VitalsChoice
How close to an MVP do you want to see during a pitch meeting? Can a prototype ever win your heart and wallet?
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
@jonathangcohen for hardware companies, a prototype can definitely win my heart and wallet! for software, depending on how complex the tech is, you should have something up and running (even if it hasn't launched yet). there are so many ui frameworks and plugins out there that make it super easy to build something quickly
Austin Teague
@austin_teague · Full-Stack Marketer and Entrepreneur
@ariellezuck As an investor how do you find startups to invest in? Specifically is it through referrals, cold emails, specific searches/sites?
Second, what is the biggest frustration leading up to investing in a startup?
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
@austin_teague the vast majority are through referrals from friends/trusted sources, but every once in a while, i’ll send a cold email to a founder. those are usually very thesis-driven. for example, i read a bunch of reports and developed conviction that insect protein will drive the global food supply in the future, so i started looking for companies in that space. i also look at product hunt (duuuh). a lot of companies include product hunt in their launch strategies now, which is really smart and makes it a great place to find cool early companies.
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
@austin_teague to answer your second question, i think a big frustration is when someone hasn't been forthright about their team (for example, finding out that a key team member is just part-time). be upfront about that kind of stuff!
Austin Teague
@austin_teague · Full-Stack Marketer and Entrepreneur
@ariellezuck Do you have any advice for startups looking to network in order to make those connections with investors?
Austin Sandmeyer
@as_austin · Thinker/Student/Rockstar
Hi @ariellezuck! Thanks for your time today! I would love to have your insight into markets you find interesting! I would also love to hear about some of your recent investments you find personally exciting!
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
@as_austin conversational interfaces like the amazon echo and bots on messenger are really fascinating to me. also, by 2050, 70% of the world's population will be living in cities, so i'm also looking into what that means in terms of civic design. i'm also excited about augmented sound/audio and immersive storytelling across all platforms (mobile, VR, AR, audio, etc.)
Austin Sandmeyer
@as_austin · Thinker/Student/Rockstar
@ariellezuck Wow, awesome areas of interest! 70%, Crazy statistic! 😳
Rustin Rassoli
@rustinrassoli · 16 Year Old Founder & CEO, Greetale
Hey Arielle! Thanks so much for taking the time to do this Q&A!
What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs? Do you have any regrets growing up that we can learn from?
Thanks so much,
Rustin
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
@rustinrassoli make sure you do your research and learn from the mistakes that people made before you BEFORE you invest your time and energy into entering a market. make sure you can articulate why your approach is better / more likely to capture an outsized portion of the market. be honest. know what you don't know. don't be afraid to tell people that you don't know something.
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
@rustinrassoli but at the same time, prepare as much as possible. try to guess what people are going to ask and know how to answer their questions.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
What are your favourite questions to ask founders?
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
@bentossell what has been your favorite moment so far working on this company? if you weren't working on this, what would you be working on? what's your biggest shortcoming? if this gets huge, what three factors would you attribute to your success? the answers to these questions are all very telling about someone's character.
Mike Coutermarsh
@mscccc · Code @ Product Hunt
Hi Arielle! I'd love to know. What's the one thing you've done in your career so far that scared you the most? What was the outcome? 😀
Harry Stebbings
@harrystebbings · Podcast Host @ The Twenty Minute VC
@ariellezuck hello hello! This one will sound familiar to you so what will be the first slackbot use case to make $1m? Actually I have another one too that I forgot to ask you when in SF, but what is the ultimate goal for you? You had success in operations and now are crushing it with KP? Which side of the table do you eventually want to be on? Always a pleasure! :)
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
@harrystebbings companies like msg.ai that allow brands to reach people on messaging platforms are pretty interesting. horizontal bot dev platforms (picks and shovels, as we call them) like howdy are interesting too. what do you think??
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
@harrystebbings the ultimate goal for me for now (it changes often) is to become a legendary investor. i'm sure the path won't be straight though!
Harry Stebbings
@harrystebbings · Podcast Host @ The Twenty Minute VC
@ariellezuck that is literally the million dollar question! Similarly, I am very bullish on msg.ai. I think the integration of big fortune 500 brand names, your Sony's, Disney, even Pepsi of the world, their ability to communicate with thousands of customers instantly is immensely powerful. I also think there is huge potential in the domestic customer support segment, for example, on Saturday night's I believe Comcast have like 2,000 people trying to call every 2 minutes, if the majority of this could be solved with bots through messaging platforms, large service providers would be an insane amount.
Charles Kunene
@charles_kunene · Co-founder & Product Designer @Obaa
In retrospect, of what value has your experience at Google been to you and what insights did you gain that guide how you live?
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Arielle Zuckerberg
@ariellezuck · Partner at KPCB
@charles_kunene google is such an amazing company. their employee bus system alone is better than most cities' transportation systems. few places, maybe zero, are more operationally excellent than google. in terms of value though, people hear that you worked at google, and doors fling open. it immediately gives you credibility. that's obviously been super helpful career-wise.