Ryan Sarver
Partner at Redpoint Ventures. Ex-Twitter. Lover of products.
Discussion
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Ryan Sarver
@rsarver · Partner at @redpointvc. <3er of products
Hi, I'm Ryan. I’m currently a Partner at Redpoint Ventures and focus on early stage, consumer investments. I’m on the boards of Luxe and Memoir.
Previously, I was an early employee at Twitter where I ran the Platform (and for a short period, BD). I am a college drop-out and a self-taught engineer that got started in the days of AOL chat rooms, IRC and Winamp skins (I used to design them).
Outside of work, I'm a partner in a restaurant in SF called, Alta CA, and recovering hockey player. Married to an amazing woman (@devon) and a new father of a great kid (@milosarver). Ask me anything!
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Tomasz Tunguz
@ttunguz
Ryan, I'm an aspiring VC with only a few thousand Twitter followers. Do you have any advice for people like me who want to reach an audience in the hundreds of thousands? How did you do it?
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Ryan Sarver
@rsarver · Partner at @redpointvc. <3er of products
@ttunguz hahaha. I was going to ask you how to build an audience :) I just got lucky by being an early Twitter employee and being part of the Suggested Users List. Now I just try to keep people from unfollowing me by just RTing your content.
Sameer Noorani
@sameernoorani · CEO, Roomvine
@ttunguz A high level analysis shows that there is a direct correlation between followers and read-end-selfies, technically called "belfies" in the industry. You could try incorporating that in your strategy.
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
How does Product Hunt get verified on twitter?
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Ryan Sarver
@rsarver · Partner at @redpointvc. <3er of products
@eriktorenberg work on your beard game cc @jack
Andy Rubin
@arubin · Playground
Hi Ryan --
I'm thinking of starting an open source operating system for mobile phones. Do you think this is an investable idea?
Aaron Batalion
@abatalion · Cofounder/1st CTO, LivingSocial
Now that you're a VC: If we do see a correction that impacts early stage startups, how does your strategy change in response to that.
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Ryan Sarver
@rsarver · Partner at @redpointvc. <3er of products
@abatalion good question, and it's hard to hypothesis since I haven't been through that as an investor before -- only on the operating side. One thing that I think has been interesting to see over the recent few decades of startups as that some of the most interesting ones were started during the toughest times, not the high times.
I think a serious correction would mean a concentration of capital and hopefully talent. Right now money is so free flowing that it spreads talent out across opportunities -- I would love to see more talent focused behind fewer, bigger ideas.
Brendan O'Neil
@brendan_o · Sales and Partnerships at Robin
Hey Ryan - given the last 6 months of volatility at Twitter and being so familiar with the company what would you like to see them focus on in the next 12 months?
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Ryan Sarver
@rsarver · Partner at @redpointvc. <3er of products
@brendan_o I still love Twitter as a product and have a lot of great friends there. It's been frustrating to see something with so much potential not reach what we all know it could be. I'd like to see them make it drastically easier for the average user to get value out of. For those of us who have spent the time to find great people to follow, we have an amazing experience. With so much great content on their, it's way too hard for the average user to find it and it misses the opportunity.
So I would like to see them make some bold product changes that focus on delivering that value sooner. It sounds like that's where they are headed and I think Kevin Weil is the right guy to lead a product team to do it. I'm cheering for them for sure.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@rsarver Hey Ryan, thanks for doing this! What is the craziest thing you have witnessed in a pitch meeting (that you can tell us!)?
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Ryan Sarver
@rsarver · Partner at @redpointvc. <3er of products
@bentossell I sadly don't have any crazy pitch stories. Clearly I need to try harder for some content here.
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
Hey Ryan - Thank you for joining us and thank you for your support throughout.
After Twitter, how did you think about what you wanted to do next? What factors guided your decision to do VC? If "Impact" was a factor, how do you measure it as a VC?
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Ryan Sarver
@rsarver · Partner at @redpointvc. <3er of products
@eriktorenberg thanks for having me and congrats on another great feature launch.
After Twitter I planned to take the summer off and then start my own company. I had two specific ideas that I had been thinking about and was talking to a few firms about EIRing to explore those. Redpoint was one of the firms and they asked pretty early in the process if I had thought about investing full-time. I hadn't thought about it at this point in my career, but it made me do some introspection about what I was looking for. I thought back through my career about when I was happiest and it was the early days of Twitter, when things were super undefined and there was a lot of whitespace. Venture felt like a way to potentially get to do this over and over again and get to work alongside the best founders out there.
It's a huge change from operating and I find myself learning every day. Loving the Redpoint team and the entrepreneurs I get to meet and talk with every day.
Matt Solar
@mattsolar · Director of Community at Applause.com
@rsarver What percentage of your day at Redpoint is spent adding to your portfolio vs. nurturing your existing portfolio?
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Ryan Sarver
@rsarver · Partner at @redpointvc. <3er of products
@mattsolar right now I'm only on 2 boards, so most of my time is spent talking to new companies, but one of the really great things about Redpoint is the way that we support each other's companies. I spend a lot of time helping companies in our portfolio that I'm not on the board of. It's super rewarding and probably the part I enjoy most.
Gordon Bowman
@gordonbowman · Mobile, Twitter
@rsarver Are you able to share more about the two specific ideas you were thinking about?
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
@rsarver i love this answer.
as a follow up, I've been asking this to early employees who've been very successful: Do or did you ever feel like you needed to be a founder to scratch some itch or to prove something?
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Ryan Sarver
@rsarver · Partner at @redpointvc. <3er of products
@eriktorenberg great question. I personally didn't feel a need to "prove something". I think you learn different things by joining at different stages and I really enjoyed joining Twitter at the stage I did. I recommend to a lot of people joining around the 30/50th employee because it's a great mix of opportunity and challenge.
With that being said, I've seen how incredibly difficult being a founder is. It's glamorized a bunch through these hero stories the press tells, but the press doesn't cover as well how hard it is on people and their relationships. So I hope people don't go into it just to prove something. It should be something you only do because there is an idea that compels you so much that are willing to risk everything for it.
Menyhárt Csaba
@sc3wnet
Hey Ryan, let's say you have to choose between an investment that has a good potential from monetary point of view but you're not excited about the idea and between one you're really excited about but you can't see how it will generate money. Which one would you choose?
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Ryan Sarver
@rsarver · Partner at @redpointvc. <3er of products
@sc3wnet maybe it's because of my operating background, but I skew towards the ones where I can intuitively understand the product and the motivations for the average user to use a product. I think I'll be a better investor and be more helpful to the company if I'm passionate about what they are working on instead of thinking of it as just a valuable asset.
With that being said, generally the most valuable companies don't start out by looking like great investments. So hopefully investing in passion also leads to great returns :)
Judith Straetemans
@judithstr · Product Manager @ Addapp
Hey @rsarver! Jonathan Sposato announced he will no longer invest in start-ups without female founders. As a VC yourself, do you keep gender equality in mind when investing? With a career in tech, how do you deal with sexism or when noticing sexism and what advice do you have for female leaders / women in tech?
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Ryan Sarver
@rsarver · Partner at @redpointvc. <3er of products
@judithstr really good question and an important topic in our industry. I would like to think that I keep gender equality in mind when investing, but we all have hidden biases that affect us. One of my two investments (Memoir) is in a company with a female founder and I would love to see more companies with female founders.
As for advice for female founder, I would give them the same advice I would give to other founders. Focus on building a great product that solves a huge need in the market. Female founders might see opportunities that male founders don't. Stay hungry and be bold.
Hari Jeevakumar
@hazzajay
@judithstr watch some interviews with elizabeth holmes. She says that if a VC or angel rejects you solely because you are a woman, and if you genuinely are a good founder, then it's their loss. You're going to eventually find the right people that want to invest in you. But if you're not a good founder, then being female or male makes no difference.