❝Story07:30
Veeva raised $4M in 2008 and never actually used it
Peter Gassner walks through a fundraising history short enough to fit in a sentence: about three million dollars from angels at the start, then four million from Emergence Capital roughly fifteen months in. Veeva never used the Emergence money, coming within about a hundred thousand dollars of touching it before turning cash-flow positive. The company started in February 2007 and raised in early 2008, when the financial crisis made even opening a bank account hard.
- Roughly $3M from angels, then $4M from Emergence about 15 months in
- The $4M was never consumed — they came within ~$100K of needing it
- Founded February 2007, raised around March 2008 into the financial crisis
- Know-your-customer rules made simply opening a bank account difficult
- Veeva now does about $2B in revenue at roughly 30% margins
“so angel investors i think that was 3 million and emergence was four million”
“we're doing about 2 billion about 30 proper”
#fundraising#capital efficiency#veeva#bootstrapping
❝Story08:30
Every VC said no — so Yuan made 'you are wrong' his screensaver
Eric Yuan opened a Wells Fargo account in 2011 assuming raising capital would be easy, then spent months being turned down by every investor he approached. One well-known VC told him video conferencing was settled, pointing at Skype, Google and WebEx. A friend offered him a cheque on condition he build something else. On the drive back from one rejection, Yuan decided to change his Windows screensaver to read that the investor was wrong, and kept it there for years.
- Opened a bank account first, assuming capital would be easy to raise
- Months of rejection: no investor wanted to fund another video product
- A friend offered a cheque only if he started a different company
- Raised roughly $3M in seed from friends, then another round from friends
- Turned a specific rejection into a multi-year screensaver reminder
“unfortunately it took me for several months no racists wanted to invest me”
“i told myself i'm going to change my windows screen receiver”
#fundraising#rejection#zoom#founder psychology
❝Story11:00
Why Zoom raised $130M it never needed — and got the reason wrong
Zoom raised a $30M round led by Emergence and a further $100M afterwards, and never dipped into the money to build the business. Eric Yuan explains he had no plan to raise the later round; he did it because he expected the economy to fall dramatically around 2016 to 2017, and says he was completely wrong. His conclusion is that taking the money or not taking it did not matter — what mattered was the product and the customers.
- A $30M round from Emergence, then a further $100M, essentially untouched
- Yuan had no plan to raise the later round before being offered it
- The stated reason was an expected sharp economic downturn in 2016-17
- He calls that macro call completely wrong
- Peter Gassner, on Zoom's board, treated it as the CEO's decision to make
“the reason why we still move forward to have a series of digs because i thought the economy will win will go down quite dramatically…”
“what matters for zoom is the great product and the customers whether you take some more money you don't take some more money right it's…”
#fundraising#zoom#macro#board dynamics
❝Story20:30
Zoom's first 40 employees: 39 engineers and a CEO doing everything else
Eric Yuan brought about twenty-five engineers with him from WebEx and quickly added fifteen more, funded entirely with angel money. Every one of them wrote code except Yuan, who covered product management, UI design, and facilities — buying and assembling the office furniture himself and writing the company's culture and values. He learned QuickBooks because there was nobody else to run the books, and Zoom had no marketing team at all until 2015.
- About 25 engineers from WebEx, growing quickly to 40 people
- All angel-funded, with under two years of runway before the Series A
- Yuan was the only non-engineer: PM, UI designer, and facilities
- He assembled the office furniture and wrote the culture doc himself
- No marketing team for the first four years despite money in the bank
“so all of them are very good engineers right except for me so i i did not write any code”
“that's the reason why i know how to use quickbooks i never know how to use that”
#hiring#zoom#founder mode#frugality
❝Story22:30
A Walt Mossberg review delivered Zoom 50,000 users overnight
Weeks before launch, Zoom still had no idea how to get its first customer. Walt Mossberg evaluated the service — a nerve-wracking prospect given his reputation for bluntness — and published a positive Wall Street Journal article along with a video he recorded himself. Fifty thousand users arrived overnight. Most churned within weeks, and Eric Yuan built the early growth strategy around the small group that stayed.
- Zoom had no first-customer plan weeks before launching
- Mossberg's WSJ article plus a self-recorded video drove the spike
- 50,000 users signed up essentially overnight
- Most left within a few weeks
- The retained core became the seed of Zoom's word-of-mouth growth
“he did write down a very nice article published in wall street journal”
#distribution#press#zoom#launch
❝Story25:30
Gassner started selling before he signed the incorporation papers
Because enterprise life-sciences software has a long sales cycle, Veeva needed sales immediately — and Peter Gassner was the first salesperson. He began pitching customers before signing the articles of incorporation, with no employees, no demo, and no PowerPoint. He came back a month later with a PowerPoint and still no team, and kept returning, on the logic that it is a relationship-based business.
- Long enterprise sales cycles meant selling had to start immediately
- Gassner sold before the company was legally incorporated
- No hires, no demo, no slides on the first visits
- He returned repeatedly with slightly more each time
- The mechanism is relationships, not artefacts
“selling before i signed the articles of incorporation show up at the customer hey i think you should buy something for me this thing that…”
#founder sales#enterprise#veeva#early stage
❝Story26:00
Veeva's first customer bought to spite his own IT department
Veeva's first sale came through a relationship of Gassner's co-founder to a small-company CEO who was annoyed with his IT team. The buyer had no real idea what he was purchasing; he wanted to demonstrate who was in charge. At the time the customer could barely log into the system. Gassner's point is that the deal still had to be earned afterwards, through hustle to make that customer successful.
- First sale came via a co-founder's relationship, not a sales process
- The buying CEO wanted to make a point to his IT team
- He had little idea what the product actually did
- The system was barely usable at the time of purchase
- Winning it started the work rather than finishing it
“i know that my it team doesn't want you so i'm going to make a point and show them that i'm actually in charge here…”
#first customer#enterprise sales#veeva#hustle
❝Story28:00
Winning Pfizer: 'we're your only shot at greatness'
Veeva's first multi-million dollar annual deal was Pfizer, won in hand-to-hand combat against a partner who circulated a note saying Veeva would never win it. Gassner replied that they would, because they had better people who would work harder and were Pfizer's only shot at greatness. In the deciding meeting a Pfizer IT leader pointed out there were more people in the room than in Gassner's whole company; he repeated the same line. The entire company got a bonus when the customer was judged live and happy, assessed through interviews rather than a formulaic metric.
- A partner circulated a note saying Veeva would never win the deal
- Gassner replied in writing that they would win it
- Pfizer noted the meeting room held more people than Veeva employed
- The pitch was better people, harder work, and a shot at greatness
- Company-wide bonus tied to 'live and happy', measured by interviews
“we will win this deal why because we have better people that will work harder and we're pfizer's only shot at greatness”
“the whole company got a bonus when that customer was what we called live and happy which didn't have a formulaic metric it was based…”
#enterprise sales#pfizer#veeva#incentives
❝Story1:00:00
'Is there any way to do this without working that hard?' No.
About three months into starting Veeva, Peter Gassner realised how hard the work actually was and asked a friend who had started other companies whether there was any way to do it without working that hard. The friend said no, immediately. Eric Yuan agrees but reframes it — he does not experience it as work because it is enjoyable and part of life, joking that the alternative is playing golf.
- The realisation arrived about three months into founding Veeva
- An experienced founder answered the shortcut question with a flat no
- Yuan does not classify the effort as work because he enjoys it
- Both credit sustained focus in the first five years
- Gassner attended no conferences at all in Veeva's first five years
“is there any way to do this without working that hard and he very quickly said no there's not”
“anything that wasn't related to the product or the customer was just bs”
#founder life#work ethic#focus