![Chetan Puttagunta – Go Slow to Go Fast: Software Building and Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.156]](https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/0c9aa272-ccce-11ed-87bf-bf8dfe731bda/image/Chetan_Puttagunta.png?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress)
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Chetan Puttagunta – Go Slow to Go Fast: Software Building and Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.156]
Conversations with the best investors and business leaders in the world. We explore their ideas, methods, and stories to help you better invest your time and money. Hear stock market and boardroom insights you can't find anywhere else. If you're a professional investor, CEO, entrepreneur, or business strategist, this is for you. Explore all our episodes and learn more at https://www.colossus.com
Show Notes
Tap timecodes to jump
My guest this week is a good friend and a business mentor of mine. Chetan Puttagunta is a general partner at Benchmark Capital and has a remarkable track record of investing in early-stage software businesses, including several like Mulesoft, MongoDB, and Elastic that went on to be public companies.
Chetan has been my key guide for understanding the world of enterprise software as we at O’Shaughnessy Asset Management have built an investing platform called Canvas. His advice has been critical to our early success. In this episode, we explore the history of software and software investing, and go into the details on how to build and grow new software businesses. We discuss product, sales and marketing, recruiting, scaling, and everything in between.
Please enjoy this great conversation with one of my favorite business and investing thinkers.
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.
Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag
Show Notes
– (First Question) – How Chetan found MongoDB and decided to invest in it
– The evolution of databases in the growth of technology
– Market penetration of this space and what investors should be thinking about
– Advice how companies can build software effectively
– Tactics to effectively implement empathy led product building
– Companies asking users what to build vs telling users what they want
– The need for the right capital, and patient capital in particular
– Creating the perfect customer experience
– Common reasons they don’t invest in a company
– Lessons on scaling, especially in sales and marketing
– Best recruiting pipeline strategies
– Pitfalls of unit economic traps
– The Dangerous Seduction of the Lifetime Value (LTV) Formula
– The Hierarchy of Engagement
– What has changed for Chetan in his time working with the team at Benchmark
9 – Later stage life cycle business considerations and Amazon’s AWS
– The business model of open-source software
– Being default open
– Kindest thing anyone has done for Chetan
Learn More
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub
Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag
This episode is not processed yet. Sign in to queue the transcript and make it useful for search and Q&A.
Sign in to queue transcript (1 credit)
Free to start
Skim the episode first,
Skim the episode first,
then decide if it is worth listening.
Sign up with Google in one click. 10 transcript credits included. No card needed.
Google sign-in · No credit card · 10 free transcript credits