👉 What Happened on Tech Twitter Last Week - Jan 12th

Visa ❤️s Plaid, 🤓tips for future founders, Zero Down is 💯, VC was influenced by whaling 🐳, and more!

Brett Goldstein

Jan 21, 2020

Yo! It’s Brett again. Here’s all the juicy goodness that happened on Tech Twitter the week of January 12th.

Want more Twitter TLDR? Check out Crypto Twitter TLDR.

🤑 Visa ❤️s Plaid

Visa acquired Plaid for $5.3B. Read on for detail$.

Zachary Perret @zachperret

Wow. Today has been surreal. I’m so incredible proud of the company that the @Plaid team has built over the past 7 years. Today’s announcement is a huge milestone for our company, customers, bank partners, and the fintech ecosystem!

cnbc.comVisa to acquire Plaid, the fintech powering Venmo and other banking apps, in $5.3 billion dealPayments giant Visa is buying Silicon Valley start-up Plaid in a $5.3 billion deal, the companies announced Monday.

Tanay Jaipuria @tanayj

Some stats on Visa's acquisition of Plaid: • $5.3B price (4.9B cash + 400M equity); 2X last valuation • Visa paying ~25X FY21 rev multiple (~$200-250M in rev expected in FY21) • Plaid at ~3.5% penetration of ~$3B US TAM; acquisition should accelerate international growth

Sar Haribhakti @sarthakgh

Insightful presentation by Visa on its acquisition of Plaid s1.q4cdn.com/050606653/file…

🤓Tips for Future Founders

On almost any week, Tech Twitter is a treasure trove of tips on starting a company. Here are some highlights from last week:

Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg

What are good frameworks for coming up w/ startup ideas? e.g. - Given skills, expertise, & relationships—where do you have an unfair advantage to build a biz? - Take a core human desire & use tech to remove friction. Consider angles new tech enables -

Keith Rabois @rabois

Formula for startup success: Find large highly fragmented industry w low NPS; vertically integrate a solution to simplify value product.

Jonathon Barkl @jonathonbarkl

How most people think you start a company: 1. Raise funding 2. Build a product 3. Get customers / revenue How you should actually start a company: 1. Get customers / revenue 2. Build product 3. Raise funding (optional)

jim @wwwjim

my product table stakes + excellent single player experience + necessary notifications only + no dark patterns + free, sponsored, or affordable + your customers want other people to see them use it on their screen + delete your data, delete activity, or delete account with ease

Greg Isenberg @gregisenberg

The playbook for building a successful vertical network startup: 1. Find minimum viable audience (MVA) 2. Create a tool that that MVA is obsessed with 3. Build social network specifically designed for this vertical Come for the tool, stay for the VERTICAL network

Natasha Malpani Oswal 🦋 @Natasha_Malpani

If your social product isn’t fun for your first users, don’t expect them to invite their friends 🤷‍♀️h

Bobby Goodlatte @rsg

The genius of Instagram V1’s filters was in how they solved the “ghost town” problem. Filters were a useful single-player experience even w/ 0 friends. If building a new social network—I’d paradoxically focus less on network design—more on crafting a novel 1-player experience.

🔥Zero Down is 💯

Patrick McKenzie did a really thorough analysis of Zero Down. If you’re at all interested in real estate tech, click in and read this amazing thread.

Patrick McKenzie @patio11

I ran into ZeroDown ( zerodown.com ) on the YC podcast. What an interesting company. The problem they're attempting to solve is "Professionals who are good credit risks are priced out of homeownership by down payment requirements in SFBA/etc due to $$$ houses."

zerodown.comZeroDown - Homeownership made possibleZeroDown is creating a new pathway to homeownership in the Bay Area. Enjoy the benefits of owning with the flexibility of renting. We buy the home you want, you move in without a down payment and build towards ownership every month.

Patrick McKenzie @patio11

The mechanism they use to solve that is very approximately "You pick a house. We buy it. You rent it from us at slightly more than market rent. You then vest 15% equity in house over 5 years with a 2 year cliff. We basically expect you to buy us out in 5 years."

Patrick McKenzie @patio11

This is super, super clever, because it's a tech company and a real estate fund. The real estate fund, which has cost-of-capital and return requirements which are *very different* from the tech company, is where most of the action very probably is.

🤔 Interesting

🧑🏻‍💻☕️ @hunterwalk

👩‍💻Number of Americans working from home fulltime has nearly tripled over past 20 years, and trend is accelerating M4b

𝗔𝗻𝗶𝗿𝘂𝗱𝗵 𝗣𝗮𝗶 @ani_pai

Curious how venture firms are still influenced by the whaling communities of yesterday? They were the first to finance an industry filled with power-laws and the best whaling agents learned how to bet on people much like investors today. For more: electricsheep.substack.com/p/the-first-ve…

𝗔𝗻𝗶𝗿𝘂𝗱𝗵 𝗣𝗮𝗶 @ani_pai

I knew whaling expeditions were the precursor to modern-day VCs, but I didn't realize how similar the return distributions were The top ~2% more than made up for all the other failures combined https://t.co/yVeMcPgA4j