SaaStr 139: Why Hiring Sales People Is Like Being Thirsty, Why You Have to Separate Between Customers and Money & Why Time Kills More Companies Than Dollars with Mike Dauber, General Partner @ Amplify Partners

Mike Dauber is a General Partner @ Amplify Partners, the fund that backs technical founders, building technical products for technical buyers. Their portfolio consists of the likes of DataDog, Fastly, Engagio and many more incredible companies. As for Mike, prior to joining Amplify he spent more than six years at Battery Ventures, where he lead early-stage enterprise investments on the West Coast. While at Battery, he was on the Boards of Cask, Duetto, Interana, and Platfora (acquired WDAY). Mike also lead Battery’s investment in Vera, which is also in Amplify’s portfolio. He also previously invested in Splunk (SPLK) and RelateIQ (acquired CRM). As a result of this success, Mike was named to Forbes’ Midas Brink List in 2014.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Mike made his way into the world of early stage enterprise investing with Battery and came to be a GP with Amplify?
• What does Mike mean when he says he looks for “practitioner founders”? What are the benefits of these types of founders? Why do they find product market fit faster? Does this tunnel vision not sometimes mean a lack of naivete, which can be good?
• Why does Mike believe that hiring sales people is like being thirsty? How can founders discover the optimal cadence for expanding the sales team? Why must founders differentiate between customers and money?
• Why does Mike believe that everyone needs to find their Hobbesian advisor? What characteristics should this person have? How can you find this advisor? What should their incentives be?  
• Why does Mike believe that founders need to set the hook for VCs in the first meeting? How does this compare to how founders traditionally pitch? What should they look for in those early VC meetings?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Why does Mike disagree with deal attribution in VC?
2. Cyber investing: Should you invest if not a domain expert?
3. Is enterprise investing spreadsheet investing?

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Mike Dauber