Question 1

What are the key takeaways from Julia Schottenstein's episode on Lenny's Podcast?

Accepted Answer

1. Inflict pain on potential acquirers to make them notice you, but do it with a smile -- keep the door open because M&A is about creating plan Bs, not burning bridges. 2. Evaluate early-stage companies on four dimensions: people, market, product, and distribution -- and recognize you won't get a 10/10 on all four. 3. Worse is better and tech debt is a champagne problem -- ship the naive solution, learn from real users, and only rebuild when scale demands it. 4. Have the pricing and willingness-to-pay conversation before you build the product, not when your sales team is already struggling to close deals. 5. Apply power-law thinking from investing to product bets: make bold bets that can bend your trajectory rather than incremental ones that play it safe.

Question 2

What does Julia Schottenstein say about m-and-a and strategy?

Accepted Answer

"M&A is always about creating plan Bs. For any one company, there's only ever two to three buyers that find what you're building to be extremely strategic. The strategy I would do in how do you get noticed is I would figure out the area that you bring a competitive advantage. And I would inflict pain on that potential buyer. Make it impossible for them to not notice you." - Julia Schottenstein "You want to do that in a way that's still friendly and open. I see a lot of founders get this wrong and they prematurely will shut down a conversation or they won't talk to an incumbent or a potential future buyer because they take too competitive of a stance. M&A is all about creating plan Bs and you don't want to shut that door down prematurely because you don't know if you can really go the distance." - Julia Schottenstein "There are four things that I care about when I'm looking at really early stage companies and it's people, market, product and distribution. People is really the CEO, the founder -- do you trust this person to lead. Markets -- is it growing? Is there space for a new entrant? Product -- can you hear that spark, that enthusiasm? And distribution -- do they have an advantage on how they're going to get to market?" - Julia Schottenstein

Question 3

What are Julia Schottenstein's views on m-and-a, strategy, competitive-advantage?

Accepted Answer

Julia Schottenstein: "M&A is always about creating plan Bs. For any one company, there's only ever two to three buyers that find what you're building to be extremely strategic. The strategy I would do in how do you get noticed is I would figure out the area that you bring a competitive advantage. And I would inflict pain on that potential buyer. Make it impossible for them to not notice you." Julia Schottenstein: "You want to do that in a way that's still friendly and open. I see a lot of founders get this wrong and they prematurely will shut down a conversation or they won't talk to an incumbent or a potential future buyer because they take too competitive of a stance. M&A is all about creating plan Bs and you don't want to shut that door down prematurely because you don't know if you can really go the distance."

Julia Schottenstein

M&A, competition, pricing, and investing | Julia Schottenstein (dbt Labs)

TRANSCRIPT

Julia Schottenstein

M&A, competition, pricing, and investing | Julia Schottenstein (dbt Labs)

Julia Schottenstein

M&A, competition, pricing, and investing | Julia Schottenstein (dbt Labs)

TRANSCRIPT

Julia Schottenstein

M&A, competition, pricing, and investing | Julia Schottenstein (dbt Labs)