 Hello everyone thank you for being here, and I just wanted to take a minute to thank all the amazing people that we've met So far that have put so much work into producing this incredible event. So Matt and I are both really excited to be here. So Matt We're here to help the founders investors and operators in the audience Learn a little bit more about your experience building Netlify specifically in the context of a few things fundraising picking the right business partners and And most importantly maintaining healthy and productive relationships with that group of people and I think it's safe to say that you're uniquely equipped to apply it on this Given the five financing events that have happened throughout the life of the company I believe over two hundred million dollars raised and You and Chris have really been doing this over the course of seven years So I'm excited to kind of hear hear your wisdom, and I think everyone else is too So before we before we give Matt a chance to talk a little bit about Netlify I just wanted to quickly see a show of hands like how many people have used Netlify before how many people are current users or familiar with the company Okay, that's good. So Matt on that note. Why don't you explain a little bit about Netlify to those that haven't had that exposure? Yeah, so Netlify is a cloud platform that teams of web developers use to build deploy and operate websites and web applications and was built around the Inside that there was a shift happening in the fundamental architecture of the web where we were moving from monolithic web applications where every website was like one big monolithic application with app servers and databases and templates all bundled together and To a decoupled world where you decouple the web UI presentation layer from all the back-end business logic layer and we saw an opportunity to really build an Inter-end platform around that web UI layer and make web teams way more productive Great. Thanks Matt So I think it's fitting to start the conversation with what put the company in the news most recently Which is a hundred and five million dollar series D raised at a two billion dollar post valuation Congrats again on this map. Thanks So I think many in the audience may have experienced raising early stage financing But few a late-stage round like this So where I'd like to start is let's talk a little bit about that experience raising a late-stage financing and how it differs from some of The earlier stage financings that I think many in the crowd have more familiarity with Yeah, of course like you go into a financing with a way more established company and with Way more established plan in the early stages of raising funding it's very much about selling a Potential version of the future where where you can build something that will be worth a lot And in the later stages of fundraising, it's obviously much more numbers driven and much more game of building a model that that shows Financial outcomes in in a realistic time frame, right? Like so so obviously that's that's like a big shift that said there's still an important component to really explaining also like the Vision you're building towards and all the things that sits outside the numbers and outside the model And what impact you think you can actually have have on the world and what you think What you think can be inflection points beyond just extrapolating from where the company is now and and where it would Naturally progress over the next several years Yeah, and on that note, is there a different set of criteria that you feel like you and Chris really Optimized for when thinking about who the right partner was at this stage of the journey. Yeah, of course I mean, I think earlier on Early on the choice of investors even more important to some degree than then later on because like the early-stage Investors that coming in at a time where the company is still being formed and shaped from there from the ground up and you need people That that are really aligned very closely with you in the vision and in there and can help you Go through those formative stages of getting a company up and running Where of course as you go to the later rounds you start looking a little more just also in The VCs start looking a little more just as you as a set of numbers and and in reverse as a founder You also start looking a little more at the VCs as as a set of numbers But that said like we were still fortunate to really find a Partner in business that we also felt really aligned with and that came to us with with their like Description of our market fees is and and had really nailed like what what was our belief in the market, so I think Across all the rounds looking for alignment on what you think the future should look like it's really important because otherwise You're gonna be pushing each other in different directions along the way Yeah, and then is there anything different that one should expect from this later-stage set of investors in terms of the Support and value add that they give to the company from your experience that the crowd can learn from yeah again I mean early on You rely more on the advice and the input on going through the formative stages Later on you might need more of just the operational machinery like what can their fund actually do in terms of helping with pipeline and deal flow and the hiring executive candidates and getting you in front of in In front of your audience in different ways right like so it changes maybe a little bit from The advice you can get from the initial like partners you partner with when you're starting to to launch that journey of building a building a company to Evaluating more what the organization can do for you so it wasn't always this obvious and I'd like to go back to the times when it wasn't and Just thinking about the first time you had to raise money What did it take to get people to buy in to believe in what you were doing at that time? Yeah, the first fundraise for us was for what's the hardest fundraise we've had every fund There's since then has been a lot easier than that first one way where where we were two people with the first version of a product and some real traction some some early Some very very early revenue numbers and so on right like and had to get people to believe that we had sort of Had an insight that that the architecture of the web was fundamentally going to shift over the next five ten years in and getting people to believe that That that was like a real lasting phenomenon that that was an Architectural pattern and not just a few teams here and there building things in a different way and that our initial MVP was not just like a simple solution for static websites but their beginnings of a of a really big cloud platform that that was like their their the way their the fundraise where we had to spend the most time on really explaining their The core vision and selling people on on on a future that really didn't exist yet when we went when we set out to To build net li-fi and then of course as each round has progressed like that that shift in architecture has just been starting to play out More and more clearly in a way where we're now people come to us because they're seeing it happening and and And that's of course a very different process Yeah, and it definitely started to become more obvious shortly thereafter and the term gradually suddenly certainly comes to mind Including to my partners and I and where I want to go next is First of all, I should say that my partners and I have these fond memories of building our first jamstack website and chasing He and his co-founder Chris to New York in an effort to earn the right to work with them around the series B And of course the company's come a long way since then but I want to talk a little about the macro climate and what that means for Founders when it comes to choosing investors and raising money today. It's different. Yeah, so some would say it's become very fast-paced very transactional And if you think about the financing climate in that context The notion of expecting investors to add any value at all I think has come into question rightfully so and I want to get your honest take on this And yeah, so I I've heard a lot of different takes and that over over time for from like the only thing you should look for in an investor is someone that they won't fuck up your company to to Really looking for for value-adding investors I've always believed that one of the most important things of building a Business or company is the people you surround yourself with and the people you get on board along the way and and that goes very much for the for the people that come along to be board members and co-partners in the journey and I think Regardless of the of Their fundraising climate. I think everyone should always optimize for having people They feel a value at us people to have around them along the journey And then I would also say that like I mean just just from from from Kleiner Perkins and from you right like we we have now like probably Over there over the course of netlify three different executives We've hired because of of of intros from from your network great like that's a high impact to to a company and Investor like and reason can has a have a huge operational machine for back channeling on hires for helping out with with go-to-market with Getting in front of customers and and just general a brand that can help your company hire and and and get in front of your audience so for us a Lot of our investors have been really high impact and and have really contributed value along their the journey so So I would always optimize for for that And if you were to go back to the beginning of the journey knowing what you know now about how to have that productive Relationship and get the most value from these investors for the company's benefit What would you tell yourself when you were just getting started that you didn't know then I? Mean I would like I would tell myself a lot of things around like a understanding fund mechanics and and Investor motivations when you when you start out I would tell myself that I should be better at sending up sending out the investor updates Then I have traditionally been it's they've gotten much better over time improved, but But it's taken a while So I think many in the room here will agree that Talent has really replaced capital as the scarcest resource that founders are faced with today And this is certainly reflected in the conversations you and I have on a weekly basis about hiring recruiting and sometimes even aqua hires So talk a little bit about what netlify is doing that might be considered unique to overcome the obvious challenge of talent being so scarce Yeah, I don't know how many things we're doing that I is like totally unique right But I think there's a set of components that I believe are really important for our ability to to hire in this space There the first is a little the same as when you go out and and fight Seat stage investors that you have to have some kind of like broader vision of How the world could look like and and what your company can do to to get it there And that also goes for hiring great employees right like you have to give them some other reason To join your company then then then just a career in a job, right? And that that has to be based on having some vision of how the world could be be be a better place and for us it ties into how the web can be better and and seeing the web as a really fundamental open building block of of Information and and communication and interaction online that we want to to further and strengthen So constantly telling that story and building a broader story. It's really important to to be able to attract the The right people even the right people you want to join your company, right? And another part is a real focus on on building a company and not just a product, right? Like and and that means building a culture that people want to come and work in and want to be a part of So we've tried to also really be intentional of how do we create a culture? And then there's been some specific components like even early on we we were firm believers that remote work What was gonna be a core part of like how the how the world would end up working that got accelerated a lot during during COVID, right? But already before the pandemic that we had about 60% of Our team working remotely and everybody working only three days a week from the office And of course that's also to create a much bigger pool to to hire from and to be able to go where where the Best talent is instead of requiring them to to to come to you And then another component that that I think has helped us have been Really early on trying to build a diverse culture And like it it would have been easy to just hire people just from our network and people that were very similar To us and that would like work well for the first group of employees But then we would quickly tap out our network, right and instead right from the beginning We really tried building a Pretty diverse company and by now we're like for example 40% women and non-binary across all parts of netlify also engineering And and I see that as a way of long-term Expanding the pool of people you could access to right like they're the the broader the base of people you can Get to come join your company the broader the base of people you have to actually go hire from so that's been One of the elements that I think had also been really important to us and that says self-reinforcing effect And we talked a little bit about this earlier in the conversation, but if I'm a founder or I'm a member of a startup What can I do to leverage my investor base to maximize my success on the recruiting front? I mean the first the first thing is to really look for people you want to work with and you want to partner with and you feel that you you That you feel that you can build a really healthy working relationship with that same that solving problems for the for the company And then find a complimentary set of investors right like the the group of investors We've brought on board gives us very different things right like Kleiner Perkins has very much been there the personal networks Are and and connections and reason has very much been the the big brand the operational machine EQT has a Been great partners to to work with and we think BVP can add another another layer to that right like so I think also thinking about how you construct like if you have the opportunity and we've been fortunate to have the opportunity of doing Like some of being fairly selective on on our end right like then I think putting together in People with different skill sets to help you in different aspects of building your company is really valuable So where I want to go next is the movement in the ecosystem that I think underlies Netlify And I'd be lying if I said I don't think it underlies just about every great company I've seen there is some kind of a movement that underlies it so where I want to go next is Talk a little bit more about what this community that fuels the growth of Netlify and and the movement that I think this That unites this community means and and how you see that playing out going forward Yeah for us like we we really pioneered this idea of an office shift in the architecture of the web and a new Jamstack architecture that would change our developers build and operate websites and web applications and and I've only I've often had Seed stage founders as you say founders that's seen what we've done with Jamstack come to me and say like hey How do I build my own category like I want to make a category as well and and we are always First recommending like you really shouldn't do it unless you absolutely have to right like it's much much Easier if you can ride a wave that's already there and just build a movement around your own company and your own brand Then having to go and and essentially put it a brand into the world That's not yours that you have to grow and nurture at the same time as building your own company But that was what we had to do just because like when we started out There wasn't even a name for this architectural shift There wasn't a common nomenclature around it and and we knew that we knew that this shift in architecture was also a shift from a world where each of these different solutions were monolithic solutions like experience management systems with everything bundled these inside or e-commerce platforms with everything bundled inside and To a world where you would have like a web UI layer then all these different API Services frameworks tool set tackling all the different verticals So we knew that for Netlify to be successful We had to be part of a really well functioning broader ecosystem So for us it made a lot of sense to really nurture that from the beginning and really intentionally try to build an Ecosystem that was bigger than our company and to build the Jamstack movement in a way that it was obviously not like just a Netlify thing But a very shared thing we've spent a lot of time initially like reaching out to founders of companies Nations in the space the larger companies that had a role to play in the space and really get them to see the value of participating in the category and talking about this in the same way as us and building alignment and that has now sort of really created a ground swell where it's very obvious that there is a whole ecosystem and a whole movement and and and a movement that's only gonna accelerate and now we can sort of Take take our journey on that on that wave But it would have been much much easier if they had already been a wave We could have jumped on rather than having to go architect that whole thing ourselves Well, I can I can assure you that many startups will benefit from your efforts in that regard And I'm seeing that every day in my day-to-day great to him So in the end The people like me that you partner with are these people that you're gonna be surrounded by for a decade or more, right? It's been seven years and and counting so What are some of the key attributes that one should aspire to as a founder when building that relationship? And then I'd love to also hear from you on like the tactics of maintaining that relationship best practices from Communication to anything anything of that sort. I mean first, I think it's just like to be really high integrity and build trust over time by By honesty and as much direct communication as as as possible Then the other thing sort of from the tactics perspective is that I think it's extremely Important all like this is basically an all-work relationship to separate the person from that job, right? like and remember that no matter who No matter who the person is that that that sits on your board They are also someone that has a job from a font to like carry out a certain certain role and You should respect that Position and that fact that they that they are that they're not just a Person or an advisor to you or something. They are like hired by a VC firm to create a return of investment to their LPs and and Sometimes that might might align perfectly with your interest as a founder or in and and at other times it might not right like and You should be able to separate those kind of conflicts from from the personal relationship to the people you are working with I think that's an important part in in building these relations and building respect long term that that that you understand when There's like moments where there might be some more pushing and pulling and so on where that comes from and and what role people are playing in and then try to maintain like their their the trust and integrity at the in the in the direct person-to-person relationship That was a very Honest answer and I appreciate that so I think we have time for one question and it's the question I've been most excited to ask you which is what does the future hold for Netlify? What should everyone in the audience expect from the company in the future and and be excited about and how can they get involved? Yeah, so I mean obviously we we see this Fundamental shift in in in how the web is being built is just getting started, right? Like and we are still very much in the early days of it and have a lot ahead of us to to build a Web that will keep being the best platform for developers to to deliver both applications and and content on in We said like in that as a part of a very broad Jamstack ecosystem and for us the most important important thing we can do is really to unite that ecosystem to create the best developer experience for people building for the modern web and Some one one of the things that that we are really starting to working on is like Once you've accepted this shift from building everything with one like sort of package to a world where? You have a web UI layer where you build the user experience and and and try to differentiate yourself But then you have all these different components from frameworks and APIs and services and maybe every project you build on our Composed of many different APIs and services. How can we how can we help? Create some order out of that out of that chaos right like if we think of all of these different Services as as Legos that developers now have available I can put together that that only really becomes fun if all the Legos have the same connectors and and and not so much if you have to glue them together and Manually for for each piece right so we are thinking a lot about like how can we find the right? Connecting points to make it much easier for developers to to maintain a coherent view of that ecosystem to work with many different services and We're also thinking a lot about like how can we invest back in that ecosystem and help it grow up and help it mature? So with our latest round we we said our we set aside our own investment fund the Netlify Jamstack Innovation Fund where where we are investing We are our goal is to invest 10 million dollars into a lot of different companies and small small check sizes but mainly to help seed stage companies in this modern web space and Go through some of the same steps of of the journey that we've gone through We hope that we can help them both with our experience and with our network of advisors and executives And we also set aside a million dollars to invest in the open source ecosystem that's around us that are often not like projects that are Monetizable in in terms of a venture-backed company but led are often incredibly valuable to our customers and to the whole Ecosystem and we want to make sure we can help that part of the ecosystem grow up So of course if you're here and and you're building a seed state startup in there in the developer tool space API space The space that just aims at making it better to build for the web then then do come talk to me. I think we are just on time and Matt I want to thank you for being here and Hope folks enjoyed this and look forward to meeting as many of you as we can throughout the day. Thank you Thank you