Jesse Zhang, a repeat founder, has raised $231 million for his latest venture, Decagon, from top-tier investors like Andreessen Horowitz, A* and BOND.
Jesse Zhang, a repeat founder, has raised $231 million for his latest venture, Decagon, from top-tier investors like Andreessen Horowitz, A* and BOND Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and Accel. Decagon focuses on AI agents that autonomously handle customer interactions, and Jesse emphasizes the importance of selecting investors based on trust, drive, and long-term alignment, as well as building a fast-scaling team.
you really need the right people. You need the right sort of leaders to also come in and help with that. So I think the best way to scale is like really getting the leaders right. Yeah. That just means you have to spend a lot of time on the hiring side. [Music] All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So today we have with us an amazing founder, a repeated founder. We're going to be talking about, you know, how it looks like when the journey is not going as planned and how to keep pushing. Also, how to think about picking market, picking markets, picking ideas. Uh they're actually announcing a recent, you know, financing round. I think that they're they've picked up an industry now that is really booming. Uh and they're definitely riding that wave. I think it's going to be quite an exciting conversation. Again, the building, scaling, financing, exiting, all of the
above. So, brace yourself for a very inspiring conversation. So without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Jesse Sang. Welcome to the show. >> Thanks for having me. >> So originally born and raised there in Boulder, Colorado. So give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you? >> Yeah, I really like growing up in Colorado. Boulder is a a little bit of a separate environment from either of the coasts. I mean, since then, I I spent time on the East Coast and the West Coast, and it's kind of like this this whole different world. So, uh it's quite nice. just it's it allows you to be a little bit more independent. Um there's a lot of academic-minded people there and so it's also just a beautiful place to grow up. >> So then tell us about getting into into computers, you know, and problem solving because you you ultimately went to Harvard
and you studied computer science. So what got you into that path? >> Yeah, when I was little, uh did a lot of math contests. So that was that was when I first started and really enjoyed doing math and yeah I think it was just I discovered what I was good at and it also was a good fit for what I wanted to do career-wise. So uh yeah once you get a bit older and kind of look into the applications of it and computer science is is one of the most obvious ones. A lot of my older friends at the time were interested in the same things. We're going into you know quant trading andor startups and uh for me it's startups much much more exciting here. You're kind of applying some of the same skills like reasoning and you know systematic thinking and so on but more to real world things and real world's obviously way messier but you you get to kind of reap the benefits of of any results that you
get. >> Well I mean talking about results I mean you wanted the results from college quite early. In fact you graduated earlier so that you could pursue your startup. So tell us about that too. >> Yeah, I mean uh at the time I just felt like no time to waste. I uh had a great time in college. Met my wife there. Made uh a lot of really good friendships and just wanted to get going. So uh yeah, left after I graduated early to just uh get started and at that time didn't know anything about starting companies. So we we we actually did YC that year and it's a good learning experience. you there's not really any way to learn it besides just trying it. And there was a lot of mistakes we made and things we didn't really know how to do. But yeah, in my opinion, when I talk to new guys, I think like if you have enough uh desire or like belief that you you want to do it eventually, it's
just better to just get into it. >> Um no kidding. >> If you feel like you're not quite ready, then yeah, don't don't rush it and try try to get some experience first from a from a good company. So why why did you get so excited with this first company? I mean what was what was it about that idea and and and why were you like we gota we got to do this thing? >> Yeah I mean my approach to companies is I don't think you necessarily start with a specific idea in mind. I think that's al also quite dangerous for most folks. Sometimes it works out but in general it's quite dangerous because before you actually start building and shipping and having customers you don't have any signal on whether your idea is good or not. Like maybe you think it's good but most of the time it's not good. So, we had some ideas, but the ideas kept changing because we realized they were not good
ideas. And that's that's been true in both companies where in my opinion, I think the best way to just get started is have a very open mind and base your ideas off of what you're actually seeing from from customers. >> Now, on this first company, you guys did the whole white combinator. Uh you raised from Andre Horowitz. I mean, you guys did the whole thing. However, you know, you did experience too that things, you know, typically don't go as planned, but you kept pushing, you kept going. So, what were some of the lessons there that you took away with you? >> The I mean, the biggest one is it's super easy to get over excited and start building in in some direction when it's it's not really the right direction or you don't really think things through or or you base things too much off your own intuition, your own ideas instead of actually customer experiences or real
customers. So that led us uh on a bunch of I would call wild goose chases where we were just building things and put a lot of effort into it and we've been working very hard but you know at the end it's it's not really something that resonates with the market and I'm sure every single founder out there has related to this at some point because it's just part of the journey and you have to get good at you know changing direction or people call it pivoting or or whatever. So that was the biggest learning which is like you can't really overthink the first stage like you can't make it too cerebral and try to like oh like let me solve this problem of what is the right idea. Uh the only way you solve it is by getting as much signal as possible. So you just have to go go through the go do the work talk to customers really get into what people are willing to pay for um what they actually care
about. And yeah that was the biggest learning. And by the way, that's a very common piece of advice, but it's very hard to know to what extent you have to do that without trying it because everyone knows you have to talk to customers. But even after talking to customers, it's really easy to just trick yourself into feeling like, oh yeah, well, I found found an idea. And then, you know, six months later or like a year later after grinding your butt off, you realize, oh, wait, this was a waste of time. >> Now, with with this company, you know, essentially what's with with with Loki, how was what were you guys doing ultimately? I mean what what was the um you know monetization you know model there? How are you guys making money? >> Yeah. So we were a essentially high performance video capture for video games and so if people are playing video games and you're having a bunch of
like great digital experiences and this was especially during COVID when that was really taking off uh you could use Loki to capture you know videos and edit them and host them and so on. Uh honestly monetization was not top of mind at the time because it's just about getting users. So we we grow a user base quite fast and that's what really mattered at the time. What we're doing now of course is super different. So I think if you're if you're starting out you also have to keep in mind like what sort of company you're building, right? Like what are you optimizing for? And if you're a consumer company you're probably not optimizing for revenue at the beginning. uh if you are an enterprise SAS company like you probably are optimizing for revenue and you also have to know for yourself like which which style is the best fit for you. >> Now walk us through how the M&A you know
through that process too because I mean first company first exit so that was fantastic you know you guys got the company acquired by Niantic. So uh how was that? >> Honestly I think it was just a very lucky situation like we it was kind of the right timing. We uh it was 2021. There were a lot of companies that were just growing super quickly and uh everyone was going really aggressive on growth. So we really headed off with the team there and they fantastic team. And so yeah, we we kind of got brought in to to build out, you know, the the social uh pillar of of the product and it was just a good fit and they they were at a place where they were willing to invest in kind of M&A and acquisitions and so it kind of just worked out. I think if it was just a year later like the markets had changed and different companies priorities have changed, I think it would have been a lot more
difficult. So I…