Thread by @RyanReeves_

Check out what some of the best VC's were saying about...

- Wix
- Shopify
- Twitch
- Twilio
- PagerDuty
- Fiverr
- Pinterest
- LinkedIn

...when they were still small companies.

[THREAD] 👇🏽

Thanks for sharing @BessemerVP
bvp.com/memos

1/ Wix pt. 1

Wix was a customizable MySpace. Funny to think how things change so quickly.

bvp.com/memos/wix

2/ Wix pt. 2

Look at this user interface! Wix has come so far.

Goes to show you that pace of innovation matters more than where a company is in the present.

3/ Shopify pt. 1

So interesting that replacing Tobi was even in the realm of possibility seeing how well he has performed.

bvp.com/memos/shopify

4/ Shopify pt. 2

The company has been focused on organic, word-of-mouth growth since day 1.

5/ Shopify pt. 3

$400 million exit rate in the best-case scenario. Off just a little bit 😂

I know these projections are so difficult but fascinating to see how people thought about the opportunity without hindsight.

6/ Twitch pt. 1

Never thought about it like this.

Raw materials were the streams and Twitch was acting as a marketplace to get those streams monetized.

bvp.com/memos/twitch

7/ Twitch pt. 2

Great insights into the value props of Twitch.

They are able to take a high rake because streamers view the money as a cherry on top, they aren't entitled to it.

Also, Twitch is aligned with publishers because it is essentially free marketing for games.

8/ Twilio pt. 1

"While growth has not been explosive..."

- it's still growing faster than 40% after all these years

And check out that valuation.

- $800k for its seed

bvp.com/memos/twilio

9/ Twilio pt. 2

The company hadn't even rolled out SMS yet. It was only a voice application.

10/ Twilio pt. 3

Twilio was on the verge of landing Google. Apparently, Google picked it over its internal Voice team.

11/ PagerDuty pt. 1

Those numbers are a thing of beauty.

137% MRR growth

bvp.com/memos/pagerduty

12/ PagerDuty pt. 2

Teams were previously just using Google Docs to record incident reports.

13/ Fiverr pt. 1

I finally understand why it's called "Five"rr 😂

bvp.com/memos/fiverr

14/ Fiverr pt. 2

Great origin story. Always cool to see a company born out of a founder's frustration

15/ Pinterest pt. 1

Pinterest first started out as a product catalog for iPhone apps.

Pinterest was a pivot.

[Forgot to mention this but so was Twitch. Gaming was not the original focus.]

bvp.com/memos/pinterest

16/ Pinterest pt. 2

"Very expensive..."

Last time I check, Pinterest's market cap was $22 billion

17/ Pinterest pt. 3

The company didn't have an established business model yet. Interesting how the affiliate model seemed more obvious than the ad-driven model.

18/ LinkedIn pt. 1

The company was pretty efficient from the beginning.

bvp.com/memos/linkedin

19/ LinkedIn pt. 2

Very cool to see how user growth was scaling. Took 477 days to get to 1 million but then only 77 days to get from 7 to 8 million.

20/ LinkedIn pt. 3

LinkedIn still has a lot of business model optionality. From advertising to subscriptions to vertical offerings, it's cool to see what growth was like in the early days.

End/

So cool to see how Bessemer's investors thought about analyzing these companies when they were still very small.

Thanks again for releasing these @BessemerVP!