Posted on 8th April 2024 by Luca
Basti Lehmann is the co-founder and former CEO of Postmates, the on-demand delivery service that raised over $900M from the likes of Tiger Global, Founders Fund, Spark Capital and Andreesen Horowitz. Following Uber’s $2.65BN acquisition in 2020, Basti founded TipTop, a platform for fast tech sales which Marc Andreesen led the $20M seed round for.
In Today’s Episode with Basti Lehmann We Discuss:
1. From US Immigrant to Billion Dollar Founder
- How did Basti start his career hacking AT&T?
- How did early hardships shape Basti’s work ethic?
- What were Basti’s biggest challenges building Postmates?
2. Lessons from Raising $900M
- How did Basti raise $20M from Marc Andreesen?
- How does Basti select which VCs to work with?
- Why does Basti think 99% of VCs are sheep?
- Why does Basti think great VCs add no value?
- Why does Basti think having to educate investors is a massive red flag?
3. Selling Postmates for $2.65BN
- Why did Basti sell Postmates to Uber? How did the acquisition happen?
- Was there anything Basti would have done differently?
- What does Basti think makes Dara Khosrowshahi a great CEO?
- What is Basti’s biggest advice to founders on acquisitions?
4. Future of AI: Startups or Incumbents?
- What does Basti think is the biggest challenge of LLMs today?
- Why does Basti think inference computing will be the future of AI?
- Why does Basti think incumbents can be replaced?
- Why does Basti think the biggest companies are being born today?
