The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot

02 Aug 2019

Audio

Description

Waseem Daher is the Founder and CEO @ Pilot, the startup that takes care of your bookkeeping from start to finish so you can focus 100% on making your business succeed. To date, Waseem has raised over $58m in funding from some of the very best firms and people in the business including Index, Stripe, Okta's Frederic Kerrest, Gusto's Josh Reeves, Stripe's Patrick and John Collison and Lola's Paul English, just to name a few. As for Waseem, Pilot is the 3rd business he has founded with his co-founders, the first being Ksplice and the second Zulip, which was acquired by Dropbox in 2014. He has also enjoyed spells with the likes of Oracle and Dropbox in the interims. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Waseem made his way into the world of startups over 15 years ago and how that lead to his founding of Pilot today, changing the world of accounting? Does Waseem agree with Joel Fernandez at JoyMode that "serial entrepreneurship is overrated? What has Waseem done differently this time as a result of his 2 prior founding experiences? 2.) Why does Waseem believe that "passion is overrated when it comes to starting companies"? If passion is not fundamental, what does Waseem believe is fundamental to ensuring one sticks the course? How does Waseem think about the craft of company building as a passion in itself? 3.) What is it about Waseem's relationship with his 2 co-founders that makes it so successful for the third time around this time? What do they do to ensure that unity and trust remains? Where do they have weaknesses and flaws in the co-founding relationship as a result of it's maturity? What advice does Waseem give to newer co-founding partners? 4.) Waseem has previously said that "VC is overrated". What does he mean by this? How does Waseem think about the decision to bootstrap vs to raise VC? What are Waseem's biggest lessons when it comes to investor selection? How much of a role does brand play? What core questions should the founders ask the VC? 5.) What does Waseem mean when he says, "never sell your company"? What were his biggest lessons from exiting two companies to Oracle and Dropbox? How did it shape his thinking on M&A and exits? How has Waseem seen his role scale and develop as a leader and as CEO? What are the biggest challenges he has found in his personal scaling? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Waseem's Fave Book: Harry Potter As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Waseem on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Smart executives and business owners know that harnessing the power of AI, embracing the cloud, and prioritizing cybersecurity are the cornerstones of growth. Every day, Wrike helps thousands of companies worldwide do this by revolutionizing how they approach work. Our secure, automated,cloud-based work management tool helps businesses future proof their cultures and evolve fast. How? Wrike 's award-winning, collaborative, all-company platform keeps everything in one easily-accessible space. Time to embrace next-gen work management at the executive level and encourage lean thinking from the top down. With Wrike, crushing your objectives and mitigating risks at scale is a cinch. Give Wrike a try for free.

Transcription

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Help us prioritize this episode for transcription by upvoting it.

0 upvotes

🗳️ Sign in to Upvote

Popular episodes get transcribed faster

Other episodes from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Transcribed and ready to explore now

20VC: Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN | Will Cursor Kill Figma | Lightspeed Raises $9BN | OpenAI: $1BN from Disney, New CRO & #1 App in App Store | Oracle and Broadcom Hit: Now the Time to Buy?

18 Dec 2025

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20Growth: How Wiz Built a $30BN Brand in Enterprise | What Worked vs What Was a Mega Failure: Lessons Learned | Why Marketers Make the Worst CMOs & What To Look for in Growth with Raaz Herzberg

12 Dec 2025

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

View all episodes from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Comments

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.

Report any issue

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Why Passion Is Overrated When It Comes To Starting Companies, Why VC Is Overrated As A Financing Mechanism & Why You Should Never Sell Your Company with Waseem Daher, Founder & CEO @ Pilot

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Other episodes from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN | Will Cursor Kill Figma | Lightspeed Raises $9BN | OpenAI: $1BN from Disney, New CRO & #1 App in App Store | Oracle and Broadcom Hit: Now the Time to Buy?

20Growth: How Wiz Built a $30BN Brand in Enterprise | What Worked vs What Was a Mega Failure: Lessons Learned | Why Marketers Make the Worst CMOs & What To Look for in Growth with Raaz Herzberg

Sign in to Audioscrape

Share this moment