Anu Hariharan – Lessons in Growth Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.198]

My guest this week is Anu Hariharan. Anu is a partner at Y-Combinator's Continuity Fund where she focuses on growth investing. Before YC, Anu was an Investment Partner at Andreesen Horowitz where she worked with portfolio companies Airbnb, Instacart, Medium and Udacity. In this conversation, we discuss growth stage businesses and their business models, how her background as an engineer impacts her investing style, the most interesting international markets for tech start-ups, and how much opportunity there still is for investing in tech and e-commerce startups. This conversation left me thinking about how much digital transformation there still is in front us and the exciting opportunities ahead. Enjoy this great conversation with Anu Hariharan.    This episode is brought to you by Koyfin, one of the fastest growing fintech startups. I discovered Koyfin earlier this year when I asked twitter for the best Bloomberg alternative, and the overwhelming winner was an intriguing new product called Koyfin.  Koyfin has tons of high-quality data, powerful functionality, and a nice clean interface. If you’re an individual investor, research analyst, portfolio manager, or financial advisor, you should definitely check them out. Sign up for free at koyfin.com    This episode of Invest Like The Best is also sponsored by Assure. Assure is changing the way investors manage private transactions.  With Assure, investors can eliminate nearly all the admin cost of private investment. On top of that, they handle all the backend, legal, taxes, accounting, and compliance. All of it, with a straightforward one-time fee. Learn more and try Assure for yourself at https://www.assure.co/patrick.   For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (2:45) – (First question) – How she thinks about growth stage businesses through their business models (5:00) – Her views on the winner-take-all business goal (9:53) – How to prioritize the stakeholders when building a network business (12:19) – Priorities in growth stage businesses vs those seeking Series A funding (18:25) – Most interesting international markets (21:44) – Risks in investing in international tech startups (24:54) – Assessing a hardware-based tech company vs software business (30:22) – How her background as an engineer impacts her investing style (36:11) – Lessons from the various growth strategies she’s observed (40:05) – How valuation impacts the company and her decision to invest (45:45) – How far along are we into the global digital transformation and what opportunity is left (48:15) – Sectors that are still primed for more digital transformation (52:50) – How the tech investing landscape has changed during her career (57:45) – Kindest thing anyone has done for her   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag