Wesley Chan: How I Created Google Analytics; The Founding Story of Gmail & Canva | 20VC #919

Three, two, one, zero. You have now arrived at your destination. Wes, I cannot believe it's been four or five years since we last made this happen. So much has changed, but thank you so much for joining me once again.

Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. It's always fun to do this with you.

Oh, it's so much fun. Uh, I enjoyed our dinner in London so much. But I wanna start with a little bit on you. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of venture first, and then how did you come to found FPV most recently?

Yeah, I mean, i- it's always an accident, right? Everything in life is a, is a pleasant accident and, uh, you know, I found my way into venture when I was, uh, after t- you know, almost more than 10 years at Google. I had built some of Google's most interesting and, and, and, uh, and, and well-known products. You know, I started Google Analytics, uh, helped build the ad system, uh, helped build Google Voice, and helped bring in a lot of the, uh, the tech into Android. Uh, and after 10 years, uh, Google had ballooned to some large number of people, right? I think there were hundreds of people when I went there, and when I left, there were somewhere around 50,000, uh, or when I was thinking about leaving. Um, and in, uh, 2009, I basically went to Larry and Sergey, uh, and said, "I love you guys, but, uh, you know, I've been 10 years here and, uh, I, I miss the old days of being part of a very, very small team." You know, my best work on Google Analytics or on Google Voice was done when the team was less than 20 people, right? You could feed it one or two pizzas. Um, and it was like a Navy SEAL mission. Everybody believed in, in accomplishing the impossible, uh, and we, we, we, w- we, uh, we built something that the, the world needed and the world appreciated and, you know, every time I go and give a talk at a conference, everybody raises their hand when I say, "Have you ever used or are you using Google Analytics?" Uh, it's incredible. So, uh, on, uh, when I told Larry I was gonna leave and, uh, do a startup, uh, it was my dream, was to go be a CEO and, uh, build a startup and then found something to build, you know, great products. Larry just looked at me and said, like, "Wesley, look, um, I had to buy toilet paper when I started Google. I had to go and, like, you know, shop for, shop for p- paper towels and cleaning supplies and everything else, and, like, buy health insurance." And, uh, he looked at me and said, "You know, that might not be your calling, so why don't you go and think about doing investing? You were great at buying, uh, some of the, Google's most interesting acquisitions, uh, with, uh, with, uh, Urchin for Google Analytics, with, uh, Grand Central for Google Voice." Uh, helped with, uh, Android and YouTube, and he said, uh, "You know, if you're good at picking companies t- for us to buy and, you know, m- uh, and they turned in some of Google's most, um, iconic, uh, products and services, uh, you might wanna try your hand at investing, and we're starting Google Ventures. Corporate venture capital has been an utter distaste in the success and founders hate it because, you know, the, the, the, the interest of the company that's investing and the interests of the founders diverge, and I want you to go build a venture fund that I would take money from." And, uh, you know, I helped, uh, s- help build and start Google Ventures with David Crane, with, uh, with Bill Marrs, with Rich Miner, and that original group of, uh, of four or five GPs, and built Google Ventures, uh, and spent five years there learning the craft of investing from some of the world's best venture capitalists. You know, some of them were on Google's board, Mike Moritz and John Doerr, Bill Campbell, Brook Byers. These guys were legends in the business, um, and, uh, it was just wonderful to be able to spend five years building it. And then Google Ventures got way too big and, uh, so I left and joined, uh, my, uh, really good friend and partner, Aydin Cenk at Felicis Ventures, who, you know, built one of the most amazing seed funds, helped him build that. And then, uh, you know, as, as, as, as, as Aydin built up Felicis, it, you know, got to a size where I said, "I l- you know, I love you guys, but it's time for me to go back to my roots of being on a Navy SEAL sized team where I can go and make decisions quickly and work with amazing founders in a way that's authentic and legit to me." And that's, uh, w- sort of how we wound up, uh, starting FPV Ventures. It's Pegan, myself, and a couple o- folks. We're five people. We move really fast. Uh, you know, we decide on things in less than 12 hours sometimes. Sometimes we meet a founder and we say, "You're amazing. You check all the boxes. We wanna back you. Your mission's s- nothing short of incredible," give 'em a term sheet on the same day and, and, you know, m- uh, sign it that night. Uh, we're that type of nimble fund, and like I said, uh, I, I work best on Navy SEAL mission-driven sized teams where I can feed 'em with one or two pizzas, and, uh, when you have that, you can just accomplish very impossible things.