WHY TO JOIN A ROCKET SHIP

By Joshua Ogundu

GOAL OF PRESENTATION

Be able to identify a rocket ship in either the business to consumer space or the business to business space

Knowing the best time to join a rocket ship The advantages and disadvantages of joining

a rocket ship depending on the stage of company

The key roles in B2B or B2C companies Resources to help identify rocket ship

companies and opportunities

WHAT IS A ROCKET SHIP?

A rocket ship is a company that is seeing hockey stick growth year over year in revenue, users, clients or mind share

Rocket ships are not exclusively tech startups they can be any company that is growing really fast

My following examples will be Slack, Snapchat, Uber and Meridian Health Plan

SLACK

• Founded by Stewart Butterfield • Founding Year: 2009 (Slack incubated and launched

March 2013)• Story: Started as a video game company but then

pivoted to a team based communication platform because they were going to run out of money before they could create the game • Location: San Francisco• Total Funding: 540M• Valuation: 3.8B• Industry: Enterprise Software

SLACK GROWTH CHART

SNAP INC (SNAPCHAT)

• Founded by Evan Spiegel & Bobby Murphy• Founding Year: July 2011• Location: Venice, CA• Total Funding: 3.4B • Market Cap: 32B• Industry: Consumer Software

SNAPCHAT GROWTH CHART

UBER

• Founded by Travis Kalanick & Garrett Camp• Founding Year: March 2009• Location: San Francisco • Total Funding: 8.8B• Valuation: 62.5B• Industry: Public Transportation

UBER GROWTH CHART

MERIDIAN HEALTH PLAN

• Founded by David Cotton • Founding Year: 1997• Location: Detroit, MI• Total Funding: N/A• Valuation: N/A• Industry: Healthcare

MERIDIAN HEALTH PLAN GROWTH

BEST TIME TO JOIN A ROCKET SHIP

EARLY STAGE (SEED/SERIES A)

• Early Stage(Seed/Series A):• Positives: Lots of room to touch a lot of different functions,

you can see the work you are doing come to life and impact the company at its most vulnerable stage of growth social capital gain of being part of the founding team • Negatives: Low Salary, so for those who are carrying

heavy debt loads (outside of student loans) that need to be attended to this stage of company may not work for your life, Still possible for the company to fail as they are still trying to reach key milestones for follow on funding

MID-STAGE (SERIES B/SERIES C)

• Mid Stage (Series B/Series C)• Positives: This is the growth stage of startups

so you will have lots of room to tackle new opportunities, fast track to leadership, social capital gain for joining the company pre acquisition or pre IPO• Negatives: Options are worth less due to

more capital being infused and shares being bought

LATE STAGE (SERIES D+)

• Late Stage(Series D+)• Positives: Market Salary, Stable so you do not

have to worry about the company failing, Name Recognition • Negatives : Not a lot of chance to touch a lot

of functions since processes have been put in place and the company is prepping for acquisition or IPO

SEATS IN THE SHIP: B2B COMPANY

• Product • Engineering • Design• Sales• Account Management

SEATS IN THE SHIP: B2C COMPANY

• Product • Engineering • Design • User Acquisition/Growth• Marketing

ITS ALL ABOUT LOCATION

RESOURCES TO LEARN ABOUT ROCKET SHIPS

RESOURCES TO SPOT A ROCKETSHIP

• Crunchbase- Use for recent funding rounds and valuations and team information • Mattermark- Use to learn about macro trends

driving the tech industry • Glassdoor- Salary Information • Angelist- Hiring Platform for startup jobs• The Muse- Hiring Platform for startup jobs• Techcrunch- Tech news site • Techmeme- Tech news site

LETS KEEP IN TOUCH

•Twitter: @joshuaogundu•LinkedIn: Joshua Ogundu

WHY TO JOIN A ROCKET SHIP

By Joshua Ogundu