#126 - KEITH RABOIS

POD OF JAKE

Keith is the CEO & Co-Founder of OpenStore and a General Partner at Founders Fund. He is an experienced technology executive and entrepreneur, a prolific investor, and a self-described contrarian. Keith previously served as a General Partner at Khosla Ventures. Before that, he was COO at Square and served in influential roles at LinkedIn. He also co-founded Opendoor. Keith began his career in technology as a senior executive at PayPal. He has since invested early in many great companies including YouTube, Airbnb, Palantir, DoorDash, Stripe, Quora, Yammer, Affirm, Eventbrite, and many others. He also served as a Board Member from inception to IPO at Yelp and Xoom. Follow Keith on Twitter @rabois.

[0:00] - OpenStore's early momentum and fundraising strategy

[5:35] - How an decentralized department store could unlock eCommerce growth

[12:33] - Introducing OpenStore Drive and why it is great for Shopify store owners

[16:49] - OpenStore's horizontal approach and why Keith believes it is best

[18:41] - OpenStore’s business acquisition strategy and thoughtful process design

[24:09] - How learnings from OpenStore’s initial acquisitions have led to improvements

[28:56] - Why OpenStore’s business is resilient in various macroeconomic environments

[35:06] - Acquisition offers and accept rates as metrics and countermetrics at OpenStore

[38:45] - Introducing Gumdrop which matches long-tail influencers to long-tail SKUs

[41:40] - The advantages of aggregation that benefit OpenStore’s business model

[45:19] - Building a great company culture; finding & developing undiscovered talent

[51:11] - The most high-leverage activities Keith allocates time to as OpenStore's CEO

homeofjake.com