E16 Unpacking marketplaces and modern food delivery wars with Mike Ghaffary from Canvas Ventures

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Mike Ghaffary, general partner at Canvas Ventures about his journey as app builder, co-founder of Stitcher, CEO at Eat24, to becoming a successful angel investor and now institutional venture investor at Canvas. 00:00 Intro 02:21 Swiss army knife of education 04:04 Business school after Dotcom bubble burst  05:06 Founding Stitcher 06:14 Focusing on news 08:03 Becoming CEO of Eat24 09:39 Growing Eat24 from 10FTEs to $700m top line 10:45 Food delivery wars 11:55 Grubhub Partnership that never launched 13:12 Jeremy Stoppelman and Steve Jobs on search on mobile 14:30 Becoming a successful angel investor 15:35 Paying off graduate debt by making the most expensive iPhone app ever 16:37 Angel investment in Strava 17:20 Angel investment in Superhuman 17:50 Joining Social Capital 19:58 Mike’s experience at Social Capital 20:28 CloudKitchens investment 21:30 HubHaus investment 22:37 Joining Canvas Ventures 24:04 Flyhomes investment 27:52 Marketplace Deep Dive 28:27 Lenny Rachitsky: focus on supply or demand side? 30:06 Thomas Eisenmann: Two-sided networks 30:57 Uber: demand side vs. supply side subsidies 32:09 Local vs. global network effects 33:24 Sarah Tavel (Benchmark): Unlocking new supply in delivery wars 34:21 Local delivery war zones 35:36 Uber Eats entering the market 37:04 Public vs. privately held delivery war contenders 38:54 Marketplace take rate 40:38 Out-of bound marketplace take rates 41:57 Zero percent take rate 43:02 Finding out more about Mike