Angel funding. Those are the earliest and smallest rounds. You have series a, later funding of series b, and so on. Generally speaking, series a is still a small round, meant to fund a company for a year, possibly two. Ill give you some context. Zoom, a company we have had on the show, is worth 21 billion now. But its series a, the first round of venture funding, was 6 million. Six. Some kind of Silicon Valley record leading a series a round to a Company Called one pass for 200 million likely the biggest series a in history, the biggest investment the firm has made. One password seems like a promising country. It deals with password management and security. But 200 million . On the first round of Venture Capital . Arun joins the reporters this week. John schwartz of dow jones and katie roof who covers venture journal. One more bit of c this is seriet was 285 million. That was a series c. What are you doing investing 200 million, and you did it with some other investors as well, in a series a . Well, scott, it really is about the size and scope of the opportunity. So a little background on one password. Its 15 years old at this point. It was started in 2005. Never took Venture Capital. No, for 15 years. This is a profile unusual in the market today. The company has been profitable since day one, is of significan well. Did not need to raise Venture Capital or capital at all. What changed for them . Wh dide to take your money . Did they pivot at all . Have they done the same thing in 15 years . They didnt pivot. Three and a half years ago they launched a business product which is what expand the the scope and potential of the company the last three years. Over the last three years they acquired 55,000 companies. Now, in customers . Sorry, customers. In the history of my investing, i have actually never seen a company that has 25 of th a cu. Its very unusual to have a company that sells to literally everyone. And so when you have a company that has that broad of a market to go after, there is, you know, sometimes they reflect and say, hey, we might need a little bit of help. Its not really about the capital. They are looking for expertise. They are looking for help scaling the business, for a net work to tap into. Thats hopefully some of the things we can help with. What are they going to use the money for . Password management doesnt tri strike me as a capital intensive business. How are they going to sell 200 million . A couple things. One, recruiting talent. Thats expensive no matter where you are. The company is based in toronto, but they have workers and employees all around the world. Investing beyond just pass urd management. Thats the first product they are selling. Over time you will start to see additional products this they are going to be selling as well. And then its also about scaling to the global opportunity. Right now they are in toronto and a lot of their customers are here in north america. Expanding to europe and asia as well. Would you anticipate there is no series b . It will be a long way down the road . Usually they come in this rhythm, right . Thats why we letter them. If you are starting out with 200 million, and katies point, they are not a capital intensive company, series b may never come. Our goal was the would never need to raise capital again. The business, to be clear, to this day and still today and probably for the future will continue to be profitable. So they might never need to raise capital in the future. But it is an option for them. And there are examples of companies historically like qual treks that raised several hundred Million Dollars while they never needed to. Zoom is a good example also of a company that didnt need to raise capital but chose to on their own terms. Is this going to be an anomaly . Do you see other Companies Getting this sheer amount of money that their series a . I will follow up with an example of a company that hasnt launched yet that raised 1. 4 billion. Is this this investment in us its a very its very important that Companies Exhibit discipline and real Unit Economics before we invest. Thats a key tenant of our growth investing process. Now, the types of companies that look like one password are very rare. We invest in a few of these companies a year. Over our history re we have investedbout 20 at look like one password. So the profile of these businesses is very rare. As part of bader industry, i do think there is some general inflation in the size of these rounds. There is more private capital today than existed five years ago or ten years ago. But i do think the profile of one password is very different than a lot of these other companies that are raising mega rounds. Right now there is a lot of layoffs at growth stage companies, often because they took really charge checks from softbank or whatever, and they are mismanaging the funds. Are you at all concerned that could happen with one password . I think two things give me confidence about that. One, the business is 15 years old, which means their dna and the discipline that they have set over the last 15 years is embedded into operate the business. One password may never go into the red, might never burn capital to grow, which is unusual compared to a lot of startups out there. Secondly been very open about this and written blog posts about this that they do not want to become undisciplined as a result of the money. Now, its a very tricky balance. A lot of companies slip down, you know, its a slippery slope and you can start spending on things because you have capital. Its something we are really conscious about. We think there is an opportunity for them to think bigger and go faster and thats part of the reason why they took capital. But that doesnt necessarily mean that they are going to overextend themselves. Do you think because and you mentioned this earlier. You came to them. They were profitable. They had, you know, established themselves with all of these companies. Did you give them more of a sweetheart deal . You must have had to have given them more of a sweetheart deal than a company in to you and sal it took them six years don vince them to take capital. So part of what important and again thats very unusual to one password. They saw an opportunity to build password management into a core pilar of their Enterprise Security strategy and thats, frankly, what we heard as well. Wei we talked to a lot of Portfolio Companies every single year and ask them what products they are using. 49 of excels Companies Use one password. Thats the highest concentration of any product in the portfolio. On average, what is the size of an investment by accel . Is it in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 million . To be honest, it ranges. We will do a 200,000 seed choke to a 200 million investment. Again more context, and i want to get to a question from katie as well. Another context. Ries strike, which we have all a, 26 last question. Sure. They have a pretty competitive landscape. Why should i store password ver pass or dash lane . What s t apart . I think two and security, how they architected the product is way more secure than anyone else in the market. We vetted that with a bunch of different folks. You should feel more secure. Two, User Experience. They dont have a single salesperson on staff. They have gotten to this scale, millions of customers, 55,000 businesses on their product, without a single salesperson. The last company to do that was atlasian. If you scale a company that way you have to do it on the strength of the product, the User Experience. You will find that its the best User Experience on the market as well. Arun matthew, thank you very much. We need to take a commercial break. E. But i think it fits the show. I am going to tell you what the name is and we will talk more about it when press here continues. Welcome back to press here. If i could i am going to ask the director to bring our theme music back for just a second. Okay, so true story. The name of the piece you are hearing right now is called what the hell happened . I dont know why our Music Service named it that. When we started the show 11 years ago our Music Service provided me with more than 150 choices of theme music and i sat on a plane with a hard drive just skipping from song to song going, nope, nope, nope until, okay, eva, one more time, just right. I bring this out because the choice of music affects what people think. Press here comes after meet the press so we tried to match the horns in John Williams score for the meet the press open. Kind of tie them together. Used in an top exercise song of all time. Jo jump around. And i think you know this song. This is rhapsody in blue music to help a company identify its brand. You dont think of it by gershwin without thinking of airplanes. Lauren is chief operator officer at feed fm which helps Companies Find the right songs for customers. Fitbit, the Golden State Warriors and American Eagle among her customers. I find that fascinating. We have known about musak for years and years, the elevator music. But they dont anymore. American eagle outfitters, what kind of song fits them . Well, its interesting. So to your point, music and retail go together. Now retailers know so much more about their customer. When you go into a retail store and they ask you do you want printed, they are not trying to save trees. They are trying to tie your in store behavior to your online behavior. They know who you are, what you listen to, what you like, how old you are, when you are likely to be in the store. There is actually a lot of sophistication that goes into music selection in a retail environment now. Its not just a top 40 stuff. Its not just the obvious stuff. It can be very obscure, indie bands that otherwise probably would never be heard. Absolutely. If discovery and being on the cutting edge is important to your brand, then its very much about things that you havent heard and remixes and finding ways to get a little bit of street cred from what they choo i so the golden state warr, their theme song, how do you come to come up with an idea for them . Who do you talk to . What are they trying to project . Its aowup. I i dont know what what do we sound like . We work closely with the deejay, d. J. D. Sharp all about country itcreating that energy the game. Our job is to bring it into the appy and get pumped and read stats and listen to the same music. Are you looking for music that already exists that you have licensed for the warriors or is it ever original . Its some of both. So actually when it comes to sports teams there is in the last two years or so a big trend around hometown heroes creating custom tracks for their team. E40 in the east bay did a custom track for the warriors for example. Its a little bit of both. Whats unique and original and also there are things like jump around that everybody loves. So obvious. It always works. I always think about that. Associated with that. What kind of music do your fitness clients like . I want to know what is going to help me get a better workout. Absolutely. Well, sos big consur survey, 1,000 people across the country, asking them about their exercise and music habits. 66 of people said they would skip a workout if they couldnt listen to music. If you f hdphones, battery dies, whatever it is. At a gut level we know how important it is for a workout. There is two decades of information around physical performance and the fact that, you know, the right music can increase muscle endurance by 15 and tee creadecrease perceived. To answer your question, its entirely personal. Thats where for our curators the challenge comes in because its very unique to you. Its what motivates you. You know, genre specific to your te tastes as well. We used to listen to the same pop, you know, radio station. Everybody who lived in the city listened to this station. We kongs. With things like spotify where you can look up other peoples playlist, i have a favorite playlist called have a great day, chill sunday morning, whatever, some of those artists i never heard of before. I am like, hold on, i really like this. All of a sudden my musical tastes just absolutely run the gamut. Not because i have great taste, but because i am exposed to so much more. You hit the nail on the head. Spotify that is 40,000 tracks a day uploaded. 4 million artists on the platform. On average a spotify listener is exposed to 27 new artists a month. We have seen that trend the last couple of years away from genre specific, which is a hold over of Record Store Days when you walk in and you need to orient yourself. Now everything is at your fingertips. So what were seeing is more activity and moodbased playlists. So confidence boost on spotify, for example, is pop, hip hop, r b. Is a theme song as important to a team or a companys idea as their logo . Go daddy just changed their logo. But i am wondering do people does that have a huge influence on what people think . It can. It can. So moose muts music creates more visceral connections than any other medium there is a lightning in the bottle factor. So the right song, the right market environment, the right compelling product for it to come together and really matter. In addition to united, which companies or teams do you think have very good iconic sounds or theme yeah, from an Advertising Campaign perspective the early 2000s ipod silhouette ads are one that come to mind because it was so, you know, the imagery iconic and the music they brought in. Everyone rels are you going to be my girl by jet and that pink or blue version of that commercial. They brought in millions ofew cuer f apple. It was right time, right place, and compelling music. I remember the frittelli song, too. Exactly, yep. You know, the other thing is i think nbc does this. We have had that since the beginning. We will never lose that. The, you know, nfl sunday night broadcast, they segue with a 70s or 80s era music. So its kind of it brings that nostalgia. I watched football with my dad when i was a kid. Exactly. You have these i was playing with the American Eagle app and its, you know, a clothing company. But inside the app itself you have supplied music that i can listen to. And im first of all, i am not going to buy clothes off an app, but are younger people listening to your music inside a retailers app . Believe it or not, thats whats happening. They are much younger demographic than we are here. But their target audience is sitting for half an hour on the weekend favoriting looks, shopping, saving things for later and listening to the soundtrack. We have worked closely with them to prove out the conversion improvement when music is integrated into the app. You see people sticking around longer and purchasing more. You know when somebody acts something to their cart. Yes. We leverage that information to the retail environment as well. Feed that back to them what motivates people and what their audience is loving. How do you convince the fitness clients that you are providing added value . I mean, you saidr is one of your clients. How are you getting that data if people are at home . Mirror is on your wall and you are looking at it. I mean, i dont see how you are getting information from the user about their experience. We are looking at really traditional app metrics. So whats really important particularly for Fitness Companies is retention. Are you going to stick around . Its very competitive. Once you find a fitness app you love, 90 are stick with one only. You are not hopping around. We look at retention as the primary metric. When music is integrated and personalized and served seamless with the workout, we found that within 90 days we can double retention for our users. So it really has a big impact on the bottom line. One last question, put you on the spot. Ome fame. What is the artist i should be listening to that im not . I am a huge fan of guts, which is a french hip hop producer. You go he really embodies this ethos that were talking about. Afro pop and soul and disco and jazz and all in this beautiful fun groovy outstanding. Thanks for being with us this morning. Press here will be back in just a moment. Welcome back to press here. John schwartz with dow jones. Katie roof with the wall street journal joining me this morning. You were writing about wapit. Tell me about the numbers that you found. I was reading the article. Yeah, so last year was a record for female founders. About 17 of venture rounds went to a company that had at least one okay, so the entrepreneurs getting vture money . Exactly. So for female entrepreneurs, 17 is still pretty low, but a decade ago it was under 10 . So we are seeing some, you know, slow improvement for sfee mafem entrepreneurs. 17 , do you know the numbers how many total entrepreneurs were applying for . Because about 20 would seem to be to be about the number of female entrepreneurs period. Yeah, i mean, i think thats a little bit hard to measure. How do you measure someone seeking Venture Capital . Is it the email you got . The intro you got . Unfortunately, a lot of women arent as well connected in the female entenms arent to go to take cold pitches. They like what they call a warm intro from know. And so one thing that has improved for women is helping them get access and be able to, i guess, apply for these opportunities. So what changed . Was it a Business Climate . Was it politically motivated . Im just wondering. I think its a combination of things. Women have been increasingly vocal in the Venture Investment community. First of all, there is morventure, female Venture Partners than there were previously. Up until two years ago, most venture firms had zero female partners. They had a junior associate or Something Like that. So t also there is just been some, you know, notable exits for companies that were founded by women. I mean, you had stitch fix, event bright, you had black line. There has been a handful of companies that have gone public that were founded and run by a for patterns. So they can see now like look, a woman did it. Multiple women have done it. So it becomes more believable for them to see that other women, too feeds into a cycle maybe if they are successful, its like, wait, why why have we overlooked this . As we get more women successfully exiting as well we will get women as Angel Investors which is going to feed that loop as well, i would think. Sure, absolutely. It helps to have female investors at all stages. But it also helps for men to invest in women as well. One thing we are oh, yes. Theaas in thet like that, but we are seeing the Consumer Companies or something ceo of feme cofounder. We are starting to see diversity of types of businesses that female founders have female founders and laura, who we just had on in the previous segment, one of the founders of feed fm as well. Right, which is actually an Enterprise Business dealing with corporate clients, which is something that previously women werent getting funding for. I am glad you mentioned pager duty. That company is performing extremely well, not in this stereotypecal kind of narrow focus that people would assign to women ceos. I encourage everyone to read katies stuff about Venture Capital in the wall street journal. Rt oure capital is an important forhe gadgets and the culture stories, and io ch of this. Katie roof and john schwartz, thank you. Press here will be back in ju thats our show this week. Thanks to my guests and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. The game. The nhl, the indianapolis 500, premier league and primetimes number one show, sunday night football only on nbc. Sundayfternoon in pittsburgh where 20 years ago Mario Lemieux took the penguins out of bankruptcy and today the fans will be part of the 600th l see star captain Sidney Crosby just back from surgery. Three games played, a goal in each. Today he faces the Boston Bruins david pastrnak. From pittsburgh, the l