Lessons from David Haber

David Haber, a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has a distinguished career as an entrepreneur, investor, and strategic leader in the fintech industry. He co-founded Bond Street, a company that transformed small business lending and was later acquired by Goldman Sachs. His experiences have provided him with a wealth of knowledge, which he frequently shares.

On Entrepreneurship

On the all-consuming nature of being a founder: "The reality is being a founder is just all-consuming. You’re on 24/7, especially being the CEO. It’s all on you in a lot of ways." [1]
The core responsibilities of a CEO: "The CEO needs to be the one to raise capital, to sell the business, to in large part hire and fire the leadership team, to manage the board and their expectations. So there's a lot of pressure in being the founder." [1]
Entrepreneurship as a creative process: "At the same time, again, it was for me one of the most creative processes of my life." [1]
The difficulty of choosing which idea to pursue: "It has always been easy for me to come up with business ideas. I think it's always been much harder to figure out which ones to pursue." [2]
The founder's primary job: "My colleague Alex's sort of pithy line for what he looks for in entrepreneurs is, 'can they materialize labor and capital?' That's ultimately kind of the job of the founder, and it's definitely a quality we look for." [2]
The importance of passion in selling your vision: To determine if you're passionate enough about an idea, ask yourself if you're willing to "pound the table" to get your mother-in-law to invest. [3]
The constant act of selling: "As a Founder you know my experience was you spend ninety percent of your time selling you're selling your customers you're selling potential employees or selling the price you're selling investors you're trying to make people care about what you're building in the world." [3]
The importance of storytelling: Effective storytelling is a crucial skill for both entrepreneurs and investors. [4]
The value of empathy for founders: "Starting a company in general has given me a tremendous amount of empathy for four founders i mean as successful as any business is still incredibly incredibly hard I mean it really is it's it's it's super challenging." [5]

On Fintech

Fintech as a horizontal, not a vertical: "I've always viewed FinTech much more as a horizontal than a vertical." [1]
Opportunities at the intersection of fields: "One of my favorite lines that I often repeat, but I genuinely believe, which is why I say it often, is that opportunities live between fields of expertise. I really enjoy exploring those intersections." [1]
The intersection of healthcare and fintech: There is a "tremendous amount of problems and a lot of opportunity at that intersection." [2]
The evolution of financial services: "Consumers and business owners are coming coming to expect to do their financial services online like they do everything else online." [5]
The challenge of customer acquisition in lending: A major challenge at Bond Street was scaling customer acquisition in a cost-effective manner. [1][6]
The power of leading with software: "I bias primarily towards FinTech companies that lead with software, as opposed to leading with a financial product." [1]
The "lead with software" strategy: Start with a software product that has a near 100% approval rate to build a large user base, then layer in higher lifetime value products. [6]
The changing culture at financial institutions: Large financial institutions are increasingly willing to adopt third-party technologies, creating opportunities for fintech companies to sell into them. [2]
The "messy inbox problem": Many industries rely on manual data entry from unstructured sources like emails and faxes. AI can automate this, creating a powerful wedge for new companies. [7]
AI making new markets attractive: "AI is making markets that weren't attractive to software companies suddenly very compelling." [8]
The future of lending is embedded: "There's a tremendous amount of opportunity for lending to be embedded within an existing software product or the workflows we were talking about." [1]
The competitive advantage of embedded finance: Companies like Square and PayPal use their distribution and customer data to "push" loans to businesses, rather than waiting for them to apply. [1]
The commoditization of basic financial products: "Pure text-to-speech will inevitably become commoditized. To maintain long-term defensibility, we need sophisticated product layers — workflows, data-rich features, and APIs — so customers become deeply embedded and find switching difficult." [9]
The vision for Bond Street: The goal was to be more than a lender, but a "financial advocate for the small businesses we served." [4]
Many banks have "hostages, not customers," highlighting the need for better, more customer-centric financial services. [10]

On Investing and Venture Capital

The dual role of an investment firm: An investment firm must deliver exceptional returns and build a "source of compounding competitive advantage." [2]
Investing in people: "I'm really investing behind people at the end of the day. My job is identifying the most ambitious and most talented people in the world." [2]
The importance of conviction: "From an entrepreneur's perspective, what you really wanted was, somebody who had deep conviction in what you're building, and, honestly, not care what other people thought." [1]
The qualities of a great VC: The investors he admires most have "clarity of thought had deep conviction moved quickly and you know won in large part because of those qualities." [4]
The importance of the "Why now?" question: Both entrepreneurs and investors need to have a clear answer to why this is the right time for a particular company or technology. [2]
The value of an investor's network: A venture firm can add significant value by connecting startups with large companies that need their solutions. [2]
The nature of venture capital: "That is venture right no no and that's also the entrepreneurial experience it's putting yourself out there and trying to figure it out." [4]
a16z's entrepreneurial culture: The firm is run by entrepreneurs, which fosters a culture of risk-taking, experimentation, and constant improvement. [1]

On Team Building and Culture

The value of a great team: "Your company is really only as valuable or successful as the quality of your team." [2]
Hiring for "humble confidence": Look for people who have valuable skills and experience but also the humility to learn from others. [4][11]
The "karmic boomerang": "The karmic Boomerang of sort of wanting to put more out into the world than you expect to receive." [4]
The importance of generosity: He looks for people who are generous with their network and relationships. [4]
Building an aspirational brand: At Bond Street, the goal was to build a brand that small businesses would be proud to be associated with, similar to how startups view top-tier venture firms. [1]
The first hire at Bond Street set the tone: Hiring a seasoned expert from Citibank, who was humble enough to learn from a young team, was crucial for the company's culture. [11]
The most rewarding part of Bond Street: "We built an amazing team, which is what I'm most proud of by far, many of whom are now actually fintech entrepreneurs themselves, which is just incredible to see." [1]

Learn more:

Lessons from David Haber

On Entrepreneurship

On Fintech

On Investing and Venture Capital

On Team Building and Culture

Written by Antoine Buteau

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