1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Garrett Goldberg of Bee Partners (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How much money had gone into the company at the point of exit?

Garrett Goldberg: Probably around $60 million. They raised Series A, a Series A extension, and then Series B.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. A question about real estate since that’s a background you have. What do you see happening given that we are going through this tremendous work-from-home trend at the moment.

I was talking to a friend yesterday. This is a couple that lives in Fremont and works on the other side of the peninsula. They have been commuting three hours every day and now they’re working from home. It added such a great quality of life. This is true at scale. 

Garrett Goldberg: I’m old school. I’m much more productive at the office. There are certainly scenarios where working from home makes more sense whether it’s the commute or the nature of the work that you do.

San Francisco has done a very good job of this whole pandemic. The nature of a lot of the work we do here lends itself to that. San Francisco made a very easy transition to it. It’s certainly going to stay.

The question is how much. We’ve gone from zero to 100%. What percent remains? There are certain studies in anthropology that show that maybe 5% to 10% of the habits that formed during this time stick. That’s my assessment. I have to meet entrepreneurs in person. That’s an important thing. 

Sramana Mitra: I’m hearing senior people in commercial real estate firms saying that this is the end of commercial real estate. They’re panicking.

Garrett Goldberg: Yes, that’s what my family does in Idaho. It’s a concern. There are restaurants and gathering places. We’ve been gathering for hundreds of thousands of years. If it’s a gathering to watch football, that’s one thing. If it’s a meeting, the default may be Zoom, then the question is why we should do it in person. 

Sramana Mitra: Or eating at home and meeting at home. Cooking at home is a habit that has taken off. 

Garrett Goldberg: I’m laughing because I’m not cook-at-home but we have two babies. Of course, we’ve been cooking at home for the last couple of years. What we would do is host dinner parties because we can put the girls down and then hang out with our friends. We’ve been doing that a lot for the last couple of years.

Sramana Mitra: That’s something we do a lot. We do a lot of cooking and entertaining at home. We like that over restaurants. I live in Menlo Park. Silicon Valley doesn’t have that many great restaurants. It has a lot of very expensive mediocre restaurants. It’s all going to evolve into some place of stability. At the moment, the world is really falling apart.

Garrett Goldberg: Maybe now we’re putting it together.

Sramana Mitra: The second and third wave seems very precarious actually. It was a wonderful conversation. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Garrett Goldberg of Bee Partners
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