How a partner at Sequoia thinks about startups

Warren Hogarth, Empower, Funding, Mobile Apps

This is what I love about San Francisco: I was out with my son and I met another father who was a founder.

He was telling me about his new startup but what amazed me was the way he thought about it and how he thought about entrepreneurship in general.

Today’s guest is a guy who thinks the way I want to think and someone I want to be influenced by.

Warren Hogarth is a partner at Sequoia and his latest company is Empower, a personal financial assistant on your phone.

I invited him here to talk about how he built his business but more importantly, what he’s learned about startups from being a partner at Sequoia.

Warren Hogarth

Empower

Warren Hogarth is the founder of Empower, a personal financial assistant on your phone.

Andrew: Hey, everyone. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. You guys know if you’ve been listening to my interviews that I’ve been traveling and moving around the world for a long time, I think four or five different cities that I’ve been recording Mixergy from.

The reason that I love living here in San Francisco is because of the people that I get to meet here. For example, a few months ago, I took my two kids to the museum, and they were playing with this other family of kids that were pretty much the same age. Before we said goodbye to the family that I saw at the museum, I took the father’s phone number and his name.

As I got home, I thought, “Maybe I should look him up. Maybe he’s someone I should have known.” But I never knew his name. I started looking him up and said, wow, this is a former partner at Sequoia, really interesting background, starting this new...

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