Seksom Suriyapa seemed to be destined for a job at a venture company. He graduated from Stanford Law and worked for two blue-chip investment banks. After that, he joined McAfee as a senior Corp Dev employee. Later, he spent six years at SuccessFactors, the human resource software company SuccessFactors, before landing at Twitter in 2018. From June to June, he was the head of its 12-member corporate development team.
Surprisingly, Suriyapa, who joined Upfront Ventures in Los Angeles just a few days ago, didn't make the jump sooner. Suriyapa says that the catalyst was finding the right firm for me.
Today, we spoke with Suriyapa, who lives in the Bay Area and will continue to be there about his new role at Upfront. He will be leading Upfront's expanding growth stage practice with founder Yves Sisteron.
He also shared his thoughts on how Twitter, which is currently on a buying spree, thinks about acquisitions. The chat was edited for length.
TC: How did your decision to join Upfront come about?
SS: Mark Suster, my long-term partner, was introduced to me by a mutual acquaintance in the venture industry. I got to know Mark over time and found him to be an exceptional individual. He is thoughtful about the business and a great brand builder. You could argue that [Upfront] placed L.A. on a global venture map.
TC: Although it was an early-stage company for a while, it now has a barbell strategy. Your new job is to ensure that it has a stake in the portfolio companies' growth. Is it possible to shop outside the portfolio?
SS: My mission is to support the hundred-plus Upfront portfolio companies that are poised for scale and to also invest in companies, which I expect will increase over time.
TC: Twitter was much more active in the corp development front during your time there. Why?
SS: Jack Dorsey was CEO for three years when he joined me in 2018. His focus was really on driving the public conversation and Twitter shrunk out of many businesses. He also [shrunk] people smarter.
TC: I recall it laid off people in 2016.
SS: One of the side effects of that was a lot less in the area of newer products. There were no new acquisitions in those three years before me, and that muscle atrophies when you don't exercise it. Jack had already transformed the management team which was, relative speaking, a revolving doors of executives up until then. I was appointed with the specific task of revitalizing a corporate-development practice that had been inactive for a few decades. When Ned Segal was a banker at Goldman Sachs, I had known him. [while] I was at SuccessFactors I heard about the opportunity to take over the role.
TC: Twitter purchases Scroll, the news reader service, and Revue, the newsletter platform. These decisions were taken from the top, or vice versa.
SS: It was product-need driven. There were a number of objectives for the company. One of the objectives was to diversify Twitter and remove it from being a purely ad-driven company. Ads account for around 80% of the revenue.
There is a tremendous need to increase its machine learning and AI as a company. It is not feasible to hire thousands of people to find toxicity in conversations. Machine learning is required to locate it. Twitter that works well can also show you the most interesting conversations. It must take signals from your social media accounts and interact with them. This is MLAI. Jack envisions that anyone who tweets in any language should be able talk to someone in that same language as them in a global conversation.
TC: Consumer applications are also emphasized.
SS: This is the third objective. What tools can followers and creators use to communicate with one another? So, Twitter added audio via Spaces Clubhouse rival. Substack's competitor, Revue was acquired by us. There is a lot of innovation going on around what type of content someone should expect to see and create on Twitter.
TC: Would these acquisitions be referred to as proactive or reactive by you?
SS: It may seem like it's reactive from the outside, but we had been thinking about Spaces since before Clubhouse was born. What I find most remarkable about Spaces is that it is the first time you have seen a company such as Twitter create a product and capability that is competing with a company that is only focused on that area. Clubhouse was unable to offer an Android version of Twitter because Twitter invested resources in it. I would argue that Twitter has a lot of the technicalities of Twitter and that creators are on Twitter, which puts it in a great position to win this segment.
Twitter has an enormous amount of expertise in detecting toxicity, so a small company like Clubhouses will struggle to get there.
TC: Twitter is so interested in cryptocurrencies and decentralization.
SS: Twitter's priorities are still being worked out. We have a lot to share about the technology trends that will be prevalent over the next five to ten years. However, we are also considering the impact of cryptocurrency on the world. How Twitter can participate in a trustless, permissionless internet where people don't have to worry about where their content is stored. Although Twitter is often viewed as a consumer app, there are many other features.
TC: Do your think that the current regulatory environment makes it more likely to work with companies or projects that have been acquired by Facebook and Google?
The reality of the regulatory environment is that, even if you remove the Facebooks or Googles, there are still acquirers that compete that would buy the things. It's a bit shortsighted to focus on just these two. We were still winning deals even though they were not active. Many of the companies that we acquired chose to join Twitter because they liked what it stood for, Jack Dorsey's leadership style, and the beliefs he holds.
TC: You now represent a completely different brand. What will you do to make Upfront more competitive in securing deals?
SS: Because of the companies I've helped to acquire, or try to acquire, I have a network of amazing entrepreneurs all over the globe. I also have relationships with VCs at different stages of their careers who actively look for businesses and introduce them to corp development teams. Twitter also has a diversity program. They plan to have 25% more diverse leadership over the next few years. My team was involved in finding diverse targets to purchase. A series of LP investments were made into new emerging funds. Some were founded by LatinX, others by women, and some were Black-founded. These funds are scouting companies from far-flung locations. . .
TC: Do direct investments also exist on Twitter?
SS: While we did direct investments, [backing fund manager] is a more leveraged approach. They invest in between 30-60 companies each, and most of them are seed funds. Yes, I did indeed visit companies far away, including India's ShareChat, where I was a board member for two years. TechCrunch earlier reported that Twitter was considering buying ShareChat. The company has since received numerous rounds of funding, and was valued at almost $3 billion by its investors.
TC: Although you have many relationships, it is still difficult to compete for growth-stage deals, when so many other companies are also investing in the area. What are your plans to compete?
SS: I will be relying on these networks to find deals. I will be investing in areas where Upfront has invested, but I'll initially be double-clicking the sectors that I have a strong interest, including around the creator economy ecosystem, which I did a lot of at Twitter. W3b 3.0 is ow this permissionless comestogerh, edge computing AI and shared date which goes across a variety of disciplines that Ive worked in, I think one of my strong points will cinterdiscplianry areas as well as sustainability. But, I won't fool myself. Your value proposition can help you compete. My strategy at Twitter was speed, understanding people more quickly, and [underscoring] Twitters unique value proposition [to close deals]. I cannot talk about my [VC] strategy until I have implemented it; entrepreneurs will need to find out what the megafunds don't offer.
