General Partner at Spark, Spark Capital
Search every verified Megan Quinn interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Megan Quinn, a general partner at Spark Capital, has spoken about the challenges companies face as they scale, emphasizing the importance of establishing communication processes earlier than feels necessary. She has described a pattern she observes in organizational design, noting that every time a company adds roughly 30 people, its communication strategies break down. Quinn has also discussed the qualities she looks for in founders, stating that the first quality she uniformly seeks is a deep sense of ethics, and that she must be able to trust that the individual is a good person with good intentions. Quinn has shared her perspective on venture capital, describing it as "overrated" and noting that it is only one model for funding entrepreneurs. She has said that the majority of businesses are not suited for venture capital and that many entrepreneurs would be better served by different types of capital. She has also discussed her personal approach to work, stating that she does not believe in work-life balance but rather a "work-life blend," and that she guards early morning hours for reading.
“We decided that we needed to have true data independence as it related to Maps — not just for the consumer product experience of business search and driving directions but also for location-based advertising and for Android.”
“Both MasterCard and Visa came out with a new rule that said for transactions under $25 you no longer needed to collect a consumer signature — our merchant customers cared about speed, so we wrestled with whether to remove the signature, but we ended up keeping it and making the removal an obscure option in settings.”
“I want to have an understanding of priority — launches shouldn't be pushed, you should drop features; have priorities (P0–P5), identify DRIs, and include past, present and future (including tech debt) for every release.”
“Square didn't have tipping for the first two and a half years of its life — when you understand that tipping is how many people make ends meet, adding tipping becomes clearly impactful and meaningful, not just a product checkbox.”
“We're seeing the emergence of chief design officers and louder design representation at the executive table, and a 'golden ratio' I often see is roughly 1 PM, 3 designers and 5 engineers to make design meaningful in product teams.”
“The first quality we uniformly look for in founders at Spark is a deep sense of ethics — we have to be able to trust that the individual is a good person with good intentions.”
“The strongest designers have a deep sense of the business need and a real practical understanding of engineering requirements — they don't design in the abstract but work closely with engineers to know what's possible and when.”
“Every time you add 30 people to an organization everything breaks in terms of your communication strategies — instill processes around communication earlier than feels necessary.”
“I wake up around 4 a.m. and use the time between 4 and 6 selfishly to read and consume the things I want; I guard that time fiercely because it's hard to engage with varied subject matter during the day.”
“I first connected with Stewart at the beginning of 2013; he sent me a DM that said 'want a job f**k that VC thing' — I didn't take him up on it but I became a beta tester and stayed in touch for years.”
“Direct listings aren't for everybody — you don't raise capital in the typical sense, so it's appropriate only for companies that don't need to raise as part of their public offering; you also need a product and business people can easily understand, an executive team willing to tell that story, and shareholders who are...”
“I think Spotify and Slack have opened the door for more direct listings — we'll continue to see more — but what's unproven is how much brand recognition or scale you need for it to be the right vehicle, especially for companies that might only be valued at around a billion.”
“I tend to say that if we are looking at the same SoftBank deal one of us is looking at the wrong deal — they traditionally make extremely large investments and some argue they over-capitalize businesses; I wish they weren't writing quite such big checks.”
“We write thirty million dollar checks and so we really think about venture growth as opposed to that later-stage equity — it's important to understand your business and how you're going to put that money to work before you raise it.”
“One of the things Slack has enabled is reducing the need to constantly check many different applications — as an integrator, Slack lets me gather insights and information right where I'm having the conversation with my team.”
In this episode, Spark Capital's Megan Quinn talks about the common hurdles she sees across companies as they scale. She also ...
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Watch full episode: https://youtu.be/7T7j3qBYzMg Just because you write the check doesn't mean that you're the important person ...
Megan Quinn, General Partner at Spark Capital, sits down with FundersClub Co-founder and CEO, Alex Mittal, for a live video ...
SUBSCRIBE: / startupgrind Megan is a general partner in the Spark Capital Growth fund. She specializes in working with world-changing entrepreneurs to design, build and scale transformative consumer products and companies. Previously, Megan was a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers where she led a number of the firm’s early stage and growth consumer investments. Megan joined KPCB from Square, the company revolutionizing payments for buyers and sellers. As Square’s director of products she led strategy and development of the company’s products across merchant and consumer audience…
An interview with retail future authority Megan Quinn at the E-Commerce Show Middle East. For more on Megan Quinn visit ...
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