E36: “Angel” Podcast: Ajay Agarwal, Partner at Bain Capital shares insights on culture evolving from sales-driven to product-driven, why enterprise software is the ideal business, best investments & anti-portfolio

0:51 Jason intros Bain Capital's Ajay Agarwal
3:17 Are we experiencing late-stage capitalism? Is capitalism broken?
8:22 Why is upward mobility stalling?
15:29 What is it about founders & startups that made him dedicate his life's work to?
18:46 What piece of knowledge got him in startups? Ajay describes gross margin & incremental costs
23:03 Two insights on why enterprise software is the best business
30:11 Mitt Romney at Bain Capital & issues with cultural appropriation
36:44 Ajay's early days at Trilogy Software, how software sales were different in the 1990s
42:23 Companies going from sales-driven culture to product-driven
46:52 Ajay describes one of his best investments: FourKites
49:13 Ajay describes the biggest miss of his anti-portfolio: Pinterest, and why some firms care about stage and some are stage-agnostic
54:57 Has Bain ever participated in every round of a companies life-cycle?
58:15 Effects of the SoftBank Vision Fund on venture capital as a whole