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San Francisco, California, United States
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880 followers
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Explore more posts
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Yacov Lewis
Most recent investor feedback: Pretty interesting, more compelling in some ways than the creator q&a platforms... Too early for where we'd get involved realistically, but appreciate the share. I'm in SF right now meeting VCs back to back to back. Making mistake and learning a lot. Here's our pitch in brief: A marketplace for CreatorGPTs available to FaceTime. Founders led IBM Watson chat and Hyperloop labs, 13 patents, mobile app exit. If you know anyone interested, feel free to share!
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4 Comments -
Wes Hather
The early days of founding Outreach was a bumpy ride. At one point we were 7 pivots deep with 3 weeks of runway in the bank. Here's how we survived: 1. We convinced our investors our 8th pivot was "the one." Before this pivot, we were a tech-focused recruiting marketplace called GroupTalent. We had spent 3 years throwing everything at the wall trying to get growth, but nothing worked. We had one more idea. To help us source developers and designers to join our talent pool, we built an internal tool which allowed us to send personalized emails at scale. The reply rates to these emails were off the charts, and we found that other recruiters wanted to buy the tool. This tool eventually became the first version of Outreach sequences. Our investors had no reason to believe this pivot would be any different but they gave us one final shot - which gave us enough time to prove out an MVP. 🙏��� 2. We had each other’s back. Most startups die of suicide, not murder. Being founders is more than just a working relationship. It’s like a marriage. You’re with each other sometimes 16 hours a day and you need tools to get through the lows. The four of us made time to get together every friday over drinks, and talk about the highs and lows of the week. And not just team-level highs and lows, we did individual-level highs and lows about each other which prevented little issues from festering and made us stronger as a team. 3. We found our “Founder Market Fit.” Before Outreach, we were basically recruiters that could have run GroupTalent off of a spreadsheet. We built a ton of tech for a problem that didn’t need it. For example, we built a really cool workflow and matching automation engine that tried to intelligently match talent up with projects. But we didn’t have the scale to warrant this investment. GroupTalent was a bad product fit for our team. The value we were selling at the end of the day was the talent itself, not the tech. But with Outreach, the value was the tech and building the tech was our superpower. Once we figured this out, we were seeing a much higher ROI. 4. We obsessed over our customers. With Outreach, we had customers since day 1 and boy did we listen to them. We were all doing customer support in the early days and built very close relationships with them. It was nice having customers finally care about the tech we were building and we were thankful for it. (Queue up our 2014 Thanksgiving video) Being so close with our customers helped us build the right product out of the gate and build up a loyal following for years to come. LOTS more to go into later, but these were the major themes that got us to the next milestone as a company.
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19 Comments -
Jon Holland
Excellent data to have when raising capital. #Automotiveindustry #electriccar #electricvehicles #automotive #electricvehicle #emobility #futureofmobility #EV #electric #electriccars #fleets #fleet #electricvehicle #emobility #futureofmobility #fleetmanagement #startup #impactinvesting #VC #angelinvesting #venturecapital #Entrepreneurs #privateequity #familyoffices
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1 Comment -
Jeremy Stryer
Hiring is hard enough, but for early-stage startups you have be prepared to pay well and often give up more equity than you want to. Shortchanging strong candidates on money and potential upside isn’t going to get it done. 3 options for early-stage startups to build their technical team: 1) Offer more comp (salary + equity) 2) Hire less experienced but motivated devs 3) Talk with us about how we build nearshore engineering teams for early-stage startups => save on payroll and keep your equity
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1 Comment -
Jordan Wan, CFA 🇨🇦
TWO OR THREE-STEPPING TO SERIES A A lot of software founders are still trying to raise a $4-5M seed round from a pre-revenue standpoint to get to Series A. I get that we all want more buffer nowadays but it's also a harder calculus to go from pre-monetization, to early customers, to giving yourself enough sales cycle time in order to hit $1-2M ARR proxy for a strong A. Which is why inevitably, more founders end up having to raise messy extensions/bridges/Seed II or whatever you want to call them. So my advice is that IF you have the luxury of starting a company today, PLAN AHEAD. Even prior to even raising your first angel round. Break up your path to Series A into 2 or 3 tranches of mission-driven capital. Each tranche has a clear goal that you can rally your team and investors around. For example: First tranche to build the product and get early design partners. Second tranche to get to $300K of ARR. Third tranche to get to Series A. This will help support higher operating discipline and awareness. Incremental purchasing and hiring decisions will instantaneously shorten your runway in a way that a larger $5 million seed round obfuscates. And you'll be motivated to find GTM efficiency faster in the journey. Great habits for long term success. For context, Peter Walker of Carta recently sent an update on the arduous path from Seed to Series A. The survival rate is about 1/2 of what it used to be: "Something like 20-24% of startups that raised a seed round would graduate to their Series A in 24 months or less. For companies that raised their seeds in H1 2022, only 13% have made it to Series A across the 6 industries in the chart."
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5 Comments -
Jean Marc Goguikian
My cofounder twisted my arm to join a "B2B Product-Market Fit" bootcamp. I was skeptical, but it wound up being insanely useful - probably the highest ROI thing we've ever done. Here's why: WHY I WAS SKEPTICAL: Yes, product-market fit is "the only thing that matters." But it's a vague concept. It's a vague, ethereal thing that nobody seems to understand. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can teach or learn. I'd also tried all the "best practices" out there (ideation exercises, customer interviews, experimentation, etc.) and found that they... didn't really work. So a bootcamp about product-market fit seemed like the best way to incinerate money and time. WHY I DID IT: My cofounder and I met with Rob Snyder, who's got founder experience and started this weird Product-Market Fit bootcamp... geared towards MBA/consulting/i-banking as well as product and developer types. In our first 30-min meeting, Rob didn't try to sell us on the bootcamp... he just helped us make a TON of progress in our business. I was still skeptical… But we decided to do the bootcamp & schedule weekly 1:1s with Rob. Why not -- it was more affordable than a sales coach, and Rob actually speaks at a founder level WHAT HAPPENED: The bootcamp is insane, like nothing else I've experienced. It approaches product-market fit from first principles, but is highly actionable. So we made a bunch of progress on our business, but I also built mental models about product-market fit and scaling that help me feel confident that I'm focused on the right things. It also didn't take a ton of time, maybe 2-3 hours per week. Not at all a distraction, with a very high signal:noise ratio. My favorite part has been getting a ton of feedback from Rob and from other founders in the program. We review each others' sales decks, sales calls, outreach messages... and debug things to get closer to "pull", vs "push." It was cool to see that there were pre-revenue companies all the way to companies with $2M+ ARR... each trying to find repeatable pull and deepen their understanding of product-market fit. SO WHAT: Our startup feels different now. We're getting a lot of traction, our sales conversations are smooth, and I know exactly what matters & doesn't. We feel pull in sales calls, customers say, "we're cutting budget... Konko is the only thing we're investing in." This is energizing to hear, and a lot of this comes from the work we've done as part of this bootcamp. If you're a B2B startup, $0-$2M ARR, and customers aren't pulling the product out of your hands... you should apply to the next Product-Market Fit bootcamp. We're coming back for our second round, it starts July 8, DM me for an intro to Rob! (Or just DM Rob Snyder)
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2 Comments -
Matt Turck
How to pitch: The company has zero traction —> “We’re early” You only have 2 customers —> “We’re working with design partners” You currently have no revenue but hoping some pipeline finally closes —> “we’re on track to exit this year at $3M ARR” You’re in the natural kill zone of a FAANG —> “We view them as partners rather than competitors” There’s no way the tech can actually work —>“We’re manifesting the future” And of course: One of your developers uses Co-Pilot to write some front end code —> “We’re an AI company”
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65 Comments -
Roohi Kazi
Just posted a half baked idea on X - and shot my shot to one of the startup founders there Am thinking this demo day will have both talent looking for their next thing in startups, and VC’s as well Kind of like a demo day + mixer of sorts Asks: 1) Who wants to team up with me to execute on this? 2) Where should we host it? 3) Who should I invite as a startup founder or VC ? 4) Which community builders should I connect with? DM me or comment below This is more a weekend project, side thing
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2 Comments -
Rob Caucci
“Founder-Market Fit” gets thrown around a-lot. I first heard of the concept in 2016 when 🧬 🤖 ⚙️ Alex Iskold wrote a Josh Kopelman-inspired post about it. Since then, it’s become a default checkbox for early-stage investors, as mainstream belief now is that it’s a key predictor of a startup's success. Yet, it feels awkward every time I see it used to reference different situations. Founder solving a problem that took the life of a loved one? ✔️ FMF! Founder with 25+ years in the same domain they’re building in? ✔️ FMF! See what I mean? Super different. While the nuance might not always matter, I think it should be understood. That’s where better defining variations of FMF can provide a helpful framework to, situationally, evaluate the type of fit a founder has. The 4 types of Founder-Market Fit I’ve observed: 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder feels a deep sense of purpose to solve a problem with their company, and they’ve become obsessed with doing so. Emi Gal is a great example of this with what he's building at Ezra. 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder has meaningful experience operating in the domain, and therefore has a unique vantage point and insights to build from. 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder's technical skill and/or SME transcends the top .1% in their field - creating high barriers to entry - and uniquely positions them to win. This fit is often required for founders building in hard sciences (eg biotech). 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder already spent time building relationships and trust in the market, ideally with buyers they’ve sold, and can leverage this “native” network. The GTM motion this creates is a wildly powerful advantage for a founder. Each type of fit is an asset with unique value for founders and compounding effects are certainly at play. Fundamentally, I think it comes down to this question: 𝘋𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 (𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮) 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘳 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘧 𝘴𝘰, 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘵, 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯/𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮? It’s proven FMF is not required to build a successful company, but founders having some prior alignment with the market usually impacts outcomes. HT to James Currier over at NFX who, from what I can tell, has written the most on how he thinks about FMF distinctions. So, what do you think I'm missing here? How do you think about FMF?
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15 Comments -
Andrew Rea
Saved a customer $1800+ dollars this week by doing something that we didn't initially think was scalable. Also turns out that thing will be more scalable than I initially anticipated. Feels good. Another reason why it's important to challenge assumptions, not overthink, and just try stuff. Especially early on when you're extremely flexible / agile. It's so easy to say that something has never been done this way before. Or that this won't scale. Or that this can't be automated. Or that VCs won't like this aspect of our business model. etc. But it's incredible how often the people telling you these things haven't gone deep enough, close to the metal, and/or approached the problem with a fresh enough perspective to actually know.
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1 Comment -
Tim Parsa
A startup idea worth pursuing is: 1. pitch-worthy: you enjoy distilling it down and telling people. 2. join-worthy: you can form a community around it. 3. earn-worthy: folks will invest time/effort for collab opportunities or early access. 4. prepay-worthy: cashflow. https://lnkd.in/gA2icK8h
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Fynn Glover
Was chatting with a product leader from a Y Combinator company last week. 🚀 He'd reached out because they needed greater control and flexibility around pricing & packaging, specifically bundling & unbundling features. 🔄💡 He explained it like this: "The issue we're running into is that it's actually really difficult for us to attach features to plans and quickly move features between plans. Any changes we want to make require dev cycles to support. The goal is to be able to move feature A to plan B or feature B to Plan A rapidly & without code changes, so that we can be a lot more agile with testing optimal packaging." 🔗🛠️ #pricing #packaging #featuremanagement
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1 Comment -
Tomas Riegos
tl;dr - We're pausing NoCode Pros as a paid community for a few months. Why is this happening? John Krueger and I started NCP last summer to help our journey growing our own low code agency, DreamLabs. Our hypothesis was that the best way to level up and achieve flourishing would not be to read some books or guru videos. Instead, we wanted to learn directly with and from other practitioners, fellow nocode / lowcode agency owners in the trenches building their own businesses. Our hypothesis was correct. Over the past 8 months we've applied the insights, lessons and connections made through NCP to achieve our goals as an agency, expanding from a team of 2 to over a dozen. We're now so busy with the agency we can't in good faith maintain the NCP vision at the same time. So we're temporarily pausing NCP to focus on stabilizing our agency. The idea is that after we're built in more foundational stability, we can open up time to return to NCP and bring it to the next level. We appreciate all the NCP members' participation, engagement and support as we learn and grow together. Upwards 🚀
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4 Comments -
Weiting Bollu
Three Phrases Founders Need to Hear 💡 "No software company should raise a pre-seed." (Controversial but true for some) 💡 "A lifestyle business is thrown around like a derogatory term as if you are not a legitimate founder because you didn't take on funding." (Let's change this narrative) 💡 "The Mighty Middle" - A newly coined term for founders who are aggressively building, reaching profitability, and creating sustainable businesses without institutional capital. (Join the revolution) As an early-stage company (Openroom HQ), we're experimenting every single day to see what sticks and what doesn't. It doesn't make you less of a Founder just because you didn't take capital. The mindset of "go raise capital" and "growth at all costs" is starting to shift. It's not that founders need reassurance to continue building and solving hard problems. We will continue regardless! But, it definitely helps when people who have done it, seen it, and believe it too. It might be controversial but I loved this morning's debriefing. Thank you to Cherry Rose Tan, MBA, MA, Moshe Mikanovsky, Brice Scheschuk, CPA, CA and Schulich School of Business - York University's Schulich Startups for a memorable mentorship quarter and helping me see a better future of building my own company. ---- Repost this for your network ♻️ P.S. What's the most controversial advice you've heard recently?
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11 Comments -
Matthew Parker
Founders face a unique challenge in re-entering the "traditional" job market. Here are some of the recurring themes I've noticed through my coaching: 1. They struggle to understand and articulate their career story 2. They're now looking for a specific role type (Such as Head of Product or Head of Operations) but are not sure what companies look for in these role types, and thus how to position said career story 3. As a result, relative to the job they're looking for, they focus their career story or achievements on skills that are less relevant 4. They don't have a clear plan on how to search for their next job as the market has changed drastically since the last time they went to market 5. They sometimes overly focus on parts of their career narrative that they are insecure about, but that in reality, companies will not worry about As a founder, is there anything that would/does concern you about re-entering the job market? Anything you would want support on that I've not listed here? Founders and Entrepreneurs have highly desirable skill-sets that most businesses are super interested in, but navigating this job market can seem extremely daunting, so it's been an honour to help so many founders on this journey! P.S If you'd like some guidance feel free to book in some time.
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5 Comments -
Matan Kleyman
I've returned to writing and sharing my insights, now on Substack! 📚✨ If you're interested in product development and compelling startup stories, be sure to check out my new Substack. The upside? It's going to be very opinionated and inspiring. The downside? It might push your thinking. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/dZnUgJj5 Stay tuned and feel free to subscribe. #Tech #ProductDevelopment #TechTrends #StartupStories #Substack
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Fred Huang
The old adage is true -- if you want to get something done, ask a busy (parent) person. I've noticed those "forced breakpoints" in the day really move the needle when it comes to: 1) Selecting my priorities. Knowing that I have to pickup kids at daycare or school means I have to wisely choose what I'd like to tackle today. The "must dos" get a lot more clear, as does saying no or managing team expectations. 2) Managing energy. Sometimes, it feels like getting to 7:30pm, when the kids are hopping in bed, is a minor miracle (and no way I could do it without my partner, Jackie). I also know my energy levels are not the same after that, so I have to line up the right work with the right energy level. 3) Time boxing work. I can't remember who told this to me, but a task will always fill the time you give it. They meant it in the bad way, where you can waste time on something that can/should be done quickly. The breakpoints for family mean all I have is this time, so push hard to get it done. 80/20 rule typically prevails. I have been surprised at how effective it is to give yourself a much shorter time frame and try to get it done.
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