Last Money In

🔍 Just published: "What Really Drives Investment Interest in SPVs?" After managing over 500 SPVs across market cycles and closely tracking LP response patterns, we've compiled our guide on what drives investment interest in SPVs. From our experience, there’s a hierarchy of influence factors: The High-Impact Drivers  - Lead Investor Quality: A premier firm like Sequoia or USV writing a substantial first check remains one of the highest impact signals  - Founder Pedigree: Tier 1 founders (previous unicorn builders) can override almost any other consideration - Traction Metrics: The scale matters more than the multiple - $1M→$10M ARR growth commands significantly more attention than $100K→$1M - Market Buzz: OpenAI would generate extraordinary interest even at $300B, but buzz alone couldn't save say a company like Bolt from valuation concerns despite its buzziness The Mid-Tier Influences  - Industry Category: AI, security and frontier/deep tech consistently outperform in terms of LP interest in this market - Syndicate Lead Track Record: This compounds over time but rarely overrides deal fundamentals - Round Structure & Terms: Clean deal mechanics with fair valuations enhance LP confidence but rarely salvage fundamentally uncompelling opportunities The Tactical Elements  - Strategic Follow-ups: Limit to 1-2 high-value updates to avoid LP fatigue - Investment Memo Length: Counterintuitively, less is often more  - Founder Q&As: More confirmatory than determinative - can help or hurt depending on founder presentation skills - Fee Optimization: Only truly relevant as a tie-breaker in widely syndicated deals We dive into this topic and much more in this weeks Last Money In article - link to full post in the comments Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with over 60,000 subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

We are launching a Deal Sheet App! We are always listening to our customers' feedback, and have some big news... We are launching a Mobile App for Deal Sheet. This new mobile experience will help customers/accredited investors access syndicated deals instantly as they become available and keep you in the know while you are on the run. We’re excited to have partnered with Rapid Dev to bring this vision to life. They are one of the top companies in the space and the experience with them has been amazing so far. They came to the first call with our entire app sketched out as wireframes. Then took 2 weeks to bounce around different ideas and features that they thought our subscribers would love. It feels like a true partnership, and we are very excited to bring this app to life very soon! Check out our progress below. More announcements as we launch to follow! cc: Zachary Ginsburg / Matt Graham 👨💻

The IRL Syndicate Strategy This week via Last Money In, I wrote about how I would get started as a syndicate lead today and build a power syndicate (link to full post in the comments). One thing we do not see much of, but is a great way to get started is to focus on IRL founder pitches and LP events. While this doesn’t scale if the goal is to run 30+ deals per year, it is a great way to build your syndicate brand and also build deeper relationships with both LPs & founders. When I started running SPVs, I would host these founder meet-n-greets with the founders I was putting an SPV together with. While I do not do this much anymore, below is an example of a syndicate that is heavily focused on IRL events and doing a great job in building an investing community. Meet Kelley Arena & Annie Evans… I met Kelley Arena of Golden Hour Ventures & Annie Evans of Dream Ventures and I loved how they have really focused on operating this syndicate in more of an in-person community experience. Golden Hour Ventures and Dream Ventures operate with the intention of bringing education and community to angel investing and deal flow. They deploy capital 3-6 times/ year. For each of their deals, they source carefully based on stage (Seed+ to Series A), industry (consumer, consumer tech, women's health), and their investor network's appetite. Their network is mostly women, spanning industries and expertise, all with their own superpowers and spheres of influence. For a founder to be the right fit for their syndicate, they see the value in having a group of invested ambassadors, who often are the brand's consumer, on the cap table. IRL STRATEGY... What makes their model unique is that they host investor events for the network, often roadshowing in NYC, LA and Miami, where the founder pitches live and fields an Ask-Me-Anything style of Q&A. They often pair this with angel investing education, with the intention of bringing in a new class of investor, and demystifying the asset class. Post-deployment, their investor syndicates will meet with the founder 1-2x year, IRL and virtual, to get investor updates, meet the other investors, and brainstorm on ways to amplify the brand. -- Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with 60k+ subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

Last Money In hosted our 5th Quarterly Syndicate Lead/Investor Dinner w/Sydecar yesterday in New York. These dinners are really the only time syndicate leads get together in-person, therefore we look forward to continuing these dinners and meeting/learning from more investors & syndicate leads :) A big thanks for coming Jonathan Wasserstrum, Ben Zises, Jeffrey Shu, Drew Austin, John Gannon, Sara Garson, David Yakobovitch, Matthew Weinberg, Chris Bordeaux, Rahul Chaudhary, Zachary Ginsburg, Jake Don Sing. (we will continue to work on our group picture taking skills)

Thanks for the feature beehiiv!

Thanks for the Last Money In x Deal Sheet feature, beehiiv!

The Ideal Angel Investor: Profiling 4,000+ SPV Limited Partners Since launching our syndicates, we've had over 4,000 investors invest in our SPVs. In today's Last Money In post we explore the characteristics that make certain accredited investors particularly successful as angels and LPs in these vehicles. Here’s a list of the typical profiles we have and see in our syndicate (not exhaustive): • Founder/Co-founder • CEO • COO • CTO • Engineer (really any level) • Head of Product • Head/Director of Operations • Owner (small business or bootstrapped business) • Account Executive (typically at a larger co.) • Family Office investor  • Venture Capitalist • Banker • Private Equity investor • Various roles interested in tech outside a major tech hub SPVs in venture capital are ideally suited for investors who bring a powerful combination: significant capital alongside battle-tested operational expertise in technology and digital markets. We've found that tech CEOs, founders, and senior leaders (regardless of department) make exceptional SPV investors. Why? They've lived through the challenges of scaling businesses, giving them an invaluable lens for evaluating early-stage opportunities. They also come with a rolodex of relevant introductions. Link to full post in comments. -- Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with ~60k+ subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

Stock options have long been heralded as the golden ticket that transforms employees into owners, aligning their interests with the company's success while providing a path to potential wealth creation. As one example - when Cisco acquired AppDynamics for $3.7 billion in 2017, a reported 400 of the company's employees became millionaires through their stock options. The founder, Jyoti Bansal, stated that "dozens of employees" had outcomes of $5 million or more. Yet the conversation around startup stock options becomes a lot more nuanced if an employee is fired, leaves early and/or wants to take early liquidity while the company’s still private. This can often be the reality:  - Join a startup, have the “prospect” of life-changing wealth - Work ~4 years to earn your equity - Need $50k-$100k+ cash to exercise options and pay taxes - Even then, you might not be allowed to sell your private stock and with no guarantee of a positive outcome  - Meanwhile, founders and investors can often sell more freely In this week’s Last Money In article, Alex Pattis and I dive into this very nuanced topic specifically covering  - How stock options work today and the true cost to exercise options  - The large human cost of the current system - Why companies block sales and why these reasons don’t necessarily hold up  - Potential solutions for what a more fair system could look like Link to read the article (for free) in the comments. Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with over 50,000 subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

The Valuation Dilemma: Raised at a high valuation, so now what? (sharing this from this weeks Last Money In post) There were so many SaaS, ecomm, fintech and other startups that were able to raise capital quickly, and at high valuations (2x, 5x, 10x, 50x of what they’d be valued in today's market). I’m not going to pretend our syndicate did not participate in many of these rounds and companies… we did. We invested alongside all the tier 1 VC’s (and backed great founders) out there during this time while the capital was flowing and we did not see a sharp turn right around the corner. But now those same companies find themselves in extremely difficult funding environments and situations. These startups that raised at exceptionally high valuations during the bull market are facing many unique challenges today including: Valuation Mismatch: Current market conditions often don't support previous valuations, leading to potential down rounds or in many situations small internal rounds or no rounds because founders and existing/new investors cannot agree on terms. Example: Peloton at one point was valued at around 23x sales; today it's achieving a 0.85x sales multiple or almost 97% multiple compression. Higher Bars for Growth: To justify their valuations, these companies need to demonstrate exceptional growth and progress. Most of these companies are trying to figure out how they can get back to their recent valuation in 1-3-5+ years with limited capital needs i.e. do it without heavy dilution. Burn Rate Pressure: High valuations often came with high burn rates, which are now unsustainable in the current climate. Most companies flipped the switch and performed massive budget cuts and got rid of many employees, to as quickly as possible, figure out how to get to profitability or extend their runway many years down the road. Investor Expectations: Previous investors may be resistant to lower valuations, complicating new funding rounds. Many founders are now upset that they sit in cap table purgatory even when the VC’s agreed to these terms previously. I’d also imagine (and have seen) a bunch of VCs stepping up to lead internal bridge rounds to help extend runway to get to the next milestone, next funding, or profitability. Full post in comments. -- Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with 55k+ subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.

Why Startups Are Shutting Down (Right Now) in Droves Today, Last Money In published a piece on what’s behind the startup shutdowns we are seeing right now, and how we got here. Link to post in comments. The startup landscape is experiencing a seismic shift. In Q1 2024 alone, 254 venture-backed companies went out of business, many of which have previously achieved nine figure valuations. Just last week brought a sobering cascade of LinkedIn posts: founders of AI startups, direct-to-consumer brands, and fintech platforms all penning heartfelt goodbyes to their teams and customers. These weren't just failures—they were casualties of a fundamental market reset that's forcing us to reexamine how we build and value early-stage companies. The reality is that the past couple of years have been a rollercoaster for the global economy and startups that raised venture capital. We've emerged from a bear market that saw significant downturns in public equities, cryptocurrencies, and other asset classes. This market downturn has had a ripple effect on the startup world, creating a challenging environment for startups to navigate and/or stay afloat. In this post, we’ll cover the aftermath of the bear market we are seeing play out in real time. -- Powered by Sydecar, Last Money In is the most actionable Venture Capital newsletter with 55k+ subscribers. Written by Zachary Ginsburg and Alex Pattis, the global syndicate leaders with 800+ VC SPVs closed.