Illusian Founder Office’s Post

Two years ago we published a post about our thinking on adding business angles to our investor lineup 📜 Sticking to our food analogies from back in the day - Root has been cooking ever since and because partnering with our angels worked so well, we are sticking to the menu that has gotten us this far 👌 Thus, next to Point Nine and arc investors, we are adding more angels to support our exceptional team in their daily operations 🧑🍳 So, here we go again 🕺🏼 Check out our blog post in the comments below! 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺: Having worked in early-stage startups ourselves, we experienced how crazy difficult it is to build an entire department from scratch with little pre-experience. Of course, you can google frameworks, read books, and schedule calls with other operators to get a glimpse of how you should proceed but this takes time and you never know how good the quality is 🤷🏼♀️ In an ideal world, you would have world-class experts in your specific domain, ready to jump in when you need them 🤓 𝗥𝗼𝗼𝘁’𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴: • Let’s build mini “advisory boards” for each position in our initial core team (we are hiring - link in the comments!) 🧞 • Let’s build these boards by selecting angels based on specific skill sets individual team members need over the next few months 📚 • Let’s have our team members pull knowledge and advice independently via regular check-ins and ad-hoc WhatsApp messages, reducing the founders’ operational load but ensuring that the team excels at their job 🧠 If you’re interested in working hand in hand with this group of operators and work on one of the most pressing problems of our time, come join us! Link is in the comments below! Welcome to the kitchen to our new cooks🧑🍳: Rodrigo Martinez - for supporting B2B SaaS companies in all topics strategy and org building for more than a decade Jan Philipp Thomsen - for leading Product Management at Celonis Pete Hamilton - for founding and scaling incident.io incredibly fast Alexander Argyros - for founding and scaling Moonfare to hundreds of team members, and now building in the climate space as well with Bluelayer Victor Landau - for leading all product topics at Uberall and now cargo.one Armon Bättig - for building Ledgy’s Enterprise GTM motion Jascha Romanski - for building Celonis’ Customer Success motion as first CS hire Constantin Probst - for leading Consumer Goods topics at BCG Veit Dinges - for leading Enterprise Sales at cargo.one Thank you ALL for the fruitful collaboration so far!! 👏 Jakob Eva Robin Patrick Franz Vassili Mengting Ba Khai Christian Alexandra Oskar Markus T. Jasper Julian Nitesh Tevfik Nicolaus Udo Jan Philip (Pico) Siobhan David Jasson Karin Luka Nils Michael Matthäus Mike and a few more cooks! Sharing is caring 💌

Ready to Take Over the Accounting World? We are on a mission to make accounting as simple as a Sunday morning. But we can't do it alone we are looking for channel partners to join us on this journey. If you're focused on innovation, teamwork, and helping businesses thrive with a powerful SaaS solution, let’s connect and explore how we can work together. To learn more just message me. #AccountingMadeSimple #SaaSRevolution #GlobalPartners #BusinessGrowth #Innovation #TechForGood #LetsGrowTogether #EntrepreneurLife #Leadership #AI #RemoteWork

The challenge: Finding and forming teams of great people 🤯 The solution: The 8Cs of tremendous teams diagnosis tool by Loomery 🤝 Through the work with our clients, we have found that there are eight traits of effective product teams in scaling organisations. Follow the link to download our easy to use tool which locates the biggest challenges and identifies what is holding back your organsiational progress. https://lnkd.in/gTT8Dr5u #Teams #Technology

This week we have taken our vision live 😀 Launching ACTVO (newsflash: name change from CStar) with our first B2B customer onboarding 15 staff 🚀 We are super excited to be an innovator in the space of talent activation. The time for simply engagement is over; companies we talk to want more - for - and from their people. We believe ACTVO brings this - we activate latent talent, confidence, and new skills. You decide. We track tightly the outcomes of our intervention with your people and aim to prove it 😎 And we're looking for partners. If you are a leader who cares about your people, and knows they can contribute more - but you just don't have the time or resources to work with them 1-1 - we should talk. Our software offers a different, more personalised service to broad employee bases, to bring them the private help they need to navigate their career forward in an uncertain future 🤩 If you'd like to find out more drop me a note - happy to share and listen! #talentactivation #employeeadvocacy #employeeengagement #innovation #humancentreddesign https://actvo.ai/

Day 10: Leading with Heart and Hustle – My Journey from Hotels to SaaS! Leadership isn’t just about titles or tasks; it’s about people, stories, and the journeys we share. Reflecting on my days in the hospitality world to now helping steer the ship at a tech startup, I realize leadership is less about the industry and more about heart, understanding, and the collective hustle. In the Trenches of Hospitality: Here, leadership was hands-on, and heart-first. It was celebrating a team member's birthday at midnight because that’s when our shift ended. It was about turning a guest's disappointment into a story they’d share about how we went above and beyond. Leadership was visible, tangible, and always personal. Shifting Gears to Tech: Moving to tech, the canvas changed but the colors of leadership remained vibrant. It became about virtual high-fives for a feature shipped ahead of schedule, and late-night Slack messages brainstorming solutions. It was leading through screens but connecting as deeply, sharing victories, setbacks, and Christmas parties over Zoom. As we lay the foundations of Arkeo AI, my role is more than just guiding—it’s about nurturing a culture where everyone feels valued and driven. We’re small but mighty, dreaming big and daring boldly. Here, leadership means being a cheerleader, strategist, and sometimes, the much-needed comic relief. Leading, whether in the bustling lobby of a hotel or the digital spaces of tech, is about creating a sense of belonging and purpose. It’s about showing up for your team, in successes and failures, and setting a pace that’s ambitious yet compassionate. p.s. Here is our founding team at Arkeo AI, working hard to bring your SaaS Copilot to life! #LeadershipJourney #FromHospitalityToTech #TeamCulture #StartupLife #LeadWithEmpathy #SaaS #SaaSCopilot #ArkeoAI

We are stoked to welcome Neej Parikh as Strategic Advisor to Revvolution.ai. Having led companies in their $0-$50Mn journey, not once but twice, Neej brings vast experience as CRO & Revenue Leader across companies like Zuora, Productive and Applied Intuition. He is currently CoFounder of Exordiom where he helps businesses scale GTM quickly. Neej also works with multiple VC Firms like Elevation, PeakSpan as an advisor to their Portfolio Companies and continues to be a Guest Lecturer on SaaS GTM at Stanford University. Here it is from Neej on what he loves about us: "RevOps has easily become a force multiplier function for startups as well as established companies, but only if used effectively. The effectiveness is what changes a RevOps function from a cost function to a revenue impacting function. Revvolution AI has tackled the problem of driving effectiveness in revenue operations leveraging AI across sales, finance, customer success, marketing, and just any function that impacts revenues within a company. Revvolution AI makes it easy for any functional leader to simply ask questions about the business, and with high accuracy make quick business decisions. Imagine if you could simply understand how a marketing campaign performed last summer by asking a question in Slack, so you can figure out if it makes sense to implement again this summer. This eliminates the need of having a human in the loop to ruffle through marketing, finance, and sales performance data, and avoids analysis paralysis enabling businesses to make quick and educated decisions."

Just wrapped up a superb session with Chris Merritt, Operating Partner at Peak XV Partners. He shared so many invaluable insights extremely helpful for a growing vertical SaaS startup like ours. One thing that really struck me was his emphasis on constantly learning & being a learning machine. Chris said, "Consistently show up with a great attitude," which is something I’ll carry forward. Chris also touched on the importance of staying adaptable. He pointed out that the strategies we used three months ago might not work today, which is a crucial reminder to stay flexible. He stressed having metrics to gauge what's working and what's not and not to take it personally when things break – because they will. Another highlight was Chris's advice on finding our focus. He said we can do almost anything, but we can't do everything. This really hit home. His guidance on identifying our next big move and hitching our wagon to something powerful was both practical and inspiring. Chris also warned about the dangers of chasing all revenue, noting that not all revenue is good. He described the ideal synergy between the problem and the product as being magnetic, which gave us a new perspective on product development. He concluded by talking about the importance of having a mission-driven team. Chris stressed finding people who care deeply about the mission and who show up even on the toughest days. He emphasized the need to develop and take care of our people. I am happy that Chris could join us and I’m eager to put these learnings into action.

In "Measure What Matters," John Doerr highlights several key examples from Google that demonstrate the effectiveness of the OKR framework: 1. Google's Early Adoption: - When Google was a startup, they adopted OKRs to align their team and prioritize work. This helped them focus on critical tasks amidst rapid growth. 2. Larry Page’s Ambitious Goal: - Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, set an objective to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." This overarching goal emphasized Google’s mission and driven innovation. 3. Quarterly OKRs: - Google uses a quarterly OKR cycle, where teams set objectives at the beginning of the quarter and review progress at the end. This regular rhythm helps keep everyone focused and accountable. 4. Measurable Key Results: - For example, an engineering team might set an objective to improve search speed, with key results measuring specific metrics, such as reducing response time by a certain percentage. 5. Transparency and Alignment: - OKRs at Google are visible to everyone within the company, promoting alignment across teams. Employees understand how their work contributes to broader company goals, fostering a sense of purpose. 6. Encouragement of Stretch Goals: - Google encourages setting ambitious (or "stretch") goals, which may not always be fully achieved. This approach promotes innovation and pushes teams to think outside the box. These examples illustrate how OKRs have been instrumental in driving Google’s incredible growth and maintaining its innovative culture, enabling them to adjust quickly in a fast-evolving tech landscape.

#Innovation is like turbocharging your problem-solving engine. It’s not just about thinking outside the box—it’s about redesigning it or realizing you don’t need one at all. In today’s fast-paced world, sticking to the status quo is a shortcut to obsolescence. Innovation is what keeps you relevant, competitive, and ahead of the curve—whether you're launching new products, optimizing processes, or creating something no one has imagined yet. Take #Zappos, for example. Their mission to "deliver wow" is legendary. By prioritizing exceptional customer service with policies like hassle-free returns and extraordinary interactions, Zappos built a loyal customer base that thrives on word-of-mouth. Their use of #Holacracy—replacing traditional hierarchies with self-managing teams—empowers employees to take charge, driving innovation, agility, and fast decision-making. This combination of outstanding service and an empowered workforce has made #Zappos a leader in e-commerce. Stay innovative. The future demands it. #SQ3 #Innovation

I am thrilled to announce the launch of BusinessTime, the first product from Business-i Inc.! 🌟 At Business-i Inc., our vision is to create a cutting-edge digital ecosystem for small businesses, leveraging the latest technological advancements. Our mission is simple: "Empower Small Businesses." Today, the small business and retail industry faces challenges in managing their workforce and tracking work hours, which remain manual and disorganized (similar to the unorganized taxi industry prior to Uber, Lyft, ...). BusinessTime is designed to be a game-changer for this unorganized sector, transforming it into an automated and fully organized domain. This product is a significant step towards achieving our vision, helping small businesses streamline their workforce and thrive in today's competitive landscape. Explore more about BusinessTime at https://lnkd.in/giPCnjsz. Join us on this exciting journey as we empower small businesses to reach new heights! 💼🚀 #SmallBusiness #Innovation #Technology #DigitalTransformation