Groops’ Post

Hey fellow founders! I made a new Substack post on Lovelace's company structure through the VC lens. I wrote it to be more transparent than usual, exposing a few key company decisions. Big shoutout to Arian Ghashghai for his post: How Earthling VC picks founders: the cockroach manifesto for the inspiration (link in the comments)!

The complete TC Early Stage 2024 agenda is here! We’re excited to uncover the implicit agenda, packed with keynote signifier speakers and interactive roundtable sessions. From fundraising insights to maturation strategies, articulation america arsenic we navigate the startup scenery unneurotic astatine TechCrunch Early Stage 2024 connected April 25 successful Boston. Don’t miss retired — secure your spot now for an unforgettable acquisition of learning, connection, and inspiration. Prices spell up astatine the door! The Agenda Women successful Tech Sunrise Breakfast: How AI Is Impacting Founders Lily Lyman, Partner, Underscore VC Rudina Seseri, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Glasswing Ventures Milo Werner, General Partner, Engine Ventures Selecting the Right Accelerator oregon Incubator Emily Knight, President, The Engine Accelerator The Ins and Outs of Seed Funding — Roundtable Sponsored by: Latham & Watkins LLP Spencer Ricks, Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP Naomi Smith, Associate, Latham & Watkins LLP Dan Hoffman, Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP Stephen Ranere, Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP Adapt & Thrive: Mastering the Chameleon Mindset — Roundtable Sponsored by: Prepare 4 VC Christopher Dube, Chief Innovation Officer, Prepare 4 VC Jason Kraus, CEO, Prepare 4 VC Preparing to Raise: Cap Table Best Practices to Help You Close Fast Sponsored by Fidelity Private Shares Kristen Craft, Vice President and Business Partner Manager, Fidelity Private Shares Laura Stoffel, Partner, Gunderson Dettmer Melissa Withers, Founder and Managing Partner, RevUp Capital Exiting via M&A: What Acquirers Are Looking for and How You Can Prepare for a Successful Acquisition — Roundtable Dana Louie, Senior Manager, Corporate Development, HubSpot Grabbing Investors’ Attention successful a Competitive Market: Tips for Early-Stage Startups — Roundtable Sergey Gribov, Partner, Flint Capital From Inception to Cash: How I Wandered into an Idea and Jump-Started a Company Sponsored by HomeHQ.ai Oliver Palnau, Co-founder & CEO, HomeHQ.ai Vinny Romano, Co-founder and COO, HomeHQ.ai Archetypes for Product-Market Fit Jess Lee, Partner, Sequoia PR 101 for Founders: Branding Strategies to Win Over Investors, Customers and Partners — Roundtable Edith Yeung, General Partner, Race Capital Never Raise VC Money (and How to Keep More of Your institution if You Do) — Roundtable Jake Cohen, Partner, Vinyl Capital How to Build an MVP and Navigate the Startup-Industrial Complex James Currier, General Partner, NFX Building the Investor Relationships You Need — Before You Need Them and successful the Right Way Lily Lyman, Partner, Underscore VC Product Myth Buster: The (Actual) Right Time to Hire a Product Leader arsenic an Early-Stage Company — Roundtable Rachel Weston Rowell, SVP, Onsite Product & Tech Center of Excellence, Insight Partners Scaling Through Chaos: The Art & Science of GTM Paris Heymann, Partner,...

Yesterday 👏 was 👏 EPIC 🤯 The Rare Founders Investor Conference and Demo Day was an absolute success. 🚀 (Which I do *not* say lightly, I'm usually very critical 😅) 👉But when one of the founders said they had 8 (EIGHT!!) investor conversations after their pitch 😱 👉And another founder literally got chased 🏃♀️down by an investor who wanted to make sure they got a chance to talk (how often do things happen that way around) - you know you did something right. In the short time I've had the pleasure of working with Vasily Alekseenko, I've been witness to his incredible hard work, dedication, and creativity. And it all paid off yesterday. 💪 We had: ✅Over 200 investors 📈 ✅Over 300 founders 🚀 ✅Over 700 day tickets ✅Another 120 evening reception tickets 🍻 ✅4 sponsors, 4 partners ✅40 investor partners ✅25 community partners If you're part of the startup ecosystem and weren't there - why??? 😂 In all seriousness, I could not be more thankful for the incredible community and the team we had around us. Over the next few days, I'll be shouting 🗣️ them out in more detail - stay tuned. But for now, I'm buzzing for one *main* reason: The FEEDBACK 🔥 🥺It seemed to far surpass everyone's expectations. People did NOT expect that some scrappy founders could deliver something so different, and get so many people in a room together. 💯 If you were one of those people, make sure to tag us - the more that people know how great it was, the better we can do next time, and the more accessible we can make it too. 🎉 And THANK YOU for being a part of the journey. It means more than you could know. Stay tuned! 👇 Love and luck!!  Seven 💜

Today is Demo Day for the last class of Techstars Atlanta Powered by Cox Enterprises, a class I was honored to work with as investor/entreprenuer-in-residence. As a Techstars alum, I learned a lot being on the program side and from this specific group of founders. Some takeaways before I watch them shine on the big (like, big!) stage at Venture Atlanta Conference today: 👑 Community still matters, and it's much different than a network. This class showed up for each other as people and peers time and time again. The founders and their teams were generous with their time, talents, kindness and insights. They made intros, troubleshot code and hugged out on the hard days. 💪 Vulnerability and transparency are strengths. The founders opened up their worlds and their spreadsheets to each other, inviting people with different perspectives and experiences to look for weak spots, not just hype their wins. 🌶️ It's about building a real, profitable business — not buzz. Building an audience and anticipation is great! But it's one part of a journey to build a great *business*. That's the assignment. That's the job as an entrepreneur. Seeing these founders focus on their products, market and customers instead of chasing vanity metrics or feeding their egos? The progress they made in the program is an outcome of this. Keep focused. Ignore the distractions (and the haters). Kiana (Kiki) Mincey, Corey Staples, Jilea H., Jamie Michael Hemmings, Chrystal Graves, Caralanay Cameron, MBA, CPC, Sed Joseph, Shawn Johnson, Taylor Folwell, Cole Folwell, Aaron Kelly, Hao Jin, Keylem C., Mina Raver, Ben Norment, Cesar Flores, Riean Knight, thank you for welcoming me on part of your journey. I'm so excited to see where you go from here!!

A week ago we held our late cofounders event… it didn’t go as expected at all. I had selected three speakers from totally different horizons and in completely different companies, expecting a wide range of learnings: ⭐️ Gabrielle Sergent, CTPO Klaro, an early-stage startup on a social mission ⭐️ Philippe Maso y Guell Rivet, CEO Ornikar, a seasoned executive that arrived when KKR put €120m in the company   ⭐️ Alban Sayag, CEO Yousign, serial tech entrepreneur building further the European eSignature leader Well, it turned out that they all shared extremely similar feedback! And that was even better. All three of them expressed that: 1️⃣ One of their key impact was driving the team and culture to new heights: more accountability, more structured and cooperative org, more data-driven decisions. 2️⃣ A late cofounder move is successful when the new comer and the historical founders can both show high humility and desire to learn from each other. 3️⃣ If at first, it’s not your company and never will be (you haven’t started it)… it quickly becomes as fulfilling as if you were a founder, and the equity package is a reflection of that, not the cause. I was also surprised by how much this role resonated, how many ultra involved C-levels identified themselves years after as late cofounders, and how many others wished to find such a role. The impact of such late cofounders is absolutely tremendous for the companies that experienced it, and the ecosystem is now beginning to understand it. With Hexa Scale ⚡ we'll capitalise on these learnings for every late cofounder we partner with!

Yesterday, I pulled up on the Goodie Nation crew for this year’s Intentionally Good Summit, just ahead of Venture Atlanta Conference. Loved catching up with peers and making new connections, but the tone of conversation in the room was what really caught my attention. Very intriguing dialogue amongst Founders, Investors, and others in the start-up ecosystem. Here are a few key takeaways: 1️⃣ Don’t obey your thirst | While the idea of capital is attractive and (in most cases) necessary, do as much as possible without it. Dilution can be a slippery slope. 2️⃣ DEI initiatives are on life support; find another way | This is worthy of a separate post. More to come. 3️⃣ Readiness is (even more) paramount | Given point 2 (and other environmental considerations), there is an even greater emphasis on knowing your financials, having an airtight model, and a clear value proposition if you are seeking funding or other types of support. Bonus: Build a dope team. Trust is expedited by the track record and capabilities of your team. #startup #investing #tech #goodienation

My key takeaways from interviewing 100 startup investors on The Neon Show: 1. They have an exceptional ability to discover the best founders at the pre-seed and seed stage. 2. They don’t wait for a large target addressable market, they invest while the market is small and is getting built. 3. They don’t wait for traction, they invest before traction. 4. They put a premium on founder time and go where the founders are based. 5. They look for founders who have contrarian insights on how the future looks like. 6. They move super fast and don’t over-negotiate on terms. On the other hand, average investors look for the founders to reach out to them, over-negotiate terms, and miss the best deals. They constantly tell founders that the TAM is too small and have poor understanding that large TAMs are built by founders.

Last week, I attended the TechCrunch Annual Founders Summit in #Boston, and it was an enlightening experience. Meeting other founders provided a unique environment to exchange insights and support one another through our entrepreneurial journeys. Many of the speakers also delivered invaluable wisdom across different stages of a founder’s journey: Jess Lee offered a comprehensive framework for assessing product-market fit and crafting compelling value propositions for different types of markets. Edith Yeung provided a crash course on leveraging our online presence and branding to attract investors, customers and partners. Lily Lyman taught us how to approach investor conversations when building relationships vs raising funds. Jake Cohen shared candid advice on how to grow a venture without VC funding, or to do so in a way that keeps the founding team and its employees set for long-term success. Sara Choi emphasized the importance of conducting due diligence on the individual we pitch to, and not just the firm they represent. Daniel Kang outlined strategies to help founders optimize their cash flow and maintain financial prudence. Rudina Seseri shared insights on founders’ journey to validating product-market fit and scaling to $1M ARR after closing their seed round. Special thanks to the people I met at the Summit! Ryan Stohl Anoushka Ramkumar Justina Samanta Akhil Daphara Daniel R. Shaurjya Mandal Cloey Wong Aaron Joshua Pinto

I've seen as many founder breakups as failures to reach product market fit. We’ve talked a lot on First Funders about product-market fit. Still, in my conversation with Julie Lein and Clara Brenner of the Urban Innovation Fund, they reminded me of the importance of a cohesive team. Is there a fit between the co-founders? I've started calling this cofounder-to-cofounder fit. As early-stage investors, we often only meet the CEO Founder during our process and not the rest of the team. It's a delicate balance not to take too much of a team's time, but it's also critical to understand working dynamics. Think about the last time you evaluated visit cofounders of a company together. How did they interact? Did they agree on the big things? Did they seem to actually … like each other?! These are all key observations investors need to make so they can choose founders with rock-solid relationships – not just ones who have opposite skills. I've hosted founder dinners to allow me to get to know teams. Julie and Clara take the time to go to the startups' offices, which is a great option! What else are investors doing to understand team dynamics better while respecting the team's time? #founders #cofounders #investors #vc

15 CEOs attended the Alumni Ventures’ CEO Dinner in Austin last week. Matt Blumberg, CEO of Bolster, and Joshua Baer, CEO of Capital Factory, led a discussion about critical aspects of the CEOs work and life. Here are just three of many takeaways: •Treat your board as an asset by discussing strategic topics rather than spending much time on reporting. • Make sure you’re spending time on self-care – time spent sleeping, exercising, with friends and family, or on hobbies makes you more productive at work. • CEO peer groups are incredibly valuable forums for problem-solving and venting. We’d like to thank Bolster, an executive talent search platform for startups, and Seba Dominguez and Adam Lyons from Builders, a service providing nearshoring developers, for sponsoring the event. The other attendees were: Aneesh Dhawan, CEO of Knit, Anthony Gerardi CEO Insiteflow, Arun Nair, CEO of OpsLab, Ethan Baehrend, CEO of Creative 3D Technologies, Jacob Rosenbloom, CEO of Levee, Jon Carter, CEO of Prado, Monica Landers, CEO of StoryFit, Simon Tankel, CEO of Heading Health, Taylor Chartier, CEO of Modicus Prime, Will Coleman, CEO of Alto, Yash M. Patel, CEO of Legion, and Jin Kim of Alumni Ventures.