Growth
When I buy clothes online from a new brand, I'll select various sizes and styles in my first order. Every brand fits differently. I expect to send most of the items back. I hope to find one or two pieces I like enough to keep. Great for me.
Pivot To Profitability
There are a lot of tweets and blog posts advising founders to extend their runway given the current pullback in venture capital investing and the compression in valuations. But there is a right and wrong way to restructure your startup while keeping your team motivated and on track to deliver
Funding
In the first few issues of this newsletter, we've talked about the importance of thoughtfully scaling product-market fit, choosing your investors carefully, and the impact external events can have on your startup's ability to achieve its goals. Let's tie those concepts together within the
Funding
In the last two issues of the newsletter, we talked about the importance of taking the time to find product-market fit and choosing the right investors. We also need to consider the external factors that can impact a startup’s ability to raise, sell or pivot to profitability and go
Funding
Choosing your venture investors is one of the most important decisions you'll make as a founder. As you progress through your rounds of venture funding, your investors gain more control over the most important decisions you’ll face: when to raise, when to sell or when to pivot
Growth
Product-market fit is widely misunderstood. The concept is often interpreted as suggesting a binary outcome. As if once you've checked off the product-market fit box, all you need is enough venture capital to grow your way to a successful outcome. The reality is far more complex. Growth -
Funding
When it comes to the coverage of venture-backed startups, the topic of profitability isn't considered the most exciting angle. Our obsession with unicorns, skyrocketing valuations, and shorter fundraise cycles ignores the fact that nearly ninety percent of venture-backed startups don't make it to their Series C
Funding
I recently wrote a post about the negative impact of the Casper IPO on investor sentiment in the Direct-To-Consumer (“DTC”) space. Anytime a company in a sector goes public at a valuation that is less than half the valuation of its last round, it’s going to ripple through the
Funding
In the world of startups and venture capital, industries move in and out of favor very fast. It doesn’t take much for an industry that’s been attracting huge amounts of investor attention and capital to suddenly lose its shine. We are seeing this happen right now in the
Growth
Stephen Blank describes a startup as an organization formed to search for a repeatable, scalable, profitable business model. They are not small versions of large corporations. A well-run startup is like a laboratory, testing hypotheses, comparing actual results against expected results, and constantly executing small pivots until a company is
Growth
Building a startup can feel like a scene from the movie Groundhog Day. Each day feels like you're fighting battles you've fought before. One reason for this is that product-market fit is a constantly moving target. The term product-market fit sounds like a fixed destination. Find
Funding
The recent WeWork IPO debacle is certainly a great demonstration of how unreliable and arbitrary private company valuations can be. Six weeks ago, WeWork expected to go public at a valuation of as much as $60 billion. Now, they are on the edge of bankruptcy and hoping for a lifeline