Fidelity Private Shares

Over the past week, we’ve been honored to spend time with some of the smartest, most influential community members to share more about Fidelity Private Shares℠. These individuals come from many walks of life: founders, investors, board members, and mentors. Their unifying trait is a passion for supporting founders. They are as bullish on the startup ecosystem as we are, and they’ve shown themselves to be relentlessly generous with their time, perspective, feedback, and connections, in support of founder success. We believe that all founders should have access to the equity management tools – and the feedback and support – that can truly make a difference in their trajectory.  Huge thanks to:  Isabelle Ury, Rebecca Zhang, Edwina Cheng (Edwina Yeo 杨时恩), Michael Spidaliere, Ryan Viktorin, CFP®, David Lewis, Molly Tyler, Rebecca Moore, Chareeda R., Devin Bramhall.    Join our startup community: https://hubs.ly/Q02J4mS90   #founders #startups #venturecapital 

We teamed up with our friends from MGMT Boston, HubSpot For Startups, and HubSpot Ventures for networking and a panel discussion about SaaS startup growth in 2024.     The panel, moderated by Kristen Craft, included serial entrepreneurs, Andrew Lau, Co-Founder & CEO of Jellyfish and John Andrews, Co-Founder & CEO of Cimulate, Inc.     They touched on best practices including:    -Pace of growth is a balancing act: at times, you may find yourself growing faster or slower than desired (or than your investors desire!) There's no one right answer or speed; the "right" pace depends on your product, your team, and the macroeconomic factors that matter to you    -Growth strategy and tactics: make sure you're thinking about both. You need a good strategy as your north star, and you need the right focus on tactics and logistics to make sure you can execute    -Sales process/team/approach: this topic was top of mind during both the panel and the networking portion of the event. Many folks in the room were bullish on founder-led sales for as long as possible (in order to keep a tight feedback loop, among other reasons). Others believe in the value of bringing on sales talent — especially a sales leader who's also comfortable being a player-coach in the early days. Again, there is no one right answer, but during the early days of a startup's trajectory, learning fast is always table stakes.      Big thanks to Matt Crane from MGMT Boston, Rafael Obando from HubSpot For Startups, and Nate Morgan from HubSpot Ventures for teaming up on this with us AND for your unwavering commitment to supporting the startup ecosystem!    Want to join more events like these? Join our startup community: https://hubs.ly/Q02HJR220

👏🏼Jane, Lucas, Samir, Francis & Bryan 👏🏼 Grateful to be learn so much from technical founders on strategy & scaling. Thank to the amazing founders, CTOs who came out! More to come, stay tuned for the video replay of these Technical Founders sharing best ways to scale w/ ai, models, data strategy & selling to enterprise clients. Thank you to HOF Capital - Fady Yacoub , Tahseen Rashid & Kelly Sennott Great job Chris Brown at NVIDIA for pulling this night together! More to come Want to join more to these events? Sign up for Fidelity Private Shares, join the community, 409a valuations, get the full support team to help with your cap table and meet new investors! Special Thank you Meghan Curtin McKenna 🔥 FIF Collective #CTO #Founders #Entrepreneur #Startups #VentureCapital #ai

The Fidelity Private Shares team had a great time at this year’s Finger Lakes Summit! Here are some of our takeaways:    1. Community and connectivity can play a big role in startup success: it's very important to build relationships with those who can support your success with funding, advice, intros, and lessons learned.    2. Building awareness and buzz: there's a lot we can all learn from the world of social media influencers. Most companies (especially B2B companies) don't even know where to start. Consider testing and iterating on a few new social media experiments to help discover what your audience likes.    3. Bringing in diverse perspectives: having a diversity of opinions can help drive business value in the forms of access, perspectives, and approaches. Seek out many types of diverse perspectives, whether that's gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, or even geography.      Shout out to this year’s talented speakers: Teddy Zee, Katie Soo, Pia Chaozon Barlow, Wayne Chang, Patrick Lee, Shraysi Tandon, Brandon Holley, Jeff Grimes, Ben Jabbawy, Ryan G. Smith, Rebecca Liebman, Jassim AlSane, Eric Paley, Jane Chen, Laura Chau, Jacob Nibley, Scott Savitz, Travis Holoway, Jason Lin, Imran Sayeed, Vishal Sunak 🚀, David J. Phillips, Nabeil Alazzam, JB Daguené ✊🇺🇦, and Julia Austin. Thanks to hosts David Brown, Sasha Hoffman, and Philip H. Beauregard, and to our fellow sponsors SVB, Goodwin, Latham & Watkins, and 1919 Investment Counsel for supporting the startup community!     Want to attend more events like this? Join our startup community:  https://hubs.ly/Q02G4X1J0 #FLXSummit #startupevents #startups #founders

Preparing to fundraise? This free checklist will make the due diligence process much easier and help you prepare for even the most thorough review! Get your free copy 👉 https://hubs.ly/Q02FtP_q0 With this checklist: -Think through every step of the diligence process -Get a refresher on all the must-have information you'll need to collect -Use the checklist on your own or with your attorney, investors, and advisors Get your copy for free: https://hubs.ly/Q02FtP_q0 #founders #venturecapital #fundraising #startups #duediligence

At the end of May, Fidelity Private Shares’ Kristen Craft gathered experienced founders and investors to discuss navigating Boston's startup ecosystem. Thanks to those that joined the discussion: - Vitaliy Schafer and Alex Guinta from Leader Bank - Jadyn Bryden from Xfund - Linxin Gu from TechConnect Check out a few takeaways from the event for founders getting ready to fundraise: - Tailor your pitches: Founders should research and tailor pitches to investors to help increase funding chances. -Take time getting ready for fundraising: Prepare for fundraising 6-9 months in advance, focusing on due diligence and investor expectations. - Leverage local resources: Utilize Boston’s universities and intellectual resources for networking and community-building. Want to attend more events like this? Join our startup community: https://hubs.ly/Q02F6HFz0 #founders #startups #fundraising #venturecapital

What an honor to participate in this event with Women Tech Meetup. The audience was so engaged with our panelists and the conversation was incredibly honest and vulnerable. Amazing job, Dasha Shunina, putting this panel together and bringing 120+ founders to the room. And of course, especial thanks to Edu (Ed) Giansante from Persona for opening your office and being such a great co-host! If you missed this event and want to stay tuned for what's to come with Fidelity Private Shares, join our community here (link to join in comments)!

AI is transforming industries by supercharging businesses, and Boston is at the forefront of this revolution. Learn more about the evolving role of AI in our report 'Boston Startups Put AI and Data to Work.' You can download the report for free now to stay ahead of the curve: https://hubs.ly/Q02Dh96v0 Thanks to our collaborators on this report: Glasswing Ventures, New England Venture Capital Association, and Value Creation Labs! #AIInnovation #BostonTech #AIReport #BusinessTransformation #VerticalizedAI

Congrats to Founder Collective on the Collective Future (Non) Summit! Curation at the highest level of the top thought leaders, founders & investors for a full day on at the Cornell Tech NYC campus. Inspiring to hear what these leaders are building and how the see the future. Amazing job Amanda Herson, Micah Rosenbloom, Eric Paley & David Frankel. I was lucky enough to sit along side an amazing panel discussing the 'State of Funding' with legends like Alex Konrad, Benjamin Sun and Amanda Herson. Other highlights included hearing from Scott Belsky and Adam Robinson about the 'Human differentiators in the age of AI" .... hint: humans have better taste! Heard the from presidential candidate Andrew Yang discussing his thoughts on the 'economy of the future'. To top it off (maybe my favorite and smallest room) I sat in was led by Aaron Holiday, Raj De Datta and Mark Gerson about 'The commercial future of AI'. So many amazing takeaways and thoughts on how to continue to build better in this ecosystem. The entire Fidelity Private Shares team is so grateful to support such an amazing gathering of extraordinary people. Kristen Craft, Schuyler Laird, Alanna (Poretta) Wallis and I cant wait until the next one! #founder #ai #entrepreneurs #VentureCapital #innovation

What do founders need to know about managing startup equity compensation? In this article, Fidelity Private Shares’ Charlie Stephens shares valuable takeaways from his recent panel with Zehra Naqvi, Investor at Headline and Jesse Middleton, General Partner at Flybridge. Read the article here: https://hubs.ly/Q02Cm82g0 #founders #equitymanagement #equitycompensation #funding #startups