Brice Douglas

21 Ways to Kill Your Company Day 9: Poor Fundraising Strategy This means two things - be realistic about the benchmarks you need to unlock your next raise and then raise enough money to hit those milestones. Be great (and realistic) with financial planning. Don't forget those extra five months you typically need to raise. #21waystokillyourcompany #fundraising #venturecapital

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If you plan on raising money (especially in this economy), having revenue isn't enough. At some point -- especially if you want to raise money--you've got to look at the "quality" of your revenue. This framework applies to ALL business, not just high growth startups... high quality rev = - My revenue is consistent and predictable - I have good margins - I'm being paid my happy/loyal customers low value rev = -I rely on 1-2 large customers <---its a great win at first...but quickly becomes a source of stress. -Transactions are sporadic and/or late -I give a lot of discounts/have lots of "sales" to inspire transactions TO BE CLEAR: In the early days, we're all chasing sells/revenue to demonstrate desirability (aka people want what I've built) #AsYouShould. Get those early customers by any means necessary to validate desirability BUT pick a moment in time to do a revenue post-mortem with your team and get real about its quality. The linked article in the comments is an oldie, but a goodie....I first found it during my time leading a startup (i think i first saw Keyona Meeks share it) when I was trying to understand revenue and anxious about the quality. I highly recommend for ALL entrepreneurs. cc: Prosper HealthTech Accelerator A vision of Prosper Powered by gener8tor

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100% agree with ethan austin's take below. Besides timing, other reasons VCs pass on a business that have nothing to do with the company: - Stage: which can actually be related to timing since some VCs have internal allocations or sub-funds with their own pacing schedules - Geo: and while VCs can sometimes invest outside of their core geo, there are limitations. You may be reaching out to them where they have already overallocated there (or their last deal was there) - Competitor/sector: VCs often do not invest in direct competitors, but even more are reticent to invest in too many companies in a similar category. You might just be unlucky if a bet was already made in something non-competitive but too adjacent The market is tough. All the more reason to keep fighting.

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My biggest win when I was in college: - Starting a podcast 1. Got the chance to interact with legends in the industry People like Pomp, Casey Adams and more 2. Grew the YouTube to 100 + subscribers - 100+ views on podcast content alone on YouTube - 6k + Impressions on YT 3. And Podcast Channel on Spotify to 1000+ Impressions over last 30 days 4. Ranked in charts of several countries over years Massive amount of learnings, and upside over the years My key learnings: 1) Podcast discoverability is not very good Growth happens through the guest, and word of mouth, compounding and network effects 2) Events for your podcast = new fans, connections, people interested - Magic is in the event attendees mixing, and talking with each other 3) KPI's for me for podcast: -> Quality of the content -> DM's 4) Going from 0-1 is hard - Growth is hard - Getting guests is hard 5) Learn the art of cold emailing 6) Experiment a lot

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My best deals have been the least competitive. Every other VC "hated the category". My worst deals have consistently been the most competitive (at seed). They raise too much for the seed ($5M) lose speed and get distracted. Deal heat is not the same as company quality. #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

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Over the last ten years, I’ve made 50+ Venture Capital investments (from 1000+ deal opportunities). My track record: 25% - Big winners (greater than 3x w/ 4 making unicorn status) 15% - Small winners (1x to 3x) 10% - Written off as a loss 50% - Still invested Most are SaaS, but I’ve branched into core AI, Data Science, Space, and Real Estate. My original objective (due to risk management) was to enter the seed or pre-A round. Then, exit (partial or in whole) at the A or B rounds with a solid return. In the short term, it provided valuable lessons learned and additional cash flow to redeploy. Yet I found this was a huge mistake, given the potential upside I missed out on, and necessary tax hit with gains. In my early investments, I looked for four non-negotiables: • Visionary teams • Unique, innovative ideas • High growth potential • Disruptive technology Then, exiting at series A/B felt safe. It seemed logical. But here’s what I missed by playing it safe: • Maturity: Early ideas evolve into companies with solid product-market fit and cash flow. • Growth: The real gains often materialize post-Series B, as companies scale and expand. • Timing: I learned that timing is everything. Exiting too early means missing out on a potential unicorn or IPO. So, what now? My strategy has evolved. It's not just about a ‘quick’ exit. It's about seeing the potential and hanging on for a few more years. Here's why staying invested pays off: 1. Higher Exits: From Series C onwards, valuations spike. You're in for larger exits. 2. Decision Power: Influence major strategic decisions. As companies grow, your impact grows. 3. Long-Term Value Creation: Benefit from the full value creation journey. It's a lesson in patience, vision, and the courage to stay the course. Investors, I'm curious: Do you take the same approach?

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Before I even knew what a Venture Builder was back in the day, all I pretty much did on a day to day basis was validate and launch little businesses with the goal of getting them to $10k per month in revenue. Once I got to that point I'd ask myself a few questions: "Can this thing go on without me? If I hire someone, can the revenue cover the costs and potentially make a profit? How big can this really get?" If the answers were: No, No, Not very big. I'd scrap it and shut it down. Yes, Yes, Big enough to be worth proceeding. Then I'd start the CEO search and start raising. I'd say that 9 out of 10 were scrapped, but that doesn't mean that I/we (investors) lost any money. Most of the time we all made out pretty good in such a short period of time. Venture Building is a lot of fun and can make you a lot of money if you follow the process, stay lean and make the hard decisions based on data.

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Guess what funding instrument was used for 89% of pre-seed rounds in Q4 of last year? Yup -- the almighty SAFE! Kevin Jurovich does a great job of explaining how they work in his post below. 💡 We also have a (free) Excel model linked here where you can test yourself on these concepts: https://lnkd.in/epTFjqaS

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Founder-Turned-VC Investor Raised $150 Million for Her New Fund💰 Masha Bucher, ex-entrepreneur and founder of Day One Ventures, has raised $150M for her new VC fund. Founded in 2018, Day One Ventures focuses on early-stage startups, offering initial investments ranging from $1M to $2M. Notable companies in the firm’s portfolio include Worldcoin, legal services company DoNotPay Inc., and AI assistant You.com. 📝Diverse Investments and Real-World Impact Day One Ventures supports startups across various industries, with Bucher particularly drawn to founders tackling real-world challenges. “From profound wealth disparities to the urgent threat of climate change and the growing sense of social isolation, tech founders will be our lifeline toward a more abundant, diverse, and sustainable future,” Bucher stated regarding the new fund. 🏆The firm’s track record is impressive, with six of its investments achieving billion-dollar valuations and 22 companies either being sold or going public. This success highlights Day One's knack for identifying high-potential startups. 🎯PR Expertise and Strategic Growth Before transitioning to VC, Bucher founded a PR firm that managed communications for numerous tech companies. She has leveraged her PR expertise to coach startups on media strategies. “If you look at any business problem you want to solve and any business goal you want to solve, 90% of the business problems are communications problems,” Bucher explained on Bloomberg Television. “I think this is something we train founders on and something that we help them to do.” 📈Growth of Day One Ventures The new fund is Day One’s third and largest to date. Fund I, closed in 2019, was nearly $20 million, while the second fund in 2020 totaled $52.5 million. This latest fundraising effort saw contributions from US and European institutional LPs, as well as 14 of Bucher’s own portfolio company founders.💰 “When you are building a firm with value add and staying close to founders, you can attract a lot of capital from your own network,” Bucher said. Notably, she made a concerted effort to include female investors, securing backing from 9 female LPs. Significant in the male-dominated VC industry, where female founders received just 2% of the total capital invested in US startups in 2023, according to PitchBook.🤷‍♀️ 🤝New Investments and Future Focus Day One has already made 5 investments from its Fund III: Cradle, an AI startup focused on human longevity; Rainmaker, a Los Angeles-based company working on cloud-seeding technology; Affiniti; Astroforge; and Layer N.  🚀🌍 ✅ Looking to raise capital for your #VCfund and increase the international pool of your LPs?   🤝 Need warm #LP introductions?   📝 Selling #secondaries to increase liquidity?   🧐 Looking for co-investments (Series A/Series B)?   ▶ G+QUANT's link for inquiries and fund decks: https://lnkd.in/gjC_EuTE #VentureCapital #TechInvesting #FemaleFounders #StartupFunding #Innovation

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The South Park Commons Founder Fellowship application is live for Fall 2024! If you're considering becoming a founder but are early and/or pre-idea, this is for you. When I found out I was accepted the inaugural Founder Fellowship, I was still working as a product manager at Lyft and had started to imagine "eventually" founding a company. I had worked as a startup employee at Kamcord (acquired by Lyft) and on a number of 0-to-1 new products at Lyft throughout hyper-growth and the IPO. However, I worried I wasn't "ready" as I did not have a specific idea, cofounder, or the personal runway to see myself quitting my day job focus full time on founding a company. Personality-wise, I typically go all-in on my work (and was so while working at Lyft) so starting a side-project would not have been an effective option for me. Thanks to Mishti forwarding me a tweet, I learned about the Founder Fellowship and applied - a day after the deadline (but hey, the Airtable form was still up). The opportunity to explore finding my life's work without the ticking clock of an arbitrary demo day really appealed to me. The Founder Fellowship opportunity flipped my thinking from "I'm not sure I'm ready" to "why not now?" and gave me the confidence to make the transition sooner. Becoming a founder certainly has not been an especially easy or simple path, but it's one that I have learned so much from already - and continue to do so daily. The only way to find out if you're ready, in my experience, is to dive in and just do it. I'm also deeply grateful for the chance to work on problems and ideas I deeply care about, most recently with CodeYam and the chance to apply what I've learned in past roles in product management, product marketing, and in my current role as a founder to try to radically improve the software development process. I love the magic of seeing something you build in the hands of customers who are benefitting from your product. Using software simulation to make it possible to craft great software products, faster, is really exciting to me. At South Park Commons, I met an AMAZING cohort of talented founders, builders, and technologists. I also met my cofounder Jared Cosulich and together we dove into new technologies, wild ideas, challenging problems, and a supportive community of incredible people. We met our first hire through an early side project with SPC members and alumni, and have had the incredible experience of getting to collaborate with and learn from others in the community throughout our journey. TL;DR: if you think the Founder Fellowship *might* be for you, just apply.

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How to pitch: The company has zero traction —> “We’re early” You only have 2 customers —> “We’re working with design partners” You currently have no revenue but hoping some pipeline finally closes —> “we’re on track to exit this year at $3M ARR” You’re in the natural kill zone of a FAANG —> “We view them as partners rather than competitors” There’s no way the tech can actually work —>“We’re manifesting the future” And of course: One of your developers uses Co-Pilot to write some front end code —> “We’re an AI company”

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Just had a founder make this exact mistake this morning. We had 30 minutes scheduled for a call. I gave my typical 2-3 minute overview on VSC Ventures and how we work with our companies post-investment, then turned it over to the founder... The founder then spent the remainder of the time talking about ALL the things they did to get to where they are now... leaving almost no time to talk about where they are going NEXT and WHY it matters that they succeed. I left without an understanding of what exactly I was supposed to evaluate for an investment. The best founders understand that in a pitch VCs like myself or my guest on CLIMB Ann Bordetsky at New Enterprise Associates (NEA) are listening for your vision of the future and how you're going to make it a reality. Your goal in a 30-minute meeting is to get a VC excited enough about this vision of the future to want to schedule a follow-up. To want to dig into the data room. To come to visit you and discern what it is that makes you, your team, and your approach truly best-in-class. Focus less on where you've been. Focus more on where you are going.

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STARTUP YOU'RE TWO OR THREE YEARS IN... ..... It's going slower than you thought. Your great days are rare and your tough days are frequent. You're building one brick at a time and you just cant get that flywheel spinning. You're in front of your screen late at night doing work no one knows about. Your friends and family don't understand. You're in the middle! Anyone can start. The middle is tough. The win is glorious. YOU DIDN'T COME THIS FAR ONLY TO GET THIS FAR. Kerosene Ventures - Helping Great Founders Raise Capital #founder #vc #startup #pitching #venturecapital

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How to invest like a VC? ☕️ Ask a founder to brew coffee for you. If s/he doesn’t select maximum grind amount, pass If they can’t even max grind with you, what hope do you have when they are alone?

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Things that are difficult about VC: - Sourcing quality deals - Nurturing your network - Finding your niche - Embracing uncomfortability - Managing your time - Dreaming bigger - Pitching consistently - Trusting your gut - Building your brand Everything takes time. VC is a long game on all fronts. If you're someone who likes immediate feedback loops, this is not the career for you. The feedback loops can be 7-10 years. You have to learn to celebrate the little wins. #venturecapital #startup #founder

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Referrals shouldn’t be a SPIFF for the quarter. They should be a core KPI that’s compensated within the main comp plan. Higher win rates Faster deal cycles Lower customer acquisition cost = money in the bank faster (in theory). Once you do a few and get enough data you should uncover a way to comp higher for referral deals due to increased sales velocity. So when we’re thinking about the work Commsor 🦕 is doing to rethink the SDR role When we’re thinking about “low hanging fruit” When we’re thinking about ways to leverage communities… It’s all there already laid out for you. This is what I’m speaking to Prospects and clients about. #symbioticsale #theyrecominghome

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When I created Founders Game, I wanted a space to empathize with founders at my level. That's why we required founders to have either raised $1M, or generated $500K ARR to even apply. Now, we're opening it up founders at all levels. If you want to join the closed beta, leave a 2 sentence pitch of your startup in the comments below.. I'll be DMing select pitches with a link to an application.

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Fundraising sucks. VCs often say no to investing in your company for so many reasons that have nothing to do with the actual quality of your company. One thing that was never intuitive to me as a founder but has become very obvious to me as an investor, is that timing, as much as anything else, is one of the biggest reasons VCs pass on investing in a startup. As a founder, I had always been told that deals go to die in summer months and around the winter holidays when investors’ kids are off for school breaks. Makes sense. When you’re competing against vacation, vacation is gonna win ten times out of ten. But as I became an investor, I saw that there were so many less obvious timing issues that kill deals too. If you’re a founder, you should watch out for these scenarios as they might save you some time or heartache going down the path with investors who are unlikely to invest in your company. 1. You pitch the VC when she is fundraising. Just like founders, VCs have to fundraise every 2-3 years, and when they do it, it can take up 50%-75% of their time and last for 12-18 months. During this time, they’re still typically investing in startups but chances are they are going to be more focused on closing their own fund than investing in your company. 2. You pitch the VC when she is already deep in diligence with another company. VCs will often look at companies in batches and stack rank the companies in their pipeline against one another. So for example, if a VC is pacing to invest in two deals per quarter, and you pitch her at the end of the quarter, when she is already far into diligence with a few other companies, it’s going to be hard to beat out those companies because the VC has already put in so much work on them and unless what you’re offering is significantly better, she is not going to want to start the entire process all over again. 3. You pitch the VC at the wrong time in their capital call schedule. Let’s say a VC has a $100M fund. She doesn’t actually have all $100M in the bank to invest at any given time. Typically she will “call” the capital from her own limited partners (“LPs”) over a period of 2-3 years. Some will call the capital from their LPs in real time when they have an investment they want to make. But many others are on a pre-set schedule where they’ve set expectations with their LPs that they are only going to to call capital at certain dates over a 2-3 year period. If you happen to pitch a VC at a time when she’s deployed all her existing capital and she’s not making a new capital call for 2-4 months, that VC is going to be more likely to just pass on the deal due to bad timing.

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