Jimmy Douglas

The VC/DNVB honeymoon is over. 🥀 Here's why: both sides have realized that DTC brands aren’t really tech companies. Recently, the "DTC darlings" have taken a hit: Bonobos was resold for $75M after Walmart bought it for $300M 📉 Unilever parted ways with Dollar Shave Club seven years after buying it for $1 billion 💸 And that's just the start—other brands like Casper, Outdoor Voices, and Smile Direct Club have faced similar fates. These brands thrived during the early 2010s VC boom. 🚀 Since 2006, venture capital investments skyrocketed from $30 billion to over $340 billion in 2021. With limited SaaS options to invest in, VCs turned to startups with similar growth potential. DTC brands fit the bill perfectly, wooing investors with three key points: 1️⃣ Tech-savvy teams: In the early 2010s, selling online required a strong dev team, and competition for talent was fierce. 2️⃣ Cutting out the middlemen: Facebook and Google allowed these brands to reach customers directly at a low cost, bypassing traditional distribution channels. 3️⃣ Attractive business models: Gross margins were high, similar to software, and recurring revenue from subscriptions offered an impressive LTV/CAC ratio thanks to low distribution costs via Facebook. But several changes exposed flaws in this model: 1️⃣ E-commerce tech became accessible to everyone through platforms like Shopify and Klaviyo, removing the unique advantage of in-house tech. 2️⃣ Facebook and Google increased ad costs, replacing one middleman with another. Then, iOS 14 made targeted advertising even harder. 3️⃣ Post-COVID, e-commerce growth slowed, and to sustain their growth, vertical SaaS platforms raised their prices. 4️⃣ Rising raw material costs squeezed margins further. 📈 5️⃣ VCs realized that big companies like Unilever and P&G (potential buyers) didn’t care about LTV/CAC ratios since multiple sales channels (including retail) complicated these metrics. This undermined the growth acceleration strategy VCs had envisioned. In the end, e-commerce is more about logistics, product, and marketing than pure tech. 📦🛍️📢 All this makes it a less appealing investment for venture capitalists.

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I believe two of the big winners over the next 10 years in the SMB category will be PE who are rolling up the businesses and GenAI powered software that makes running these businesses significantly more turnkey and/or profitable. Thanks for having me on Jay Kapoor. If you want spicy takes fast forward to 25 min mark. If you want to get deep in market analysis buckle in for the whole thing. https://lnkd.in/d8M7Jyrx

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It is a great privledge to be backing Stella Garber for a second time, as well as her sensational co-founders Brian Schmidt and Justin Gallagher. It’s also great to working with Index Ventures again, too. One thing I have learned in my venture career is that humans are lazy, and software that does simple things can feel like magic. Hoop uses AI to automatically harvest to do items from all of your communication channels. Today it’s single player, and in the future it will be your whole team. Read more about why we invested: https://lnkd.in/geTy-kyZ

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The cloud-based SportsGrid Out-of-Home Content Solution will enhance the fan experience by delivering a 24/7 real-time on-screen L-Bar overlay featuring breaking news, scores, injury reports, odds and more to fans watching the game in public spaces. We're pleased to be launching the SportsGrid OOH Content Solution in partnership with Barvanna Network, a sports & entertainment TV network specifically designed to entertain out-of-home viewers. The Barvanna Network is available to more than 3.5 million screens in the US and 36,000 internationally. Located in sports bars, restaurants, health clubs, offices and hotels including major brands like Applebee's Neighborhood Grill + Bar, Buffalo Wild Wings, Hooters of America, Dave & Buster's Inc., Twin Peaks Restaurants, Yard House Restaurants, Mellow Mushroom, TGI Fridays, Islands Fine Burgers & Drinks, Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery, Pizza Hut, Carrabba's Italian Grill, Olive Garden, Denny's, Buca di Beppo and Hyatt Place. The SportsGrid content solution presents OOH publishers with an untapped programming resource to connect sponsors with their engaged sports audiences. The new syndication platform serves as the sports betting content source to integrate publishers and the massive sports gaming audience unlocking an entirely incremental revenue stream. Put simply its a big win for SportsGrid and our partners! Read more here: https://lnkd.in/e435fXp3 Charles Theiss Jeremy Stein Louis M. Maione Jason Sukhraj Gregg Sussman Michael Cardano Carl Cutforth Alex Levine Rebecca Harrelson #sportsbetting #sportsmedia #OOH #Streaming

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🚀 It’s a big day at Hoop! We’re excited to share we’ve raised $5m led by Index Ventures with participation from Origin Ventures, Chingona Ventures, Divergent Capital, and an inspiring group of angel investors. Two years ago, Justin, Brian, and I got together and started brainstorming. We had worked together as early executives at Trello for 7.5 years! We wanted to recreate the magic of the early days of Trello and respond to the epidemic of distraction we were seeing in the workplace. When I left Atlassian, I was in back-to-back meetings most days. Slack was constantly buzzing. My whole day was spent going between apps and praying I wouldn’t miss something important. I would wake up in the middle of the night remembering that DM I forgot to respond to. In an age of AI, this kind of mental fatigue across tools drains humans of our energy to do the work that really matters: the focused and creative work that comes when we can feel secure that we’re on top of all important work. Hoop is the product I wish I had. It connects to Zoom, Google Meet, Slack and email and automatically captures tasks for me using AI. It then centralizes everything in one spot so I never miss a task. Our vision is to rethink task management with an AI first principles mindset. There’s so much we can do now that we couldn’t have imagined back when we were building Trello. It’s an exciting time to be building in the space, and we’ve got a world class team taking on this challenge. Now’s the time to try Hoop out and let us know what you think! We couldn’t be more grateful for all the amazing support from our community, investors, and friends. Let’s go team! 👏🏼 Special thanks to our investors for all their belief and support - Damir Becirovic Neil Rimer Katie Shea Samara Mejia Hernandez Jason Heltzer Andy Dunn Wade Foster Linda Lian Michael Pryor Kristen Habacht Elizabeth Hall Barry Clark Nikita Miller Mihika Kapoor Jiaona Zhang (JZ) Maggie Adhami-Boynton Sonia Sahney Nagar Sean Harper Darren Murph Mike Arauz Job van der Voort Annie Duke Jay Simons Maria Christopoulos Katris Ezra Galston Sheel Mohnot Ilya Fushman #futureofwork #ai #startups #fundraising

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DeepCast shipped a number of really cool new features recently in advance of a broad outreach push to podcast listeners. One new feature is our new Daily DeepDigest tool that sends you a concise daily email including any new episodes from the trailing 24 hours from any podcasts you Subscribe to (on DeepCast). Think daily podcast cliff notes or podcast news ticker tape, with a hint of Morning Brew various brews or PitchBook News—it's increasing information throughput when you're pressed for time. And this feature is rapidly evolving to distill other key extractions from shows you're already interested in, but also exposing you to other shows you might be unfamiliar with that also have nuggets to share—and thus increasing your aperture yet still conscious of your time. Want to go deeper on any given episode? Click the episode detail and you're off to an episode on DeepCast, where you can subsequently read a longer form distillation of that episode or go straight to the source and listen to the episode. (And podcaster friends, these pages are definitely increasing indexing and thus Google entry points to your shows!) I'm loving this feature as a user, personally. Can't wait to see what others think! #BuildingInPublic #Podcasts #AllTheWorldsInformation #HowYouWantIt

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SFTW Startup Spotlight returns after a bit of a break. This month I highlight #artificialintelligence and #robotics company FarmWise Access to farm labor is a big challenge here in California (and in many other parts of the world). Labor can be up to 50% of your production costs in specialty crops Farmwise is tackling this challenge head on, with their AI powered mechanical weeding robotic implements (Vulcan!) and taking advantage of convergence of a few different technologies with a bold mission and vision "Enable growers and ag equipment OEMs to reimagine every farming task with machinery that can perceive, understand, and act at the plant level in real time" The startup spotlight from SFTW does a deep dive into -Farmwise's philosophy and a vision for a different way to farm -Deep dive into their technology (my favorite part!) -Their flexible and modular architecture -Use of foundation models (another topic I like to think about) -Business model, and most importanlty, -The team behind Farmwise led by industry veterans Tjarko Leifer and Greg Chiocco, and a diverse motivated team Link in the first comment #agriculture #california #agtech

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looks like 100k followers on ig is the milestone that can rev up the revenue engine 🚀 impact on Tough Trucks For Kids 🚜 kpis over the last 7 days: - order revenue: up by a whopping 75.26% 📈 - net profit/income: skyrocketed by 384.91% 💸 - net profit/income margin: climbed a massive 262.56% 🌟 - cac: down by 30.49% 📉 - roas: jumped up 77.09% ⬆️ the road’s looking smoother with every follower! ..... put some miles on it back of the chevy with the engine runnin' just you and me in a truck bed wide like a california king we could break it in if you know what I mean ..... go win your kiddo the big kahuna dump truck or the forklift that'll teach your kids the fundamentals of cause and effect. we're all about play with a purpose baby! okay now back to work. 🚜💪 #d2c #startup #entrepreneurship #bootstrappers #adventureawaits

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First reactions to noncompete ban: * Startup valuations (at certain stages) just took a significant haircut in valuation. * More capital will be required to start businesses. * EQ in management became a lot more valuable. * Employee equity pools will be critical. * Startups with real, protectable IP will not be hit as bad. https://lnkd.in/gsPnbAxf

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Early stage founders run into this all the time: So much to do and not enough resources. The best advice: 1) pause; 2) think through the what, the why, and the how. That’s how you’ll achieve your goals. In our newest episode, Bryan Karas and guest Catherine Donaldson, startup and Go-To-Market leader, dive into the Go-To-Market landscape and the common challenges that early-stage founders face at different inflection points. Are you at an inflection point? Tune in and you’ll find out. Link in the comments.

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I get asked this a lot and I post this same example a lot... "Hey Jeff, what is a deal room and why should I use one for my raise?" Here's an example of a deal room for one of our funds https://lnkd.in/g8XQKVXR You use them so that the investors have all of the information they need online in one place so that they can make a decision quicker and easier than the old school ways like pamphlets, mailers, email attachments etc. They can even invest on the portal, E-sign documents, get updates, reports etc. all in one place. And if the sponsor does multiple deals on one platform, they can see them all under 1 login.

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Economies thrive with automation, and Formic is accelerating state-of-the-art robotics & AI across our factories and warehouses:

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We wired our 300th SPV this week via Riverside Ventures 💰💸📈 This does not include deals I have co-syndicated, as most know this is a model I am bullish on and expands the exposure for LPs. I’m not going to do a “10 key learnings from 300 SPV’s” post, ya know… all that stuff you’re supposed to do or whatever here. I cover it weekly via Last Money In Media 🙂 The best curated syndicated deals for accredited investors can now be found via Deal Sheet (our new, paid product). Feeling very motivated from the 300 deals we’ve done! Excited for the next 300 SPV’s and awesome founders/companies to back ahead! We don’t lead rounds or set terms but we are definitely open for business. Onwards & upwards for Riverside Ventures, Last Money In Media, and Deal Sheet...

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The sports venture ecosystem is booming! New startups, huge growth verticals and emerging leagues. Knowing how to navigate it all takes a tremendous amount of first had experience and industry knowledge. Why it's important is because founder and investors want to know where to look for deals, capital availability and outsized returns. We have really carved out a unique swim lane at Champion Venture Partners. -We don't do startups. We invest in growth stage companies, post product market fit and ready to scale. -If you can't have some control in the outcome then you are just gambling. This is exactly why (just like other huge firms deploy KPMG or similar) we deploy a Sports Mgmt Co, lead by Kyle Auffray, to jump into the fray and add value, -We bring on the best talent in the industry that these companies couldn't normally afford. -We let retail investors play right alongside the big hitters in sports deals they only dream they could play in -Liquidity points that are unheard of in this space and a secondaries trading platform We know how to navigate it all and do a damn good job being experts in our industry. So if you are a growth stage founder, jump in here: https://lnkd.in/gQ-3DhQ9 If you are an investor want to know where to look, just reach out!

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If anyone is in North County San Diego, on Thursday May 2nd, we will be hosting a tech entrepreneur and investor meet up at 5:30pm. We’ll have a couple speakers, one of which is a fin-tech start-up raising a round, followed up by a presentation on the state of the stock & crypto market. We host these events quarterly and usually get a lot of founders and investors to attend. If anyone is interested, please message me and I can send you the details. LaunchPad San Diego #startups #startupincubator #entrepreneur #investing #crypto #meetup

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Credible car histories with dNFTs. Imagine that. No, really. Imagine it for a moment. If every car was tokenized with dNFTs, you’d have access to: →  Complete service, mileage, & accident records →  History of past sales transactions  →  Accurate market value & more The future of car ownership is here: https://lnkd.in/ePWfye9X What excites you most about dNFTs? Let me know in the comments. Enjoy this glimpse into the future? Share this post with others and follow us, FlexSmart & Nate Zapata, for more.

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The #1 Factor to Determine Max Valuation in Micro SaaS...is debt financing. Here's why, plus a free valuation calculator... Most buyers in the $500,000 to $2 million valuation range use SBA loans, which come with specific requirements. The SBA requires a Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR) of 1.25, meaning the company needs $1.25 of income for every $1 of debt payments. In simpler terms, the key question is: Can the business afford itself? Does the Micro SaaS firm generate enough income to cover the loan needed to buy the business? As the valuation rises, so do the loan and debt payments. At some point, the valuation requires a loan that breaks the DSCR requirements. The upper limit of a Micro SaaS valuation is ultimately determined by the maximum loan a buyer can secure based on the company's income. Here's a simple calculator to illustrate this concept, helping us all determine valuation more accurately based on the real world 👇 #microsaas #acquisitionentrepreneur #saasgrowth

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I'm excited to reshare this timeless episode of #Supermanagers featuring David O. Sacks, a member of the PayPal Mafia, founder of Yammer, Inc., and General Partner at Craft Ventures. David offers invaluable advice for CEOs, managers, founders, and anyone looking to elevate their organization. In this episode, David dives into:  - Introverted leadership - Managing hyper-growth - Knowing when to throw out processes  - And so much more. Don't miss out on his unique perspective and leadership journey. Tune in to learn from one of the best in the business! 🎧 Link in comments 👇

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