Suzanne Xie

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

131

12 Comments

Great time on the Embracing Erosion podcast w/Devon O'Rourke! We talked about: 🚀 How to scale a company from concept to 9-figure exit 🔄 How to break away from the traditional consulting model and apply product approaches ⏩ Why it’s important to iterate quickly and often with messaging 💸📈What signals are important to pay attention to when investing in startups and much more!

1

1 Comment

As we dive into 2024, the Series A fundraising landscape is becoming increasingly daunting. Investment standards are soaring, and fewer startups are making the cut. Series A investors are finding many seed stage companies too premature. The median valuation jump from seed to Series A skyrocketed from $19.5 million in Q1 2022 to $28.7 million in Q1 2024. Investors now demand stronger revenue performance, targeting $2 million to $3 million in ARR, up from $1 million to $2 million. Alarmingly, only 12% of Q1 2022 seed startups secured Series A funding within two years, down from 31.8% in Q1 2020. #venture #earlystage #seedtoseriesa #seed #seriesa #inspireglobalventures https://lnkd.in/gW4bkcNy

6

A topic that comes up often with companies we work with is how they think about the (Return on Investment) ROI of group travel for offsites and retreats. I’m excited to share thoughts in partnership with the Chief of Staff network tomorrow at 12 pm EST. You san RSVP here: https://lu.ma/kstmwma6 Before considering the ROI, we should consider the investment itself. 1. Prior to COVID, companies paid for rent (duh). Many companies paid $1.5-2.5K+ per employee per month per rent - Companies didn’t have a choice on whether or not to pay for rent - A right of passage for startups used to be raising a seed round, and taking out an expensive lease - In cities like SF and NY, rent is expensive: $80-100 per sq ft. - Based on avg. sq ft per employee, and other expenses like snacks, security, etc. spend on rent adds up! 2. With distributed work, companies have to spend less on rent (sometimes a LOT less) - Some remote companies are spending nothing or very little on rent - Even for in-person companies, because employees aren’t coming in every day the sq footage needs are down - The price of commercial real estate has also fallen considerably - For example, all we spend on rent at Marco for a few WeWork subscriptions for certain team members 3. Companies are now spending more on T&E (offsites and onsites) - Spend on rent is lower, but spending on T&E has gone up - More employees are distributed, but the need for in-person connection hasn’t gone away - Many companies are now investing in gatherings 2-4x per year - On the whole, companies should be saving money between rent and T&E 4. With much lower spending on rent, and higher spending on group travel, on the whole companies should be saving a LOT I’ll break this math down, and show how we’ve seen companies measure the impact of gatherings like offsites tomorrow! #employeeexperience #offsites #futureofwork

11

Let the wave begin! Pioneer Fund company Recall.ai *grew their revenue 10x* in the past year, has 300 enterprise customers, and just raised a $10M Series A led by Ridge Ventures. David Gu and Amanda Zhu dropped out of college at age 19 to start the company. They've grown it exponentially with a tiny team. They make it easy to build meeting bots that are cross-platform. They're aggregating all these different APIs into one unified API, the way Twilio did with cell phones. At first it "sounds" easy to build a meeting bot -- just integrate with the Zoom API. But in fact there's a huge long tail of things you need to build, security and privacy pitfalls, automations, transcription complexities, integrations, the calendar invites where someone is using Google Meet or Teams, staying up-to-date with the libraries, etc etc. Recall takes care of all of that. It's WAY easier to build on top of Recall.ai and focus on the features that make you unique. Congratulations to the Recall team!

86

7 Comments

Our revamped newsletter, The Angle by Angular Ventures, officially launched today! We hope this new format will make it easier to read, share, and subscribe. Back to it, in this week's column, Gil Dibner covered the spirit of risk-taking that inspired Angular to venture into unusual spaces. While, of course, we invest in AI and SaaS, as of late, we have been investing in more and more contrarian spaces - from quantum, to spacetech, to energy, etc. in search of the supposedly impossible - the truly contrarian. Read the full column via the link.

17

🗣 Startup Founders (particular early stage) I'd love to pay it forward and help you! What's top of mind or what questions do you have that I can (potentially) share thoughts on? From hiring and team building, to designing a cohesive product or fundraising. Run wild!

21

7 Comments

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 👇

30

3 Comments

We believe in extreme vetting of our founders. You can't build a unicorn if you spend time on silly stuff, like seeing family and friends. Grow up, and focus on investor returns. #vc #startups #investment

2

5 Comments

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽'𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 I recently had an insightful conversation with Derek Andersen, the visionary founder of Bevy and Startup Grind, on my podcast. Derek's journey is a testament to the power of community building and the transformative impact it can have on businesses and individuals alike. I wanted to share some key takeaways from our chat in this blog post. 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗚𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗕𝗲𝘃𝘆: 𝗔 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿'𝘀 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆 Derek's passion for community building led him to create Startup Grind in 2010, a global platform that connects and supports entrepreneurs. Startup Grind's success is a testament to its core values: giving more than you take, helping others first, and making friends. As Startup Grind grew, Derek and his team realized the need for better tools to manage and scale their community efforts. This led to the creation of Bevy, an AI-powered platform designed to streamline community management and growth. It's a great example of how identifying and addressing real-world problems can lead to innovative solutions. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗧𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆'𝘀 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 In our conversation, Derek emphasized the increasing importance of community building in today's world. In the digital age, where connections can often feel fleeting, communities provide a sense of belonging, support, and shared purpose. For businesses, fostering a strong community can lead to increased customer loyalty, engagement, and even product innovation. Derek's insights on leveraging AI in community management were particularly interesting. AI can help automate repetitive tasks, personalize experiences, and provide valuable insights into community behavior. However, Derek also stressed the importance of maintaining a human touch in community building. AI is a tool to enhance, not replace, human connection. 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 Here are some key lessons I took away from my conversation with Derek: 1.Start with a clear purpose: What do you want your community to achieve? 2.Focus on giving value: Offer your members something they can't find elsewhere. 3.Embrace technology: Use tools like Bevy to streamline your efforts. 4.Never forget the human touch: Foster genuine connections within your community. If you're interested in learning more about community building, I highly recommend checking out the full episode of my podcast with Derek Andersen. It's packed with valuable insights and practical advice for anyone looking to build a thriving community. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

16

18 Comments

Last week at Stripe Sessions, we at OMERS Ventures, in partnership with Recall Capital and Gusto Embedded, hosted a few founders, builders and investors to chat about current and future trends in embedded fintech and vertical software. A few of my big takeaways from the evening: 🤖 A lot of us on the media and content side see AI as an existential threat, but many of those on the SMB and entrepreneur side actually view it as a solution to the 'cold-start' problem of 'wtf do I actually put on my website?' when they sign up for a Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, whatever and have to actually populate a customer-facing surface for the first time 🥞 Point solutions are increasingly losing out to full-stack offerings, even in vertical markets where requirements up and down the stack are unique. Everyone building a point solution is looking at how and when to expand. I think the differentiator will be in what the starting line was and how that cascades through the company's DNA as it adds additional features and capabilities. 👩‍💻 Technical integration of embedded solutions remains a complex and frictionful process, even for so-called 'two lines of code' 'simple' plug-ins (they end up not being this when they encounter complicated, aging legacy codebases). Is this a place for AI to excel – can agents handle heavy lift codebase stitch-ins without the time and effort it takes devs on either or both sides now? All in all a fantastic evening with great discussions and a terrific panel hosted by Somrat Niyogi! Thanks to Fred (Fady) Helou, Elizabeth Olveda, Charity Hudnall, Jackson Reynolds, Jeremy Butteriss, Lucy Wang, Isabelle Cole, Sarah Tierney Niyogi, Matt Bocci, Yi Liu, Yanett Burgueño and many more for provoking the above thoughts and many more!

65

8 Comments

Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

114

4 Comments

🌱 For pre-seed/seed founders 🌱 The early stage vc markets have changed drastically -- but many founders don't truly understand how or how much things have shifted until its too late or they are deep into the fundraising process already. This recent Allocate pod lifts the veil on the pre-seed/seed 2024 markets. SO MANY GEMS are packed 💎 into the first 20 min, I had to listen twice. Key takeaways from pre-seed VCs I'm a big fan of Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures, Kirby Winfield at Ascend (PNW represent!) & Nate Williams. 💎 The market in one word: 'turbulent' 💎 Fundraising bi-furcation; 2X founder building in AI (rounds take weeks) vs All Others (rounds take up to 6 months). 💎 "Leading VCs" (ie. first check in) are putting in a TON of work - building conviction & then helping founders fill the round. 💎 Up to 5 rounds pre-A; need lower early valuations to enable step ups 💎 Pre-seed entry valuations have corrected to $5-8M 💎 Round sizes have increased at pre-seed & seed for extended runway Many more insights in the full pod here: https://lnkd.in/gYf-DMr6 #venturecapital #preseed

75

7 Comments

I’m so excited to announce the new name of the vetted community for startup founders I'm building: Village Lane Village Lane connects ambitious early-stage startup founders, both in-person and online, who have at least $100k in ARR or $250k in funding. The name Village Lane is deeply personal to me... It's the street I lived on after business school, in an apartment with my friend Andrew - the kindest, most welcoming, supportive person I’ve ever met, who sadly passed away suddenly a few weeks ago at only 31 years old. It’s also the place where I went full-time on Just Go Grind for the first time when it was a daily podcast and then joined VITALIZE Venture Capital. It was a special time and place and where I took a giant leap in my career. I envision Village Lane (the community) being similar - a special place filled with kind, supportive members looking to take a giant step forward with their businesses. Several experiences have led to the creation of Village Lane: - A transformative MBA experience at USC - Working at VITALIZE Venture Capital for 2.5 years - Growing my social media audience to 40,000+ followers - Building this newsletter to 21,000+ subscribers - Hosting 400+ podcast interviews with founders & investors - Creating an angel investing community with hundreds of members Now I'm focused on helping founders connect, build their personal brand, and create more successful businesses. Village Lane's in-person events will include things like: - Co-working - Social activities - AMAs - Retreats The online component of Village Lane will include: - A member directory - Slack group - Vendor suggestions - Tech stacks - An investor database - Media exposure and amplification - Personal branding assistance We'll also phase in monthly digital peer groups as membership grows. This will all be built around our members and their needs. I’ll share more details as this evolves. Interested in joining? Learn more and apply below.

30

2 Comments

For founders raising money — here are a few ways to start building your initial list of investors to vet: ➟ Work through Crunchbase to find companies in your space, and look up the investor who funded them at the appropriate round. You can also look at funding announcements for companies in your space and see which investors are involved. ➟ Reach out to angel investors, advisors, mentors, and your extended network to ask which GPs could be a good fit and have keen interest in your space. ➟ Look up lists of the most active investors in your region and try to understand if those investors have a thesis or have previously invested in companies in your industry. Good luck and stay strong! I've seen Unicorns get 100s of No's at the Pre-Seed stage before they got to their first Yes.

56

4 Comments

I chatted with VC general partners recently, and they shared something obvious but still very important for startup founders that is often missed. To succeed, you need three critical roles among the founders: Sales, Product, and Engineer. ✅ Sales is the person who gets customers and drives revenue. ✅ Product is the visionary who shapes the product and keeps it on track with customers' real needs. ✅ Engineer is the one who builds the product and makes it work. Having these three roles covered is crucial! It balances the team and covers all the bases. 💡 If you're starting something new, ensure these roles are in place. It can make all the difference. #StartupLife #Founders #Teamwork #Fintech

17

2 Comments

In our latest episode on the Practical Nerds podcast, Patric and I talk about our earned learnings on how founders (and other VCs) should choose the right (Co)Investors for their startup (Construction-tech or otherwise). Which of these do you agree with ? What did we miss ?

22

2 Comments

Did you know that 68% of small businesses report having cash flow problems, and many small businesses rely on the owner's personal funds to stay afloat? Relay exists to solve this and the best part is it's actually working! Which makes this announcement even sweeter: We raised a USD $32.2 million Series B round. What does this mean? - More spend management tools to improve financial visibility - More products to give small business owners flexibility - More integrations to streamline operations - And ultimately more businesses making better and smarter financial decisions Exciting times ahead! PS We're hiring: https://lnkd.in/gMT2mN25

34

1 Comment

A few spots left for this awesome workshop with Justin Gray of In Revenue Capital. Every successful founder I know learns to develop and maintain high performing relationships. This is a skill like anything else and can be developed. Founders, if you want to build a high-growth company, learn to build high-performing relationships. This workshop will help you do that. Hope you can join us.

15