Alexander Busse’s Post

My partner Darly Bendo and I had the great pleasure of sitting down with Enzo Cavalie from Startupable to talk all things SaaS in LatAm. It was a great discussion and we covered a lot of ground hitting on topics like: 👉 The state of SaaS in LatAm today 👉 US vs. Brazil vs. Mexico 👉 The virtues of selling to medium-sized companies 👉 What makes an early-stage SaaS pitch interesting You can listen to the full episode on Spotify here:

5 Ways To Become a More Customer Centric Organization Customer centricity is a theme we spend a lot of time talking to the founders in our portfolio about. For any B2B business to thrive you must deliver exceptional products and services to your customers. To do so, you must understand your customers deeply – how they operate, how they think, where they struggle. Their pain is your opportunity. Understanding them deeply imbues your company with purpose and serves as a North star. Here are 5 ways to make your business more customer centric: 1/ Set up formal mechanisms to expose C-level executives to customers: 👉 Invite clients to your office / have lunch with them once a week. Speak to them about their business and understand how they think about your solution 👉 Analyze usage data closely to understand how the product is being used and how customers are browsing your website 👉 Man the customer service phone for 1 hour every week 2/ Create formal feedback loops from client interactions back into the business so product, sales, and marketing benefit from client feedback. 3/ Create and track KPIs that reflect the customer experience. These are usually usage-related metrics and indicators that show how you are helping your client (time saved, # of tasks performed, time spent on the platform, etc.). Incorporate these into OKRs and make them central to performance. 4/ Make it easy for your customers to get in touch with you and help them with a smile. While some companies might think this is a cost center, the flipside is that you are getting tons of real time feedback on how to make your product better and where customers are struggling. Improve the product and user experience and contact volumes will decrease. You will also retain more customers. 5/ As a team leader, make sure the customer is at the heart of how you communicate your mission, priorities, and company goals. Remind them your clients are the reason your company exists.

I am absolutely thrilled to announce the closing of our new $98m fund focused on supporting the best early-stage B2B entrepreneurs in LatAm. It is a great time to be building and investing in tech in the region. The talent has never been better and the opportunity never clearer. Go NXTP Ventures! Can’t wait to write this new chapter in our history. 

Building a start-up is risky. But what exactly are those risks and how do VCs think about them? I put together a simplified list of the types of risk we frequently identify and help entrepreneurs overcome. 

Amazing opportunity to learn, grow, and become an instrumental part of our investment team evaluating and investing in some of the fastest growing and most exciting early-stage tech businesses in LatAm. Follow link below to apply!

6 Reasons Why Every Start-Up Needs a Detailed Metrics Dashboard A strong metrics dashboard is not a choice; it's an essential management tool for all startups. Here are six reasons why a robust dashboard is non-negotiable: 1/ It Rallies Teams Around a Common Growth Strategy A strong leader communicates clearly and helps teams visualize the future. A dashboard plays a central role in doing so effectively. It creates a shared language around concepts and metrics that describe why a company is thriving or what is broken (think LTV, NRR, CAC, funnel conversion). This helps teams understand what they need to do to grow. It also highlights everyone's contributions and responsibilities, makes them more aware of shared goals, and how to work toward them. 2/ It Helps Provide Direction “If you are not measuring it, it cannot be fixed” is a famous phrase attributed to Peter Drucker. When your start-up is struggling, the first step to remedy is a diagnostic. Without a dashboard, it is impossible to know what is working and what is broken. This leads to anxiety and inefficiency because you don’t know which direction to lead your team. With clear metrics, you can identify what needs to change and build plans around it. 3/ It Facilitates Iteration Startups are about trying new ideas, testing hypotheses, and improving based on results. Without data, you're guessing. A dashboard lets you see if an idea works, needs more testing, or needs changes. It shows trends, highlights problems, and points toward the right growth paths. 4/ It Facilitates Building OKRs and Doing Performance Reviews A robust dashboard helps the leadership team build OKRs and plan critical initiatives for each business unit, streamlining company-wide strategy. Tracking KPIs allows leaders to easily set team goals and objectively measure performance. 5/ It Makes Fundraising Easier A nice by-product of a great dashboard is that it makes fundraising easier since you already have all the info an investor might want to see (if you are structuring your dashboard correctly). You might decide not to share everything with investors, but you won’t have to rush to put materials together when an investor asks you questions about your operations. If you're not tracking key metrics before fundraising, you can't tell investors what works and why. 6/ It Can Help Create a Customer-Centric Culture A dashboard should be more than just a list of numbers. It should also focus on the customer, showing their behavior, how they use the product, and how it helps them. While many see dashboards as just business tools, they should really use data to quantitatively show how you're helping customers. This builds a customer-centric culture–key to any successful start-up. 

Thanks to the Fintech On The Rocks team for a great chat about all things #venturecapital, #earlystageinvesting and #fintech. Check out the link below (Podcast is in Spanish) if you are interested in listening in.

What Founder Phenotype Are You? (And what are your blindspots?) As early-stage investors, we are in the business of backing people. As such, I love to understand what motivates founders. Why are they embarking on the unbelievably difficult journey of building a company with frighteningly low odds of success? Over the years, I have seen three broad categories of founder phenotypes: Mission-Driven, Product-Driven, or Entrepreneurship-Driven founders. Each with their unique strengths and respective weaknesses. When I work with a founder, I try to understand what type of a founder you are. This allows me to provide the most effective support. Mission-driven founders are primarily motivated by a deep commitment to solving a particular problem or making a meaningful impact in the world as seen through a specific lens. They often have a personal connection to the problem they are solving and thus are driven by passion and dedication. Given their passion for a particular problem or mission, these founders might become so specialized or obsessed with a narrowly defined problem that they overlook the broader market trends and fail to adapt to changing circumstances. Their deep commitment to a vision might also hinder necessary business model pivots or adjustments beneficial for company success. Product-driven founders, are primarily motivated by the aspiration to create exceptional products. Their expertise typically lies in deep technical knowledge and they are often obsessed with refining their product to perfection. These founders are innovators, always aiming to produce something of high value that customers will love. They may be so passionate about their product's technical details and functionality that they lose sight of the business-side of things (GTM, growth, team, etc.). Product-driven founders are also at risk of succumbing to analysis paralysis by unnecessarily delaying the launch of a product in pursuit of perfecting it. Lastly, entrepreneurship-driven founders are driven by the thrill of building and managing a successful business. They may not be anchored by a specific mission or product but rather by the entrepreneurial journey itself. This group typically exudes an indomitable will to succeed, adaptability, and deep comprehension of building and scaling a business. Driven more by entrepreneurship than a specific mission or product, these founders may lack a clear vision for their business and tend to be less customer-centric. They mainly focus on the business, making it more difficult to motivate their team, attract customers, and differentiate their product. In my role at NXTP Ventures, I invest in all three types of founders. Each brings distinct skills and motivations, which inform our investment and support strategies. All need tenacity and resiliance. Agree? Disagree? What other founder phenotypes are there? Could you name founders who fall into these categories? #founders #entrepreneurship #venturecapital #earlystage .

At NXTP, we've dedicated 11 years to building successful B2B SaaS startups, partnering with 6 unicorns and a host of highly successful startups. We have distilled our knowledge down to the top 10 essential principles for B2B SaaS builders. If you're working on an exciting project, we'd love to hear about it and explore how we can support your growth. #B2B #SaaS