Amber Illig’s Post

Wonderful hosting several members of The Council Angels for a happy hour in SF last night! There’s nothing more invigorating than stepping out of deal discussion on slack, zoom, and email to connect with your people. Fun facts: 🎉 We are now 170 members strong 🌉 Largest concentration is in SF Bay Area (60 total), followed by NYC and LA 💰 In the past year, members have sourced 33% of deals that The Council Fund invested in, and earned carry while doing it 👯♀️2 members have become portfolio founders 📇 Our members have been early builders at co’s like Slack, Uber, Waymo, Opendoor, Heard, Komodo Health, Cruise, and more Building alongside operators keeps me and our firm fresh! Thanks to everyone in our community and those that came out last night 🙏 Anabel Lippincott Paksoy Rachel Tsui, PhD Jessica Bixby Vivian Luu Aideen M Kathy Copic Shin C. Victoria Li Shilpi Sanchetee ❤️

Cannot WAIT for this. Founders check out Ian's story below and join us at 12pm PT for a free crash course on Sales & Marketing from Ian Illig and Sonia Baschez. I just saw the slide deck and they are DEF oversharing all of their secrets, frameworks, and tools for Pre-seed founders. We've got about 70 founders signed up so far!

📣 Free founders-only event below! I often see founders get a lot of early traction in signing customers and then hit a wall when trying to scale that repeatedly. Why?? Maybe it's because: 1️⃣ that 1st group of customers came through warm intros from your accelerator batch 2️⃣ you've already combed through industry connections from your previous career 3️⃣ you're just good at brute-force selling but you're only one person 4️⃣ you are still narrowing in on product market fit Next week I'm hosting a free, founders-only candid discussion with two people who have had to break through this wall out of necessity and now coach countless founders on this. More on our speakers: 📈 Ian Illig took his 1st job out of college at a friend's startup (employee #1). He quickly found himself trying to sell a product that was still finding its market fit. Fast forward years later and Ian had completely built out the sales team and revenue, allowing the company to get acquired. And then he turned around and did the same thing again with the same founding team. 👀 Sonia Baschez was one of the 1st employees at Atmos, a consumer & builder-facing product for homebuilding. She developed early marketing channels & helped the company grow from Pre-seed to Series A. Sonia optimized product launches to reach the right customers, a challenging feat given their core customers are actively NOT in the tech bubble (aka Techcrunch and a thread on X are not going to do the trick). Whether they know it or not, both Ian and Sonia have been secret superpowers for me as I've grown The Council Fund and supported portfolio companies. I'm excited to share their playbooks & expertise with founders for FREE next Wednesday. Join us 12-1pm Pacific! Link to RSVP in comments below ;)

Can't wait for this session!! Pre-seed founders trying to tackle sales and marketing – this is for you 👇🏼

Love to see our portfolio company Dirac, Inc. on the 2024 Vertical SaaS 50 🥇 Let’s go Filip Aronshtein & team!

I am hiring for a Head of Community to lead The Council Angels into the next phase! This role starts out as part time and can expand into a full time position with the firm. Friends, let me know if there's someone in your network that could be a good fit. This is a great way to start or grow a career in venture capital. Link to application: https://lnkd.in/e4rjnZvu

Awesome to finally meet Alejandro Zelaya in person today! We've had so many high quality convos over zoom about firm building over the years that it's hard to believe we had not met in the flesh before today. Just goes to show how helpful he's been as an LP, early believer, and friend in the ecosystem.