Building and supporting companies within the #VentureStudio model puts our team in direct communication with a lot of #founders. This is among my favorite things about working at the 9point8 Collective. After a handful of calls with early-stage founders today, I began to think about the things I appreciate about them. The list includes more than the three qualities I’ve listed below, but these ones really stand out to me: ↗ Optimism. It's a hard world, y'all. Founders see challenges as opportunity. What an awesome quality in a human being. It makes me want to be around them. 💪 Grit. Nothing worth accomplishing comes easily. Founders get this. They accept that failure is on the critical path to success and they push through it. 🏃♀️ Hustle. With scarce resources, founders create lasting value, fast. They put superhuman effort forward to make that happen, building a vision into reality. It’s inspiring. Venture Studios celebrate all of the above and provide critical support to #startups and their leaders - when they need it the absolute most. This is a big part of why I love the model - and my job - so much. What qualities do you admire in founders and #entrepreneurs? Neal Ghosh Blair Merlino Evan Allen
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Sharing for reach. These people are excellent at what they do and also at being humans.
We seek a talented and motivated Designer to join our dynamic team at Multiple, Inc. You will be vital in supporting our design and development teams by producing high-quality design files and contributing to various UI/UX projects. This is an excellent opportunity to grow your skills and gain valuable experience in a fast-paced, creative environment. https://lnkd.in/gm3k2g6i
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Often when folks talk about subject matter expertise, they’re referring to a vertical knowledge set or experience. Someone might be an expert in the mortgage industry, or a thought leader in the financial planning vertical market. Often, you’ll see serial entrepreneurs launch and operate a series of ventures in a single vertical. It’s been my experience that there’s every bit as much power and opportunity when one develops a horizontal expertise. These people can travel across markets and deploy their skills in more diverse settings. The same is true for #VentureStudios. Some organize themselves inside of vertical environments, but others are more horizontally focused. Studios from the latter group will partner with vertical experts and empower them to operate in their natural habitat. There’s nothing right or wrong with either approach, but I will say I have personally enjoyed the horizontal approach in my career. It allows for a broader set of opportunities to deploy my curiosity. I’m always learning, and it’s fun to develop little heuristics and hacks that can travel.
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Once you’re in it, you’re in it. #Startup #founders don’t just take financial risk - they invest years of their lives. For many, it’s absolutely worth it. To me, the first task is the most important one: to define your target and make absolutely sure it’s one worth that level of investment.
Venture-backed founders: you really are signing up for a decade. Here's some new data on the time (in years) from the day of incorporation to various funding milestones for software startups. Yes, I know funding milestones aren't everything. But if you're on the venture path then they matter - and speed is a major aspect of the VC growth model. Chart below shows time to primary round (no funny business with bridges or extensions) and is filtered to just software companies (hardware / biotech plays at different timescales). 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗱 (𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘀 & 𝗦𝗔𝗙𝗘𝘀 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 $𝟮𝗠) • Median of 1.8 years from incorporation recently • Up 15% or so from 2019 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗔 • Median: 3.1 years from incorp • Up a gentle 10% from 2019 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗕 • Median: 4.7 years from incorp, 16% higher than 2019 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗖 • Median: 6 years from incorp (and down a little from 2023? Odd.) 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗗 • Median bounced all the way to 8.1 years from incorporation So what stands out from this data? Couple points to me. First, obviously companies in the venture ecosystem are staying private longer. We didn't show it in the chart but you can get medians up to 12 years or even higher for Series E, F, etc. Second - founders are definitely skipping stages. The round names are taken from the term sheets themselves, but there's no reason a founder has to hit every funding milestone. Get a seed, make amazing progress, boom jump up to a Series B. Third - damn that's a long time! The "cofounder as marriage" analogy hits hard. Build with the right people 🙏 What else would you want us to analyze through the lens of incorporation timelines? Open to new ideas in the comments! #cartadata #startups #fundraising #founders #venturecapital -------------------- Data on idea stage startups through pre-IPO — new insights out every Thursday morning. Subscribe to the Data Minute at the URL in graphic for your copy!
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Nice one from HQ today. Something I think gets missed by many #founders who are first / early movers: it takes time! Selling something brand new into a market requires new thinking, new processes and often enough, new budgets. Does this mean you shouldn’t innovate? Nope. It just means you’ve got to be realistic about sales cycles.
In VC, particular in hot sectors with lots of competition, it can be easy to forget that technological adoption takes a long time. ⏱️ Older technologies took decades even to reach 50% adoption among the population. Newer technologies are faster but still take 5-10 years. 🏦 New financial instruments have a similar lifecycle, with "innovations" like mutual funds and ETFs taking 10+ years for 50% adoption among everyday investors. New ideas take a while to play out; instant and complete adoption is unlikely. There's plenty of need to improve the technology to increase adoption, and plenty of room for lots of firms to innovate together in the interim. #innovation #technology #venturebuilding
Advisors ‘wary’ of bitcoin ETFs are on a slow adoption journey, says BlackRock exec
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Jonny Boyarsky's point here is spot on. Running a #startup is requires so much of #founders - it's important to focus on relationship value density.
Founders, it's better to find 20 people that really want to support you than have 100 who kind of like what you do. Same thing goes for talking with investors. Find those that are fully convicted and all in on what you're building!!
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Sometimes we get so entrenched in the work that we confuse the path for the target. I do this all the time. When this happens, the trick is to remember what we’re trying to accomplish, and to remind ourselves that the path to that target should be fluid. #VentureStudios help create a culture of efficiency. If there’s a better (faster, less costly or just easier) way to get where we need to go, we should be biased to take that path. My partners push me to think this way every day. I’m thankful for it! Blair Merlino Evan Allen Neal Ghosh 9point8 Collective #TargetsOverEverything
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I've been so impressed by the quality of content and the speakers assembled by Max Pog in his Fund of Funs and Family Office Online Conference. In particular, the focus on #VentureStudios has been excellent (well done Adam Pase in leading this breakout session). If you operate in the studio space, I cannot recommend these online conference events strongly enough. Bravo, Max.
FoF & FO Online Conference finished on June 20th. Venture Studio Community, Conferences, Podcast, Research, & Investment Syndicate. 3x entrepreneur
I'm ready for the Fund of Funds & Family Office Online Conference. Bring fruit (it's the dress code)& join us tomorrow on Zoom. We're at 2600+ registrations including: 156 Funds of Funds, 229 Single Family Offices, 74 Multi Family Offices, 261 Limited Partners, 490 Angels, 428 Venture Studios, 919 VC funds, 177 PE funds, 401 Advisors to Family Offices, 159 corporations (each registrant could check several options). Register: inniches.com/conf $1.6+ trillion – AUM of participants & speakers. We'll gift many books to active participants. There is a risk that Zoom will reach its limit – this is why it's better to buy a paid ticket to get access to all sessions, recordings + be featured on the networking list + get the full list of participants open to networking (90%+ of registrants). Or you can join for free. We'll also launch YouTube streaming in case Zoom doesn't allow more participants to join. I hope speakers, moderators & all super guests will be on time, I hope everything will go well – it's our biggest event ever – so I am nervous a bit (a lot). Connect with these amazing people who will make our day tomorrow: Kevin Campbell, John Gerold, AWM, Bill Ringham, Adam Pase, Priscilla J. Guevara, Milun Tesovic, John Boyce, Scott Sherman, Jonathan Hollis, Chuck Tedeschi, Ben Bergman, Ronald Diamond, Gayatri Sarkar, Angelo Robles, Danielle Patterson, Grace Gong, Ihar Mahaniok, Jaclyn Freeman Hester, David Teten, Oliver Oster, Luca Mannucci, Denis Efremov, PhD, Winter Mead, Tracy A. McWilliams, John Milanovich, Ian Timotheos-Pilon, Chris Golden, Stephen Deadmon, Alejandro Tocigl, Marcel (Nacho) Imery, Samara Mejia Hernandez, Annie Vshivkova, Masha Shele, Roman Nefedov
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All of these reflections from HQ make perfect sense to me. The era of PowerPoint-ing for capital is waning; less is more from a messaging perspective; grit - in the form of bootstrapping - is sexy again.
There's a lot of data and content for seed and Series A investing, but very little for pre-seed (probably because many early-stage VCs don't actually invest in pre-seed). This report is a great primer on what a successful pre-seed venture looks like in today's climate: 📽️ The era of raise-by-powerpoint is over. 92% of funded pre-seed ventures included a live product (either prototype or prod). ⏱️ Brevity is key. Average reading time on a deck is just over 3 minutes (Founders think about this often when you're introducing yourself to... well anyone) 💸 Investors are looking for bootstrapped progress across in all stages, and same too here. The profile of funded pre-seed founders has shifted older and with larger founding teams, to provide a better base of bootstrapping resources for the startup. #venturebuilding #venturecapital
Rubén D. on LinkedIn: How to Succeed as an Early-Stage Startup
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