Kusiima Boswell’s Post

Tech founders journey for Pack to the Future™ Investor's on my list so far: 38 No's from investors: 3 Warm referrals: 2 Interested investors: 2 100% the whole “show the build in public” has got traction. I’ve had two amazing and warm referrals over the weekend as well as another investor show genuine interest (Craig, I won’t tag you just yet but I am looking forward to catching up and answering your questions). When people say that the fundraising journey is a full time job, they aren’t exaggerating. I’m so damn lucky to have Sara Knight, Marcelo Alcantara and the team behind me while I spend every waking hour networking. For those wondering, I’ll be actively looking for term sheets started May 15th. Until then, I’m happily networking and building referrals. 9:30pm Friday night I got a brilliant email from 🏔️ Meg Williams letting me know I’ve been shortlisted to pitch on stage at Blackbird’s Sunrise conference. Thanks for pulling long hours for the current Giant’s cohort Meg and thanks for giving me the chance to get some mentoring from Gaby Howard 🙌🏼 That news was further affirmation that I’m on the right track and a bloody big step towards unfu*king the planet! On top of the Blackbird Giants program we are currently in, I also snuck in an application to Y Combinator on the cut off day for their next intake. Thats the bloody holy grail of startup world to get in Y Combinator and it would mean I’d be heading to San Francisco for a few months if we got in. In a platform update, we’ve all but finished the API connections to all our partners and we are on hopefully the last scrum to get the MVP live and in a working test environment. We’ve now been shipping out the physical packaging to stores daily and we’ll go all in on ramping up that offering when I get back from a week in Sydney for Sunrise. I can’t help but smile as even though I’m working 7am-11pm daily, I’m doing something I’m so damn passionate about that it’s not even work 🫶🏼

From Techcrunch: Everyone’s talking about tech IPOs again ------------------------------- After going on about tech IPOs and the ongoing drought for so long, I would like a change in theme, one driven by SEC filings and data. #techcrunch #startups #breakingtechnews

🚀 Navigating the Choppy Waters of Tech IPOs: What Small Businesses Can Learn As we near the midpoint of 2024, the dream of a bustling IPO market continues to elude many technology startups. Despite a hopeful start earlier this year with notable IPOs from Reddit, Astera Labs, and others, broader macroeconomic conditions — including heightened interest rates and looming presidential elections — suggest a quieter scene until at least 2025. 🔍 Key Insights: - 📉 Market Sentiment: Initial public offerings are tempering, with major players like Plaid and Figma opting out of IPOs for the year. A strategic move often indicative of a preference to strengthen financials or await more favorable market conditions. - 🔄 Financial Strategy Shifts: Companies like Stripe and Databricks are leveraging secondary market activities to build value, providing liquidity opportunities outside of public offerings. 🌐 Why It Matters to Startups and Small Businesses: Financial and strategic pacing is vital. The hesitance or delay in IPOs by larger firms underlines the importance of readiness over speed. For small businesses and startups: - 🛠 Build a Resilient Foundation: Strengthen your core operations and financial health before considering major financial leaps. - 🤔 Explore Alternative Funding: Secondary market transactions can offer a pathway to raise capital without the spotlight and pressures of an IPO. - 🎯 Strategic Timing: Market conditions heavily influence the success of public offerings. Timing your company's growth initiatives with market receptivity can be crucial. Current trends underscore the necessity for startups to adapt to an ever-evolving financial landscape, ensuring they are robust enough to weather market unpredictability and capitalize on opportunities when they arise. Stay informed and agile, focusing on sustainable growth that aligns with both your business capabilities and broader market movements. 🔗 Full article: #Startups #FinancialStrategy #BusinessGrowth This post was generated by an AI. Please contact us for more information.

🌵 Why I'm so bullish on pre-seed angel investment and why 2024 should be a good year for the startups and tech ecosystem 📈 We have seen recent IPOs like the one of Instacart in Sept 2023 and more recently Reddit, Inc. (last week), which are giving some fresh air to the IPO market And they are doing well 👉 Instacart IPO 6 months later ➕ 60% 👉 Reddit IPO 1 week later ➕ 30% There are 5 more 🌶 hot ones expected this year (see graph) This impact directly the VC market IPOs --> liquidity events --> more growth and late stage deals --> more Serie A and B deals --> attracting more capital again So, as an angel investing in pre-seed, you don't invest in the current market. You always invest in a market in 3y-5y 💹 And as every crisis repeats the same pattern, the fact that we see again few IPOs, it means we certainly reached the bottom of the market 🐂 Hence, I'm expecting the coming years to be a bull market, which means that if have picked the best founders and startups, we should be in a good position as investors in that future market. Also, that should implies more operators getting their partial / full cash out, which part of it would be reinvested in the ecosystem. 💰 💰 And hopefully that implies new Upscalers' members ⚡ Which expected tech IPOs are you more excited about ? ------ ✍ I write about startups, community, and angel investments, focusing on the greatest tech operators. 👨💻 I run Upscalers, the Home of the best operators in Europe (and soon beyond) to network, grow and learn together, and angel invest. Apply to join us --> https://lnkd.in/e_zr4Xzd

2023 was a roller coaster. There were highs and lows, but looking back there were many firsts, wins, and supporters that deserve a spotlight. 1️⃣ Passbase & Parallel Markets: Having a front-row seat to Passbase's acquisition by Parallel Markets was a highlight. Participating in the acquisition gave insights into valuations and exit strategies for founders. Immense gratitude to Dave and the Passbase team – it was a blast working together. 2️⃣ Investing in Doormat: It's been inspiring to see Robert, Joel, and Benjamin's growth as they build a modern real estate law platform. It’s insane to believe that they processed 100+ property closings and processed >$100m in transaction value in less than a year! Brace yourselves for more cheerleading posts in the future. 3️⃣ Launching GTM Time: What started as an experiment grew into GTM Time, a fractional Go-To-Market consultancy for early-stage startups. A big thanks to the founders at Ansible Labs (Dan), MergeStat (Patrick & Josue), Blue Rhythm (Jacob), and others for trusting me and bringing me along to advise on unique GTM strategies. Have a peek -> www.GTMTime.com 4️⃣ Toronto's Startup Scene: Balancing time between NYC and Toronto, I've been energized by the local start-up ecosystem, thanks to Ryan Ing (RI.Events), David (Klondike), and Andrew Yeung for their awesome events and insights. Highly recommend checking them out. 5️⃣ Travel and Engagement: From a 3-month trip across Europe and Asia to a challenging hike to Everest Base Camp, the end of the year was packed. And to top it off, I got engaged to an incredible adventurer, best friend, and boss, Olivia. ❤️ (somehow I posted this on LinkedIn before Instagram 😅) Let's see what 2024 brings

From Techcrunch: Everyone’s talking about tech IPOs again ------------------------------- After going on about tech IPOs and the ongoing drought for so long, I would like a change in theme, one driven by SEC filings and data. #techcrunch #startups #breakingtechnews #marketAnalysis

NY TECH WEEK by a16z is a blast. Shout out to other founders out there building amazing products and experiences for the world (technology is for the good). Shout out also to many good and genuine partner ventures looking at supporting startups with big ambitions. Never experienced that many quality events packed in a single week to bring the ecosystem together. Some learnings: 1. Build in the open and don’t shy away from criticism. Build-learn-repeat. 2. Keep traction and fundraising work in a steady flow. The right moment for investment comes naturally from there (well, hope that’s true!). 3. For early stage, it’s not all about strong ARR but also demonstrating the linked learning and increased value creation to design partners/early customers along the way. 4. Make something people love by delighting 1 customer at a time, scaling product 1 customer at a time. Echoing Brian Chesky about the early days of Airbnb: "better to have 100 people who love your product than a million who just sort of like it". #NYTechWeek #product #founder #learnings #innovation InnoVista

The deadline to apply for Y Combinator was yesterday, April 22. If you applied or if you plan to apply in the future, you might want to reconsider. Here is why you should not do YC. For context and in full transparency, I applied to YC when we started Chezie and never got in. I know a few founders that have done the program, and they liked it. However, I think a lot of founders default to applying because they think it’s what they should do. Many of them overlook a simple truth: YC (like most VCs) doesn’t care if you crash and burn. Let’s say you get into YC. Your cohort has 250 companies in it. YC invests $500k in each company for 7% ownership of each company. While you are going into the program with high hopes of being the next Airbnb or Coinbase YC knows that most of its investments will go to zero. That is, the companies will shut down, and that $500k investment will be worthless. YC is okay with this. The firm is betting that a handful of the companies in the cohort will explode and reach a billion-dollar valuation. Here’s some quick math: - 250 checks of $500k each for 7% = $125M invested. - 5 companies reach ‘unicorn’ status and exit at a $1B valuation. The remaining 245 companies go to zero. - YC owns 7% of each unicorn company, or $350M in total value. In other words, they've almost 3x’d their money This is an oversimplification (YC probably wouldn’t maintain 7% ownership and not all of the 245 non-unicorns will flame out), but it illustrates the issue. Doing YC often means that you’re probably jumping on the VC hamster wheel when that's not what's best for your company. If you’re the founder of one of those 245 companies that don’t blow up, the YC team doesn’t lose any sleep because they have hundreds of other companies that could get them their targeted billion-dollar valuation. You, however, have potentially: 1. raised millions of dollars at a valuation you couldn’t live up to 2. succumbed to VC pressure and grown faster than you knew you should 3. built a different company from the one you envisioned based on pressure from a board focused on profits over impact Not great. This isn't a shot at YC. There is plenty to like about YC → Mentorship, community, a worldwide brand; the list goes on. I’m not saying that folks shouldn’t apply. I’m saying that you shouldn’t apply just because you think it's what you're supposed to do if you’re building a tech startup. What do you think? Should underrepresented founders do YC no matter what? Let’s discuss!

Picture this: 50 Startup Founders and Investors in a room, but guess what? They're all banned from talking about work or pitching anything for 2 hrs⏳🔥 You can't even imagine what to talk about right? As founders, we often get our identities wrapped up in our startups. But here's the thing: when all you talk about is work, it's easy to blend into the background and blur together. You're tagged as that AI LLM guy or girl building random SaaS and immediately forgotten 5 minutes later. Especially during conference weeks. You might get an email from a VC and then it goes into their funnel and rarely gets a follow up. Yesterday's last minute "No Pitches Allowed @ SXSW" proved that you get a lot more done when you can connect with people on a human level. Two founders, building in some very hard to fund verticals, caught investors' attention and got their chequebooks opened without even mentioning their ventures 💰💸 How? By just being themselves and making everyone think they were awesome people. So, mark your calendars for the next "No Pitches Allowed @ NYC Fintech Week" on April 10th in Manhattan 🗽 https://lu.ma/el0ufcrs Let's ditch the pitch and talk about literally anything else other than our startups. See you there! 👀🔥

18 months ago we made a very big decision to pivot the entire business. Our company was doing well - we were a break-even tech startup with 28 staff and had grown at 4x YoY. It was the dream. So what was wrong? We saw that whilst we were doing well now - we weren't solving the underlying problem - just a side effect. The real problem was the core infrastructure didn't exist. The infrastructure for a company to engage their shareholders, or to get new ones. Companies were using 1:1 emails, calls and lunches - which works amazingly for the Top 20, but doesn't scale beyond. Or they were screaming into the void and blasting out content - but no idea if it worked, or any way to capture interest. We did a hard pivot and launched InvestorHub a few months later, in June 2022. Now we have dozens of companies getting amazing, repeatable value and have crossed $8bn of market cap supported. This is a great achievement by the team in such a short time - and we have so much more to go.