Why I Backed a 24-Year-Old Trying to Assess Human Potential
Last week Upfront Ventures announced backing Rebecca Kantar’s startup Imbellus, a company designed to assess human potential and ultimately change the way we teach children. We led a $4 million investment along with Thrive Capital, GLG and Sound Ventures. The news blogs covered the what, how and how much but I want to focus on the […]
How Do VCs Choose Their Investors (and should entrepreneurs care?)
I recently read a blog post by Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director of Sapphire Ventures about why entrepreneurs should care about from whom their VC funds raise their capital. I spent a bunch of time thinking about this position — especially since Beezer is an investor in Upfront Ventures. There are a lot of things I […]
#CXOTALK Reinventing the legal industry with AI, machine learning, and augmented reality
The legal industry has a reputation for being slow to change and behind the curve on adopting new technologies. A credible survey of law firms in the UK indicated these facts: 17 percent of partners in the top 25 UK law firms are women 80 percent of the law firms surveyed see digital strategy as […]
What to Make of Andreessen Horowitz’s Returns?
Rolfe Winkler wrote a piece in the WSJ about A16Z’s returns in which he says they “lag behind Sequoia, Benchmark and Founders Fund.” Scott Kupor of A16Z responded with a comprehensive overview of valuation methodology in a post that while accurate feels more targeted at sophisticated Limited Partners (LPs) who invest in funds. Let me […]
7 Things We’ve Learned in Hybrid Revenue SaaS
By Tony Knopp, CEO & Co-Founder of InviteManager, which makes planning your client entertainment easy. Building an enterprise SaaS is a challenging proposition. Doing so with a services business attached can be even more interesting. Here are seven things we’ve learned about building, raising money for, and growing an enterprise SaaS with a hybrid services […]
The Pivot You Need to Read About
GOAT just announced it raised $5 million in venture capital led by our friends at Matrix Partners. On the surface that sounds unremarkable — fundings happen daily. But this isn’t just any funding. GOAT (“Greatest of All Time) is a sneakerhead marketplace that is en fuego, but we led the company’s last financing round in […]
My First Big Sales Deal
In my first start-up, I was mostly hunting whales — seven figure and eight figure deals. I had no experience doing any of this. For our First Big Customer, we’d been negotiating a $6m/year contract for quite some time (they always take time). We finally had the “all hands” meeting with all the C-level and […]
Dharmesh Shah of Hubspot: From Day 0 to IPO. What Went to Plan. What Most Certainly Didn’t (Video + Transcript)
In anticipation of the upcoming SaaStr Annual 2017, we’ll be releasing the full series of transcripts and videos from all the awesome 2016 sessions. There are rules in starting an enterprise software company. You will fail if you: 1) try to build a suite of products out of the gate, 2) focus solely on SMBs, or 3) […]
Why Some SaaS Companies Stall Out at $20m ARR
Part of my job when I invest in a start-up is to get folks excited about the company. It’s not that hard. Because I am genuinely excited. Or I wouldn’t make the investment . And part of the picture I try to paint for the The Next Investor is where they’ll be in 12-18 months. E.g., […]
Why We Can’t Let Luddites Ruin Global Trade
Luddites. It’s a term most of you know as being somebody who is backward or uninterested in learning new technology. Actually, the Luddites were worse than this. They were a movement in England during the Industrial Revolution who had the objective of ruining machinery that was used to build products at scale. They thought […]
Why Raising Too Much Money Can Harm Your Startup
Amongst the most often asked questions I get from founders is, “How much money should I raise?” Reflexively founders want to raise as much money as they can because they figure it will give them more resources, better chances of competing and a longer runways before they have to do the often painful job […]
Why Acceptance of Failure is Critical to Startup Success
I talk about failure a lot because I think it can be tremendously instructive and I think that success without failure often masks underlying lessons. I even prefer to fund entrepreneurs who have experience some level of set-backs in their careers or startups because I think it brings a humility to decision-making that I […]
The Corrosive Nature of Over-Introducers
In modern society we’re all over-worked and over-loaded with information and tasks and to-dos and obligations. Nowhere is this more apparent than working in a startup where you are definitionally under-resourced and trying to make big accomplishments in compressed periods of time. That’s why focus is critical. Saying “no” often to people who want […]
Small Deals at Large Companies. Hooray!! And 100% At Risk.
Every customer you close, the next day, is at risk of churn. A month-to-month customer can basically cancel anytime. An annual contract customer can sort of cancel anytime, but really probably won’t for a year, or even 3 (more on why Year 3 is the biggest risk for bigger customers here). You know this, of […]
e-Staff Meetings and 1-on-1s: You Gotta Do Them
For the first time in my career, I’ve worked with amazing first-time managers as CEOs. Before I was a CEO, I was a mid-level manager, a director. And then a VP. Across a few start-ups. Before I was first a founder. Those management team weren’t perfect, and I wouldn’t copy everything they did. But at […]
