John Waldmann

Great post by Josh Wagner on the importance of urgency. If you don't want to build a company characterized by urgency and extreme intensity over a long period of time - at least a decade - you would be better off not raising venture capital.

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In a recent episode of The Expertise Economy podcast, I sat down with Johnny Page, CEO, and Matt Verlaque, COO, of SaaS Academy. Johnny shared a crucial insight for SaaS founders that challenges conventional wisdom 👇 "Many founders aim to delegate sales once they reach $15-20K MRR. This is often a critical mistake. We advocate for founders to remain deeply involved in sales for as long as possible." Why? According to Johnny, "No one can articulate the problem and solution more compellingly than the founder." Key takeaways from our discussion: > Founder-led sales drive stronger growth > Focus on consistent wins rather than quick handoffs > Clarify your customer acquisition strategy > Define your ideal customer profile precisely > Optimize your sales channel and offer > Maintain this focused approach for at least 12 months This strategy is the catalyst for transforming steady growth into exponential scale. For a deep dive into scaling strategies for your SaaS business, watch the full interview now: https://lnkd.in/dju-Be2u SaaS founders, what has been your experience with sales leadership? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. #sales #SaaS #SaaSAcademy #Scale #Startups #Podcast #Leadership

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Venture Capital is broken right now. AVL Growth Partners released a new guide that highlights the key three financial drivers of a startup, along with recommendations to help founders avoid common financial modeling pitfalls and the best way to project business growth. A few of the common mistakes AVL Growth discusses in this guide include: - Overestimating attainable revenue - Misunderstanding how quickly revenue can grow related to COGs - Underestimating customer acquisition cost We, as startups, are often given mixed advice from the venture world. - If your intent is to raise VC funding you must have a pro forma that shows you going to $50M in revenue in 5 years - Your pro forma is not realistic This can be confusing as hell because not many businesses go from very little revenue to $50M in 5 years. My advice is to create a real pro forma and build your business off of that. There is a shift in the VC world towards higher progress hurdles for funding. It's both a buyer's market right now and VCs are having their own troubles with their business model, resulting in a double whammy on investment activity. The VC market will come back around when liquidity starts to happen. Short of that, I urge you to examine how to build your business without the venture capital world. This means: - finding earlier paths to revenue - doing consulting in your space to find other sources of early revenue - finding grants (especially in the climate tech space) - getting creative with a combination of crowd funding and angel networks and the vehicles you use to raise

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I enjoyed going on Nick Telson-Sillett’s podcast, Pitch Deck by Forward Pursuit. Nick is a serial founder and investor (founded and exited DesignMyNight) so knows both sides of the table which always makes for an enriching chat. Some things we discussed: - The perceived power dynamic between VCs and founders can hinder productive conversations. - A compelling product demo can significantly influence investor interest. - Founders must focus on solving real customer problems to succeed. - Hiring standards are crucial for building a successful startup team. - Behavioural roadblocks can prevent the adoption of new solutions. - Validation from potential customers is key for pre-revenue startups. - The early-stage funding landscape has become more efficient and selective. - Pace of execution is a critical factor in attracting investment.

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Are you a start-up founder looking for your first VC money and a ton of guidance from GTM experts to get your revenue engine going? See below to apply to Stage2's Catalyst program - applications are open now. The insights you'll get from GTM experts will be transformative.

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When we asked CPG founders who they wanted at Founderland... Their answer was clear: People who can help them grow their business & achieve their goals. Specifically: - The top retailers - The most founder-friendly investors, and - Other founders they can learn from and share with This conversation that I'm hosting at Founderland is a perfect representation of this group, plus one BIG bonus. We're also including Joel Toledano and ChargeUp.ai which is one of my favorite tech companies that is supporting consumer brands today. They automate the retail deduction and chargeback process for brands, saving them an insane amount of time and money. Such a cool co. Excited to teach, share and connect...and get some deals done, while of course having lots of fun. Joel Toledano Jen Zeszut Kim Coffin Deb Conklin

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#BuildingInPublic: VC funding & Growth - What I learned from Jason M. Lemkin, SaaStr July3rd webinar VC funding model is broken and Growth at all costs is back VC's still investing (have a tons of money), but they don't want to burn it on slow growth startups. ROI is ~1.01x So they are funding seed companies, and Seed valuations at all-time high 100x+ARR deals happening, but its AI, not B2B Growth is still king... VCs don't care about Profits Growth is moving from T3D2 to T2D2 ---- Watch on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gaeNbeq5 Slides here: https://lnkd.in/gT96wD5H ---

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🔥 Founders, don't make the mistake of pursuing VC funding if your startup isn't the right fit! 🔥 In this podcast clip, I sit down with David Forsberg, CFA from Ascent Energy Ventures to explore the truth about raising venture capital. 💸 As a startup founder, former VC, and advisor to companies that have raised over $1 billion, I know how crucial it is to target the right investors. 🎯 Check out the full podcast for more expert advice on navigating the world of venture capital. Link in the original Kruze Consulting post. 🎧 #startups #venturecapital

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DeepCast shipped a number of really cool new features recently in advance of a broad outreach push to podcast listeners. One new feature is our new Daily DeepDigest tool that sends you a concise daily email including any new episodes from the trailing 24 hours from any podcasts you Subscribe to (on DeepCast). Think daily podcast cliff notes or podcast news ticker tape, with a hint of Morning Brew various brews or PitchBook News—it's increasing information throughput when you're pressed for time. And this feature is rapidly evolving to distill other key extractions from shows you're already interested in, but also exposing you to other shows you might be unfamiliar with that also have nuggets to share—and thus increasing your aperture yet still conscious of your time. Want to go deeper on any given episode? Click the episode detail and you're off to an episode on DeepCast, where you can subsequently read a longer form distillation of that episode or go straight to the source and listen to the episode. (And podcaster friends, these pages are definitely increasing indexing and thus Google entry points to your shows!) I'm loving this feature as a user, personally. Can't wait to see what others think! #BuildingInPublic #Podcasts #AllTheWorldsInformation #HowYouWantIt

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Who will best serve your path to product-market fit?  In the early days of your startup, chances are it’ll be a renaissance player.  I first learned the term from Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway’s 2006 article on the “Sales Learning Curve” (still an excellent piece) and it comes up constantly in my work with startups who are seeking product/market fit, or having to pivot.  #Leadership #Startups #RenaissancePlayer #ProductMarketFit  https://lnkd.in/ggcYYggM

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After the first deep dive discussion w/ founders I often hear a comment "I wish I had heard about this alternative [to all-in must-become-a-unicorn] way to build a startup earlier as I have wasted years in pursuing the wrong thing". Our mission is that no founder would ever need to say that again as it is such a waste. Us preaching the gospel 1:1 just doesn't scale, hence we use mass media to multiply our efforts - that's how Gorillacast came to be. The 1st episode is out, featuring yours truly. "How can you know what food you like unless you taste everything" said a chef. How can founders make informed choices about the best strategy for them to follow unless they know of all alternatives? This might not be of interest to you but pls spread the word so that the founders who should hear it can find it. I have a dream!

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🌱 For founders taking on venture debt, covenants are the fine print you cannot afford to ignore. 📃 They set the boundaries for how you can operate and manage your company’s finances. If you don’t play by these rules, the consequences can be pretty dire. It’s all about negotiating terms that align with your startup’s financial health. Be sure to read the original post by Kruze Consulting to get the full breakdown. Link in the 1st comment. 👇 #StartupFinance

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I believe two of the big winners over the next 10 years in the SMB category will be PE who are rolling up the businesses and GenAI powered software that makes running these businesses significantly more turnkey and/or profitable. Thanks for having me on Jay Kapoor. If you want spicy takes fast forward to 25 min mark. If you want to get deep in market analysis buckle in for the whole thing. https://lnkd.in/d8M7Jyrx

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I recently saw this metric from Carta’s 1Q24 VC Fund Report, which is very concerning. DPI... is nowhere to be found in earlier vintages that probably should start showing DPI. Funding early-stage projects is great, but ultimately, these venture dollars need to exit their investments and pay back their limited partners. That’s where the metric Distributed to Paid-In Capital (DPI) comes in. While managing a fund, we get interim measures during the life of the fund (e.g. IRR, MOIC), but ultimately, “you can’t eat IRR.” If you want to build a lasting venture capital organization, you need to start showing DPI for your fund. Keep in mind that this is traditional VC data from Carta, and is not strictly crypto venture. Crypto venture tends to get liquidity earlier (tokens) and things tend to go parabolic sooner (faster, more unicorns) - but I’d wager that the data here is somewhat similar for Crypto VCs… Not as much DPI as there should be from these earlier vintages. Read the full article, as well as a recap of all the crypto fundraising rounds for August, here: https://lnkd.in/g3eVJ-iF

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We invite YOU to join us at VSC Ventures' inaugural Dirty Jobs Summit! Across the world, companies relying on blue-collar workers face challenges in finding reliable labor as boomers retire and younger generations choose other paths over trade roles. We believe software, automation, and robotics in these Dirty, Dusty, and Dangerous industries is a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’ Over the past two years, Vijay Chattha and I have actively invested in seed-stage companies bringing automation, efficiency, and digital transformation to legacy industries through companies like PaintJet, Glacier, concrete.ai AI, Sesame Solar, Presso®, Homemade, and more… and we’re just getting started! ***Why a Dirty Jobs summit?*** Incredible founders are tackling key issues in slow-to-digitize, hard-to-decarbonize sectors like manufacturing, construction, recycling, and logistics, but they lack a space to share learnings and grow their network with kindred operators and investors. The Dirty Jobs Summit has curated a group of top founders, investors, operators, marketers, and decision-makers, creating a forum for founders to be seen and heard. Our Summit will distill specific takeaways, including strategies and tactics the most ambitious startups are deploying, the solutions legacy players are adopting, and the capital investors are deploying to bring huge transformations to dirty jobs ***Who’s going to be in the room?*** Seed through Series B Founders from Rapid Robotics, Inc, GrayMatter Robotics, Renewell Energy, Jacobi Robotics, Kodama Systems, Reshape Automation, Olis Robotics, Raise Robotics, Urban Machine, Polymath Robotics, Bedrock Energy, Cambium, First Resonance, Plantd, GaeaStar,r CivilGrid, Gritt.ai, Voltair, and many more GPs and Partners from Lowercarbon Capital, Eclipse, G2VP, Lux Capital, Pathbreaker Ventures, HCVC, Outsiders Fund, Brick & Mortar Ventures, At One Ventures, Voyager Ventures, Congruent Ventures, AlleyCorp, Blue Bear Capital, F-Prime Capital, Union Labs Ventures, Wireframe, Bee Partners, Schematic, Ravelin, Counterpart, 81 Collection, Climactic, Dart Ventures, Sandhill Angels, and so many more Plus, a number of Strategics from the biggest companies who are actively investing in their own industrial transformation and climate adaptation initiatives. ***What will be discussed at Dirty Jobs?*** Proposed topics we’ll cover in our roundtable discussions: — Accessing downstream capital in unsexy industries (Series A & beyond) — Navigating nearshoring of critical manufacturing — Frameworks for effective storytelling in legacy industries — Writing & winning grants in 2024 — What strategics actually care about and look for — Customer acquisition strategies that actually work We've got a great group already with just a *few* more open spots. If you'd be a good fit for Dirty Jobs please RSVP ASAP: https://lu.ma/4dus91nm Special thanks to our incredible sponsors Fidelity Private Shares, Trinity Capital, SVB and Goodwin. See you on June 4th!

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Make sure your investors and funding partners don’t inadvertently kill your business. Beyond just putting cash into your company your funding partners need to fall into one of the three following buckets: 1. SWEET MONEY: funding that’s such a sweet deal you can’t possibly turn it down. Supportive grant programs with non-onerous funding requirements fall into this bucket. 2. SMART MONEY: people who can make connections, add legitimacy, guide you, and know how to execute investments with standard terms. Savvy angel investors and professional investors fall into this bucket. 3. SHHHHHH MONEY: silent investors who want to support you and are willing to lend a hand when asked fall into this bucket. Funding partners can create bad corporate structures, distract you from your customers, or create burdensome requirements and kill your company if you’re not careful. We’ve been very fortunate to have amazing funding partners, when I looked at why it’s so easy to work with them it’s because they fall into one of these three buckets.

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For a young software company, what does a dream end-market look like? A few great signals off the top of my head: ▶️ Low NPS of incumbent solutions ▶️ Lots of manual / lightly-digitized processes ▶️ Many buyers (i.e. top 3 don't control the market) ▶️ High ability to pay (decent margins and trendlines) What else should be on the short list???

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