Daniel Cruz

This part of my conversation with Joao Barbosa, co-founder at the world’s leading wellness platform Gympass (now Wellhub) valued at $2.4 is a testament to the fact that nothing big actually started big 👇 It took Gympass 5 pivots and 2 near death experiences to find the business model that works and is scalable across the globe What I found really interesting is the framework that the team had around pivots - the tripod approach towards creating value. This approach could benefit many founders especially in marketplace kinda businesses Head over to our channels on Spotify, Apple and YouTube to watch / listen to the full conversation link in comment 🔗 The J Curve #thejcurvepodcast #podcastrecommendation #gympass #pivot #entrepreneurship #founder #venturecapital

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VC funding in healthcare has been more resilient than in other industries. Here are some key takeaways from recent Carta data: 👉 At the priced seed, Series A, and Series B stages, dilution for health startups has noticeably decreased, while dilution for SaaS startups has stayed flat or increased slightly. 👉 In priced seed rounds, median dilution for healthcare companies dipped to 14.2%, compared to 20% for SaaS.  👉 The frequency of bridge rounds surged in the health sector in Q1, jumping to 44.3% from 36.9% in Q4 2023. This is the first significant increase in bridge rounds in healthcare over SaaS since early 2022. 👉 More founder-friendly terms for health startups may result from enduring VC interest since COVID. Healthcare has remained strong through economic turmoil, enabling higher valuations with smaller round sizes. What are the implications? The healthcare sector might see a rise in new ventures due to favorable investment conditions and lower dilution rates. The surge in bridge rounds suggests that certain sectors within healthcare face unique challenges that require interim financing solutions. Founders and investors in the healthcare space- what are your thoughts on this? I’d love to hear from you. If you know a founder innovating in healthcare, tag them in the comments! The Artemis Fund is especially interested in groundbreaking care tech companies. You can check out Carta’s full blog linked in the comments. If you haven’t read our latest blog on care tech, you’ll find that there too. #healthcare #caretech #fundraising

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Tech companies are always tempted to create a new category. After all, what they're building is different & unique... right? Not so, argues positioning rockstar Anthony Pierri 🎸 "You should almost always anchor your product to an existing category," he told me last year. James Evans, co-founder and CEO of Insight-backed CommandBar, learned this lesson firsthand. Creating a category propelled CommandBar to a $19M Series A, but it meant building on “hard mode”. Shifting to “easy mode” — disrupting an existing category — helped CommandBar double their growth rate. Check out the full story in Growth Unhinged: https://lnkd.in/evxjWjfv The biggest pitfalls with category creation: 1. No competition. This meant CommandBar wasn't tapping into the demand that already existed -- and instead had to create entirely new demand. 2. Low product understanding. "We explained what we did—a lot. We’d spend the first 20 minutes of a discovery call getting people to understand the fundamentals of our product." 3. Mixed buyer profile. "We sold to different buyers. Sometimes the founder, sometimes the CTO, sometimes a PM, sometimes an engineer with a hackathon project." The TL;DR: you (probably) shouldn't create a new category. Disrupt an existing one instead. #marketing #positioning #messaging #categorycreation #startup

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Sam Altman on idea generation: “YC once tried an experiment of funding seemingly good founders with no ideas. I think every company in this no-idea track failed. It turns out that good founders have lots of ideas about everything, so if you want to be a founder and can't get an idea for a company, you should probably work on getting good at idea generation first. It's important to be in the right kind of environment, and around the right kind of people. You want to be around people who have a good feel for the future, will entertain improbable plans, are optimistic, are smart in a creative way, and have a very high idea flux. These sorts of people tend to think without the constraints most people have, not have a lot of filters, and not care too much what other people think. Perhaps most of all, you want to be around people who don't make you feel stupid for mentioning a bad idea, and who certainly never feel stupid for doing so themselves. You want to be able to project yourself 20 years into the future, and then think backwards from there. Trust yourself-20 years is a long time; it's ok if your ideas about it seem pretty radical. Another way to do this is to think about the most important tectonic shifts happening right now. How is the world changing in fundamental ways? Can you identify a leading edge of change and an opportunity that it unlocks? Get good at differentiating between real trends and fake trends. A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people. Any time you can think of something that is possible this year and wasn't possible last year, you should pay attention. When you can say "I am sure this is going to happen, I'm just not sure if we'll be the ones to do it", that's a good sign. A good question to ask yourself early in the process of thinking about an idea is "could this be huge if it worked?" There are many good ideas in the world, but few of them have the inherent advantages that can make a startup massively successful.” - @sama

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The above is all true, and I'd like to add a really important point. In the Bay Area, I observed that startups collaborate, partner, meet, etc - all in the spirit of the best possible user experience as an end in itself. The startups work together more. It's easy to get a meeting, you can basically show up to someone's office, just walk in, and you're welcomed. Founders work on "cool" experiences or tech first, and worry about financials second. In NYC I found the reverse to be true. It's harder to get a meeting with a founder. When you get one, it's like going to the dentist; the EA schedules a meeting with you 6 weeks in advance, upon arriving you sit in lobby and you wait until you are called. The meeting is transactional, a "novel" user experience or excitement around a technical breakthrough is rarely a main topic. It's much more transactional. This isn't a criticism in any way, it's just an observation that I believe explains why there are less household tech names coming out of NYC. Because if you look at the household tech names in the world - they always put the user first.

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💰 Attn: Are you a founder or CEO prepping for fundraising? Or a GTM pro who works for one? You’ll want to check out our (2) new templates: 📚 Interactive fundraising deck: https://lnkd.in/eCECjnG5 📚 Executive summary: https://lnkd.in/e7SfggGf Even though AssetMule was designed to help GTM teams better engage prospects with interactive sales assets, we’ve started to see an influx of founders signing up to build their fundraising assets. And it makes total sense. Just like buyers, investors are overwhelmed with the amount of pitches coming their way and are harder to reach than ever before. Founders need new ways to rise above the noise and earn their attention. And that’s exactly what AssetMule is designed to do. Not only will these templates help you pull your core fundraising assets together in a fraction of the time & with less effort, but they’ll help you engage investors in a more meaningful way and book more pitch meetings. Check out Justin Dorfman's demo below & sign up for AssetMule to get started for free: https://lnkd.in/efkfwj7i #startups #ceos #founders #fundraising #saas

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🔥Tune In to the Latest Fireside Chat with a VC in Healthech🔥 What percentage of VCs are former founders? 30% maybe more? I'd think a fair amount, yet how *exactly* does that transition happen and what perspectives change *radically* afterwards? Sigvards Krongorns shared exactly that - his journey from PwC consultant to Healtech founder, to a VC shaping the future of Healthtech startups. What we talked about: ✨ Sigvards' transition from a PwC consultant to founder to a VC ✨ What steps are necessary to bring innovative medical devices from concept to market ✨ How being a founder can prepare you for a role in venture capital ✨ What strategies help navigate the regulatory landscape in healthtech startups ✨ The right way to engage with VCs for startup funding ✨ What future trends in venture capital and Healthtech look like #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation #StartupJourney #HealthcareInnovation #Entrepreneurship #FiresideChat #VentureCapitalInsights Full conversation can be found here:

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Harsh truth: most founders over-index on product, and don’t think enough about distribution when launching a company. As the Founder & CEO of The Muse, I grew the platform to 70M annual users and used my GTM expertise (and a s**t ton of experiments along the way) to fundraise, to build a brand, an audience, an ARR customer base, and to distribute my Wall Street Journal National Bestseller, "The New Rules of Work." I'm getting a lot of DMs and messages from people seeking advice, so I've opened up 5 exclusive 1:1 mentorship slots on @Intro. 10% of proceeds will be donated to Girls Who Code. What can we cover together? ✔️Advice on fundraising ✔️How to attract early employees and set a strong company culture ✔️Early distribution and go-to-market strategies ✔️Brand-building and PR, both for companies and individuals ✔️Tips on writing and marketing a book Excited to be on @Intro alongside world-class experts like Dianna Cohen (founder of Crown Affair , backed by Gwyneth Paltrow), Hamet Watt (co-founder of MoviePass), Alana C. Matthews (former EVP of Business Ops for the Dallas Stars), & Debbie Millin (founding COO at G-P ($4.2B valuation). Comment “interested” and secure your spot now: intro.co/kathrynminshew

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Couple of weeks ago had the pleasure of sharing my story to Alexander Benkendorf about starting CastPrint and later moving on to join Verge HealthTech Fund and the learning along the way. Some topics we discussed: 💡What does it take to bring innvation in healthcare 💡How did my startup background help me better prepare for VC work 💡How founders can better engage with VCs and what are the tips and tricks from the "other side" Thanks Alexander for having me!

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I sometimes see entrepreneurs effectively "single-thread" their approach to VC pitches. They find a partner they like and want to work with, and they let that partner champion them through the process. If you're a hot deal, moving fast, you might meet one other partner one time before you pitch the partnership. Maybe not even. It is absolutely the right thing to start by targeting individual partners you want to work with. They're the ones you build the business with, day in and day out. But as you move through the process, take a moment to understand the broader firm. It's the firm you're legally marrying, not the partner. Understanding the decision-making process and culture inside the firm will pay dividends if and when you hit a bump in the road. You're raising from a partner *and* a firm: https://lnkd.in/gSHuh399

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This is a must listen to for anyone B2B founder. How to figure out Product Market Fit. One of best frameworks I've seen in a while. https://lnkd.in/ghSmhVNB

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What do VCs actually look for in pre seed deals, particularly given the recent wave of AI startups? As a B2B SaaS focused investor, I have the opportunity to evaluate thousands of software businesses, and invest in 100+ each year. One of my favorite parts of my job is meeting exceptional founders and learning about problem spaces that are completely new to me, but the investment team at Forum Ventures spends a lot of time discussing focus areas and opportunities where we see the most promise and are actively looking to invest. In the coming weeks, I'll be sharing a series of market opportunities where I am looking to back exceptional founders solving challenging problems.  * Automation of complex, legacy workflows within enterprise, particularly across regulatory and compliance use cases. * Application of AI across the defense and broader government sectors, specifically related to operational efficiencies, the infrastructure stack required to leverage cutting edge AI advancements, and the development and adoption of autonomous systems. * Manufacturing/hardware design and production, spotlighting modern manufacturing - robotics, aerospace, alternative energy, medical devices, etc. * Complex manufacturing supply chains- from extraction to processing and refining, and ultimately through manufacturing and distribution.  If any of the above sounds like something you are building, let’s connect. #GenerativeAI #VentureCapital #EarlyStageStartups #Innovation #TechTrends #AI

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Winning early GTM via founder led sales is an essential step in building a consequential start up. 🎯 But, while there are countless conferences focused on scaling GTM once you've hit a couple million in revenue, to date there hasn't been a conference focused on FOUNDER LED SALES and nailing the earliest days of GTM. 👀 😅 That ends now. 🙌 Pear VC has helped 100+ founders learn how to sell, how to build their 0-to-1 sales engine, how to get from $0 ARR to $1M ARR -- and now we're introducing the first ever GTM CONFERENCE for EARLY STAGE FOUNDERS. ⭐ "Zero to $1M: Winning Early GTM" will be held in San Francisco, CA this September 5th! ⭐ If you're at the idea 💡, pre-seed 🌰 , or seed stage 🌱 , this is the GTM conference for YOU. Come hear from Pear veterans, industry leaders, and successful repeat founders like Sanjit Biswas (Samsara and Cisco Meraki Co-founder and CEO), and leave with actionable guidance to supercharge your startup’s revenue from day 1. ​ ➡ APPLY NOW! Space is limited, and the early application deadline is July 15th. Pepe Agell and I will review applications on a rolling basis. 🚀 CANNOT WAIT TO SEE YOU THERE! 🚀 #earlystageGTM #zeroto1M #founderledsales

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Imagine you’re meeting a VC today and pitching your company. Now, also imagine the VC goes home tonight and tells his or her spouse about the meeting with you. How do you think the VC would (or should) describe your product to the spouse? Remember, this is for someone who doesn’t have any context, and probably doesn’t have time to listen the whole story. If you can think of a story version that's plain and simple -- how you want the VC to describe your product to the spouse -- perhaps that version should be your pitch in the first place?

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Early-stage VCs tend to view startups as grand narratives. Later-stage funds view startups as spreadsheets–ratios and metrics. Both are right (but incomplete). Companies need both story and spreadsheet to build a great and enduring franchise.

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59 out of our first 100 customers were fellow Y Combinator companies. 🧡 Post-pivot, the YC network/community, and bookface (YC's internal forum) were mission-critical for us. Critical for so many reasons: 1) These companies bought our product before they should have. Shout out to Gabriel Spencer-Harper for literally buying our product 1-week before it shipped. 2) Allowed us to get initial feedback from people who really cared. 3) Gave us so many customer referrals. 4) Enabled us to show initial traction ahead of a seed-extension round. 5) Basically free CAC. YC has a lot of benefits, but for us, being able to sell into the community has been arguably the biggest.

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Do you know how many hyper-growth public software companies are growing by over 40% this year? According to the latest June Guggenheim report… Zero. Not a single public SaaS company is growing over 40%. Do you know how many are growing their next twelve months (NTM) revenue over 30%? Also, zero! With that context, I was strategizing with my team on the most impactful ways companies can change their growth trajectory, and one thing we landed on solving immediately was time to integrate. If a company growing at 30% can pull in all net new integrations and thus revenue by just 1 month over the course of the year, it can increase its growth rate by almost 5%. For simplicity, assuming a $100M annual revenue, a 10% discount rate, and a 5-year valuation period, using a DCF, the company’s present value would not be 5% more valuable, but closer to 20% more valuable for all shareholders. The power of compounded growth rates. Game changer, and with just the smallest adjustments. That’s why smart companies are investing heavily in new customer onboarding and no-code, low-code technologies, like lightweight agents, hosted or embedded UIs, and more. The Socure team is ahead of the curve—ask our people about what we’re building and how we can help you accelerate your revenue growth.

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Folks put time on my calendar frequently, but I sometimes get the sense they're unsure what to talk to me about. To have a high quality convo with your CRO, here's the mindset👇 Two years into my role scaling up GTM as a CRO, I would describe my #1 job as debugging. I'm always keen to talk to folks at any level with creative ideas and a vision for where the business needs to go and how we can unblock more revenue. Here are some prompts to get you started on a great convo with your CRO: - What's your POV on where your team needs to go over the next 2-3 years? - What skills does the team need to develop and what metrics will they move? - What hidden opportunities exist in the business that could be captured with small operational changes (to process, packaging, cadence etc)? - If I asked you to 2x, 5x, 10x your business in 12 months, how would you do it? There is value in the perspective from every seat. Don't be afraid to bring forward your ideas and excitement -- it's exactly what we want to hear.

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