Florian Rittmeyer

It’s hard to find someone in tech who hasn’t heard of Calendly or been sent a Calendly link. Calendly now serves >20 million (🤯) users. Millions more sign up each year. And these aren’t only individuals — 86% of the Fortune 500 use it. Their funnel is a CMO’s dream — and biggest nightmare. Just ask Jessica Gilmartin. “It worked, but it was inefficient and expensive,” she told me. Starting in January, Jessica overhauled the sales motion. Calendly changed how they organize their sales team, score leads, route leads to reps, and bring automation into the process. And the results are pretty dramatic. Do yourself a favor and read the full story in Growth Unhinged: https://lnkd.in/ea2k4Js4 The takeaway: folks pay too much attention to getting new leads & not nearly enough on serving the ones they already have. #marketing #saas #growth #sales

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I get asked a couple of the same questions over and over again ("how do I break into VC?", "what start-ups should I target with my job search?", "how do I make the transition from consulting into tech/product management"). Here's my attempt to summarize my answers (and I'm quite happy to add other people's thoughts to these answers as well). https://lnkd.in/e2qysZrB

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Founders - if you're raising a seed round and the VC across the table says your employee option needs to be 20%, push back. I've had multiple DMs over the past couple weeks from founders who are in the middle of negotiating their seed raises. One major sticking point - the employee option pool. No surprise why VCs would push for a larger pool (before completing the round): it saves them from some dilution! But 20% is almost always too large a reserve for a company at this stage. I've resurfaced some data below from 28,000 cap tables on Carta that shows the median for seed-stage valuations is around 13-14%. Especially with seed-stage startups growing headcount at a much slower pace than in prior years, the option pool should reflect the hiring needs of the next 2 years or so, with a little wiggle room. You can replenish the pool at the next fundraise as needed. Obviously I still advocate for employees to be given generous equity grants - they're the bedrock of company success after all. But founders can do that while also minimizing their own dilution just starting out. Thinking of doing a mini-series on the real data for the most common cap table sticking points for early-stage deals, let me know if you have topics you'd want covered below. #cartadata #ESOP #employeeoptions #founders #startups  

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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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I’m seeing an increasing number of founders (and friends) exit their startups this year. Most of them have never exited a business before, and unfortunately, roughly half of them are likely to end up in dispute post-close. The most common reason is a term that almost everyone has never heard of. Working Capital Adjustments (WCA) are part of the broader Purchase Price Adjustments (PPA) in a standard M&A agreement. They intend to adjust the purchase price based on the actual working capital at closing compared to a previously agreed-upon target. This prevents the seller from emptying the bank accounts and running off with inventory before the deal closes. This mechanism is disputed so widely because Working Capital is often defined as “GAAP, consistently applied” — and this is not specific enough. A dispute arises when the buyer and seller interpret items differently, such as accounts receivable. These may seem small, but the cost can be in the millions. Many lawyers suggest that the solution is to draft a detailed dispute resolution process, which ultimately leads to higher fees for the lawyers. We believe the better solution is transparency. Referencing a pre-agreed set of financial statements and calculations that are up to date in real time during the closing process can align buyers and sellers. Combining this with a defined list of Accounting Policies and using GAAP only as a fallback mechanism safeguards against dispute and ultimately protects the sale proceeds.

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I get asked at least 3x per week for coach recommendations by founders. The problem isn't finding a coach... it's about finding a GOOD coach that actually fits your needs. So… my former boss and good friend Amos Schwartzfarb (former MD at Techstars) and I have teamed up to start matching founders with top tier coaches (at no added cost to founders) If you’re a founder or exec looking for a coach, drop a comment or click the link below and we will get you intro’d to someone that matches your style and budget. ------------- Matchmaking here: https://lnkd.in/eErMTbzR

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If I was to do a monthly podcast epiosde segment called This Month in VC 1) Who should I invite as a guest for this segment? 2) Any VC's who would be down to come on and share their stories + insights on this? Basically recapping what happened in that month in VC - It would be an under 30 minute discussion - Recorded remotely using Zoom, Riverside DM me or reply to this if interested Inspired by Harry Stebbings This Week in SaaS to try out a different format

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“Being narrow in our thinking about competitors is how we create our own blindspots.” When startups map out their competitors, the matrix has two ends — big incumbents with big budgets and well-known products, and tiny scrappy teams just getting started. Other startups, even those that have raised significant funding, are still just breaking in to solve the problem you are trying to solve. They are building and defining their market, too. But, it’s not just the other companies that are your competition — it’s the status quo — it’s how customers are solving their problem today. It’s the thing you didn’t even think about. At last week’s on-site for VirgilHR, Product Manager Naman Sharma walked the team through a critical exercise to expand our thinking about the competition. The danger, he cautioned, is when we overfocus on the competitors we know about, those whose websites we can go look at and run feature comparison or see a demo, who we can see how they are marketing at the industry conference, who we can easily research. With a simple question — “What are the competitors that don’t fit on a slide matrix?” — the team went into a deep discussion about how customers are solving their problem today. The answer was mostly without the use of a product at all, and that was most of the market. This of course means that there’s a big opportunity ahead for the team, but also means that there is a lot of work to be done! The big takeaway to share — WHO or WHAT is hiding in your competitive matrix between “Other Startups” and “BIG Co?” Is it consultants? Google? Membership organizations? Facebook groups? Gen AI? Ignoring the problem entirely? Internally built software? Process? Identifying what is hiding there creates a stronger strategy, reduces your blindspots, and keeps the team engaged with the end user’s lived experience. Tried this exercise? What was hiding? Any tips for how you resurface this discussion regularly? #startups #entrepreneurship #leadership #productmanagement #product

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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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I’ve heard an uptick in people claiming that their good advice isn’t being heard. It’s easy to blame advice seekers for not being “coachable.” Advice givers, though, shouldn’t be given a free pass. We’re all inundated with data and opinions, making crafting narratives supporting the answers we want to hear easy. When an advice seeker already has an established belief, advice will likely fall on deaf ears if it conflicts with what they want to hear. In my line of work, I give a lot of coaching to startups. Below are the tools I’ve found to work when I need to persuade an advice seeker to take action particularly if my advice doesn’t align with their established beliefs. Use Referenceable Supporting Data - During virtual calls with startups, I frequently drop links to credible data sources that validate my claims. Want to double-check my valuation advice? Here’s a link to Meritech. Unsure if I’m fairly assessing your enterprise SaaS growth metrics? Check out this data from A16Z. Want to see the sources I use most frequently? Here’s a link to Elevate's Pitch Deck Guide with reference links (attached to post). Use Personal Stories - I’ve had success coaching others by sharing horror stories highlighting my own mistakes. Sharing learned experiences creates trust, and sometimes, hearing about the pain of a mistake is enough for others to heed the warning. While advice from personal success stories can also be impactful, it’s easy to lose the advice seeker if the conversation shifts from storytelling about what worked to storytelling about the fruits of the success. Don’t Forget to Highlight the Positives - In my early twenties, I shared a business plan with a successful entrepreneur who ripped apart all of my assumptions. At the end of our time together, he asked when I plan to launch my company. Deflated, I told him I was not sure as it appeared I had a lot of work to do. He immediately waved off the comment and spent the remaining time encouraging me to launch my company immediately. When giving advice, it’s easy to focus on ways in which the company, person, or situation could and should change. It’s also worth acknowledging what’s working and to keep things positive and in perspective. Encourage Them to Take Small Steps - I’ve found success in encouraging others to take advice on action by doing the least required to validate if the advice given is worth taking. This is particularly helpful when coaching first-time founders with startup ideas. Don’t worry about raising money right now. First, ask a handful of people to validate the severity of the problem your startup will solve. Then, use that feedback to refine your business idea. Next, propose your solution to potential customers. Then, you guessed it, refine your business idea. Small steps go a long way in moving from analysis paralysis to taking action. When someone comes off as uncoachable, maybe the advice isn’t being heard because of the delivery, not the content.

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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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Founders - don't feel pressured to give your startup advisors hefty equity packages. A few of them are worth every percentage point of equity. But I've heard multiple times this week of advisors requesting 1%, 1.5%, or 2% of company equity from pre-seed founding teams. This is pretty far from market. 𝗖𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝗣𝗿𝗲-𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗱 Median Advisor Equity Grant: 0.23% Avg: 0.42% 90th percentile: 1% 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗱 Median: 0.1% Average: 0.21% 90th pct: 0.5% 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗔 Median: 0.07% Average: 0.16% 90th pct: 0.30% Again, I'm sure there are outlier situations in which very large advisor grants work out great. But for most companies, grants far above the median will turn out to be wasted equity. For reference, the median grant for the first hire is 1% - and they are full-time! The more you know 🙏 Headed to Italy for the next few weeks so posting may be spotty! Hit me with your best Tuscany recommendations in the comments if you have any. #cartadata #advisors #equity #founders #startups  

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The talent market is about as disjointed right now as I’ve ever seen it... There is a incredible amount of tier 1 venture talent (multiple exits - real enterprise value creation and outcomes) opting for advisory, fractional or time on the “Beach” or “bench” right now. It’s not that they don’t want to find their next thing that they can sink their teeth into and go all in - many do - and candidate sentiment on the market has taken a 180 degree turn from Q1 2023 from negative to positive. It’s that the right next thing is incredibly hard to find right now. Messy cap tables, egregious valuations, lopsided preference stacks, limited run way, unclear ways to drive consistent growth (or even if product market fit exists) in a world that rode tailwinds for years, complex cultures, and more. Many of the “Clean” opportunities are still in seed / early series A. Many of the growth stage opportunities are plagued with cultural challenges or require a hard reset across the board. If I was in PE, or a large company looking for innovative talent, I would be doing my best to capitalize on this market. If I was in a clean VC backed company, I’d be going hard at courting the creme of the crop right no. If I was in a complex VC backed company, I’d get creative on management carve outs, outsized offers, and do what it takes to move the ball downfield. I think we’re about 9-12 months away from tech/tech enabled findings it’s way back to being at the top of tier 1 candidates list. It won't be 2021 again.... But I do think the market is going to be way less available. Move now.

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I’m excited to share a new project: Estuary. It’s not for everybody. It’s a newsletter for ~100 people. They’re GTM leaders who: - want to diversify their sales & partnerships channels - are curious if VC and PE partnerships make sense for them - aren’t sure how to launch this bespoke strategy Being from Louisiana and now living in coastal North Carolina, Estuary brings to mind for me not only diverse ecosystems but also resiliency in the face of change. Sales orgs that thoughtfully experiment with new routes to market will win. My first few posts will focus on the basics, and we’ll move forward from there. The link to sign-up is below. I hope you’ll join me, and I hope you’ll tell your friends. #vc #pe #gtm #sales #saas #partnerships Photo: The Nature Conservancy

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+1 this wholeheartedly. I don’t even love calling it “Support” and prefer something like “Customer Experience Engineering.” These folks are a direct line between customers and product engineering. Reduce that friction, and assuming you act on the feedback, you’ll reduce frustration-related tickets coming through this channel. Funny enough, when you do that, you can have these same folks focused more on proactive solutioning with customers vs. just reactive support, thus scaling the role from cost-center to revenue-generator. 🚀🚀🚀

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Excellent data to have when raising capital. #Automotiveindustry #electriccar #electricvehicles #automotive #electricvehicle #emobility #futureofmobility #EV #electric #electriccars #fleets #fleet #electricvehicle #emobility #futureofmobility #fleetmanagement #startup #impactinvesting #VC #angelinvesting #venturecapital #Entrepreneurs #privateequity #familyoffices

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💯 If your team is drowning in support tickets and customer "rough edges" you should probably sit back and evaluate if you have a viable product. At the very least, you should evaluate if your product team is correctly focused on the needs of your customers when this pattern emerges. "Jessica pointed out that if our solution was to hire someone to deal with customer issues, then next week when we grew more we’d have to hire another person, then another, and so on. Her point was that the real solution isn’t solving tickets, it’s listening to customers and building a better product so customers never need to write in the first place." "In a sense, every customer support ticket is a privilege – someone took time out of their day to write about how to improve your product. But it’s also a failure – you could’ve saved them that time by making the product better and more intuitive in the first place. You can’t out-hire a bad product, or compensate for poor taste with a big support team." Customer feedback is a gift. Don't squander it or pawn the problem off on a man-power to solve it. A pile-up here is *always* a sign that your product direction needs improvement.

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I always get a bit peeved hearing other VC's categorize AI-enabled companies as 'ChatGPT wrappers'. Your Defensibility? Your Moat? That's your business model and unique insights into your industry. It's Network Effects, and scrappy GTM's, and sticky features you build on top. In my opinion, LLM's are a core part of most tech stacks, the same way cloud compute or other infrastructure is. OpenAI and others have created one of the most profound advances in computing, and has made it publicly accessible for everyone to use. There's massive opportunity to build applications on top of it.

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I just finished Isaacson's book on Musk. It's incredible! Every founder and CEO should read it. Here are my top four learnings: (1) Mission Above All: Musk has the fortitude to build many multi-billion dollar companies concurrently because each has a humanity-altering mission that deeply convicts him. He doesn't care about being the top rocket company; he believes humanity is doomed if we don't become multi-planetary. He doesn't care about making the best-selling car; he thinks society must transition to clean energy to survive. To him, SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink's missions are vital to preserving humanity. Musk won't stop until he achieves these missions. (2) Guided by First Principles: Musk challenges all generally accepted conventions with first-principles thinking. This approach allows him to create much grander visions than 99.9% of people. He questions everything. He considers all fresh ideas, no matter how ambitious and unrealistic they appear. So long as the laws of physics don't preclude an idea from becoming an actual product or process, it's game on. (3) Hardcore and Extreme Urgency: Musk sets seemingly unrealistic targets with public launches and oftentimes puts his teams through excruciating circumstances to achieve massive dreams. He catches a lot of flack for it. But show me another way to build numerous multi-billion businesses at the speed he's done it. Bill Gates ran Microsoft equally hardcore in the early days - same result. Every sports championship documentary I've ever watched is about blood, sweat, and tears. I'm convinced that if you want to go big and fast, you must be hardcore. (4) Maniacal Attention to Product Simplicity and Cost: I think this is so overlooked in software. CEOs delegate to CTOs while focusing on fundraising, GTM, and culture. Imagine CEOs obsessed over product details, simplicity, and production costs. Sure, that might drive some product managers and engineers crazy, but if managed well, we'd have much better products requiring much less marketing, sales, and support investment. If you're building a company today, a few key questions: a) How much conviction do you have in your mission? Even if you're not sending rockets to Mars, will your mission fuel your drive for the next 7-10 years? b) Are you breaking conventions or following common processes? How can you shatter the mold and push your industry forward? c) Is your culture hardcore or laid-back? Do you want to go big and win championships or be comfortable and achieve moderate success?  d) Do you really understand your industry, user, and product? What are the top five ways to simplify your product and reduce time-to-market and production costs? #founder #startups #ceo #saas

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