Nicholas Fender

Creating a Thriving Startup Community: Lessons from building Startup Grind Frisco (Here’s how we’re fostering innovation in the city of Frisco, Texas) 1. Focus on Collaboration Over Competition In Frisco, startups thrive when they collaborate rather than compete. Sharing resources, insights, and support elevates the entire community. Remember, a rising tide lifts all boats. 2. Cultivate a Culture of Mentorship One of Startup Grind's pillars is mentorship. Experienced entrepreneurs guiding newcomers accelerates growth and builds a supportive network. This culture of giving back is crucial for sustainable development. 3. Foster Diversity and Inclusion Diverse perspectives are invaluable for innovation. Ensuring people from different backgrounds feel welcome and valued leads to richer ideas and solutions. At Startup Grind Frisco, we've prioritized diversity, resulting in a vibrant mix of startups. 4. Leverage Local Strengths Every city has unique strengths. Frisco's strategic location and robust infrastructure have been significant assets. Identifying and leveraging these local advantages gives startups a competitive edge. 5. Build Strong Relationships with Local Government and Institutions Support from local government and institutions provides startups with essential resources and opportunities. In Frisco, our partnerships with entities like Frisco EDC (Frisco Economic Development Corporation) and Comerica Bank (Comerica Bank) and many partners have been instrumental in driving growth. 6. Host Engaging Events Events hosted by Startup Grind Frisco create opportunities for learning, networking, and showcasing talent. They are the lifeblood of a thriving startup community, providing platforms for entrepreneurs to connect and grow. 7. Continuous Learning and Adaptation The startup world is ever evolving. Encouraging continuous learning and adaptability has been a cornerstone of our approach. We embrace new technologies, methodologies, and ideas to stay ahead of the curve. 8. Celebrate Successes and Learn from Failures Recognizing achievements and analyzing failures without fear of judgment fosters a growth mindset. Celebrating success stories inspires others, while transparent discussions about failures provide invaluable lessons. 9. Build a Strong Member Base We’ve built a strong and vibrant community of over 1,000 members who actively participate, share knowledge, and support each other. This strong network is the backbone of our success, driving momentum and creating a sense of belonging for all involved. I had the privilege of establishing the Startup Grind Frisco chapter, combining my passion for startups with my commitment to building an innovative, supportive community. Building a thriving startup community comes with challenges and successes. By focusing on collaboration, mentoring, diversity, and leveraging Frisco's strengths, we've created a dynamic ecosystem. These principles will guide our continued growth.

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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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The Wall Street Journal's recent findings on how the pandemic magnified the supply chain's vulnerabilities—and the ingenuity companies deployed to navigate them—paints a vivid picture of the industry's agility and foresight. It's fascinating to see how leveraging size and scale allowed certain giants to maintain stocked shelves, ensuring their commitments to communities were met, even as the world faced unprecedented disruptions. The Federal Trade Commission's report adds a crucial layer to this narrative, revealing how these practices might have sidelined smaller competitors, sparking a necessary conversation on market dynamics in times of crisis. Working at Cleo, where our 4,200+ ecosystem integration customers come in all sizes, I found it interesting that while large retailers' strategies of imposing stricter delivery requirements and fines for non-compliance steered more goods their way, it illuminated the need for a balanced approach that ensures supply chain resilience doesn't come at the expense of competition. Click the image below to read more. #Logistics #SupplyChainResilience #SupplyChain

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SFTW Startup Spotlight returns after a bit of a break. This month I highlight #artificialintelligence and #robotics company FarmWise Access to farm labor is a big challenge here in California (and in many other parts of the world). Labor can be up to 50% of your production costs in specialty crops Farmwise is tackling this challenge head on, with their AI powered mechanical weeding robotic implements (Vulcan!) and taking advantage of convergence of a few different technologies with a bold mission and vision "Enable growers and ag equipment OEMs to reimagine every farming task with machinery that can perceive, understand, and act at the plant level in real time" The startup spotlight from SFTW does a deep dive into -Farmwise's philosophy and a vision for a different way to farm -Deep dive into their technology (my favorite part!) -Their flexible and modular architecture -Use of foundation models (another topic I like to think about) -Business model, and most importanlty, -The team behind Farmwise led by industry veterans Tjarko Leifer and Greg Chiocco, and a diverse motivated team Link in the first comment #agriculture #california #agtech

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Today, I was reminded of two remarkably prescient 1997 ACM, Association for Computing Machinery presentations: the first by Nathan Myhrvold and the second by Bran Ferran. If you are not a member of the ACM - I highly recommend joining. Nathan Myhrvold The future of software, the software industry, and Windows '47 https://lnkd.in/egMwYty Bran Ferran How IT will transform the experience of telling and listening to stories https://lnkd.in/gqF7C7TK

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Something different today -- not about tech, but its impact. Let me elaborate if you’re wondering why this is a topic of interest. Whether it involves selling in-game upgrades, pursuing growth at all costs, or engaging in sports betting, I believe these practices are fundamentally wrong and not the right way to use technology. The proliferation of smartphones, affordable always-on connectivity, big data, & algorithms has facilitated the weaponization of sports betting. https://buff.ly/3Xc8jgp

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Congratulations to the Antler Spring 2024 Cohort! 🎉 As a Spring 2023 alum with Layerpath, I relate to your intense journey. The IC decision, while significant, is just one step in a much larger adventure. Here are a few key takeaways and next steps for all of us early-stage founders: 1) Embrace the Journey: A founder's path is filled with ups and downs. Every decision from accelerators or VCs is part of your growth. Stay focused on your long-term vision. 2) Conviction and Resilience: Believe in your mission and be ready to embrace both successes and failures. Progress, no matter how small, is what truly matters. 3) Community Support: Let's support each other. If you're feeling down or need advice, please reach out. As someone who's been through this process and is 12 months ahead, I'm here to chat, make introductions, or share resources to help you navigate the next steps. Founders grow stronger together. Let's keep pushing forward and supporting one another! 🙌 Tagging some fantastic fellow Antler cohort members who have become friends for life! Soham, Adie, Hazim, Carin, Milad, Sharath, Dana, Sakib, Tord, Sahil, Fauzan, Fauzi, Satwant, Sujith, Rohan, Nijansh, Nikita, Emily, Pradyu, Vidushi, Devyani, Willem, Catherine, Dana, Dan! #Founders #StartupLife #Accelerators #FounderLife

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As AI-powered software takes flight we're seeing stress emerge on SaaS business models. Outcomes > seats and the shift to services-as-software means we need more nimble ways to price, bill, and take payments. A few threads we're pulling on: 🔹 Software builders need more flexibility - it's a shame to build incredible software or have new tools at your disposal only to have pricing / business models restrict adoption and innovation. 🔹 As companies add AI features (often on top of OpenAI or other models) they need to fundamentally rethink pricing to ensure they maintain margins and don't have flat fee users scaling usage disproportionally. Unit economics are under threat. 🔹 This becomes even more crucial as we introduce AI agents into workflows as the volumes of automations will skyrocket. And, the multi-agent teaming economy will be fascinating (forget your smart fridge paying for groceries). More here: https://lnkd.in/ezYq-XPx 🔹 AI is making software more effective and employees more productive. Seat based pricing isn't set up to share in value creation, especially when companies can avoid having to hire new folks / can reduce headcount. 🔹 Modern database, data streaming, and unstructured data infrastructure is making it possible to power new models, make use of existing data, and for vendors to often know a company's data better than the company does. More here: https://lnkd.in/e5JpJiJH 🔹 Modern FP&A tooling is now capable of ingesting data at scale and reducing the headache on finance. More here: https://lnkd.in/ejrQGcun We're actively working on an Activant Capital Research report on usage based billing and would love to share learnings with anyone actively using or considering a shift to UBB. Please reach out to Richard and I if you want to chat --

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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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I feel like I constantly hear about the corporate vs startup debate. Which path is the right one? Entrepreneurship has no set path. Scott Lingle spent 25 years at bigger companies before fully making the leap and has now helped build a super special company in Remodel Health with Austin Lehman and the team. New episode of Get IN. just dropped. Whether you work at a big corp or are a scrappy startup employee this episode has something for you. Plus we highlight 2 entrepreneurs in their 20s that are CRUSHING IT. Link is in the comments.

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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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Matterport is being acquired by CoStar Group for $5.50 per share, half in cash and half in CoStar shares. "Matterport’s stock was trading below $2 per share before the transaction was disclosed." I'm very happy for the Matterport founders Matt Bell and David Gausebeck who were pioneers in 3D reality capture and SLAM. Simon Heinen and me started working on SLAM and 3D reconstruction at the same time. Also, NavVis got started at the same time btw. Back in the days, the goal was to create great Augemented Riality experiences, but all three teams landed in construction and real estate where we could create cash flow. NanVis and Matterport went down the road to use the Kinect scanners, Simon and I believed in mobile devices aka smartphones. The rest is history... Back to the business side of things. Matterport was at around the IPO day at nearly $25 and later got up to over $27. All the people who bought at that time are loosing out big time. BIG TIME. I guess mostly retail investors or your pension fund. I bought some Matterport sahres around $5.80 and some for $4.20 over all that was the range I thought the real value was. I had hoped they would get some innovation going or build something new. But in the past years nothing big happened. Not sure where all the money went... Anyway, Matterport is a great start-up story with I guess many pivots and ups and downs. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what CoStar Group will do with the company. It could be great, when they focus with product management on their strength and core market: real estate. here is a link if you want to read more: https://lnkd.in/dWY78mHM #realitycapture #3D #slam #augmentedreality #contech FARO Building Insights aka HoloBuilder

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Quick follow up to my last post on the evolution of software business models (please excuse the rough sketch!) Traditional SaaS models have many advantages - they're sticky (often 3+ year committed deals in the enterprise & legal contracts), consistent, and easy(ish) for finance teams to forecast. Usage-based models typically don't have the same advantages, but have been the growth engine of a lot of the best technology over the last decade - from developer tools (many of which started as open-source), to fintech (just start taking payments with Stripe or Square), and much more. Why? they're self-serve and the product drives the stickiness. They get the party started and can often scale perpetually. They also often graduate into traditional enterprise contracts too. As mentioned in my last post, however, we're barely scratching the surface on how to adapt to the coming wave of productivity improvements with AI. AI is making software more effective and employees more productive. Seat based pricing isn't set up to share in value creation, especially when companies can avoid having to hire new folks / can reduce headcount. One obvious place we see the potential for usage-based models to complement traditional SaaS is overage. But the bigger impact (and multiplier) over the coming decade will be AI - agent-agent interaction and the agent economy are going to move at exponentially higher speeds and scale than human-software. We see the future of software as a combo of all the above. Outcomes powered by flexible business models. But the only way to solve this is clean, accurate, and real-time data. #software #ai

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Myself and Evan Schnidman will be re-running the first session in our AI Investing Masterclass Series next Thursday May 16th, with Danielle Patterson of Family Office List. Link to register is below in her post! (If you've already attended the first class, *Session 2: AI IP & Defensibility* will be announced soon!)

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Early stage founders run into this all the time: So much to do and not enough resources. The best advice: 1) pause; 2) think through the what, the why, and the how. That’s how you’ll achieve your goals. In our newest episode, Bryan Karas and guest Catherine Donaldson, startup and Go-To-Market leader, dive into the Go-To-Market landscape and the common challenges that early-stage founders face at different inflection points. Are you at an inflection point? Tune in and you’ll find out. Link in the comments.

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Fascinating post by Michael Ho highlights that only 1.8% of 117K VC-backed startups analyzed from 2005 to 2022 reached $100M ARR or achieved a $1B+ exit! WOW. Interestingly, startups in SEA are gradually breaking through the ~$3M bar and accelerating towards $10M+ quicker than ever. This shows the region's dynamic potential and diverse paths to sustainable growth. From my experience as a co-founder, startups often experience phases of “revenue plateau”. These periods can be incredibly frustrating. It prompted us to rethink our growth strategies and focus on new ways of creating substantial, consistent value that customers find indispensable vs. sticking to the plan. I'd also add that true success isn’t only about hitting specific revenue milestones like $100M. It's about balancing growth with profitability, aiming for longevity, and focusing on creating sustainable value for both customers and other stakeholders. I’d be curious to learn how fellow entrepreneurs think about navigating these revenue plateaus

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There is so much that is so damn impressive about Nominal's execution. The team identified a truly needed product in the world. More than that... They serve their customers. Sometimes Nominal is saving days of work for an engineer detangling the performance of new hardware in an autonomous fixed wing drone. Other times, helping implement a transformational change for engineering orgs, delivering iteration speed from simulation to range to unlock an RFP goal and contract win. They are building dual use -- powering the best of commercial and public sector teams. Whether a government contractor delivering on a $12b contract. A scaled public company, integrating AI into your roadmap on to your existing HW platform. A startup which is willing a first product into existence. Nominal is there for all the dual use hardware builders who live real time, live in physical world time. The real world runs real time. The real world runs Nominal and so excited to be on the journey. Also, hiring, https://www.nominal.io/, kind of a lot. If you are awesome, they want to talk to you.

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One of our favorite snippets from a thought-provoking conversation on Strategycast with Lori Jones. If you are looking to chart your path to profitable efficient growth, then MultiplyGTM is for you.

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Ever heard of the Mendoza Line for SaaS? The Mendoza Line is baseball jargon for a .200 batting average, the supposed threshold for offensive futility at the Major League level. It refers to Mario Mendoza - the charismatic guy in the picture. While demonstrating decent skills on the field, he struggled as a batter. His fellow teammates teased him for his poor hitting ability and coined the term Mendoza Line. When a player's batting average is below the line, it means their hit rate is not good enough for Major League Baseball. In 2018, Scale Ventures Partners introduced the "Mendoza Line for SaaS". The line shows revenue growth thresholds for each stage below which a SaaS startup is not on a clear VC-backable trajectory. It's based on two main assumptions: 1. Investors prefer to invest in companies that have the potential to get to IPO (= making it to $100M+ ARR). 2. Growth rates decline over time - which is somewhat predictable. Depending on which source you use, the growth rate for a given year should be between 70% and 85% of the growth rate in the previous year. If you want to read more about it, you can check out the corresponding saas.wtf article. Do you think it's a helpful guide or useless bs? Does it hold true in the current market environment? #saas #startups #vc #venturecapital #funding #growth

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