Nicolae Rusan

Impactful Biz, Ops & Investment Roles at Early Startups & VCs: • Chief of Staff to Ex. Head of Product at Google • Founding GTM at the most YC product used by other YC companies in the past four years • Chief of Staff to a Partner at a Top-Tier VC Fund • Head of Platform of a NY State Backed Accelerator • Investment Associate at a Seed Stage Fund Investing in Category-Defining Companies • Partner at a Defense-Focused VC Fund • Chief Revenue Officer of a New Space Company in El Segundo • Venture Capital Analyst at a fund investing in overlooked geographies • Investment Associate at a Spirit-Focused Fund • Strategy & Ops Lead at a Company Focused on Helping Improve Autism • Senior Product Manager at a Company Focused on Building Shopify for Content Creators • Program Manager for a Space Security Company • Open-ended Investment Position at a Top-Tier Accelerator • Biz & Ops Lead for One of the Most Loved Digital Consumer Products 💸 All companies are well-funded and backed by top-tier investors. ⬇ You can find links to the roles above, plus many more, in the comments.

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Let's finally get rid off the "VC alphabet song" and redo the system to become more founder friendly. "The benchmarks set by funding stages are often arbitrary and not necessarily aligned with the actual development needs of individual startups." #vc #venturecapital #founder #fundraising #startups #fundingstages #funding #fundingrounds #pitchbook

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We believe in extreme vetting of our founders. You can't build a unicorn if you spend time on silly stuff, like seeing family and friends. Grow up, and focus on investor returns. #vc #startups #investment

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Are you looking to break into VC / PE / being a CEO? Are you frustrated at job applying process? Do you want to surround yourself with the best and brightest and build a network that includes investors, 10x founders, and other hellbent on changing the world? Do you run a start up that needs some hypergrowth? The job market has changed, applying for jobs is dead, its all about creating jobs via entrepreneurship or possessing executive skills to create a job at a company. Come join us at IOTA Labs MBA bootcamp; a donation based month long part time, program that puts infront of VC/PE deal flow with the intention that if you can follow the program, you will be contributing to large deals and getting paid for the work. The point of this program is to rapidly convert highly motivated individuals to high performing executives by surrounding them with the training, network, and skills they need to be successful @ IOTA or beyond. With training from tenured product manager @ Google, VC Fund managers, investors, 10x founders, CxOs (15+ at GM, Salesforce, Accenture), legal experts, and other subject matter experts https://lnkd.in/eSgHkB9u Seats will fill up fast just as an FYI , do please repost this so we can help as many people as possible.

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Alternative Resources for founders, geared for startups with generous free tiers: 1) Papermark - Docsend alternative. 2) Tally - Typeform alternative. 3) Cal.com, Inc. - Calendly alternative. 4) Supabase - Firebase Alternative. 5) Sender.net - Mailchimp Alternative. What else are people using and loving in the founders stack?

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A post from Rob at Balderton Capital pointed me at this piece from TechCrunch, and it perfectly aligns with what I've seen in the market: When things (aka: building businesses) are getting harder, founders seem to be more aware of how to structure ownership within their team. I've recently seen a few transactions where mostly experienced founders insist on longer vesting schedules for them and their team (👋🏻 Mario from Enpal revealing this week the whole company runs on 7y vesting schedules). Avoiding dead capital on the cap table is one of the key priorities we try to make founders aware of when raising rounds - be cautious with part-time, non-operative 'co-initiators', professors, accelerators or angels that don't add much value beyond the very initial stages, or co-founders that decide to move on. Enforcing strong (read: long) vesting mechanisms including cliffs (no need to stick to the 1y cliff market standard either) can be a simple mechanism to align interests for the long-term.

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Nic Poulos and I wrote an essay for Euclid Ventures, "An Era for Vertical Software." The TL;DR is that vertical SaaS is a distinct, enduring discipline that we believe is poised to dominate the software landscape over the next decade.   "2024 will represent a turning point, perhaps even a new era for venture capital. While the fog feels like it’s lifting, the path forward isn’t yet clear. One includes a soft landing for the US economy and the continuing recovery of software multiples, with ZIRP-era behaviors continuing around hot themes. Another sees a recessionary period in which VC capital inflows remain stagnant and startup funding the year dips below $100B. Either way, a more measured VC market in 2024 is a certainty. For many investors, that will come with a rude awakening as their strategy becomes more difficult to execute or their thesis of choice is negatively impacted by tightening markets.    We see this reversion of the venture ecosystem to its mean as a strong tailwind for Euclid and vertical software. As a category, Vertical SaaS is uniquely well suited to thrive in volatile market conditions and produce fund-returning outcomes. The sections below aim to answer the question: why is vertical software different? Our answer discusses the factors driving the natural market resilience we see in vertical software as a category–resilience that will help them thrive in 2024 and beyond."

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Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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InVision has experienced the biggest fall from glory in Silicon Valley's recent history. $350M raised with a peak valuation of $2B. And now they are shutting down. Not acquihired or "acquired by private equity" or strategic tuck-in. Just a hard stop. It's so easy to s**t on them. They got out-innovated, they were not product driven etc. etc. But, the truth is most startups that raised monster rounds in ZIRP days could face this deadend. You raised too much money: 1/ So you are too expensive to acquire 2/ So you raised your burn too high to finance a big GTM team 2/ So you got complacent on product 3/ So you got lazy on shipping There will be a lot more inVisions in the next 24 months as startups run out of capital. It's sad. The employees & founders at these companies gave it their all, but raising too much money sealed their fate. For the next gen of startup founders, heed this advice: raise little, keep your burn low, ship fast!

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Our revamped newsletter, The Angle by Angular Ventures, officially launched today! We hope this new format will make it easier to read, share, and subscribe. Back to it, in this week's column, Gil Dibner covered the spirit of risk-taking that inspired Angular to venture into unusual spaces. While, of course, we invest in AI and SaaS, as of late, we have been investing in more and more contrarian spaces - from quantum, to spacetech, to energy, etc. in search of the supposedly impossible - the truly contrarian. Read the full column via the link.

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How to Profit by Divesting from Companies with Anti-Israel Stances As savvy investors, we must always be alert to the implications of a company's political stance on its financial health. Take, for instance, hims & hers, whose CEO, Andrew Dudum, recently made a controversial statement about hiring pro-Palestinian protesters just days before a potentially underwhelming quarterly earnings report. This statement, coinciding with a 5% drop in share value—erasing $100 million in market equity—raises the suspicion that it might be a psychological maneuver by a CEO fearing for his job ahead of poor earnings results. Given hims & hers' history of underperformance, with shares gaining only 8.32% since its IPO compared to a 23.33% increase in the S&P 500 and similar growth in the Nasdaq, investors could have seen better returns elsewhere. Furthermore, analysts are also showing signs of concern. Recently, Jefferies downgraded hims & hers from 'Buy' to 'Hold' and reduced the price target to $15 from $17, signaling a cautious stance on the company's growth prospects. This downgrade, coupled with the anticipated poor earnings, paints a troubling picture for the future of hims & hers. Additionally, the related Supernova festival tragedy on 10/7, where victims mirror the typical hims & hers customer base, might further alienate its clientele. Customers may sympathize more with the victims than with a company perceived to be exploiting political events to distract from business failures. This scenario suggests potential for increased customer churn and a continued decline in share value, making it a critical time for shareholders to consider divesting. For those open to risk, short selling could capitalize on anticipated downturns.

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Crossing the chasm is a book most startup founders knows about. TLDR: It's about how products are adopted by early adopters and the mainstream market. But I hardly ever see anyone in the productized service space read this book, but it's highly relevant. Here's why 👇 Early adopters. Software products are adopted by early adopters and then eventually reaches the late majority and laggards. If your prospects aren't for design subscriptions, then you're not targeting early adopters. So this means that you have to find a market where the customers are willing to take a chance on this wild idea of subscription design services. Hint: Early stage startups that are funded are all for taking risks over large enterprise companies like AWS / Tesla.

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For founders raising money — here are a few ways to start building your initial list of investors to vet: ➟ Work through Crunchbase to find companies in your space, and look up the investor who funded them at the appropriate round. You can also look at funding announcements for companies in your space and see which investors are involved. ➟ Reach out to angel investors, advisors, mentors, and your extended network to ask which GPs could be a good fit and have keen interest in your space. ➟ Look up lists of the most active investors in your region and try to understand if those investors have a thesis or have previously invested in companies in your industry. Good luck and stay strong! I've seen Unicorns get 100s of No's at the Pre-Seed stage before they got to their first Yes.

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Custom GPTs are killing a huge number of startups. And it's not hard to see why. (They don't have any proprietary tech.) If you've checked out ChatGPT recently, you might have noticed the new "Custom GPTs" panel on the left-hand side. It's like an app store for AI models, and it's spelling doom for many startups. -- As my co-founder Jacob Tucker recently pointed out, we're seeing a huge domino effect in the #AIStartup world. When ChatGPT first launched, these wrapper startups looked impressive. They were raising $2-3 million rounds, even though they had no technical moat. They were just low-hanging fruit, capitalizing on the hype around ChatGPT. Now that house of cards is crumbling. -- This is a huge win for deep tech companies that are actually innovating in the AI space. Companies like EmpathixAI, where we're building proprietary AI models from the ground up to solve specific problems, like conducting in-depth interviews at scale with #CultureChat. We're not just slapping a pretty interface on top of someone else's tech. We're doing the hard work of pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI. -- So if you're an investor or a business looking to leverage AI, take this as a cautionary tale. Don't be dazzled by the shiny wrappers. Look for companies with real technical depth, who are building solutions that can't be easily replicated or replaced. Those are the companies that will survive and thrive in the long run. The rest? They'll be washed away by the next wave of AI innovation.

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Secondaries are becoming a super attractive asset class. Just this month, StepStone announced a new $3B+ fund dedicated to secondaries. Late-stage private companies are still trading at a discount relative to their 2021-2022 highs. But the venture capital advisor exemption requires firms to keep their secondary positions less than 20% of total investments. I think this will encourage fund managers to get creative with registration/legal structures in order to unlock greater exposure to secondaries as attractive deals come through. https://lnkd.in/e_3_xitM

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💸 SAFE NOTES EXPLAINED CLEARLY W/ ADDITIONAL COMMENTS BELOW💸 SOURCE: Kevin Jurovich 💸Key terms in a #SAFE note include: Valuation Cap: Maximum company valuation for converting the SAFE. Discount Rate: Percentage reduction on share price during conversion. MFN Clause: Ensures equal or better terms if new SAFEs are issued. Conversion Trigger: Event that converts the SAFE into equity. SAFE notes benefit #investors by offering a simplified, standardized investment process with potential for high returns. They convert to equity at a discount or valuation cap, providing early investors with favorable terms. Additionally, the MFN clause ensures they receive the best terms available in subsequent rounds. 💸A valuation cap benefits founders by potentially reducing equity dilution. If the company's valuation exceeds the cap during conversion, the SAFE converts at the capped valuation, resulting in fewer shares issued to investors. This preserves more equity for founders, especially if they are confident in achieving higher valuations in future rounds. 💸A discount rate in a SAFE note provides a percentage reduction on the share price during conversion. This means that when the SAFE converts to equity, the investor gets shares at a discounted price compared to the current valuation, offering an incentive for early investment. 💸An MFN (Most Favored Nation) clause in a SAFE note ensures that if a new SAFE is issued with better terms, the investor with the MFN clause can opt to receive those same favorable terms. This protects early investors from being disadvantaged by subsequent funding rounds. 💸A conversion trigger in a SAFE note is an event that converts the SAFE into equity. Common triggers include a priced equity round or a liquidity event. 💸Examples of SAFE notes include: Fixed Conversion at a future date, Valuation Cap with no discount, Discount with no valuation cap, Valuation Cap & Discount, and MFN (Most Favored Nation) clause. These variations offer different terms for investors and founders. #SAFENOTES #CAPITALRAISE #INVESTOR #INVESTING #EARLYSTAGE #FOUNDERS

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TWO OR THREE-STEPPING TO SERIES A A lot of software founders are still trying to raise a $4-5M seed round from a pre-revenue standpoint to get to Series A. I get that we all want more buffer nowadays but it's also a harder calculus to go from pre-monetization, to early customers, to giving yourself enough sales cycle time in order to hit $1-2M ARR proxy for a strong A. Which is why inevitably, more founders end up having to raise messy extensions/bridges/Seed II or whatever you want to call them. So my advice is that IF you have the luxury of starting a company today, PLAN AHEAD. Even prior to even raising your first angel round. Break up your path to Series A into 2 or 3 tranches of mission-driven capital. Each tranche has a clear goal that you can rally your team and investors around. For example: First tranche to build the product and get early design partners. Second tranche to get to $300K of ARR. Third tranche to get to Series A. This will help support higher operating discipline and awareness. Incremental purchasing and hiring decisions will instantaneously shorten your runway in a way that a larger $5 million seed round obfuscates. And you'll be motivated to find GTM efficiency faster in the journey. Great habits for long term success. For context, Peter Walker of Carta recently sent an update on the arduous path from Seed to Series A. The survival rate is about 1/2 of what it used to be: "Something like 20-24% of startups that raised a seed round would graduate to their Series A in 24 months or less. For companies that raised their seeds in H1 2022, only 13% have made it to Series A across the 6 industries in the chart."

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Pre-seed/seed founders: When pitching investors, don't shoot yourselves in the foot by trying to hide what isn't pretty. A good early stage investor accounts for there being things that aren't figured out, or just plainly look bad. When I can't get a straight answer to a fact-based question from a founder, it is likely that my main takeaways will be: 1. #Fundraising will be hard for you. This is a gut and trust business. Obfuscation drops a bomb on that for many investors who index on founder honesty and ethics. "I don't know", "I can get back to you", "It's not great" or "I don't think that's the right question" are better than a cryptic misdirecting answer. 2. #Hiring and #retaining top talent will be hard for you. Great talent won't stick around at the early stage if you can't provide clarity and transparency in your leadership of teams & targets. 3. #Sales will be hard for you. Customers want clarity on value add, and how it solves their problem. I'm less inclined to believe that you provide that when I am not experiencing it myself. Any combo of the above makes a bigger dent on your funding prospects than the ugly truthful answer to the question I asked.

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