J. Scott Tapp

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Rubrik’s IPO Signals Venture Capital Optimism and Growth Opportunities Rubrik’s recent IPO triumph serves as a powerful signal for venture capital investors. The company’s valuation surge provides hope for reasonably priced growth financing rounds. However, many companies still find themselves below the valuation of their last funding round, patiently awaiting brighter days. Here’s a closer look at Rubrik’s journey: Successful IPO: Rubrik’s stock price soared 17% on its debut day, closing at $37. The firm’s valuation now stands at approximately $6.49 billion. Upsized Offering: The IPO raised a whopping $752 million, fueling Rubrik’s expansion plans and valuing the company at $5.6 billion. Steady Growth: Rubrik’s valuation has steadily climbed. In January, a Series E round valued the company at $3.3 billion, up from $1.8 billion in 2017. Investment Backing: Microsoft, Greylock, and Lightspeed have all backed Rubrik, reinforcing its potential. #IPO #VentureCapital #TechCompanies #GrowthOpportunities #DataSecurity #CloudComputing #Cybersecurity

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In business, as in life, authenticity and trust are non-negotiable. It has been my guiding principle and at the core of my leadership. Today, Axiom Service Management is focused on being more than an IT service provider; we aim to be trusted partners to our clients across the US and Canada. Our commitment to solving their problems and being deeply involved in their success sets us apart and drives us forward. One of our core beliefs is listening to our clients. We don't just conduct transactions; we actively work to understand their unique challenges and needs. We prioritize open communication, encouraging both positive and constructive feedback. This culture of transparency helps us continuously improve and adapt to our clients' evolving requirements. Our team is the backbone of Axiom’s success. I am incredibly proud of the dedicated professionals who bring their expertise, passion, and commitment to excellence daily. Their ability to collaborate and innovate has been instrumental in our growth and in maintaining the high standards our clients expect. At Axiom, our purpose is to lead with integrity and resilience. Every challenge we face strengthens our commitment to excellence and reinforces our clients' trust. P.S. How do you foster trust and authenticity in your leadership style? Share your experiences in the comments! #Leadership #Trust #Authenticity #BusinessGrowth #AxiomSM #FinancialResilience

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Thanks Renee Cohen for the thought leadership and sharing your four big take aways from the PEI Operating Partners Forum Napa session. Looking forward to doing it again with this amazing group in NYC in October! I'll add the summary content from William B. session who literally wrote the book on Value Creation called "Creating Value in Portfolio Company Operators." Will's PEI Operating Partners session was titled "Today's Challenging Environment Requires the Actions of the Operating Team to be Brought to the Forefront of Investing." 1. The importance of the value of the Operating Partner team needs to be effectively communicated in financial terms. 2. Value Creation needs to be at the forefront of every investment - this is an integrated, top, bottom, and strategic pivot agenda that should be developed bottom up; the management team needs to be designed to support. 3. A system needs to be developed within your PE firm, aligned with your overall engagement model with the management team that programmatically improves the likelihood of investor churn. 4. Periodic reviews of the total existing portfolio should be conducted to identify pockets of opportunity that management is not seeking to address - these can take the form of rapid assessments or in-depth health checks. William B. Zorian Rotenberg Tony La Rosa Irene LaCota Paul Stansik John Zink Anjai "AJ" Gandhi Sean Turner Adam Fuller Rupen Patel Mike Devine Matt Koven Bart Macdonald Daniel Perry Drew Kiran Achi Yaffe John Clancy Jessica Cash (she/her)Scott McKenzie Rajveer (Raj) Kushwaha Yale Kwon Alex Mason Benjamin Levin David Su Fred Sturgis Lawrence Dvorchik Marc Mele Scott Graham Phil Cunningham Michael Hilliard

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Super excited to continue the Symitri journey! Tomorrow, the Symitri board, including Keith Banks of KB Partners, Peter Bordes of Trajectory Ventures, Jeff White, and myself, will meet for the first time to collaborate with the company management team led by David Kohl to help drive the Symitri platform into the market. Symitri is the first real-time data cleanroom with a built-in privacy firewall designed for the open web. To learn more about Symitri and to opt in for updates, visit www.symitri.com and be sure to follow Symitri here on LinkedIn. Stay tuned for more updates in the weeks to come! 🚀#Symitri #TRUSTX #Privacy #Identity #DataSecurity #Compliance

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I recently had the pleasure of speaking with and learning from several software execs from our portfolio companies and industry experts during Thoma Bravo's AI Summit in Miami. It was great to share our insights into trends and practices we see in our portfolio and how we manage opportunities and risks. At TB, we have a long history of guiding enterprise software companies through digital transformation, and we’re already navigating the transition driven by generative AI. Our focus is on managing this new innovation by absorbing the technology to bring meaningful benefits to our portfolio companies and indirectly to their customers. And it’s evolving fast! We see our portfolio companies today using gen AI in generally three ways: first, to create new products and provide customers with incremental use cases. Second, to defend against cyber attacks that have become much more sophisticated by bad actors. And third, as an enabler of talent to make business operations run more efficient and productive. In our view, AI presents a significant growth opportunity, but we also believe that to really maximize that potential, companies should carefully evaluate the risks and be thoughtful about governance, trust, security and data privacy. AI is poised to accelerate innovation and it’s hard to predict the full, transformative potential of AI, but we are confident that some of the advantages of incumbent knowledge and data will be key to unlocking its value.

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ISP Strategic Leadership, Engineering, and Operations As an organization scales, there is often a need to separate strategic technology leadership under the CTO from internal execution under engineering and operations management. This allows the CTO to focus on outward-facing duties while enabling streamlined operational efficiency. However, it's crucial to recognize the differing motivations and needs of these distinct technical roles. On one hand, engineers thrive on tackling interesting, challenging projects that push their abilities and knowledge. They value working alongside capable peers, genuine recognition of technical accomplishments, and contributing to products/services that reach the market. In contrast, operations teams should strive for repeatable processes, continual improvement, and driving efficiency at scale. Their priorities revolve around standardizing workflows, minimizing disruptions, and incrementally optimizing existing systems and procedures to maintain consistent service delivery as the company grows. An effective organizational structure acknowledges this dichotomy, fostering an environment that fuels engineering innovation while providing operations with the stability and process-orientation they require. Striking this balance enables the company to stay agile and innovative through its engineering efforts, while simultaneously scaling operational execution in a reliable and repeatable manner. Competitive compensation remains an important motivator across both domains. By properly aligning structural elements, motivational factors, and leadership priorities, a rapidly growing ISP can position itself to attract and retain top talent across engineering and operations, driving sustainable growth and success in the dynamic technology landscape.

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We are at the intersection of legacy and innovation, where the futures of established baby boomer businesses hang in the balance. How do we blend traditional values with modern strategies to ensure these enterprises not only survive but thrive in the face of economic shifts? We want forward-thinking investors who are passionate about molding resilient, recession-proof businesses for the future. #InvestInLegacy #StrategicInvestment #FutureOfBusiness #InnovationInInvesting

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Multiple expansion will play a more diminished role in driving returns for the foreseeable future. Cold Bore Capital Management is pre-positioned to drive organic growth in the new market landscape through investment in high-performing human capital, implementation of proven frameworks, and preservation of established legacies.

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If you're building a fintech startup, you likely know of this investor, but just in case... This week's findfunding.vc spotlight is on Neil Kapur from TTV Capital. He: 🛫 Is based in SF & Atlanta 💲 Has spent time at Google in consumer-facing payments & at two fintech startups  🏔️ Loves alpine mountaineering and has climbed Kilimanjaro, Denali, Rainier, and more!! Amongst founders, Neil and the team at TTV Capital , including Gardiner Garrard, Mark Johnson, Sean Banks, Lizzie Guynn, and Laney Lewis are known for saying “lift, not lean.” They believe that their job as investors is not to create work for founders, but instead ask the right questions and help navigate to the best outcomes. Knowing Neil well personally, he's not only my go-to person for anything related to fintech but I can also highly recommend having him on your cap table - he's the kind of human you want to have in your corner during both good times and bad. Make sure to: ✉️ Pitch him at nkapur@ttvcapital.com ➡️ Follow TTV Capital on LinkedIn For more, check out our funder spotlight card below along with TTV Capital's profile on findfunding.vc (link in comments).

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Too many small and mid-sized businesses struggle with capital constraints out of fear and misunderstanding. Sourcing the capital required to remove those constraints is key to unlocking the value creation potential of these companies. https://lnkd.in/gRYTKEmN #smallbusiness #businesstransformation

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We provide fractional CFO help for companies looking to fundraise or do M&A. I'm always surprised when I review investor decks at the number of companies that provide TAM calculations which are top down, versus bottom up in nature. "Here is a generic link for an industry we operate in, and here is the rough market size we'll get to..." I'm not saying this is wrong, but if should be triangulated out with a bottom up calculation to get to TAM, SAM & SOM. These calculations help both a company and the individuals reviewing the deck understand which customers an entity is targeting, the subgroup within this, the geographies they are based in and the number of companies in each geography. It provides a timeline for initial customers that will be targeted, and market share reached (SOM), scaling up to more geographies and customers (SAM) and then what the total addressable market is (TAM). We're offering a free review and feedback of these calculations for any companies interested in exploring their TAM calculations further. Happy Monday all and have a cracking week.

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I've had the privilege of learning from Stephen Tafaro over the past few years. His new book, "Winning at SaaS," encapsulates the successful strategies he has shared with numerous SaaS businesses. If you work in a customer-facing role within a SaaS company or invest in SaaS businesses, I highly recommend checking it out! "Winning at SaaS: The CEO and CRO Sales Playbook for Early SaaS Success" is now available on Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/0ix2AF7k

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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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PE insights - from the latest episode of "Behind the Deal" with Orlando Bravo & Carl Thoma at Thoma Bravo. Great lessons from Orlando Bravo who discusses losing money and making many mistakes early in his career, Carl Thoma (Orlando's mentor): On People: - "PE is a people business." - "Deal-making is such a people business. It's not like you can sell the stock if you don't like it, you're stuck with your partners. " (Good point - unlike public equities investors, you are in it for the long-term, with your team, partners, and your portfolio companies - it's a people business). ------ On Making Mistakes: - “Mistakes are meant to be stepping stones to success - not stepping stones to ultimate failure.” - "People learn from their mistakes." - "Mistakes early on make great investors but you have to make sure you don't make so many mistakes that you lose confidence... and just don't make the same mistakes again". - "When you make mistakes, you have to capitalize on that." ------ On losing money (Orlando asked whether Carl was going to fire him): - "I've sunk $50 million of experience into you, so you are a star now and you've got a lot of good, expensive training." - "I'm not sure you could have been as successful without stumbling a little bit early on." - "You had pride in your work and drive that it didn't put you in a stumper and didn't leave the industry. I think 1 + 1 = 10, drive and some failures are good experience." ------ On Teamwork: - "Just like in sports, today you just cannot have individual players that are brilliant but not working as a team. We got away with that for 25-30 years of private equity, but now it's become too competitive. We've got to function as a team." ------ On communication: - "You can resolve so many issues if you just communicate." ------ Sources: https://lnkd.in/eVk_Wxwq https://lnkd.in/eem_DquZ ------ #pe #privateequity #business #leadership

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After 3.5 days navigating the exhibition floors, dozens of happy hours, and fighting for meeting space at hotel lobbies, cafes, etc, I wanted to share some of my learnings from the 2024 RSA Conference. Complexity = Vulnerability: The industry is congealing around the notion that complexity is leading to vulnerability, meaning that the nature of managing dozens, if not hundreds, of solutions in a security tech stack is in itself making organizations vulnerable. The buzz continued about Palo Alto Networks' “platformization” as a response to this, and other major cyber vendors are following. Threats Growing, Budgets Tight: Despite the billions in venture capital dumped into cybersecurity, the threats and breaches continue to grow. The exponential increase in connected devices and cloud services are major components of the problem. In spite of this, there remains pressure to get a handle on corporate security spending. AI and more AI: AI — not surprising at all — was everywhere, at least in terms of marketing. The hype is still feels very much ahead of actual innovation, but areas showing the most promise are SOC manpower reduction and GenAI Pen testing. Deepfake Defense: Dedicate platforms are emerging for fighting deepfakes. The winner of the Innovation Sandbox, the competition for the most innovative early-stage startup, was Reality Defender, a deepfake detection platform. More solutions are emerging from automated detection to security awareness training. Big government presence: There was a strong emphasis on the geopolitical dimension of cyber - see, Blinken Keynote - and cyber as a national security issue. Funding slowdown alongside interest surge in AI: A sentiment of caution remains among investors. While optimism exists around new opportunities emerging in AI, investors are struggling to find differentiators, especially among the dozen or so AI SOC companies that have emerged in the past year or so. What’s more, security professional seem skeptical about adopting such tools, making investors nervous about investing at this stage in the AI hypecycle. But, early-stage AI security deals are happening and with large sized rounds and valuations. Early-stage vs Growth Investors: Early-stage investors seem to be more optimistic about investment opportunities, especially around AI security or security for AI companies. For growth-stage investors, new and attractive opportunities are still frustrating low and very competitive. The growth deals that are getting done are extremely competitive, often pre-empted, and valued-high. A lot of cyber unicorns in queue: Of the 77 security unicorns crowned since 2019, just 6 have exited above $1B via IPO or sale. Lastly, the top enterprise segments remain cloud security and identity, with growing interest in any tech related to AI (security for AI, data security, etc), but these segments are crowded and competitive. (For fun, I asked ChatGPT to create an image of the conference. Not bad...)

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Darden Restaurants recently reported its quarterly results, showcasing resilience amidst a challenging environment. While Olive Garden faced a decline in same-store sales for the second consecutive quarter, Darden's overall performance remained steady, with earnings per share surpassing expectations at $2.65 and revenue reaching $2.96 billion. Looking forward to fiscal 2025, Darden projects a promising outlook with expected earnings per share between $9.40 and $9.60 and anticipated net sales of $11.8 billion to $11.9 billion. The company's LongHorn Steakhouse segment notably reported a 4% increase in same-store sales, underscoring Darden's effective management and operational strength. With plans to invest $550 million to $600 million in capital expenditures, Darden is poised to enhance its offerings and maintain its competitive edge in the market. Read More Here: https://lnkd.in/eFgDC97p #hospitality #restaurants #technology #innovation Branded Hospitality Ventures Angelo Fama Jr. John Espy Dave George Daryl L. Cunningham Lisa McDowell Robert Anderson Ali Charri

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I have always believed that private companies are best financed by a range of investment sources with complementary risk profiles. The addition of Bob to our Advisory Board is a critical step that reflects our thinking.

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