Denis Burkov

We've seen this so many times. Your brand/customers/product is unique, but that doesn't mean you should reinvent the wheel with your commerce/marketing stack experience. When brands choose heavily-customized tech stacks, it usually leads to high implementation & maintenance costs. But more importantly, it makes it difficult to iterate down the line. You'll be stuck with your "custom" ecom site, loyalty program, unique UX for years - while your competitors will blow past you with "out of the box" tools.

12

3 Comments

My 7-year journey via Maple VC with Clay. Thanks Josh Scott at BetaKit for covering the story. I was first introduced to Kareem Amin through a fellow Canadian expat and now Maple founder, Michael Hershfield of Accrue Savings. They first met working at Sailthru in NYC where Kareem sold his first company. In 2016, Kareem started to tinker on new ideas with his cofounder Nicolae Rusan and I was fortunate to meet them at this time. This happened to align with me establishing Maple 1 in November 2016 on the simple thesis of backing Canadians building in America. We noticed that Canadian expats, who graduate from Canadian universities, go on to build some of the biggest companies in tech – Uber, Slack, Instacart, Notion, Faire, Databricks, Cloudflare, Roblox and most recently, OpenAI. Kareem and Nicolae seemed to match this pattern as two graduates from McGill University building in the US. In 2017, they landed on a very clear mission to make programming accessible to all. They painted a picture of replacing the black terminal that developers use, with a spreadsheet that is connected to the internet which could allow non-developers to automate work. What we saw immediately that gave us conviction was a very big ambition (making programming accessible to all) with a unique insight (using a spreadsheet) via a new method of no-code tooling. This reminded us of the early days at Uber: The promise to deliver you anything (big ambition) by starting with a black car that takes you from point A to point B (unique insight) via your phone (new method). We first committed to investing in Clay in Jan 2017 before the company had a lead. In June 2017, we were thrilled to learn that First Round Capital was going to lead their Seed. Sequoia Capital led the Series A in June 2019, which was surprising, since we had no revenue and were still figuring things out. However, the low-code no-code category was starting to take off. Then, they spent the next 3 years figuring out where to focus. During this phase it was fascinating to witness the many disbelievers. We had folks tell us that we should mark this investment to $0. In late 2021, they decided to narrowly focus on automating sales and this turned out to be the big unlock. Varun Anand joined as a cofounder leading their GTM efforts. The timing played out beautifully with new LLMs that we could use to automate growth in a way that hadn’t been done before. Clay relaunched in Feb 2022 with $0 in revenue and has not looked back since. We 10x’d two years in a row, all organically, achieving 100k users, 2500+ customers, and 11k people exchanging ideas in our Slack community. Maple has tripled down since the Seed through the Series B which was just led by Meritech Capital. We have a strong feeling that Clay has a real shot at realizing that vision they first shared with us 7 years ago.

332

25 Comments

Are you ready to unlock the full potential of Product Operations? 🔍 Only 2 weeks left until Product Ops: 101 - Getting Started with Product Operations on October 30, 2024, led by Denise Tilles! With only 2 spots left, this hands-on workshop will give you practical tools to implement and scale Product Ops strategies. By the end, you'll have a clear roadmap to drive better outcomes within your organization. Secure your spot now: https://lnkd.in/exBcs2V5 🎟️ #productops101 #productoperations #productmanagement #workshop

15

3 Comments

This is a really good post by Ghassan Halazon. It's easy for armchair quarterbacks to say "Canadians sell our companies out too early", or "we don't think big and therefore sell out early", but it's never that simple. I don't agree with Ghassan that first-time founders should always take the offer (eg. Google could have sold to Yahoo in 1998, and I'm sure Shopify had multiple interested suitors on their path to an IPO), but he's probably right in most situations. The first exit I had as a VC was a 5x return over about 4 years. I recall the negative comments I received from people in the ecosystem that we sold out too early to the Americans (Microsoft was the acquirer), and that we weren't thinking big enough. But none of those critics saw the slowing sales pipeline, or the increasingly competitive sales cycles, or the churn rates, or the difficult fundraising. No matter how good things are, there are always risks to the business. Most companies plateau long before they achieve a market dominating position, and distinguishing between approaching that final plateau vs. just a slowing blip before the next growth wave is difficult for entrepreneurs that are usually 'half-glass-full' people. And, on a related point, despite what many say, it is never that companies sell out early because they lack the access to capital needed to scale. They may lack capital at a valuation they desire, but that's different, and in fact a datapoint on where a business is on its path to plateauing or market domination.

33

3 Comments

Shopify Hydrogen's massive momentum and capabilities! 🚘 If we look under the hood of the Shopify Summer Edition, there are a lot of interesting things to be uncovered. One of them definitely is Hydrogen and its exploding feature set/ecosystem. 🤓 Features: (benefits of the features you can find underneath) - All out visual editors for marketeers/webmasters - Fully dynamic data/content editing in CMS and Shopify - Pre-built commerce / B2B components - Complete freedom to build anything that is possible on the web - Extremely high performant front ends - Server-side personalisation - Server-side A/B testing - Migration from liquid to Hydrogen (even step by step) - Optimistic UIs - Background page reloading - Global fast hosting included in your Shopify subscription 🤑 Benefits: - Freedom for your marketing team to build pages in a visual editor, just like in Shopify's online store - Save time by editing content from the website editor, wherever the content/data might live - Save time in development because the basis is provided, only spend time on what makes you unique - Zoom in on the features that make your brand stand out by incorporating product builders, name it and it can be built - Higher conversion because of real, deep personalisation - Higher conversion because of deep A/B testing functionalities - Save money and spread out investment due to step by step process, only focussing on what really makes the difference - Snappy UIs for better conversion --> The freedom and possibilities that are arising on the platforms are mind blowing. Features are churning out at an impressive pace which compounds over time to yield an incredibly flexible and valuable tool. #shopify #hydrogen #summeredition

16

1 Comment

We turned a skeptic into a full-fledged AI believer after closing a deal driven entirely by AI within just 30 days of launch. Two weeks ago, we went live with Zemlar Offices, Ontario's largest co-working operator with over 25 buildings. The Challenge: - High volume of inbound leads 24/7 - Leads coming from 10+ third-party sites - Limited capacity to respond quickly and convert effectively Waleed R. Javed, ZEMLAR Offices head of sales, knew there was money left on the table due to these challenges. But Zemlar was cautious about AI solutions after being burned before by a provider that couldn't handle their unique, complex workflows and that hallucinated too often. Fast forward two weeks: Our AI agent autonomously closed a sale for one of Zemlar's products. No human intervention. No phone calls. No 60-minute meetings. Just pure, efficient AI-driven sales. All in all, companies with genuine challenges are often the most open to trying new solutions. Past disappointments with AI can lead to caution, but also to greater appreciation when the right solution comes along. And in the next 6-12 months, most businesses will start to realize that AI Isn't replacing humans. It's augmenting their capabilities, handling routine tasks so the sales team can focus on high-value interactions. P.S. Are you still skeptical?

24

Just had to share this gem from Collision Conf in #Toronto. Among the #startups and VCs, I spotted a guy with a shirt saying, "Ask me about my CAC." Naturally, I asked. Sebastian Fallenbüchl, BASc., the wearer, shot back, "My CAC is getting lower as you just approached me." Genius. Seb’s witty remark was more than just a laugh — it was a reminder that business is about people. Metrics like CAC are crucial, but so are the connections and conversations that drive them down. Takeaway? Be #approachable. Humor and humanity can make all the difference. Thanks for the insight and the laugh, Seb. Here’s to more moments like these! #Networking #BusinessInsights

31

3 Comments

Toronto Startup Guide for Founders. Thank you Yoran Beisher and Michael Liu for pulling this map together and for keeping it up to date 🙌 #CommunityBuilders Now, who can do this and update the old Montreal Startup Guide for Founders?

11

Hamish McKay has run an absolute masterclass of building in public. Building in public can be controversial, especially if you’re in a market with a low barrier to entry (the Shopify App Store) and you’re fully aware that a few ankle biters are incentivized to grab some of your nascent market. However, in a platform-based ecosystem, it’s understandable and even necessary. If your whole company depends on a third-party platform to be a viable business, you have to be really careful of your primary vendor becoming your primary competitor. My hypothesis? To be taken seriously by enterprise customers, Shopify is continuing to clean up the App Store and quietly removing unmaintained or low-quality apps. I’d also bet that there are going to be a new tier of apps along the lines of, “Shopify Basics," so that new enterprise merchants don't feel like the only way to take advantage of Shopify is layering on a pile of apps. Everyone knows Amazon Basics, right? Amazon uses their treasure trove of consumer data to identify popular products and create a generic line of equal or better quality offerings. Batteries, binders, and bookshelves are all sourced, manufactured, and sold by Amazon directly. Amazon chooses the products to source and sell themselves based on data from the vendors who took the risk of selling on Amazon. We’ve all heard of the handful of large brands who refuse to sell on Amazon - or if you’re Walmart, go so far as to refuse to consider vendors who use AWS for their infrastructure. (Spoiler alert... Amazon never needed you to sell on their platform to identify market trends, they just learned about your margins.) I imagine Shopify has a few highly-paid MBAs in their strategy department combing through app store data, segmenting the data by merchant size, billing volume, or even API usage to determine which apps gain the most traction among merchants. Then, they make the decision whether to build, buy, or ignore. Hamish has set himself up to be bought by Shopify, and I bet it happens sooner rather than later. If Shopify simply rips him off, they send a very public message to the app development ecosystem that will stifle ongoing innovation. If they buy him, similar to their other acquisitions, they remind the ecosystem that you too can get rich by taking on the risk to build in this ecosystem. For us, our primary risk is the Shopify Search & Discovery app. It’s a phenomenal app and eliminating the need for apps like Boost Commerce, Fast Simon, and SearchSpring. Why pay a third-party app for functionality that Shopify offers for free? Our business risk is further amplified by sitting between not just one, but two platforms: Shopify and Google - who are actually partners! We get to watch the innovation (aka competition) happen in real time, and our success will depend upon who can build and maintain better AI-powered search algorithms for large merchants. Based on the AB tests we’ve run, our bet is on Google.

14

2 Comments

I have a simplistic term I use for the proliferation of cookie cutter rewards programs in DTC over the last ~5 years: Gen 1 Loyalty. We’ve all seen them and can can spot the typical features: * Customers provide an email address to unlock a points mechanic. * The discount is typically significant, usually starting at 5% and growing to 10%+ for the upper tiers. Customers unlock higher tiers with additional spend. * The points system is usually fairly convoluted .. said differently, 100 points rarely equals $1. As DTC brands continue to place a greater emphasis on their bottom-line, I think these types of programs are doomed to fail for one simple fact: there is zero friction for customers to adopt. And since there is zero friction to adopt, the customer has no skin in the game. What does this mean in practice? Since anyone can sign up with just an email address, the brand has effectively provided an always-on discount or 5%, 10%, or more to every customer. That’s unsustainably expensive just for someone’s contact info. These programs end up creating pretty poor customer segmentation. Yes, super-fans will adopt. But so will everyone else if they can get a meaningful discount *forever* just by sharing their email address. In my view, Gen 2 Loyalty will be about two emerging models: paid membership and branded payments. These two products share similar characteristics in that they: 1) Require the customer to put some skin in the game / there is some friction to adopt 2) Create direct economic leverage for the brand 3) Definitionally appeal primarily to a brand’s super-fans I’m obviously biased towards the branded payments model — but I think the best, most sophisticated brands will be exploring one of these two options as the foundation of their loyalty strategy.

29

The 2024 Future of Work list highlights the next generation of startup companies that are revolutionizing the way we work. 3.4 billion workers show up for a job every single day. Most of those workers are unhappy, underpaid, and underappreciated. The Future of Work has now become an existential topic for companies around the world. Over the last decade, public Work Tech companies such as Workday, Atlassian, and monday.com have enabled companies to do more with less, automated repetitive tasks, and collaborated seamlessly across geographies and time zones. The companies recognized on the 2024 Future of Work 100 have raised a cumulative $30 billion in venture capital financing, with a total valuation over $140 billion. The ranking is represented by companies across 17 countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the USA. Airtable, a low-code platform for building collaborative apps, tops the 2024 list. The 2024 Future of Work 100 honorees showcase the diversity of WorkTech companies and highlight strong market capitalization, increased efficient growth, and a newfound focus on profitability. In addition, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as an important theme with 93% of the recognized companies have implemented AI capabilities across their product lines. Business Wire #futureofwork #worktech #collaboration #startups #venturecapital Acadian Ventures

6

1 Comment

The AI hype bubble is almost over. When investors refused to fund new AI startups because they know they’re going to fail, then the AI hype bubble is starting to fail. Even the most clueless, Investors now know that this is a bubble waiting to burst like the metaverse bubble and the dotcom bubble. And nobody wants to be left, holding the back on this bubble. The era of free money iis over with interest rates sky high. When big tech companies are losing money on AI and the bigger AI startups are demonstrating that they are all dead and struggling to even have revenue, then no one is interested in funding, smaller AI startups that they don’t believe will be profitable anytime soon. People aren’t waiting for an AI unicorn to break out. They are waiting for Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and similar to start buying distressed AI startups. Collapsing companies and minimal paths to profitability doesn’t help a space that was already overhyped. Don’t forget in all this mess that the unfortunate reality is that engagement and retention don’t match installs and downloads. What I mean by this is the most basic of mobile tracking were ignored. You don’t judge success in the mobile market based on downloads or installs, but rather based on retention and engagement. What this means is, it’s not actually impressive for OpenAI to get to 100 million users quickly if 2% of them retain. The question is not how many people signed up for a free account. The question is how many monthly active users and daily active users do AI startups like OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Stability, and others have. And how many are paying customers? And what we are finding is that retention is in low single digits. The reality is that AI startups are getting users the way that mobile free to play did. And they haven’t found a way to actually make money on that. Don’t ask an AI startup how many users signed up. Ask them how many DAUs and MAUs they have. Ask them what their ARPDAU is. What you will find is that every number is low. AI startups have no idea how to do monetization, and they don’t have regular active users in any volume. What this points to is that they’re all going to fold or get bought.

38

7 Comments

A few months ago, we received a gig that took us by surprise. A request to build an online store using Shopify. We were initially puzzled. "who still uses Shopify extensively?" Lol As it turns out, many businesses do. And for good reason. Our client was seeking a robust, user-friendly e-commerce solution that could handle their growing customer base and inventory seamlessly. #shopify was the perfect fit. Its benefits were clear:   #shopify is: ✅ Ease of Use: Shopify's intuitive interface made it simple for our client to manage products and track sales without needing extensive technical knowledge. ✅ Scalability: The platform's ability to scale effortlessly meant it could grow alongside our client’s business. ✅ Customizability: With a plethora of themes and plugins, we tailored the store to perfectly match the brand's identity. ✅ Integrated Payments: Secure and varied payment options ensured a smooth checkout process for customers. With our talented experts Afribreath, we built a sleek, high-performing online store that not only met but exceeded our clients’ expectations, boosting their sales by 50%. At Afribreath, we pride ourselves on having a pool of highly skilled tech professionals ready to deliver innovative solutions tailored to your business needs. Whether it’s Shopify or another platform, our expert talent is here to elevate your online presence. Ready to transform your ideas? Let’s connect!

1

Sidewalk Labs (Part of Google), another showcase of Canadian politicians bending over for a big US corp, with ZERO tangible results 💩 Roxana and I attended a "private investor demo" session in 2019. A block of wood was passed among the audience, supposedly the NEXT BIG BREAKTHROUGH in urban development! Demo concluded, by observing a piece of wood! Building blocks of future skyscrapers! The promise? With this, Google will build a "Smart City" for us, the peasants of Toronto, in Queens Quay 🏖️🏢 Sidewalk Labs' website now points to a newer Google scam, it reads: "Build Sustainably with Google Earth"! Bait and switch, but let enough time pass so no one remembers 🤢 https://lnkd.in/gd3B-a6m Guess now the investors and Ontario Government | Gouvernement de l’Ontario have shit loads of these wooden blocks, ready to shove up somewhere, to find a use for! All because the name "Bloomberg" sounds authoritative enough to our ears? Surely that's capital well spent, instead of investing in local talent! 🤔 Will Canada's tech ecosystem ever crawl out of Silicon Valley's shadow, and stand on its own? ⌚👀⛔

46

2 Comments

There are two main reasons I started SalesMVP Lab this year. One mission driven, one personal. Mission: To help as many technical founders as possible learn basic sales skills. I've been in the early-stage startup ecosystem for a long time. First started in Halifax Nova Scotia, where I saw plenty of really smart engineers have great ideas, but fail to take them to market because they did not know how to sell or grow their company. I thought this might be isolated to smaller tech markets, but then I found the same when I lived/worked in Toronto. Then I started traveling for conferences, meeting a ton of founders along the way, and it was clear that this is a widespread problem globally. Lots of smart, technical folks know how to build a product, but fail to launch a startup. So I made it my mission to teach as many founders as possible. I do this through content, playbooks, courses, and coaching. Personal: To increase my income while slowing down. I wanted to get away from the VC-backed, growth at all cost world. It was fun and exciting when I was in my early twenties, working in a downtown office in Toronto, going out for drinks with colleagues. Half work, half social life. But my priorities changed as I got older. And the social life aspect pretty much went away with WFH. Then I had kids, so I didn't really need the social life anymore. But what I realized was that I averaged 60+ hours a week. At various pay (early-stage doesn't pay too well). With options. Only one company I worked at exited, and I got a bit of cash from my options. Nothing life changing though. And for me to make more money, I needed to get bigger titles. Which comes with more responsibility, especially in managing teams. You hold a bigger bag. There's more pressure. Again, that was fun, until 2022 hit, and the playbook became reduce + restructure. And I had to "lay off" people every quarter. Then rebuild teams from the ground up. And do this over, and over, and over again. Smile for you team in a Friday meeting knowing that half of them would be gone on Monday. It became draining. The money was amazing at that level, but it also created golden handcuffs. The longer I would stay, the more I would depend on the money. The more stressed I'd be. I burnt out three times between 2021-2023. Change had to happen. There's no reason someone has to work 60+ hours a week to make good money. So I went out on my own. I can work on my mission, at a much reduced workload, and make similar money. My clients (founders) win, because they can do sales. My health wins, because I have energy. My family wins, because I can actually spend time with them. My bank account wins, because I'm making good cash. This is the life of a bootstrapped solopreneur. It's not always like this, I know folks who are struggling. But with my dozen years of GTM experience, I know a thing or two about product + marketing + sales + bizops. And I get to put it all in practice. On my own terms.

402

69 Comments

🚀 Just had an incredible experience meeting Keily Blair, CEO of OnlyFans in Toronto! Here's a mind-blowing stat: OnlyFans has paid out $15 billion to creators since 2016. Yes, billion with a B. 💸 The company takes 1/5th of the payments generated. With over 3 million content creators on the platform, it was fascinating to discuss the future direction of the business - which really has a ripple effect... OnlyFans has already shifted culture and how we think about creators. But their next big wave goes beyond content and culture—it’s about challenging traditional banking norms. With its massive financial footprint, OnlyFans is pretty well poised to reshape the financial landscape for lawful, profitable businesses often marginalized due to stigma. (👋 Shoutout to Sextech School founders, Women of SexTech, and other businesses that struggle to transact or even open business bank accounts.) Keily’s background as a partner at a law firm specializing in cyber, privacy, and security makes her the fit to take on the big banks. I love learning about how people found their ways into these sorts of spaces - for her, OF was a former client (and a fav client). I learned so much in our meeting. One last nugget that stood out: OFTV (their safe-for-work streamer) just licensed their first reality show to Netflix! At this point, the mainstream influence of OF, whether it's in entertainment or financial sector, is undeniably having a hand in what our future looks like.

280

23 Comments

The Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentive is one of Canada's most powerful tools for fostering tech innovation - enabling businesses to recoup up to 65% of their R&D salary costs. Here's the troubling reality though: While this program distributes ~$4B annually to 20,000 businesses, an unnecessary "SR&ED consulting industry" has emerged that extracts $400M-800M from these funds. Why? These consultants capitalize on companies' fears about complex paperwork, despite the fact that 94% of SR&ED applications are approved. They charge 10-20% of the tax credit simply to complete forms. Let that sink in: Nearly a billion dollars meant for Canadian innovation is instead diverted to middlemen who add minimal value. At Publicus, we're passionate about streamlining government processes through automation. While SR&ED reform isn't our current focus, we believe in raising awareness about the systemic, government-related inefficiencies that hold back Canadian tech companies. #CanadaTech #GovTech #Grants #Innovation

58

8 Comments

Last week, Zach and I visited a large partner rolling out Yembo across 400 locations in the US and Canada. We spent the entire day with them, working with their teams to understand their workflows. It wasn’t just about integrating Yembo. It was about: → Identifying gaps, → Fine-tuning our product to streamline processes, → And setting them up for long-term success. We met with their executive team, diving into their future vision. ↳ We outlined specific initiatives, ↳ Shared Yembo’s future direction, ↳ And presented a roadmap showing how we’ll power their growth. At Yembo, our mission is simple: Make our customers' lives easier. We’re focused on building partnerships where we can add real tangible value. -- At Yembo we use AI to make property inspections easy using smartphone photos and videos. Our virtual surveys provide photo ID of each item, streamlined guided video calls, built-in estimating, and the platform gets new features shipped each week. If you're a moving company, book a demo here: https://hubs.li/Q02PjX_g0

59

11 Comments