Chris Potter

I had a great conversation with Evan M. about my career and entrepreneurial journey, including getting into the venture capital industry and why I founded Staircase Ventures with a unique philosophy and approach. Some quotes: "We benefit in Canada from terrific technical talent. In addition, we are seeing more repeat entrepreneurs and more experienced start-up leaders than we did 5 to 10 years ago... The other thing is that US investors want to invest in Canada. Ten years ago, US investors were reluctant to invest in Canadian companies and if they did, it would be on the condition that they move to the Valley. That is no longer the case." "I started my own fund not for the sake of starting my own fund, but because I wanted to devote my time to working with entrepreneurs and to serving them, helping them to build impactful companies. I had some ideas about how venture could be done differently and I wanted to put those ideas into action. That is what led me to start Staircase Ventures... There's three unique aspects of Staircase Ventures. The first is our founder development platform which is designed to help accelerate founders' development and help them perform their best every day." "Life is long and how you treat people and how you perform really, really matters in the long run. Life is not a short-term game; it is what you do and how you show up, day-after-day, over a period of many years that will determine your future." Listen here: https://lnkd.in/gpHprCt8

68

4 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

Custom stacks can lead to two very real problems: depending on custom development and increased tech debt. Combined, your pace slows and ultimately, your trade-off is innovation and growth. That’s why Mejuri went from a fully custom stack to Shopify. Before Shopify, Mejuri was on an entirely custom stack: custom ecommerce, payments service, and middleware that was built to connect their custom ecommerce site to their point of sale system [POS]. This led to a ton of challenges. They were spending too much time building and maintaining 3rd party integrations to coordinate channels, data, and functionality between systems. With limited resources and team members, the trade-off of building custom features was they were not able to address their mounting technical debt. Addressing those issues in-house, slowed down their pace of innovation making them unable to deploy features as fast as they needed to. That’s the ‘invisible’ cost component with a custom stack. You spend an inordinate amount of time building custom features at the cost of innovation. Brands can avoid that with Shopify. Shopify is a natively unified ecommerce and POS system so everything just works together really really well. It doesn’t require middleware or integrations. Your customer, order, and product data flows to both channels from a single source of truth. It’s simpler and allows you to move faster. Hear about from Mejuri yourself. Rohit Nathany, the Chief Digital Officer sat down with us to talk about the pain points they faced on a custom stack. As Rohit says, what better way to simplify than to have a unified ecommerce and POS solution? See the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/eyCSdVgf

472

24 Comments

Looking forward to sharing GenAI insights in a conversation between investors and operators. See you at Invest!

33

If you're a Canadian entrepreneur, investor, or founder then this past week has made it painfully clear that when it comes to innovation and economic recovery the calvary won't be coming and is in fact running in the opposite direction. The federal government and associated regional innovation support agencies (ie Invest Ottawa) are failing to look at solutions aimed at effectively addressing an overall decrease in entrepreneurship and economic activity across the nation and it is now on us, as resilient Canadian entrepreneurs, to empower those who can bring the most value to the table if we are to strive for the quickest path forward towards economic recovery and helping the average Canadian family better their quality of life. I am proud to announce that RHA Ventures Inc. has answered that call 👏 In the face of rising costs for domestic businesses in Canada and competition from abroad, RHA Ventures, an Ontario-based venture capital firm specializing in cutting-edge technologies, announced today its investment in Real Life Robotics, a Waterloo-based company designing real robots for real businesses. This investment marks a significant milestone in the development of Real Life Robotics and underscores RHA Ventures' commitment to supporting true, tried, and tested founders and Ontario’s growing startup ecosystem despite an overall decrease in entrepreneurship across the rest of Canada. “Real robots, real people, and real-world challenges are what differentiate RLR as a technology company. We could not be more thrilled to have RHA Ventures, a group of experienced founders and problem solvers, on board as strategic advisors and investors as we help elevate Ontario globally as a home for first-in-class robotics and automation technology - empowering businesses with transformative robotics solutions that unlock new levels of efficiency, reliability, and scalability,” - Cameron Waite, CEO of Real Life Robotics. The numbers clearly show that the cost of getting involved in a business or launching a new product is too high for the average inexperienced Canadian and our economy has slowed in growth accordingly. On a macro level, we are placing too high an importance on new founders in a down market when we should be rewarding and doubling down on our true, tried and tested investors, founders and legacy businesses who have shown they are willing to take the risk. Thank you, Brian Foster and the rest of the team at RHA Ventures Inc. for taking this first step of the journey with us 🙏 https://lnkd.in/gSr5TP48

63

8 Comments

Does BC Tech have it right? Next week I'll be on stage with an amazing line up of leaders at the BetaKit Town Hall: Vancouver. From my conversations so far, some clear differences have emerged from the vibes of the Toronto tech sector. -Unequivocal in their belief that BC is where they want to live, and so no question about keeping their companies there. -Just as sick as everyone else with trying to sell in Canada, but seemingly much more at peace with straight to US sales approach. -Stymied in raising in Canada, much more likely to extoll the virtues of bootstrapping and to have avoided the pitfalls of irrational growth -Influenced by their natural surroundings and research communities, more focused on high impact verticals on life science and climate tech, and more likely to raise the potential of tech to address big challenges like forest fires -More likely to praise provincial government programs for getting things right (although quick to shred SR&ED) Not all rosy, to be sure, but some low key BC rizz I'm looking forward to hearing more about.

22

5 Comments

Some Shopify brands are customer-centric, and then there's DOLAN. When you meet a customer-centric Founder, it's unmistakable. Jodie Dolan built an impressive scrubs brand that emerged in a competitive market with a best-in-class product and an organizational framing that truly puts the customer at the center of *everything* they do. As a size-inclusive brand, that obsession over the customer experience led her to provide her web visitors with the confidence to convert with The Dolan Difference. If you can't find your size, they'll straight up make you a custom pair. Now that's an unwavering commitment to the customer. Keep up the impressive growth, Jodie Dolan and Philip Atkins!

32

7 Comments

Building a new category is tricky, and it's come to my attention that people don't know what FERMÀT is. So we asked...how would they describe it? Maximilien Langlois answer (Founder of HYPE10) was fascinating: “(FERMÀT) is a landing page solution that necessitates very little time to validate ideas and prove theories for an e-commerce brand.” Max isn't wrong. We build landing pages. But we're not a landing page solution; we're a full-funnel solution. And we help you do it quickly. With FERMÀT, you can spin up funnels at the same speed as ads. That’s the category we’re creating. I'm happy to see that Max is using the tool to experiment, innovate, and push boundaries. It's a testament to the versatility and power of our platform. So whether you're looking to validate theories, optimize marketing strategies, or boost conversions, FERMÀT is here to help you achieve your goals with efficiency. You can catch our chat with Max on our FERMÀT Friday channel, and his full answer in the video.

22

3 Comments

I just came across this awesome example of how Shopify Inc's CEO Tobias Lütke ran a company-wide remote work experiment in 2017 that helped the company's anti-fragility when Covid-19 hit three years later. Background - Shopify is always trying to help employees stay curious, for example getting employees to use the mouse with their left hand for a day. In line with this, in 2017 Shopify closed the company’s offices for a month, requiring their then 800 employees to work from home. This was a strategic move to enhance the company’s adaptability. During that month, the company and its leaders encountered unexpected hurdles, such as interns struggling to find food without the office kitchens. This challenged the employees to get creative, for example - the kitchen staff bought and ran a food truck! Lütke explained their philosophy on building adaptability in an interview with The Motley Fool "One of the things that we've been trying to do is ... inoculate the insides of the company from the crazy changes that exist on the outside. All of us are on boats in very stormy waters in the industry today, because there's a million different micro trends that are all hitting us in the form of tidal waves at the same time." (1) Imagine how much this experiment readied Shopify's leaders for Covid - a time when they simultaneously needed to go remote and respond to a massive increase in the number of entrepreneurs needing their help? This builds on Lütke's views on the importance of "Antifragility," where a system responds to disruption not just with stability, but by getting stronger. This concept was introduced in Nassim Taleb's book of the same title, one Lütke loves and tells everyone to read (as he said in an interview with Andreessen Horowitz General Partner, Sriram Krishnan (2)). Antifragility is such an important idea for building adaptable companies that MIT teaches the concept to its entrepreneurs. Bill Aulet explains how and why the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship does this in an article by MindFrame Connect https://lnkd.in/e_vyxzg5 Enjoy! Sources 1: https://lnkd.in/ewmUkshD 2: https://lnkd.in/e6SkrH5N

10

4 Comments

𝐋𝐞𝐭’𝐬 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐤 𝐀𝐈 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲—𝐀 𝐏𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡 There’s been a lot of buzz lately among founders and entrepreneurs about AI driving efficiency. I've had some incredible conversations with folks at Shopify, Lemonade, and a few other companies over the last few quarters, and I wanted to share something we’ve been working on at Yotpo—something very practical that shows real progress and that most companies can implement. This isn’t about AI in our product lines but rather how we’re using AI to drive efficiency within our operations. To give you some context, we have several initiatives across departments aimed at giving our people superpowers, and we even founded a dedicated team under Dan's leadership to focus on this. We’ve made some solid progress, but our latest internal release is particularly exciting. Yotpo UGC runs roughly 6,000+ QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews) a year. For those unfamiliar, a QBR is where our CSMs prepare a full analysis of an account, map out opportunities for improvement, and present it to the brand to optimize their UGC program. As you can imagine, preparing these decks takes a lot of time and requires a deep understanding of both the brand and its UGC strategy. After analyzing the process, we found that the average CSM spends 2-3 hours preparing for each QBR! So, Dan partnered with Katie and the team to tackle this. Their solution? The QBR AI model. With just a click of a button, the AI dives into the account, benchmarks it against our entire database, and provides the most quality insights, recommendations, and a status update for the merchant. I’ve seen a few of the QBR decks generated by this AI, and honestly, I was blown away. 𝐖𝐞’𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐂𝐒𝐌𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 12,000 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐚 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 while improving the quality of the insights we provide. If you’re in B2B, I highly recommend looking into building your own QBR AI to save time and boost quality. If you have any questions or want to discuss this further, drop a comment or send me a message. Let’s keep the conversation going.

65

13 Comments

We just had a record breaking month, and we are not slowing down at Maple. We've just sent out an email to our entire user base, committing to some major product launches in May. At Maple, we pride ourselves on shipping great features, at a high velocity, for the families who use us. So here is what we have cooking: - A new calendar integration. Finally, Microsoft Outlook will be available in Maple. -A significant overhaul is coming to how people will use Maple, taking a year of feedback and delivering on making Maple easier to get in and out of your favorite tools. -Introducing new customizations, including cover photos on your folders. -AND we have made Maple Plus free to use for 7 days before committing to a monthly or annual cost!!!! To kick off May, we are rolling out our first investment to bring your family up front and center. This is both a healthy reminder of who you are doing all this hard work for, and it makes a far more pleasant experience for our tablet users- who now can benefit from Maple being a collage of family photos when it is just resting on your countertop. A modern take on your family photos sitting on your fridge. You are going to love these updates.

50

3 Comments

I’m completely blown away by this. It’s now my go-to for any brand, hands down. Why? Because it’s ridiculously simple and takes CRO integrations to the next level. Massive props to the Shopify team for creating a framework that truly delivers on the often overhyped promise of “simple integrations.” 1 click? Well, okay—2 clicks if you count hitting “Save Changes.” This Shopify App Embed lets you deploy your entire bank of Instagram, TikTok, and studio shoppable videos in zero time. It’s so easy, it feels like cheating. Why does this matter for product videos? Videos are the MVP of ecommerce—more engagement, higher conversions, bigger baskets. But for most brands I speak to, using videos on product pages is a faff: Why? - Manual Uploads: Adding videos by SKU or embedding across templates is chaos—tracking, updating, and coordinating = a logistical headache. - Scalability Issues: The more products you have, the harder video management gets. - Placement Complexity: Where do you put videos? Above the fold? Buried in a carousel? Let’s have another meeting. - Maintenance Overload: Updating your video library involves agencies, sprint cycles, and endless waiting. - Performance: Which videos are actually driving plays or conversions? Wait—how do you even know? Let’s call an analytics meeting. Anyone? So, what does the ideal product video solution look like? This approach: ✅ Automatic Video Placement: Forget manual embedding—videos should dynamically appear where they perform best. ✅ Above-the-Fold Optimisation: Videos belong in high-conversion zones without disrupting your page design. ✅ Effortless Updates: Instagram, TikTok, Studio edits - Sync your entire video library across all product pages in real time —no repetitive tasks or delays. ✅ Lightning-Fast Page Speeds: Lightweight, mobile-first. Period. ✅ Showcase Related Videos: Multiple videos help customers visualise your product and convert faster so let’s show them. Sauce Hero Product Videos: We went further: 🚀 Dynamic Video Syncing: Automatically map videos to SKUs, variations, and product groups. 🚀 Custom Placement Options: Position videos above the fold, in floating animated thumbnails, in galleries, in edutainment videos hubs or as standalone hero content with smart templates. 🚀 Mobile-First Design: Optimised for all devices, anywhere. 🚀 Analytics Integration: Understand how videos impact engagement, AOV efficiency, and conversions directly from your dashboard. 🚀 1-Click Integration: (Yes, really!) enable the Sauce Hero product Videos via Shopify's App Embed and start displaying videos—no code, no hassle, no extra work. A huge thanks to the brilliant minds at Shopify and a subtle hat tip to Jo-Anne for driving enterprise success like its a county final to win. This is how you redefine what “seamless integration” actually means. Let’s make product pages punch above their weight. 💪 #Ecommerce #Shopify #HeroProductVideos #VideoCommerce #SauceSocialCommerce

11

3 Comments

My first recommendation to parents is to try to delay their children's first phone for as long as possible. One of the reasons is that this will give them more time to enjoy their childhood without screens, allowing them more time to engage in the real world. Of course, one must consider their social situation and try to prevent social isolation. Therefore, it's beneficial to gather the parents of their friends and agree on a time when all of you will give your children their first phone. This way, socially, the child won't feel disconnected. On the other hand, it's essential to understand that in the digital age we live in, digital platforms are a part of our lives and our children's lives. Similar to a road we use daily, which holds many dangers, particularly for our children, we need to guide and educate our children on how to behave online. Just like the real world, the digital world is part of our lives and also holds its own risks and challenges, requiring us to guide, educate, and protect our children. However, unlike the physical world where we can see our children and guide them, in the digital world, it's challenging to know what they are doing online. This lack of information makes it difficult for us to help and protect them. Some parents might buy a basic phone that allows only calls as a temporary solution. Eventually, the children will need parental guidance when transitioning to using a smartphone as they take their first steps in the digital world. Other parents mistakenly believe that giving their children an old phone will keep them safe. Yet, even with an old phone, children can access social platforms and the digital world. Today, parents can use online child protection services that provide practical tools to cope with the challenges posed by the digital age. These tools include helping kids overcome screen addiction, tracking their screen time and app usage, and receiving alerts about events happening to children on social platforms that require parental intervention, such as cyberbullying, shaming, attempts by predators to connect with children, or exposure to inappropriate content like drugs, alcohol, or dangerous trends. One such service is #Surfie, offered by PureSight, providing tools like these for parents.

5

2 Comments

Some more thoughts on why we think SecondShop.com is one of the more ambitious investments we've made.

18

1 Comment

Greatly enjoyed the conversation between Kyle and Mark (ex VP revenue at Shopify). Some interesting bits: > shopify did not have variable compensation for sales leaders in order to encourage a long term focus. > kyle’s own advice to founders is to steer *away* from the typical 50-50 base to variable comp structure for sales leaders. Series A-B companies are constantly changing quotas and forecasts, and having a high variable comp brings in a short term focus which leads to bad customer quality, and culture problems. > once a week, Mark, a sales leader, would meet with someone from engineering to understand their mental model of the product and business, and understand the technical challenges they grapple with. This was super helpful in influencing the product roadmap.

49

6 Comments

Shopify showed the world that simplifying something complex can generate $8B in annual revenue. Here’s how I’m bringing that lesson to the company I co-founded: When Shopify started, they were turned down by almost all VCs - The market was deemed way too small.    What those VCs missed - Shopify was creating its own market. The VCs didn’t see this because they were only looking at existing markets. Now, Shopify is closing in on $8B annual revenue. “Market sizing gets much larger as friction is removed.” Tobi Lütke, co-founder and CEO of Shopify. Because taking something complex, making it simple, and inviting new players into the e-commerce space. Expanding the market size… This is essentially what we’re trying to do with private market investing at Stableton. Private companies that have reached the growth equity or pre-IPO phase are typically fast-growing, well-funded, often profitable and can provide strong returns to investors. The problem: It is out of reach for most investors, including banks and wealth managers. And even here, most of them typically only participate in primary funding rounds. The only way to invest is by participating in secondary transactions, which are complex deals many investors are unaware of. We’re taking this complex problem and making it simple. We’ve built a portfolio of the Top 20 pre-IPO tech companies by making 50-100 secondary transactions per year. As the go-to partner for pre-IPO investing, we can enable financial firms and their end clients to participate and subscribe to this portfolio, much like an ETF. This way, they get exposure to some of the most attractive private assets without ever engaging in a single secondary trade. From complex to simple. Want to learn more? Check out Stableton’s Navigator newsletter for the latest investing trends and insights: https://lnkd.in/eBE5GxAK #secondaries #innovation #growthequity

37

9 Comments