Niccolo Perra

How to onboard a team member in the worst way possible I’ve worked in many companies in my short career as a software engineer, and one stood out as the worst onboarding experience. On the first day, you’re expected to watch a video of the CEO ‘welcoming’ you and talking about their culture, I was then given a windows laptop that barely worked and I had to submit tickets already to the IT team to fix it. So there I was in the first day just sitting at my desk waiting for IT to respond and with only a single interaction with my supervisor. One of the things I noticed with great companies, is that if there’s an individual joining a team, they get their entire team to interact with the new guy, as early as possible. It could be through team building activities, a clear induction, team lunch, anything that would get them to establish themselves as ‘friends’. Because believe it or not, the more your team likes and cares about each other, the more productive and enjoyable it becomes for them to work together.

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Haha. Slush was wild! Watch my supercut below. Once again, we spent most of the time hustling and building partnerships, but I did manage to hear one talk by Benedict Evans, and it was very insightful. Bundling and unbundling SaaS is the only way to make money, and we can help with that 💪 I think what surprised me the most was the presence of so many major American VC funds—Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Pear VC, … Maybe Europe is not so uninnovative and stagnant after all? 🇪🇺🚀 We didn’t win this time, but I’m still very proud of us being in the top 20 out of 1,000 startups. More and more people are starting to see the enormous potential. Congrats to our fellow top 20 builders: Pal | Digital Palliative Care, arterioscope, ContentRadar, DevAlly, Flowcore, FULLY AI, Inzipio, Lendorse, Metabob, Crono, MinersAI, Mohana, Pyrpose, Senara GmbH, Sightwise GmbH, Signatur Biosciences, SLY , Supersight, and of course OASYS NOW🥇 Reach out if you’d like to team up. Listing your SaaS on https://gralio.ai is completely free. 💪

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Congrats on your recent VC deal, CorPower Ocean! And congrats NordicNinja VC on investing in the deal! We know how hard it is to fundraise, and we celebrate your success! In your due diligence process, was it easy to figure out the relevant competitors for your tech? On our platform, you can enter any technology term you want, like “OCEAN WAVE ENERGY”, and you’ll get an instant, global market map (https://lnkd.in/ekNwjK_s).   We’re sharing the promo code for 5 free market maps in the comments too. Don’t forget to use the filters, so you only see the companies that fit your investment thesis. Definitely test out other technology terms too. Maybe this will help on your next successful deal!

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One of the most exciting features we’ve launched in a long time… We try and make data and reporting as simple as possible for our users at Tenzo - Restaurant PerformanceOps, but in the past that meant not giving them the ability to explore or build reports themselves. Because building reports from scratch is no simple feat; there are a lot of technical challenges that present themselves when dealing with the sheer amount of data that restaurants generate. So we tried to figure out the best way to keep things simple, but still allow users the flexibility they wanted when it came to building out the right dashboards for them. And so the card wizard was born… Now users can explore and experiment with new KPIs and metrics, create the best dashboards for themselves and their teams, and make sure that everyone is speaking the same reporting language. Access to over a hundred thousand reports, but in a simple and intuitive interface. One reporting language, but personalised reports.   

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DPW: Are Intake/Orchestration and “Roll-Your-Own” GenAI Initiatives Targeting the Same Pain? It’s been a fun few days at DPW, seeing so many faces, both old and new. While Matthias Gutzmann has kept me busy with panels and speaking, I’ve had ample free time to check-in on a number of sessions while also talking to dozens of attendees. My favorite session thus far was my Spend Matters colleauge Pierre Mitchell “drilling” three procurement suites on stage from Ivalua, Coupa and SAP. Pierre has a level of mastery and depth I never achieved as an analyst. As much fun as that session was, it almost felt secondary to me in terms of the real sub-theme that feels to be emerging in the “traditional” procurement technology market outside of high growth energy areas such as supply chain risk, direct materials procurement and vertical/category enablement. Let’s get to that now. One session I sat in on this morning was run by Shakil Nathoo of Kearney where the primary theme was “roll-your-own” GenAI. Shakil and his colleauges surveyed ~100 procurement execs and found that of this group, 66 planned to build “AI” in house, 33 planned to build it with external support and only 4 planned to buy it. And GenAI budgets, he also pointed our, represent a large double-digit percentage of overall procurement tech budgets — sometimes as much as half! Yep, you read that correctly. At numerous other sessions, procurement intake/orchestration took centerstage, including a keynote today with Zip co-founders who argued that GenAI will replace, not augment, the traditional spend management suite (I also spoke at an an ORO Labs side event which dove into significant detail on intake/orchestration use cases). You’re probably asking: what does intake/orchestration have to do with GenAI (and the “roll-your-own” dominant crowd). I see both as working on the same problem in different ways. And that problem is simple: our legacy S2P and P2P systems aren’t keeping up with the demands of the business and we’re also not taking advantage of the tech we’ve bought already. Both GenAI (through self-directed initiatives) and intake/orchestration are aiming to tackle this pain and problem in different ways. But I don’t think most people are seeing just yet that the “packaged app” vs. home-grown solution is perhaps the new investment battleground in procurement tech. #intake #orchestration #GenAI #DPW

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Why Scaling a Software Business is Like Building a Legacy 👨‍💻🏗️ 👇👇 To all my fellow founders out there, we know that running a software company is more than just about the code—it’s about doing what we love and building something that lasts. 🏆 In my journey with Perseus Software Solutions, I’ve learned a few key lessons about scaling efficiently: 1️⃣ Prioritize Smart Growth: It's tempting to take on every project, but focus on what truly aligns with your long-term vision. Not all growth is good growth. 📈 2️⃣ Cost Efficiency Matters: Hiring skilled developers at competitive rates isn’t just about saving money—it’s about extending your runway and reinvesting into growth. 🚀🚀 3️⃣ Relationships Over Transactions: We’ve all seen it—businesses that prioritize short-term wins often miss out on long-term success. Build trust with clients and partners, and the rest will follow. 🤝 Remember, scaling a software company isn't about rushing—it’s about steady, strategic growth that ensures sustainability and success for the long haul. 🚀 Let’s keep building legacies! 🔧💼 #TechFounders #ScalingSmart #BusinessGrowth #PerseusJourney #Entrepreneurship

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💥Martin Rusnak - Interim CTO joined The $500k CTO Podcast as a VIP guest on Friday. He's worked as an interim or fractional CTO for 15 (!) SaaS companies and shared lots of interesting insights about: 1. The Difference Between Interim and Fractional CTOs: Martin explained how these roles differ in terms of time commitment and responsibilities.💡 2. Importance of Building Trust Quickly: As an interim CTO, gaining trust fast is key. Martin shared how he builds strong relationships within the first few weeks to ensure success. 📝 3. Balancing Technical and Soft Skills: Communication, emotional intelligence, and empathy in leading tech teams is more important than deep technical skills. 4. Continuous Learning: Staying updated with the latest tech trends is vital. Martin talked about how he keeps his knowledge fresh and relevant, even with a packed schedule. 🤓 5. Networking and Getting Clients: If you are looking to enter this field, Martin's tips on networking and finding clients can be useful. Let me know in the comments if you'd like to get notified when it's LIVE. #TechLeadership #CTO #Podcast #TechInsights #Leadership #FractionalCTO #InterimCTO #ContinuousLearning #Networking

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One of the best books I've read on building lovable products. I recall meeting Marty Cagan back in 2009 during a Product Coaching Bootcamp (offered by SVPG) at HP-Snapfish, and again in 2012 at eBay. There is so much to learn from Marty, he is as inspiring as the book. This book is a must read for all roles involved in building products. #productmanagement

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Built and Led by Software Engineers, for Our Clients! One of the things I’m most proud of at YLD is that we’re a software consultancy founded and led by engineers not sales teams. This engineer-driven approach is more than just a point of pride, it differentiates us for our clients as where you might normally get bogged down with pre-sales calls with untechnical people. With YLD you will be speaking to someone with a deep understanding of tech at the leadership level from the start, this means we're able to: - Prioritise quality and innovation over quick wins. - Focus on solving real challenges rather than pushing unnecessary products or team structures. - Ensure technical transparency and trust in every step of the journey. Being led by people who understand the craft means that we build partnerships based on true tech insights and meaningful outcomes not just sales metrics.

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Exciting milestone alert! 🎉 Quick update on what we've been cooking up at NoLimit Creatives. For the past six months, our team has been heads-down rebuilding our Design as a Subscription (DaaS) platform from the ground up. Let me tell you - the wishlist was LONG. Between feature requests, business needs, and customer feedback, we had our work cut out for us! But rather than trying to boil the ocean, we broke it down into three manageable phases: Phase 1 ✅ (Just wrapped!) We tackled the foundations first - streamlining the user experience, adding AI-powered design briefs, and making sure our customers have everything they need to succeed. Phase 2 🚀 (Just getting started!) Now comes the fun part - we're upgrading how customers and designers communicate, rolling out some exciting new offerings, and focusing on product-led growth initiatives. Phase 3 🔮 (On deck) The final piece will bring new efficiency tools for our designers, seamless integrations, and deeper insights to help us keep improving. While there's more to do (isn't there always?), I'm beyond proud of what our team has accomplished. Moving into Phase 2 feels like hitting another gear, and I couldn't be more excited about where we're headed. Major props to the incredible NoLimit Creatives team - y'all make the magic happen! 💪

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😎 🤜 Proud moment 🤛😎 Today we make it official that Wes Bush (THE PLG guru) has joined Niimblr as an advisor. 🤔 But what is PLG even you might think!? Product Led Growth is about letting the product do the talking and driving the growth of the company. Imagine a piece of software that’s super intuitive to use, delivers immediate value, and hooks you with its features—so much so that you naturally want to keep using it, sharing it with your team or clients. 🎯 Why is PLG so well aligned with the Niimblr vision? We are building the simplest, most powerful review experience that anyone can pickup and use. By adopting PLG and giving full focus on the product + user experience, we are actually ALSO giving full focus to our business strategy. It's a win-win, for Niimblr and for our users. 🧔Tell me more about Wes! Wes is ALL about PLG. He is the founder of ProductLed, and has helped more than 300 SaaS companies generate over $1 billion in self-serve revenue. His bestselling book, "Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself", has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide and is considered a seminal work in the field. 🌈 🦄 In a rainbow+unicorn world, the best possible scenario for any startup with a PLG strategy is to get help & advice from the best out there. And we just did. I can’t wait to work with Wes and team Niimblr (looking at you Per & Celine) to push upwards and onwards 🚀 See comments for full press release. 👇 #PLG #Advisor #WesBush #saas #startup #growth #proudmoment

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With our $61.500 USD (430.000 DKK) investment We will not hire anyone. Here is how we will use it: Monthly costs Salaries Marius - 2200 USD (15.000 DKK) Villads - 2200 USD (15.000 DKK) Software licenses Total - 1100 USD (7.500 DKK) Food (dinner for the long evenings) Total - 1000 USD (7.500 DKK) Office 2 desks - 600 USD (4.000 DKK) Other - 1000 USD (7.000 DKK) Monthly income: Recurring revenue - 3250 USD (23.000 DKK) In short, we’ve been able to build a product from 0 to 1 and get to 3250 MRR without funding I think every founder would agree that it was way harder to get from 0 to 3250 MRR than to go from 3250 MRR to 10.000 MRR When we hit that we will be profitable Which means that we can grow faster The key insight that Sebastian Seilund and Esben Friis-Jensen taught us In our situation, money does not guarantee that we grow faster, it can easily be a distraction So we will continue to do everything ourselves Keep executing 🦄 #investment #unicorn #StartUp #founder 

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When sharing deal flow, quality is everything. That means strong companies, solid founders, attractive markets. But it also means strong fit with the investor receiving the deal. And that can be challenging to get right, especially at scale. We've built an AI-powered scoring mechanism in Notissia that helps investors identify which companies from their deal flow could be a good fit for each investor in their network. The best part: it's incredibly easy to maintain investor preferences and send the right deals to the right people. Link in first comment to learn more or try it free.

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Can I have your opinion on something? The other day, we had a feedback call with one of our users who prompted us to reevaluate a feature that I initially discarded as a "distraction" and not part of our core product when we planned our MVP. Maintaining our fleeting focus while building a startup is no easy feat, so I am concerned about "branching" out with secondary use cases. Omnai is a news platform for internationals that distributes daily news in 32 languages through email. Our core value is to provide seamless access to local information to those who don't speak the native language where they live (currently only in Denmark). The idea our user shared with us, which I had previously discarded when my co-founder brought it up, is to enable users to select two languages, such that their news comes in their native language and the language they might be trying to learn side by side (like the picture below). That way, readers can get language training while reading relevant news. It's a win-win on paper, and the feature would be fairly simple to build. However, I'm curious if it's wise to add a seemingly unrelated use case to a product that is as young as ours. Will Omnai primarily become a news platform or language tool? What if users actually like that feature more? Will that incentivize us to double down on language learning instead? I'm not particularly passionate about that, so opening that door might be risky. Maybe it's such an obvious extension of what we're already doing that I shouldn't worry too much about it and put it to the test. What do you think about this as a strategic decision? And if you are living in or imagine living in a foreign country, would you be willing to pay a €5-10 monthly subscription for this feature/tool? All input is cherished. 🙏

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If you don't have equity in the company - stop working like you do. I think that the same applies to working in a normal job as it does when working with clients. Time and time again do I see and hear (and experience personally) stories of freelancers/contractors and even ordinary employees burning themselves out for some outcome that's not theirs to obtain. What do I mean by that? Of course, there will always be times when pushing yourself is required, like when meeting the criteria for a promotion, or when getting a critical release out, or getting a project back on track ... but this feeling that we need to just grind endlessly is unproductive and damaging. Instead, it's important to set clear boundaries with your work and your life. Whatever that may be. For most, it's 5pm, or the weekend - and make sure you stick to it. In the last few weeks, I went through an entire mindset shift with my business. There was one project I did where I grinded for weeks on end and threw all my personal time and even my normal business operations like sales and marketing out the window - just to appease a client and make them happy because I felt like that was my god-given responsibility. And to a degree, we have a responsibility to serve our clients, customers and employers - but we shouldn't forget the responsibility to ourself in the end. Take it from somebody who has literally stressed themselves to tears and minor panic attacks in the past few months just to get work done on time... which is the reality of being a founder that most will never see. Remember to set your boundaries and take care of yourself - take the time to go out and enjoy your life after work. You owe it to yourself to be happy. And after all of that - you'll start to see a massive change in your mindset and you'll feel great about waking up every day. 💯🔥💪 #business #startupfounders #founders #entrepreneurship #mindset #entrepreneurs #wellness

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31. Escaping the Build Trap – [MGMT Minutes] 🏃 Do you ever feel like you are working in a feature factory without a clear goal ahead of you? Maybe you are stuck in the build trap and you are not even aware. Today we are talking about all those products materialising one person’s idea stripped from touch with reality and what you should do to escape the place you are trapped in. Minute 31! #mgmtminutes #management #product #productmanagement #productdiscovery #buildtrap

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What I read last weekend ** 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗞𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗔**𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲 ** Turns out, good and horrible founders have the same characteristics, but very different characters. How do you tell them apart up front? (It’s super easy after a few days of working together though) --> https://lnkd.in/dsU9wD6J ** 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗮 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗿 ** You are Volkswagen, it’s 1949. You want to sell the car Hitler commissioned. To Americans. The car is about half the size of an American car, but gas is still cheap. Ah, the car also looks a bit odd.  Your ad agency has a secret weapon though: humor. These ads have everything I miss from this region: a sense of humor, the clever, self-deprecating kind. Copywriting that sounds like a human had written it. --> https://lnkd.in/dUwv4T3T ** 𝗥𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀 ** Robo-advisors for investments were statistically better than humans. Nevertheless, they did not succeed. Why? We will soon all talk to AI agents (and those are probably way better than the lets-not-even-mention-them-anymore chatbots of yesteryear) but here’s why they still won’t replace many human ones.  --> https://lnkd.in/dHYV7gqx

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📢 Niklas Stephenson’s talk "From Founder-Driven to Product Leadership" is now live at learningloop.io. Recorded at the January Product Loop Meetup in Copenhagen, it offers practical insights on scaling product teams, adapting leadership styles, and maintaining a clear vision. Niklas has taken quite a walk into the fields of Product and Entrepreneurship since I first met Niklas at a Ruby on Rails meetup back in 2008. When I asked him to speak, I knew he was the perfect choice the topic of Scaling High-Performance Teams. 📺 Check it out to learn strategies for your product and leadership growth. #ProductManagement #Leadership #ScalingTeams #TeamTopologies

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