Celso Pinto

Tomorrow at 2 pm I'll be joining Kate Clarke - ACA and Myles Arnott to talk about the role of metrics in driving strategic success. So, whether you're a #SaaS founder, established CEO or Managing Director looking to elevate the performance of your business, join us for actionable insights and a lively discussion! Details in the comment below. #strategy #flywheel #metrics

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On Zero Leverage Activity I recently reread High Output Management by the late Andy Grove and found it much useful to me at this later stage of my career than it was in its early days. Back then it felt very dry to me as someone very junior but having been running companies for more than a decade now the insights were truly useful. One of it was on finding High Leverage Activities as a manager as we have finite times available to us, the best way to increase productivity is to focus on high leverage activities. This would be on things which moved the needle would be 1 on 1s, systemizing the process and delegating the tasks. Our coach also shared this quote by Robert Kuok which also talks about high leverage activities. "You are hired to work and to make money, not to squander your time seeing off and receiving your boss or colleagues." & it’s truly unfortunate if your work is not measured by your output but off activities which moved no needle at all.

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surely not again.... This is what I said to my team when they looped me in to an account review of a client who was asking why we were materially different from their Stripe numbers. What did we find? Baremetrics was showing around 25% less MRR than Stripe Where was the discrepency? 6%- discounted subs and coupons not taken off Stripe MRR 11%- scheduled to cancel still contributing to current MRR 9% (and in my mind probably the most egregious)- marked as active customers THAT HAVE NEVER PAID! This was for a total of around $37k MRR. They were using this Stripe figure to fuel hiring decisions, investments, growth initiatives, marketing campaigns. Yes, we calculate metrics different to Stripe... and for good reason DM me if you want a complimentary account review

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These two founders of a FinTech start up were struggling to hire their final software developer.... This was a critical hire to help the development team execute on their road map for the coming months. But no success, and time was ticking. We were invited in after their current chosen agency had shared 8 (!!) candidate profiles, none of which had been successful. The result? 🏆 1 CV sent in total. ⏰ A 26 day turnaround from CV sent to offer (holidays and 4 stage process contributed to this) Here's how we saved them time and effort, but not necessarily money... → Understood how important it was to find the right culture fit. Someone who was ambitious, self motivated and proactive in problem solving. but could also hit the ground running. → Advised that whilst 4-5 years experience was, in their opinion, essential, someone with the right attitude at 2-3 years experience could also work (the developer hired had 2.5 years experience) → This wasn't going to be a financial move for a developer, so we took time to understand their vision, their mission and the culture they were trying to create, so we could sell this back to potential candidates. It's no surprise that we were more expensive than all the other agencies in the mix. But wouldn't you rather have full trust in agent for the sake of a few extra ££. Having faith that you will make that business critical hire so productivity can be increased where it matters - actually coding and building your product - is priceless. Here's what the software engineer had to say about working with me? 👇 Place.

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Want a demo of Deal Lite? Happy to give a personal demo https://lnkd.in/erspFMm9 At Deal Lite, we capture data on funding rounds. We focus on UK technology businesses only. Here’s a snapshot of what we have captured over Monday and Tuesday of this week. Our data includes: - 4,346 venture-backed UK tech companies. - 3,920 venture capitalists who have funded them. - 1,859 business angels who have funded them. - 6,512 funding rounds We focus on giving you timely information so you can do something about it. In most cases, our customers use us as a lead generation service. We are not attempting to replace expensive databases you already subscribe to, e.g. Pitchbooks. We sit alongside them, offering you bite-sized leads and information you can act on today. Accordingly, we have priced both Deal Lite News and Deal Lite Web App to be affordable to everyone. Book demo: https://lnkd.in/erspFMm9 Deal Lite website: https://deallite.uk Deal Lite weekly deal news: https://lnkd.in/efmz5xBP #UKtech #UKTechInvestments #TechInvestments #Investments

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Controversial opinion for my Linkedin feed - The budget later today will scrap Entrepreneur’s relief and increase CGT and it will have no discernible impact on the number of startups being created in the UK or established startups moving abroad. Entrepreneurs relief was dropped from 10m to 1m (by Sunak in 2020). Nothing changed. Dropping from 1m to 0m will have even less effect. CGT will increase by such as small amount (my guess is 5%) it will have precisely zero bearing on a founders decision to start a business. The UK is a big market with tonnes of talented entrepreneurs starting businesses and overall will still rank very highly as a place to start a business (think SEIS/EIS, EMI, R&D tax credits...the list goes on). Where the entrepreneurs are, the investors will flock. Any founder worrying about the whether to start a business in the UK because of these tax tweaks is in totally the wrong game and probably un-investible. If you truly believe you’re building a unicorn you probably shouldn’t be worried about what tax you’re paying on your first million.

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Suddenly discovering your recurring revenue is over reported by 25% is no joke. But that’s what happened to Luke's customer. MRR doesn’t seem like it ought to be that hard to calculate, but scratch beneath the surface and you’ll quickly discover you need to handle: - Discounts  - Failed payments - Pending cancellations - Metered billing - Tax - Trials (Stripe is notoriously behind here because they don’t provide proper MRR data via their API.) Calculating MRR from first principles is not something you want be rolling your own solution for in 2024. It’s time consuming and error prone. If you want proper subscription reports use Baremetrics or Chartmogul. Of course this phenomena, of vendors not providing the the metrics you actually need via their APIs, isn’t just true of Stripe. We see it across most the data sources we support at Geckoboard. It’s where the bulk of our engineering effort goes: Taking messy APIs and painstakingly calculating the KPIs you know and expect - saving you time and ensuring you don’t get any nasty surprises. 

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This has been the topic of controversy a few times in the past regarding Lofty and how we display the market cap and circulating supply of equity for a given property. Last week we released this new UI element to show users the current circulating supply of a given property in terms of equity. The difference between the total supply and current circulating supply is the leverage, or mortgage, on the property. Those tokens are escrowed away. As owners pay down the mortgage, the portion that goes towards the principal pay down is unlocked as new equity into circulation. Eventually, when the mortgage is fully paid off, the total supply of the property will become the circulating supply. We hope this makes the loan structures more clear and save users time when considering a property to purchase. As always, please keep the feedback coming.

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The move from start-up to scale-up is one of the hardest transitions in business. Had the opportunity to speak with an incredible Chief Commercial Officer today that outlined some of the challenges brilliantly. Brought in by the founders of this Fintech at a pivotal moment in the organisations story, they spotted that the company lacked focus, trying to be all things to all people and were able to refocus the business on a smaller number of core verticals, build the GTM playbooks and secure consistent and high quality business that led to strategic investment and 70% MRR growth in 18 months. One of the biggest challenges was keeping the Founders focused on the agreed plan. This is something I see time and time again. It's not necessarily something that founders are aware of, but they can often self-sabotage their business as they are innately drawn to chaos and chasing the next new shiny thing. The hardest part of building management teams for scale is not so much the systems and processes that need to be put in place, but more managing the founders to let go, focus on their highest value activities and trust the team they build to do what they are best at, bring structure, focus and repeatability. If you are interested in people like this, give me a shout. #scaleup #startup #leadershiphiring

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Very interesting roundtable today at techUK on how to attract and retain talent at Tech Scale Up companies. Many thanks to Mia Haffety and the speakers/panellists Ben Maitland, Robin Beattie, Paisley Keys, Graham Butler, Rebecca Simmons. Some of the takeaways: - Despite Brexit, it is still possible to recruit skills abroad, provided that you are prepared to pay more to sponsor visas and understand the multiple channels/criterias which can be leveraged - Scaling up requires a plan designed in advance, which takes into consideration the key critical skills required against certain milestones, but also how clarity on distribution of roles and responsibilities within the scaled-up organization. - Proactiveness: having someone focused on Organizational design and talent pipeline early on is critical to any tech business scaling up. - Money is important, but clarity of vision, sense of purpose, values are really critical to retain talent as the business grows beyond the 20 people or so.

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The UK is forcing entrepreneurs to leave… …with the government planning to hike capital gains tax from 20% to 39%. At this point, they may as well admit they don’t give a damn about innovation or job creation. The risk we take as founders is massive compared to those in a more ‘stable’ job, so surely choosing this path should come with greater rewards? You’re better off in a full-time role that pays £50K a year, rather than paying a 45% marginal tax rate on £250K from selling your startup. It’s a no brainer if it gets to that. This will also push investors away from the UK, which is a key building block that drives innovation. But let me throw a spanner in the works here: Is a potential, unintended positive consequence = more CGT > more CGT to write off > more SEIS/EIS investments? I’m a positive person, so I can only hope so. However, this increase will no doubt cause many investors and founders to move elsewhere. We’re really screwing ourselves over here in the UK.

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I believe in paying for software. I use lots of it to build & support my habit tracker app “Did You Do it Today?“, and pay for a fair chunk of it. I’m happy to do so, though, as the stuff I pay for really helps me, and it feels good to support the folks & companies building & maintaining it. Software I pay for: • WordPress → Domain name & web hosting, blogging • Bubble → Full stack, no-code development platform (this software is incredible & is the only reason a non-coder like me can build an app like DYDit) • Stripe → Payments processing • Sinch ClickSend → Daily Check-in emailer • SendGrid → Daily Check-in SMS sender • Titan → Customer support emailer • Google Workspace → Spreadsheets, forms, & other emailing • SnagIt → Screen captures & visual designs Software that’s free: • Trello → Idea & task management • Notejoy → Writing • Figma → Visual designs • Microsoft Copilot → AI image generation • Meta AI → AI image generation • Bubble third-party plugins → Visual elements (eg. charts) • LinkedIn → Marketing • Meta Facebook → Marketing • Instagram → Marketing • Twitter → Marketing • Threads → Marketing Holy shit, that’s a lotta software! We use way more in our daily lives than you’d think, and it’s especially amazing how much you use when you’re trying to build a digital business. I’m pretty content with my paid vs. free balance, especially since I could be, in some cases, using a hacked-together free solution for something I pay for. Also, with the way AI is advancing, I’ll be likely be using & paying for even more in the near future. So, like I said, it feels good to pay for software that really helps you. How about feeling good with me by building your Habit over @ https://lnkd.in/e_8nwVwX #dydit #dyditlife

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It's interesting how companies shoot themselves in the foot. Just looking at renewing my car breakdown cover and had a disappointing experience using the AA site for a quote. Firstly, there was no option to choose EU cover and secondly my annoyance was compounded by an incredibly poor chatbot implementation, which couldn't understand the basic question "Does this quote also include EU cover?". In age of AI and the ability to create compelling intelligent chatbots for customer engagement, which can easily understand a question like mine, it seems crazy AA haven't made an investment to improve theirs. If anyone from the AA is here, if you need a hand on your chatbot, give us a shout 😊

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100 APPLICATIONS 😍 In just 24 hours we've had 100 applications for our first Product Manager/Product Owner role. If you haven't applied yet, don't fret - Oliver Horlyck and I are reading every single one still, and will be for at least another week or so. So suggest getting your application in this week 👍 Also - based on what we've reviewed so far - here's some stats and a bit of gratuitous advice that may help you shine through: 💡 75% of applications chose to answer each question (including Optional). This gives them a better chance to speak to their strengths, and doesn't give us a 'Can they be bothered?' impression seeing the blanks. 📌 My advice: answer all the questions, even if it's just a sentence or two 💡 About 20% have used ChatGPT significantly. There's been no silly 'as a large language model...' style errors, but when reading 100 applications side-by-side, you actually see the same responses and same styles again and again. 📌My advice: we view a tiny bit of ChatGPT with no issue, but when seeing it across multiple answers we'll filter that application out. 💡Around 25% applied and then sent me a linkedin message. There's broadly fall into 2 groups: ▶ 50% of these were concise and human-like messages, e.g. 'Hi Elliott, I just applied, I think i'm a good fit because of [reason]. Hope to chat soon'. 📌these were viewed slightly positively, although we are not necessarily noting them against the response list ▶ 50% were long, robotic, or felt ChatGPT scripted. 📌These were viewed negatively. 💡 Separately, about 20 candidates sent me a message on LinkedIn before applying. ▶ 5 of these were useful, e.g. they'd previously worked with myself or a member of the team, and wanted to say hi to note their application was coming. (all of these were told to put their application in) ▶ 15 were not useful. They were long, robotic, or felt ChatGPT scripted. I replied to most of these and told them to put an application in anyway to assess it. 📌My advice: If you're going to message on linkedin, make it meaningful. (for example, draw a connection to someone we have in common at the minimum!). Also, preferably message after you've put the application in, so we have something to look at rather than just saying thanks.

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Is anyone in your organisation thinking strategically about your finances? Are you truly on top of your numbers? In this week's Atom CTO podcast, I talk with Alysha Randall a veteran fractional CFO that has been through IPOs and large M&As. We talk all things finance and why it is important for an organisation to be aware, not only of their key financial indicators but also to get your books in order for the day that you're going to want to raise finance. If you've ever considered hiring a fractional CFO, this podcast will tell you why you should! Follow the link to listen to the episode: #finance #cfo #startups

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🤯 We acquired 2 new businesses in the space of 6 weeks... The last few weeks have been intense, so I've been a bit quiet on Linkedin. 2023 was a tough year for us. We weren't delivering as we wanted, and the market for acquisitions was rough. But momentum has shifted in 2024. Performance has improved, our culture has become happier, and more accountable, and we have a real sense of direction. We were getting the hang of things...and then we've acquired 2 new companies in the period of 6 weeks. 🤯 No matter how many times we've done this, I always seem to forget how much work it truly takes to onboard a new brand. It's been a crazy challenge for the whole team. I'm in awe of how they've stepped up. 🚢 Onboarding two new sets of products into our systems, our supply chain management. 👪 Creating new relationships with staff and founders 📊 Jumping on new sets of problems with limited context as we try and learn the brands. 📈 Still delivering growth across the whole of our portfolio despite a whole new set of businesses to learn. Suddenly the business feels totally different again, and we're adapting to a new reality incredibly well. Can't begin to express the pride I have in everyone at The Mothership - super excited for the rest of 2024! #acquisitions #entrepreneurship #teamwork

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Last week we launched the Reverl MVP in to a small group of businesses. The feedback we've had so far has been really useful, primarily its been that: - Our survey is too long 🥱 - The question formatting is repetitive 👯 - The styling needs refining 🎨 All things we can work on quite quickly and without too much hassle. But the most important thing is that it's out there. People are using it and we're gathering the real user feedback that we need to iterate and improve. Every day is a school day when you're launching a new product. No amount of hypothesising makes up for actually just getting what you've made into the hands of the people you've made it for. This is the bit of building products that I love. ----- Reverl makes it easy for any business to provide tailored employee wellbeing support programmes that meet the specific needs of its employees for a fraction of the cost of hiring a wellbeing manager or consultant. Reverl.com - Measure, monitor & improve your employees wellbeing. Join our wait list at Reverl.com

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This is exciting news for UK employees: Sick pay will be available from day one (and not day four) of your job! 🏥✨ As I shared in Startups.co.uk yesterday, this isn’t just a policy update—it’s a call for businesses to rethink how they support employee wellbeing. Instead of reacting to illness, we have the chance to create a workplace where health and wellness come first. With mental health making up 44% of long-term sick leave, it’s clear: prioritizing wellbeing is no longer optional—it’s essential. At YuLife, we’ve witnessed the power of our gamified wellness tools firsthand, with 87% of our users reporting a genuine boost in their wellbeing.🌟 This isn’t just about reducing sick days—it’s about creating thriving, resilient workforces where people feel their best, and are supported from day one. Onwards and upwards! 🚀 #EmployeeWellbeing #SickPay #HealthAtWork #YuLife #EmploymentRights #MentalHealthMatters

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Last week, we lifted the lid on our guide to creating great propositions. Now, it isn’t lost on me that in doing so I had a pop at the consulting industry’s BS but there are probably a few people scratching their heads saying “well, that’s all very nice Tom but I have no idea what you mean by proposition and smells a little BS’y to me.” Hands up, I accept that challenge. It is terminology we have played around with…a lot! And it’s definitely one of those things that has many different meanings to many different people. But in wrangling with it (and fundamentally believing in its importance for businesses to get right if they want to win and grow), we’ve boiled it down to 4 simple things: 1. WHAT you do 2. HOW you do it 3. In a way that resonates and motivates customers buying decisions (WHO & WHY) 4.  And explains how you're DISTINCTIVE (maybe even unique) in the market. We believe by keeping it that simple and nailing those 4 things, you’ll be on a pretty good path to having a proposition that works. Want to know how to do it, follow the link to our guide in the comments. Remember - share it, steal it, use it!

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