Henry David Firth

Our product team at SparkLayer B2B have been on an absolute roll over the last 3 months... 30+ features published in our release notes, and that excludes all the under-the-hood improvements we’re making 👀. Many of which will help lay the groundwork for some humongous updates later in the year! Here’s just a selection of what’s fresh out of SparkLayer HQ: == Frontend experience == 🎨 Product customisations: B2B customers can now add customisations to products (e.g. freeform text) 📜 Purchase history: customers can easily see their recent order history and 1-click re-order 📊 Barcode support: customers can upload orders via a CSV file just by using barcodes == Sales agent tooling == 📅 Order history: letting sales agents keep tabs of their recent orders ⚙️ Custom settings: sales agents can set custom product rules (e.g. pack sizing) 🔍 Search improvements: making it faster for sales agents to find their customers == Order workflows == 🚦 Order approvals: company roles can be set up that limit who can/can’t place orders 👀 Order visibility: customers can now see “draft” orders placed right within their account We use the word “cadence” internally to describe how we build and release, and there’s nothing more satisfying in software than reaching a rhythm within your team. And getting stuff done! Our website only scratches the surface of what SparkLayer B2B can do and what our team delivers, head over to our help docs if you want to see what our solution is capable of!

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Pump fakes vs. *actual* signal - both can be indistinguishable to a founder but produce drastically different results. Let me explain.... In venture, a 'pump fake' results in a founder building a bespoke solution for a customer under the false pretense that the solution/product has broad applicability for many customers. Customer product requests are intoxicating, especially in PMF phase, because it makes teams feel that 'we're onto something' and there's a market for our product. Pump fakes can be company-killing b/c it sends a team with limited resources down a path that ultimately becomes dead-end with little runway to pivot. Here's how you can avoid the perennial pump fake and keep pushing forward: (1) Don't just hear the customer, *listen.* Hearing is a passive and involuntary activity resulting in zero info retainment. Listening is active and voluntary process that forces you to absorb and react to information. By listening, you're able to translate customer feedback into measured actions. (2) Speak to *many* prospective customers BEFORE you start building. This helps you internalize the true hair-on-fire problem customers are facing and filters out atypical feedback not shared by a customer cohort. (3) Understand customer nuances and recognize that not all customers are created equally. When evaluating prospects, try to understand the composition of their business (team, fundraising, revenue, ICP, etc..) to triangulate why your service is needed for a particular customer. Often times, pump fakes are missed simply due to lack of customer context! https://lnkd.in/euYZ-TKk

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This may be anti-narrative given the buzz in the market. Paul Graham’s Founder Mode essay (link in comments) glorifies the relentless hands-on approach, suggesting founders must stay deeply involved in every facet of their business. I have a different POV—clinging to every detail may choke your company’s potential and prevent your team from evolving into capable decision-makers. In the early days of Magento, I was committed to ensuring the product met my vision. While I wasn’t coding, I was heavily involved in refining and guiding the direction. As we grew, it became clear that holding onto every detail was slowing us down. When I trusted my team to lead, make decisions, and solve problems creatively, everything changed. Stepping back allowed the team to thrive and the product to excel. Graham implies that only founders are invested enough to make the right decisions. But here’s the thing: founders who micromanage because they don’t trust their team are bottlenecks. Many great decisions at Magento didn’t come from me—they came from empowering our engineers and product leaders to solve problems and be creative. In many cases, I got out of the way, and it worked. Yes, founders must be hands-on early on. Their vision, passion, and deep understanding of the problem they’re solving are invaluable in shaping the direction. But if you’re still overseeing every detail years later, you’re not fostering growth—you’re bottlenecking progress and holding back your team’s ability to step up. True scale happens when you trust your team to carry the vision forward and make decisions independently. (in the photo, the empowered core development team, ~2006) Do you think founders should empower teams as the company scales, or stay hands-on?

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The cost of growth: Facing the challenges of scaling Styrkr 🚀   🎥  We've gone from a self-funded startup to a seven-figure brand in just two years, but with that growth comes real challenges. In Episode 4 of our behind-the-scenes video series, I dive into what it really takes to scale Styrkr.   Here’s what we’re facing – I’d love to hear from anyone who’s tackled similar issues. 👉 Space limitations Our UK production facility and warehouse is maxed out, with pallets heading to the USA, Australia and beyond. We’re looking at new warehouse options to keep up with demand. 👉 Scaling production & stock Our production increase hit 170%+ this year, and we’re planning £2m in stock for the first quarter of 2025. Sachets, gels, bars – scaling without compromising quality is no small feat. 👉 Building the right team It’s not just about driving demand but capturing, fulfilling and sustaining it. We’re growing the team and building systems to scale as smoothly, as possible. 👉 Financing growth We’re proud to be self-funded and debt-free, but expanding requires tough decisions on financing.   Check out the full episode to see how we’re navigating these obstacles. 📺 Youtube Link: https://lnkd.in/e8-RfZsV And if any of these challenges resonate with you, I’d love to hear your insights:   • If you’ve hit space constraints, how did you handle logistics? • For fast scalers, what systems helped you manage stock? • For those with investors, how did you protect your brand’s core values?   Let’s learn from each other. 💬   See you out there.   #ScalingUp #Entrepreneurship #FuellingAmbition #Styrkr

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🗞️ I caught up with Hayden Evans recently at Beam it Recruitment to talk about: ▶ how I started with programming and my career so far ▶ the current landscape of Elixir learning materials ▶ the pros and cons of a language like Elixir ▶ why I started PureType and how it fits into a new world of software development 🔗 Link to the article is in the post below

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Sometimes it clicks Meeting of minds Agreeing next steps Not so often but yes Here’s a thought👇🏼 A short while back we prompted a discussion about product market fit. Short form version is that you know it when you’ve got it. And the same goes for people and what they do. Sometimes it just clicks into place. Like Lego is just clicks together. We also acknowledge that sometimes it’s like standing on Lego in bare feet: immediately painful. The two ends of the range of outcomes. Perfect fit versus sharp pain. The early positive indicator was the preamble chat on the video call. Mind you that wasn’t a given as Teams is a test all of its own and rarely considered a joyful start to any proceedings. But even with that tortuous headwind it was tickling along nicely. Three broad components got us off to a good start and then got better. Quiet confidence and self assurance plus prior preparation and careful thinking plus open minded discussions. In many ways it was a case study for my constant message of #thinklikeaclient And this meant that we agreed meaningful next steps and there will be a positive collaboration that is a win-win for us both. Do note that this win-win started on here with cold outreach to connect with me, a few simple messages and then a call, all of which was achieved in short time lines and minimum fuss. #ThinkLikeAClient #GrumpyOptimist #VentureStudio #Entrepreneur >>>>>>> Footnote: all my content is freshly made daily by me with no additives or tricks. If it interests you please tag the 🔔 in my profile to get it delivered straight to you. Otherwise if you search #GrumpyOptimist you’ll see my past posts.

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We're committed to talking about the 'bad' as well as the 'good' at Main Sequence. Alezeia Brown shares some work we have been doing on our work with founders before an investment. "About 6 months ago we asked the startup community for some feedback on what it’s like to engage with Main Sequence, so that we could work out where to improve. To say some of the feedback was humbling, would be an understatement." https://lnkd.in/gbWBbhqZ We'll also be sharing more stories about things that did not go to plan in portfolio companies. The nature of venture building is ups-and-downs. We need to normalise that more.

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I was just talking to a founder about the Stella Service business model that Jordy Leiser had built--where you test the customer service experience at a brand and then charge them in various ways for the results, either showing them how to improve or licensing them a seal of approval. The founder hadn't heard of that model and wondered in what other areas it could apply--and it got me thinking about a repository of models and business structures. Has anything like this been built? Pay to get unbiased recs--a la Angie's list. Good for X, Y, and Z markets. Pros, cons. A plugin that pops up information about each site as you visit it, a la Honey, SiteAdvisor (Chris Dixon's old startup before Hunch). It would be great for founders stuck on something to be able to say I've got X, Y, and Z information flowing from here to there, and it has this criteria, or these types of community members, this kind of power dynamic, etc... What models work for this? Otherwise, you wind up with "Uber for neurosurgeons" without realizing that "Uber for" only works with relatively commoditized services.

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😮‍💨 We don't just want to be the fastest and most affordable option for founders - we want to be the very best option for them We've had loads of great reviews over the last couple of years but I think this one really nails the value that Verticode team 🧑‍🔧 offers to founders - alongside the power of the Verticode tech ⚡️ #startups #founders

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I have spoken with more early-stage Founders in the first half of this year than any other full year previously. A lot of the time, a big focus for them is around fundraising and it's always high on the discussion agenda (both pre and post raising). Questions like the below are front of centre of them conversations: ▶ What advice can you give me when I'm sitting down with an investor? ▶ What do you think of my pitch deck? ▶ Is there anyone you can introduce me to who's interested in what I'm building? ▶ Once we've raised, how do we start building but keeping the runway extended as long as possible? I received a great email from Hustle Fund earlier in the month with the clear message to Founders to know your numbers and know them in detail. I hope they don't mind me sharing but below are 5 areas they shared that a Founder(s) must know and be able to talk about. There are definitely more you need to be prepared to discuss but these are ones you should absolutely know. 𝟭. 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀 🔹 How much revenue did you earn this month? Last month? The month before? 🔹 Which acquisition channels drove revenue? 🔹 What is the cost of your product (or subscription)? 🔹 How much of your revenue is attributed to the product vs. your consulting services? 🔹 Excluding marketing, what are your margins? 𝟮. 𝗔𝗰𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀 🔹 What is your cost per acquisition? 🔹 What is your website conversion rate? 🔹 How many daily active users do you have? How many monthly? 🔹 What is your retention rate?  🔹 What is your monthly churn? 𝟯. 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀 🔹 How much have you raised to date?  🔹 How much are you raising now? 🔹 What were the terms in your last round? 🔹 What are the terms in this round?   𝟰. 𝗠𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀 🔹 What milestones do you expect to hit with this raise? 🔹 What metrics do you care about when measuring the health of your business? Why?   𝟱. 𝗦𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 🔹 How have your conversion rates changed over time? Have they increased, decreased, or stayed the same? 🔹 How have different customer acquisition channels performed? For example, what is the difference in conversion rate between Facebook ads versus LinkedIn ads? I hope the above helps guide the Founders out there who are engaging in conversations with VC's / Investors. I'm happy to talk through with anyone in my network who would appreciate a sounding board going into investor meetings, would like to discuss support in getting ready to raise or you have raised and need support around next steps. #founders #startups #investors #vcs

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Warning! The Below Founder's Advice on Growth is Grossly Oversimplified for Illustrative Purposes. Sustainable Growth vs. Acquired Growth Many companies try to grow as fast as possible.  There are lots situations where that makes sense - winner take-all land grabs, for example.  A temporary advantage you want to exploit.  Often, companies that try to grow as fast as possible try to acquire growth. Lets say, for example, you want to grow as fast as possible.  The obvious thing to do is to spend money to acquire new customers, say from Google.  Suppose you have 100 customers.  Suppose further you’re able to get 100 leads a month from Google, and you close 10% of leads into customers.  Say further you’re a subscription business, and you have 100% retention.  In the first month, you go from 100 to 110 customers.  That’s 10% month growth, not bad!  The second month, you get the same flow from Google and you go from 110 to 120 customers. That’s 9% growth.  The third month, you go from 120 to 130, which is 8.3% growth.  Google steadily sends you a linear about amount of leads which you close into customers, so your customer count grows linearly each month, and you have a diminishing growth rate.  Knowing this, what founders do is attempt to develop more channels, and layer them on.  So they buy Social, they begin to hire sales reps, they conduct other activities.  But each of those channels likely has the same dynamics as the example with Google Paid Search.  They tap out and yield diminishing returns.  So in order to maintain a growth rate, you need to find new channels. There is another way: Sustainable growth.  The objective here is to grow equally when you're big, as when you're small. The best way to do this is to grow from your existing customer base.  Say you have 100 customers, and each one of them refers a lead each month, and you close 10% of them.  At the end of the first month, you’ve gone from 100 to 110 customers.  That’s 10% growth.  Then, next month, you get 110 leads, and close 10% of them for 11 new customers.  Now you’re at 121 new customers.  Unlike the Google example above where you saw diminish growing rates from a linear channel, when your inbound leads are proportionate to your customer count, sustainable growth gives you 10% growth again.  Founders are under immense pressure - particularly from investors - to deliver growth as fast as possible. When this turns out well (rarely), the riches are vast (asymmetrical advantage to investors). So they turn to acquired growth. The problem is that once you start down the treadmill of acquired growth, you have to keep running faster (layering on new channels) to maintain the same speed. Sustainable Growth is when your leads grow because of your customers, not because of external factors beyond your control. It is not always the right answer, but founders should wisely deliberate the right road because the acquired growth treadmill is a path of no return.

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I don't go in for 'building in public' in general, but every now and then I think it's worth sharing what I'm seeing in the market. The below graph shows the average time to close a deal over time at EmergeOne and you can see that this has been creeping up since last year (adjusted for seasonality) and is currently close to 3 months to close a deal. So what's happening? Well, I was recently at an CFO event where we got a bit of a data driven view into the state of private markets. Some key points that came out: 🏷️ Median post money at Series A has dropped from 80m USD in 21/22 to 65m USD in 2024. This is still up from 40m from circa 2020. ％ Top quartile is significantly over at 107m. 📈 Series B median post money is $137m, top quartile $287m USD, but bottom quartile significantly struggling. 🚀 Deal velocity has slowed but started recovering. 💰 Lots of deals are happening but not priced - bridges abound. So how does this therefore relate to what we're seeing in terms of time to close? Firstly, we are a consultancy providing fractional CFO support to venture backed tech startups typically post Seed and pre Series A so this data reflects what we are generally seeing in the market as well. But the two main issues that are seemingly impacting our numbers are around deal velocity and bridge financing. There are simply fewer deals being done and they are taking longer to close, so the volume of potential clients we can target has dropped significantly. This does, however, mean that the quality of deals we're working on is significantly higher this year. Secondly, as companies struggle to raise priced rounds, they are raising lower amounts of capital on convertibles. This impacts us as CFOs are only truly valuable when there is a significant balance sheet to manage, less capital = less need for CFOs and hence the decision as to when to bring us in gets pushed out. But equally, that insecurity over funds means that founders are much more hesitant to make significant hiring decisions, prioritising hires that can directly influence revenue / traction in the near term. But they also know that they need the support so are often waiting for the 'magic moment' where they hit an inflection point that gives them confidence to pull the trigger. Outside of the deal data, we are also seeing venture indexing towards more R&D heavy businesses (life science, hardware etc.) and these sort of companies are often not commercialising for several years. They have security over spend and regard finance as a future problem. We are seeing a lot of companies approaching Series B without anyone in finance, deferring that decision till they close. But we are also seeing leads come through from a multitude of sources proving there is appetite for strong commercially minded CFOs to support and grow these scaling businesses. So as the market stabilises, I would expect to see these numbers come back. Business wouldn't be any fun if it was all easy, would it?!

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Which farmer produced the food I'm eating? You may never know, however you can trace it, if you really want to. It's quite simple, first the farmer harvests and sells to an Aggregator or Broker (eg. GrowForMe) within his community, the Aggregator then loads a truck with bags of the grains typically packed in 50kg or 100kg or 150kg. This is then transported and packed in a warehouse until enough commodities are sourced. Some Aggregators or Brokers will deliver it straight to the market while others will hoard until prices go up. Whichever option is taken the commodities are eventually sent to the market or processing company for food production for humans or animals. One of the most critical things checked in commodities are Aphlatoxins, which is a cancer causing agent. The biggest price determinant for commodities is the moisture content (how much water is in the commodity). This is because water has a lot of weight and does not bring profit to the buyer, hence you will hear terms like "I need old maize, soybeans etc" in the Commodities market. Old stock is more valuable and expensive than the new stock. So next time you eat, ask which kind of stock you sre consuming old or new 😁. To invest in Agriculture visit www.growforme.com My next post will talk about what happens in the warehouse.

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No one wants a slanging match over sustainable toilet paper My journey to finding a new business idea began with a problem I had faced personally. Adopting a sustainable lifestyle was clearly the right thing to do, but it was hard. And I knew I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. There’s lots of talk about the sustainability action gap – a reported desire to live sustainability yet a lack of follow through. Might an answer to this problem be some sort of online programme? I’d been using Zoe, the gut health app, and was impressed. Could I build something similar around living sustainably? But exploring this with my soon-to-be co-founder, Charlotte Fereday, we quickly realised that the challenge would be ongoing engagement – based on my own waning interest in Zoe, as well as our experience of designing similar models for clients in the past. After further exploration, we landed on an idea we felt might work – a community-powered online shop built around like-minded people. The logic was that connecting recommendation (of sustainable products) with the opportunity to purchase could help with habit formation. And once small habits were formed, we could build towards bigger behavioural shifts. And why community-powered? A few reasons: + This is a collective problem which requires a collective solution.  + People will be more likely to make and stick to changes if others are too.  + Individual impact is scaled through a group. + With all the turbulence in the world today, we felt people are longing to be part of something they can feel positive about. But what form might the community element take? One option was a Nextdoor-type social network – but the last thing we wanted was a forum where people argued over which toilet paper is more sustainable. So we considered the idea of a ‘Costco for Eco’ model: where the power of the community would enable group bargaining power – you’d pay a membership fee and then get money off sustainable brands. But although we liked that it helped people out financially, we worried it would contribute to the discount madness which creates margin pressure for businesses that are already having to invest above the norm to be conscious companies. So we wondered if, instead, we’d sell at full price but repurpose margin from each transaction to invest in climate action… an idea we’re still developing (more to come on this in another post). And another idea that required lots of thought: how to build trust. Trust kept coming up in our research and we knew that the success of our community and business would depend on it. One way to start building that trust is by being as open and transparent as possible – including by writing about what we’re up to, why and how we’re going about building. However, as I’ll explore in my next post, is there such a thing as being too open? +++ Follow me - James Haycock to hear the highs (hopefully) and lows (inevitably) of building a new, purposeful business.

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My email to a founder that I'd like to invest in, re: what makes Graham & Walker special: "Every fund has traditional 'value add', and so do we - big amplification channels, help with press, impressive network that we can name drop etc. But I don't think that's what makes us special. We're the fund you want on your side when things get hard. And they will, in fact, get hard. (And, somewhat ironically, if you don't believe things will get hard, then I don't think we'll want to invest in you). We are ride or die investors. We have a high tolerance for the early, ugly and messy. We're honest with you, but always kind. We shine when it's hard to talk to the rest of your investors. As proof points I offer what some of our founders have to say about us. And some of my writing, both in public (like our values, and the viral article about female founder takedowns), and in private (I'll forward you the email I sent to the whole portfolio late last year). Most importantly, I invite you to talk to any of our portfolio companies, particularly those who have had moments of struggle as well as moments of victory. I'm excited to be on your cap table. Our mission at Graham & Walker is to change the face of the Nasdaq by investing in female founders that can go the distance. I believe you might be one of them."

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So this is a design reference for Mitgo Ventures's monthly stakeholder meeting presentation... ... ... 🤔🤔🤔 ... ... ...because you can't bore people into buying your shit. I've sat through thousands of hours of presentations that made me want to put a bullet in my head. Doing the same for others would go against my understanding of human ethics. It's hard enough to look at someone's reports and try to figure out if they did a good job or not. It's pure decision-making - probably the hardest job in life. Right? Imagine how easy it would be if all the decisions were obvious or even made for us. I know more than a few people who would like that so much, they convince themselves that have no choice in all slightly-above-average-difficulty situations even though there are literally a trillion of possible solutions. "Got no choice man, gotta do what you gotta do" - and proceeds to do the dumbest shit ever with zero necessity. But we should have compassion. It's been a hard week and it's still Tuesday - cut them stakeholders some slack and at least try to make your slides 5-6% fun, okay? ...please?

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Super quick post on price, because I've been getting questions around pricing recently. ...HMMM BUT HOW WILL I COMPETE ON PRICE? This is something that I get a lot from new entrepreneurs. It usually comes in the form of a question of this type: "Why would someone sign up for dollarshaveclub, when they can get the exact same razor from Dorco for half the price?" Dollarshaveclub by the way is now at like 1 million subscribers. That's 1 million customers that did not care about this seemingly sound reasoning. Why? Because unless you're selling widgets, purchasing decisions are NOT made in this way. ----- "Why would you buy milk from a supermarket when you could go directly to a farm and get it for half price?", said No one ever! Bottomline, purchasing decisions online are determined by branding, tribe, emotional connection, convenience, and a list of other things that have little to do with price and everything to do with utility or presentation. You don't buy your jeans directly from China to save a couple dollars, nor do you buy the cheapest cell phone you can find. Yes there is a certain range that people expect, but we try to be at the top of that range and build in value, rather than being at the bottom scrounging for margin. We heard the same thing when we came out with a suite of wordpress themes for $450 each. Folks were like, there's no way you can sell them for $450 when you can get wordpress themes on themeforest for $45. We sold $100k of them in the first year. They were especially useful for a particular niche and the branding was . To wrap this up, kill that noise. If you build something that is well branded, useful, and you can communicate that utility clearly and effectively, you could sell water to a well. And the better the branding, the more you can charge for that water. Real talk: If no one is complaining about your price, you're not charging enough!!! -Haha "Selling water to a well" just reminded me of Jay : -) When you're ready here's 4 ways I can help: https://lnkd.in/gBtFr8cK

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Had so much fun talking to LaunchVic founders yesterday about our journey of building Chronicle. Feeling so proud about the product we have built. I shared some of my learnings around fundraising for Chronicle. Mark Newman thanks for organising. Here's a summary - 1. Spend time to perfect your narrative before anything else. This is why in Chronicle you start with a storyline - a simple distraction free, text-only outline. 2. Winning pitches is about anticipating questions. Ones you are most sure about answering - just bait the audience into asking these and then hit it out of the park. 3. Show don't tell. In Chronicle you can embed 1000s of interactive outputs by just pasting a link - just paste in a link to your Figma/Framer prototype and you are ready to impress! 4. Don't hide behind chartjunk, fluff and flowery visuals. Present distilled insights - do not present data. #fundraising #pitch #founders Tejas Gawande Claire Taylor

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Just read Elizabeth "Beezer" Clarkson's tweet on the seed to Series A gap. It reminded me of why I wrote a book called 'Journey to Series A' last year. It was inspired by the challenges many startups face when scaling up. And offers practical guidance for founders on how to prepare and successfully raise a Series A round. Watch an excerpt below, full link in the comments. #startups #fundraising #SeriesA

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