Mike Chalfen

Next up in the series of posts about starting a startup for non-technical founders: 2. Finding a co-founder How do you even find one in the first place? For anyone who's tried, it's exceptionally hard. Let's start with the framework. You want to find: (a) Someone that has complimentary skills. Think one plus one equals three. (b) Someone equally passionate about the same problem. If you’re not equally excited about the challenge you’re tackling, it’s going to be hard to keep the momentum going. (c) Someone that is available - Timing. You both need to be available and ready to commit at the same time. After you go down this list, you might be lucky to know one or two people in your immediate network to work with. In terms of what you can do to navigate this stuff, there were 2 things that I thought would give me the best shot. One was immersing myself in a founder-dense environment like SF. Another was co-founder dating. The best matching platform I’ve seen is from YC. They have tons of profiles and make it simple to meet a lot of people quickly. None of this is easy, but all of it is possible. I will be sharing learnings from the process that Tennison C. and I went through (very different; I met 8 new people vs Tennison met 80 new people)—hope they’re helpful for anyone experiencing this.  --- Yesterday, we covered "Things you can’t say as a non-technical founder." For the remainder of the week, I will write about 3. Importance of a deep trial period 4. Investing in your co-founder relationship

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Insightful look into bioplatform strategy, and what it takes to raise a Series A from my partner, Omri Amirav-Drory: https://lnkd.in/dFv7GbF6

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Tomorrow is the summer edition of SaaStock Local London and we've a great entrepreneur sharing his story of how he orchestrated an exit (to Zuora). If your building a SaaS with a view to a future exit (most folks except Basecamp), Or your currently thinking about M&A Then this is the inside story from a great founder, James Henderson, who got a fantastic outcome. The content will not be recorded, so you have to be there to get the insights such as: Why selling was right for James and Zephr - How do you plan an exit - What forces did James consider before he sold - How he managed his team and board through the process - What happens when you make a deal and sell All these questions and you get to ask your own. So make sure you're there if you're serious about building a SaaS company to sale. Around 17 tickets remaining. Link in the comments. #exits #M&A #founders #saas #london #CEO #saastocklocallondon

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We're thrilled to announce that MedScout has closed a $15M Series A funding round led by Fulcrum Equity Partners, with continued support from our existing investors, Stage 2 Capital and LiveOak Ventures. After three and a half years of working closely with over 100 companies, we couldn't be more excited about reaching this milestone. From day one, our vision has been clear. If we built the platform that every medical device sales rep in the field NEEDED to have, everything else would fall into place. This new capital allows us to bring this vision to life in ways we've only dreamed of until now. In our search for the right partner, we wanted to work with a team that deeply understands both healthcare and vertical B2B SaaS. Fulcrum fits the bill perfectly. Having Philip Lewis and Jason Moore in our corner, with their invaluable experience from Stratasan, Florence Healthcare, and other ventures, changes the trajectory for our next phase of growth. Reflecting on the journey so far, I'm so damn grateful. I'm thankful for each of the talented individuals building their careers with MedScout. I fundamentally believe startups are a team sport, and I'm proud of how this team supports each other and our customers every single day. I appreciate all of the companies trusting us with their sales enablement needs and every rep who's taken the time to give us feedback. They've taught us invaluable lessons about commercializing medical devices and what it takes to make an impact within healthcare. The guidance from our board members - Mike Marcantonio, Venu Shamapant, Mandy Cole, and Anubhav Maheshwari - has been incredibly instrumental as we've navigated building a venture-backed company. Finally, I'd be remiss not to acknowledge Parker Chase-Corwin, Mike Boyden, Mike Moore, Lisa Bichsel, Paul M. Edwards, Charlie Whelan, J. Scott Heinzelman, and everyone else who has lent their time and expertise along the way. As we embark on this next chapter, we're committed to pushing the boundaries of what it means to commercialize medical technology. Every advancement we make in our ability to turn complex data into clear insights and powerful tools not only improves sales processes but also helps ensure that life-changing medical innovations reach patients more efficiently and effectively. I'm more excited than ever about this mission and can't wait to see what the future has in store for MedScout. https://lnkd.in/g8xUYzA7

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I love marketplaces. I've spent more time working on marketplaces (six in total), reading about them, and helping friends who are marketplace founders than any other type of product. I've never worked on SaaS. I think the reason I'm drawn to them is because: 1. They enable entrepreneurship — I grew up helping my entrepreneurial parents; all my friends (y'all) are entrepreneurs. I love to help them. 2. I like to connect people — I connect people daily and get a lot of joy when those connections lead to new friendships, opportunities, fundraising, etc. The success of every marketplace is determined by its ability to effectively connect people.

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49 founders and senior startup leaders respond to a survey from Sifted on the relationship between founders and VCs. Are expectations off from the start as VCs try too hard to pander to their founders with over promises of "value-add" and extensive platform teams? Do founders need to be reminded of their primary role - execution?

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🤨 What do I look for in co-founders ? 🤨 This is the question I get asked the most often, and I (finally) have a good answer! At Hexa, I partner with entrepreneurs ~3x/year, a CEO and CTO for each project— essentially “marrying” 6x/year to build the best partnerships. I look for 4 key traits in my co-founders ⤵️ ⚡️ Energy booster Building and growing a company is about convincing people to follow you—investors, clients, team members—and the person’s natural energy is a key factor in achieving this. I call these people exothermic: they move things around them simply by the energy they exude. How do I test this? I need to feel more energized at the end of a meeting with them than I did at the start. ⏰ Sense of urgency The higher the velocity in a startup, the faster it will grow. Having a deep need to act and get things done sets the fast-paced tempo I’m looking for. 🧑‍🏫 Thirst for self-improvement Founders who are constantly looking to improve by proactively seeking feedback and showing vulnerability have an endless strength to overcome the (inevitable) challenges of entrepreneurship. 🏋️‍♀️ Commitment Being a founder means making your company part of your top priorities, it’s a journey that’s all-consuming. If you believe you embody these traits and are ready to build a transformative company, let’s connect!

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A lot is happening at PickyStory these days. Here’s a partial list: 1. New Subscriptions Product – We’re about to launch our new Subscriptions product as part of the platform, natively integrated with our Bundles and Cart products. Join the waitlist here - https://lnkd.in/e84YuyGd. 2. Rules Engine – We’re preparing to roll out our advanced rules engine, enabling merchants to easily create sales rules across our bundles, upsells, and cart. This is a game-changer! 3. GTM Expansion – After growing PickyStory solely through a product-led growth model, we’re now building our go-to-market team and strengthening relationships with both existing and new partners. 4. Rebranding – Yes, we’re changing our name to *******! A completely new name, logo, and brand colors are coming soon. More updates soon

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Is “launch early” bad advice? I always thought it was a cliche VC tagline… but (annoyingly) it actually works. We launched Accend (YC S23) publicly a couple of weeks ago with our press announcement in Axios, and the effects we’ve seen are incredible. More people booking demos, reaching out, wanting to join our team. Of course, it helps to have a product that does what it says and a line up of customers to give us more credibility. The hard part about launching early is learning how to separate the noise from substance. More people are booking calls with me through the link in my bio - but a lot of those conversations don’t go anywhere and aren’t a good fit for Accend. Even though it’s easy to get starry-eyed seeing the metrics go up, more demos doesn’t mean more conversions and more sales. You have to ringfence the core audience you’re trying to serve - for us, that’s fintech platforms and banks struggling with manual KYB - and double click into it. It takes a lot of focus and discipline to avoid getting distracted, but all-in-all it’s been a net-positive throwing ourselves into the spotlight. So even if you don’t feel 100% ready, just launch. You can always course-correct later.

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🚀 Attention Founders: The Power of Pro Rata Rights 🚀 Having been on both sides of the table - as a VC and a founder - I can't overstate the importance of pro rata rights in seed-stage investing. Why it's a win-win: +It keeps early believers invested in your success 🤝 +It helps maintain a balanced cap table 📊 +It can lead to smoother future funding rounds 💰 Why it's a pain for founders: -Later-stage investors may try to block seed investors' pro rata -Founders need to manage this dynamic carefully! As you navigate your funding journey, remember: fair terms build lasting partnerships. Maybe this round is hot, but what about the next when you need an extension? Keep your earliest supporters close and bought in! Go deeper into this topic with Scott Orn, CFA's insightful article - link in the original post. #StartupStrategy

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What do investors expect from MVPs? Here’s what I learned 👇 1. You need proof, not just ideas → Investors rarely back just an idea unless you’re a repeat founder. 2. Build first, ask for money later → Focus on bootstrapping, validate the solution, then raise funds. 3. Show engagement over polish → Investors care more about real users interacting with your MVP than perfect design. 4. Validate before scaling → Ensure users are gaining value before you push for bigger investment rounds. I’m passionate about helping first-time founders build lean MVPs. What’s holding you back from starting? Let’s talk. #MVP #StartupFunding #LeanStartup #FirstTimeFounders #Bootstrapping #ScaleSmart #StartupJourney

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At Forum we look at thousands of deals each year across our Accelerator and Pre-Seed funds but only end up investing in a little over 1% of those startups.  As an early stage VC, I am in the business of saying no to nearly every startup I meet, and while there is nuanced rationale for many of the startups I pass on, a vast majority of businesses that don’t meet the qualification to get funded typically fall into one of two buckets. ▪ First time founders have a tendency to go out to market too early to raise pre-seed capital ▪   I’m sure most founders have heard some iteration of this from VCs that ultimately pass on their business.  In some cases it's a blanket excuse covering up for other pass reasons- perhaps a VC doesn’t believe in a team or isn’t bullish on the market opportunity - but in many cases founders simply haven't proven enough to the market to warrant an investment. I meet many teams with an articulate vision for the product that they want to build, but they either haven't performed enough customer discovery to prove demand for their initial wedge product, or need to raise pre-seed capital to build out an MVP.  In those cases, pre-seed investors are unwilling to underwrite those risks.  To be default fundable, teams need to be able to keep costs low, perform extensive customer discovery, and ship some version of an early product - pilots and early paid customers are key. A huge piece of this is having founding engineering talent on the team. ▪Not every startup is a venture opportunity ▪ By definition, a venture backed business is solving a problem within a market opportunity so massive and so desperately needed, that its growth rate is off the charts.   It spreads like a weed, absorbing almost unlimited amounts of capital to fulfill demand within its customer base.   Each year there are maybe 20 companies launched that ultimately have venture scale outcomes. The bar to reach this rarified air is unfathomably high and the reality is the vast majority of founders simply aren’t building for opportunities that have the potential to be one of these generational companies. Many startup founders view VC as the only viable option for capitalizing their business, but not every great business is a venture business, and most successful founders never take VC dollars.  In order to reach an IPO/acquisition large enough to generate venture returns, a startup needs a credible path to $100s of millions in revenue. This is the standard by which early stage opportunities are evaluated. The flip side to this, and I share this feedback often with founders I meet that are building interesting business in non venture markets, if you are able to scale to $10- $20M in revenue that can be a massively successful outcome for a founder.  There are investors who focus on these type outcomes, namely lower middle market PE shops, and the typical path to those deals is a bootstrapped business or a friends/family capital raise.

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Chat with Miles Clements about building Linear For me companies are like design problems: you have context, constraints & goals unique to you. Then you look for a solution that has a good fit to your unique problems. The company problem also evolve over times the solution Directly applying what others have done doesn’t work that well, yet there is lot emphasis on playbooks, pattern matching and playing copying what other companies are doing in industry. https://lnkd.in/ghxjJwYU

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To all the VC associates - you are in a really fortunate job where you are getting to meet really resilient and smart entrepreneurs day in day out. Never burn bridges. Never underestimate and more importantly, never come off as a snob. Be humble, even when you are rejecting a founder. Does not matter how big of a fund you work in. Do not look down upon any founder. I entered the startup ecosystem in 2018 as a junior VC associate. I evaluated around 1400 startups during my 2 year stint there. I passed on over 1300 of them after 1 call, thinking they can never be viable business models. I always tried to close the loop with the founders with genuine feedback - felt feedback was the biggest help I could give them at that point. It has been 6 years now and I am pleasantly surprised to see so many startups I rejected continue to survive and thrive. No funding. No fancy pitches. No fame. No $100M ARR. No burning money for faster growth. They just continue to build frugally. Some of them have also become our customers and trusted us to handle their organic growth strategy. Some of them have referred customers to us. It is a small world and we all are in this for the longer run, collectively trying to forward the ecosystem in our own ways. You never know how people will end up helping you. Relationship is THE most critical asset!

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A couple of weeks ago, I'd put out a post committing to helping 20 SaaS Operators become first-time CEOs (non-founders). https://lnkd.in/eX5gi2D2 Since then, 32 operators have reached out seeking support in getting to the seat. Majority being GTM leaders but also a good mix of Tech, Product, Finance, Operations, and HR leaders. Their collective experience ranges all the way from $2M - $21B ARR. Mix of VC, PE, bootstrapped & publicly traded companies. Here are a few common themes that emerged from their stories: 1. There is very little information available on "how" to get to the seat.     2. Most folks give up within a few months of the search, largely demotivated by the advice they receive from headhunters. While the need to connect with headhunters is understandable, remember most are simply working towards pre-defined criteria set by the Board/investors. Unless they are actively working with a Board/investor group open to a first-time CEO, there ain't going to be many words of encouragement.     3. Connecting the dots between current skillset / experience and the CEO's job feels like an insurmountable task. There's plenty of literature available on the CEO's role but very little that speaks to leveling up from a certain role (e.g CRO, CMO, CTO, etc)     4. Too many folks feel hamstrung talking about their story. "How do I cover for my skill gaps?" is a common question. In my experience, you don't! Instead, be brutally transparent about your strengths & gaps. That right company/role/board will find you. E.g. if a PE firm acquires a company with GTM being the biggest gap - they are likely looking for a GTM-savvy CEO.     5. "Not sure where to begin the search". It's true that most CEO opportunities are not publicly advertised, so the typical search approach may not work. One way is to begin by mapping out your ICP (replace customer with company) - industry, entry ARR, product category, etc, look for PEs/Holdcos that make acquisitions into that ICP, and request intros through your network. All of this is to say: Operators, please do not give up on your aspirations. Assuming the right intent, fit, foundational skills, and track record, not only is there a path to becoming a first-time non-founder CEO, but there are some great people out there specifically looking to make a bet on first-time candidates. On a separate note, this is probably my first time experiencing the power of LinkedIn. Given my limited reach (~3.4K followers), I wasn't expecting much of a response to that post, but the fact that over 30 first-time CEO aspirants reached out within 2 weeks encourages me to continue using this medium to "pay it forward." More soon!

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Anne Sraders at Sifted reported on the results of a new survey from the publication that found 44% of startup founders score their investors a “1 out of 5” on helpfulness, saying their relationships with their VCs have gotten worse in the last 12 months. 👫   So, what’s driving the reported decline in these relationships? According to the survey, economic constraints seem to be behind it all – with investors asking founders to cut costs and trim staff. According to the survey, founders are also looking for help with go-to-market strategy and support for managing mental health concerns.    With these pressures weighing on founders, working with the right people is more important now than ever. Having a mentor to guide a founder through this landscape, who is there for them through thick and thin and knows what it is like to be in their shoes, can be a game-changer. 🏃‍♂️   These mentors can provide expert guidance on managing the relationships between a startup and a VC by leaning on their expertise and knowledge of the global startup ecosystem. Tenured entrepreneurs guiding rising entrepreneurs can give founders the resources they need to make their startup successful. 🚀   What is one piece of advice you wished you were given when starting your entrepreneurial journey? Leave some advice for your fellow founders in the comments! 👇 https://lnkd.in/d2mn2YMm #VCs #Startups #Founders

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Today Vladimir Oustinov and I are launching Railblocks 🚀 We partner with ambitious founders building ops-heavy businesses to help them design, build and grow their own internal Operating System. I’ve seen so many “best stack for X” lists go viral lately — and while I think this is important and I’m always for giving visibility to amazing tools, these lists can mislead founders into forgetting that picking the right tool is just the beginning. The real key is how you implement and stitch together the tools you pick: 1. how data flows in and out of each tool 2. how they fit into your processes 3. how you communicate about 1 & 2 with your team This is exactly what I have been doing for the last 8 years as an employee, and what we want to solve with Railblocks. We get things moving quickly: in just a few weeks we’ll have laid the foundations for your new stack, migrated all your existing data over, and trained your team to start using it. From there on out it’s all about documenting/training, monitoring and iterating. Over and over again. We're not a distant agency, we get our hands dirty and go deep into the weeds with your team, until your company feels like it’s on rails. We’ve been hard at work with our first clients (On Deck, Lighthouse HQ & Mercury) over the last 6mo to help them build automated and scalable workflows to: - attract & qualify leads - onboard & communicate with customers - attract & select talent - track & analyze KPIs Big thank you to Julian Weisser, Noémie Federico, Minn Kim, Alexis Wiseman, mallory contois for trusting Railblocks 💜 Amd shout out to all the great tools which have made this possible: Airtable, Zapier, Fillout, Attio, Glide, HubSpot, Hightouch, Customer.io, OpenAI...

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One of the things that worries me the most about 2021-era AI startups is precisely this: early-stage burn rate. Burn rate applies not only to dollar amounts but equity as well. Raises ultimately have to tie to revenue at the very least, so even if the first stage VC went starry-eyed, it doesn't mean the second stage will. I suppose it's just the Great Filter of AI, but here's to the prudent leaders!

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Finding product-market fit is hard. But if you’re starting your first company my biggest piece of advice for founders is: get on support calls. Here’s why. As you’re developing your early stage products you have maybe done some market research to validate your general product idea, but you’re also likely basing it on whether you would find the product useful. Awesome. That’s a good start. But it doesn’t get you product-market fit. In those early stages you need to always be validating product iteration with your customers. How are customers using the product? What are the biggest pieces of friction they see in onboarding and using the product? What are customers calling out from what competitors are doing? You get answers to these questions on support calls. Not hunkered down looking exclusively at customer use data. So if you’re an early stage founder, get on the support calls if you’re not already. And, even if your company is past those early stages, it’s never a bad idea to see what customers are saying by jumping into support tickets. Just remember, not every customer suggestion is worth developing. Make sure it syncs with your overall product strategy and vision.

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