Ash Maurya

I have been seeing a lot of AI-enabled products with sub $300k in ARR but 75-100x revenue valuation multiples. Obviously there is a lot of promise for many of these tools, but a question I keep wondering about is which line item in a prospective buyer's budget many of these software licenses is going to come from and if revenue growth is going to be a lot slower than valuation because buyers haven't yet adjusted their FP & A process to include allocation for AI tools that don't neatly fit in any historic software category. Tricky question. TIA Ventures

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Startups are inherently risky, but prematurely going all in is even riskier. Instill a bootstrapping mindset to get you to the first significant milestone. Not Product/Market Fit, but Problem/Solution Fit. Problem/Solution Fit is when you go from hoping you’ll create something people want to knowing you will. Spend three months now to save you three years later. The Bootstrapping Operating System: https://lnkd.in/gqusDjhU

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Does negotiating with development agencies feel like a puzzle? It doesn’t have to! On this week's SaaS Founder Stories, I chatted with Kurt Willis from Boro Dev Agency, LLC. We talked about how to align your tech needs, investor expectations, and development goals. His biggest lesson? Transparency and flexibility are key to a successful partnership. If you’re scaling your SaaS and working with dev teams, this episode is a must-listen. 💡https://lnkd.in/gU88cK8E #SaaS #TechLeadership #StartupGrowth #DevAgencies #StartupAdvice

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People buy software for 2 main reasons: 1. Increase Revenue 2. Reduce Cost You can hear more form Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures on this week's episode of TFR.

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B2B SaaS is not easy, especially on the beginning. Let me explain. As Jason M. Lemkin says: getting to $1M ARR is impossible, getting to $10M is improbable, getting to $100M is inevitable. Not surprisingly, only a few will get there. The problem is how to make sure as a founder/CEO you take proper actions, optimal from time and costs perspective, truly required to achieve the next milestone in the company growth. Or even, in the first place, do you actually know what are those milestones and steps required. There's plenty of advisors on LinkedIn and beyond that will offer you the GTM services. My experience is, they rarely understand there is the "impossible" and "improbable" stage first. Advising in the "inevitable" growth stage is something many can do, but how to make sure you can cross the chasm of 0-1 and 1-10? In B2B SaaS, that's the stage of conceptualizing and engineering the product - the stage where most GTM experts will not help. If you will listen to their advice before doing the homework, it will backfire. Sure, it's super compelling to hire sales team and start scaling the business. The issue with that, if you do it prematurely, you will burn cash and not achieve the growth targets. There are steps you have to do yourself as founder/CEO before that, and they are not possible to be delegated. Especially for the first-time founders, discovering them can be quite daunting, but there are no shortcuts. For me professional growth is about learning new things. I'm constantly in pursuit of new knowledge, researching internet, my personal network and other resources to better understand the position and momentum we have in Occubee and which next steps we need to take. Sometimes I get lucky and come across great tactical materials on PMF, like recently shared by Rob Snyder from Harvard Innovation Labs (link in the comment). But to get the actual perspective on the whole process, from the idea market fit, through product market fit, go-to-market fit to scaling, the discovery of Wayne Morris and his GTM debt methodology was absolutely essential for me. GTM debt assessment is such a powerful tool, which by providing a framework of questions regarding the milestones and steps required to achieve them, allows founders and CEOs to make sure they operate in the same phase of growth as their company is in a given moment. I was one of the first that had the opportunity to take the assessment (when it was still in the beta) just before I met Wayne for the first time in person. Since then, we had multiple touch points and discussions, and they were pivotal for me. I was actively evangelizing about GTM debt for a while already, hoping more founders will have similarly cardinal discovery. Today, I am happy to share the news about Wayne's new initiative, RVNU, which will make it possible for even more fellow B2B SaaS founders. If you are a B2B SaaS founder or CEO, you definitely need to check it out! https://rvnu.co/

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5 Comments

A significant tech trend over the last ten years is the rise of no-code app builders. Tools like Knack, Airtable, and Retool allow non-technical people at nonprofits to build apps in minutes. Think Google Forms but on steroids. The use cases are endless! Here are a few ways a no-code builder could help you: 🔹 Organize your grant applications 🔹 Create a donor or member portal 🔹 Manage events and build registration pages 🔹 Coordinate your volunteers 🔹 Manage your inventory 🔹 Build a project management workflow 🔹 Collaborate with your team No-code builders are the Swiss Army knife of software. By building apps yourself, these tools give you the power to decide what is essential. Since you only add features that matter, you eliminate the noise accompanying more complicated tools and keep things simple for your team. Want to learn more? If you work for a nonprofit and want to learn more about how a no-code builder might save you time and money, comment or send a DM, and I'll schedule a Zoom call to brainstorm. In the meantime, here's a demonstration of how to build a custom CRM in seven minutes. I hope it sparks some ideas. #nonprofit #software #nocode #crm

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Most people don’t know that when a practical SaaS company raises money from a growth equity investor or private equity investor, those dollars mostly go to the founders. It’s not risky rocket fuel for the business like the VC funding game. It’s mostly money off the table—a partial exit prize—for the savvy founders who created fuel-efficient businesses with steady growth. This practical world of growing and funding unsexy B2B SaaS companies is where most of the action is in the software business right now. It’s also where founders are winning more overall. These founders created valuable companies, and they kept their option to sell all or part of the business when it made sense to them. Growth equity investors play a huge role in helping successful SaaS founders take money off the table and keep growing their practical software businesses. In this week’s podcast, I discussed the world of growth equity investment with Philip Dur, a 20-year investor veteran and managing partner of PeakSpan Capital. PeakSpan Capital is a growth equity investment firm that works with bootstrapped SaaS founders who are scaling up to become sizable market leaders. Phil has been funding capital-efficient software founders for over 20 years and has served on 40 boards with those companies. Phil explains that the growth equity approach is almost the opposite of the VC investment game. For starters, Phil works with founders who want to keep growing their business but still retain the option to sell all or part of it at practical points along the way. Founders can’t do that when they take on big VC funding. In the venture world, it’s go big or go home, but it’s the opposite with growth equity partners. As Phil describes it: “I recommend every founder do some honest reflection and ask yourself, what is really the first exit value where I might want to transact and sell all or a part of my business? “If you raised or want to raise outside capital, make sure that your investment partners are making interesting returns at that outcome so you can make it happen if there's a great place for you to pursue liquidity. “Alignment and optionality are two unsung heroes that are hugely beneficial to bootstrapped and capital-efficient founders. Growth equity aligns with that. "You have the option to raise outside capital or not and the ability to sell all or part of your business at the right time. Alignment with your founders and any practical investment partners is required to be able to do that. "I think every time you raise, you should take secondary and take a little bit off the table." VCs and VC-funded founders don’t try to keep their optionality. That’s just one way that growth equity is different than venture funding. Phil describes more ways that growth equity can be practical and useful on the Practical Founders Podcast this week. Listen to this podcast here. https://lnkd.in/giawRYuS #practicalfounders

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Have you ever looked for theory that can answer - how to approach investors - what kind of product to build first - how you’ll defend the company against competitors This new article from CDA partner, Kevin Maney extends Steven Johnson's writing from the book Emergence to #CategoryDesign. All #Startups and #VentureCapital teams should dig in. (link to article in comments)

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How to pitch: The company has zero traction —> “We’re early” You only have 2 customers —> “We’re working with design partners” You currently have no revenue but hoping some pipeline finally closes —> “we’re on track to exit this year at $3M ARR” You’re in the natural kill zone of a FAANG —> “We view them as partners rather than competitors” There’s no way the tech can actually work —>“We’re manifesting the future” And of course: One of your developers uses Co-Pilot to write some front end code —> “We’re an AI company”

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Do you know how many hyper-growth public software companies are growing by over 40% this year? According to the latest June Guggenheim report… Zero. Not a single public SaaS company is growing over 40%. Do you know how many are growing their next twelve months (NTM) revenue over 30%? Also, zero! With that context, I was strategizing with my team on the most impactful ways companies can change their growth trajectory, and one thing we landed on solving immediately was time to integrate. If a company growing at 30% can pull in all net new integrations and thus revenue by just 1 month over the course of the year, it can increase its growth rate by almost 5%. For simplicity, assuming a $100M annual revenue, a 10% discount rate, and a 5-year valuation period, using a DCF, the company’s present value would not be 5% more valuable, but closer to 20% more valuable for all shareholders. The power of compounded growth rates. Game changer, and with just the smallest adjustments. That’s why smart companies are investing heavily in new customer onboarding and no-code, low-code technologies, like lightweight agents, hosted or embedded UIs, and more. The Socure team is ahead of the curve—ask our people about what we’re building and how we can help you accelerate your revenue growth.

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Is this ARR madness? Logitec proposes mouse as a service. As one Reddit user joked - if you exceed the mouse clicks, you go to premium plan. Yes we know from Economics 101 that rent is the most profitable concept. But a society of renters (and here we try to build one when everything is rented) is a society of poor people. Soon your electric toothbrush will stop working when you forget to pay the monthly fee. May be your fridge too. And you many not be able to go into your house if you haven't updated or paid the monthly fee for your smart lock. I am going back to metal keys. https://lnkd.in/e5zay5J2

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Can anyone define what makes a CMS an enterprise-level CMS??? For me, it's not just about the size of the company the project is for. It’s about the complexity of the integrations and requirements of the project. We've recently built a complex crowdfunding platform for a very small startup that involved integrations with HMRC, payment gateways, and CRMs. This shows that enterprise web development isn't just for large organisations. So, what characterises an enterprise CMS? For me, it’s one that can seamlessly integrate into a complex solution architecture, regardless of being headless or traditional. What do you think? And this is where Umbraco excels! It’s versatile enough for simple content sites yet powerful enough for enterprise-level projects. Plus, it’s open-source and free to download, making it accessible without hefty licence fees. If you're considering a powerful yet flexible CMS for your next big project, give Umbraco a try. For more website project hints and tips, follow me, you won't regret it, sometimes I'm funny too 😊 #umbraco #opensource #enterprisecms

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This is a must listen to for anyone B2B founder. How to figure out Product Market Fit. One of best frameworks I've seen in a while. https://lnkd.in/ghSmhVNB

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I was listening to this episode of Lenny Rachitsky's Podcast (https://apple.co/3YIIyDI) when the guest, Archie Abrams, referenced Shopify's 100-year perspective. I love this, which is a large part of why Shopify has succeeded. Shopify's 100-year perspective got me thinking about what if more of us had a 100-year perspective? How might we live our lives and conduct our businesses differently if we played a longer game? Would we take more risks, invest in longer-term value, be less stressed about next week, and more? The pushback would be that most people don't live to be 100 (the life expectancy worldwide in 2022 was 72 years), and most organizations don't make it a few years, let alone a century. But even if it is unlikely that you or an organization you lead will be around for 100 years, what's the harm in conducting yourself like you and it will be? The answer, I believe, is there isn't any. Having a long-term perspective, longer than what most people or organizations would think of as long-term, only has upside. It gets us out of reactionary, impulsive thinking and action. FOMO becomes irrelevant. Fads and trends fade into the background and get chased by others as you stay focused on building something long-lasting. A 100-year perspective would change a lot of our societal, political, and economic planning, policy, and discord, too. We're all driven by KPIs, OKRs, and other metrics that define our short-term success or failure. Make no mistake: You have to succeed in the short term to have a chance at a 100-year run, but there is probably a lot of opportunity for most of us to reverse our perspective from being short-term driven to long-term, which would benefit us and our organizations. Since they are outliers, we marvel at centurions' longevity and secrets to living a long life. Organizations celebrate anniversaries and longevity with parties, commemorative items, and honorary logos. We're turning 30 in 2025 at Transform Labs and will indeed celebrate the milestone. Still, we're still far from a finish line when you think about it compared to 100 or another 100. In many respects, we're just getting started and building on a legacy that will continue for another 70+ years. We all have an opportunity to live and lead with a 100-year perspective. If we or our organizations don't make it that long, so be it, but what if we do or can facilitate it?

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𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐭 - 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐆𝐓𝐌 𝐆𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞 I just revamped our SLED GTM Strategy Guide. Check it out and let me know what you think.

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This new feature could wipe out several startups. At our offsite, Nico Finelli and Jackson Hardy built a test case generation POC that answers customers' biggest asks: "Building test cases takes forever." "It's hard to start with LLM evals." "Startup X auto-generates test suites—why doesn't Vellum?" Here's what Nico built in just a few hours with Vellum: 1. Takes use case context, test suite name, and test case count. 2. Pulls existing cases via API. 3. Generates new ones using LLMs. 4. Updates test suite via API. Jack added a frontend button for instant generation, turning a half-day hack into a game-changing Vellum feature. See it in action:

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Saw the news today that PivotalTracker is shutting down. Although I haven't used the product in years, PivotalTracker was, to me, the perfect example of how opinionated software can supercharge a development team. All software embodies a process. The best tools are ones that not only record information but drive your process and your team forward. If you tried to use PivotalTracker but didn't follow their process, you'd find the tool would not work well - and so you'd be forced to adopt their process (which was a good process). Other tools that are more general, like Jira, let you do whatever you want, which often results in teams with poorly defined or loose processes, which results in teams that don't operate effectively. RIP PivotalTracker. For me, its legacy as an example of what opinionated software can do to make a team operate with peak efficiency will live on. https://lnkd.in/e3_jvQ9g

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