Brianda Gonzalez

Andar means "to carry" in Spanish, and this company, rooted near my hometown in Arizona, handcrafts some of the highest quality "carriables" available DTC. In addition to premium quality products, one thing this company does VERY well is video UGC. Wallets, bags, cases, holders... They have stacks of content for each. In 2024, content has become core to every new product release for Andar. If I were a brand, I'd be allocating budget to do the exact same thing. Did you know you can now get a piece of video UGC for ~$80. Did you know adding UGC to a PDP improves conversion by >5%? Did you know there are only 3 Shopify Apps that make this easy, for under $100, with no impact on site speed/performance? Proud to say Novel is one of them and that we work with such amazing brands like Andar :) Questions? Here to help.

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Let’s play the blame game. Whenever an NBA team – or a company – fails to reach expectations, people are quick to point fingers. "The Atlanta Hawks didn’t make the Playoffs because of Trae Young," some say. "Company Y missed their earnings because the VP of DTC didn’t get enough unique visitors to the website," they say. Rarely, though, is the finger pointed at the right place. That’s because – and the example of Trae really had me thinking about this – when a company falls short, it’s almost always an institutional failure and not a single individual. What does that mean? Let’s keep using Company Y and that VP of DTC as our example. In a nutshell, the VP was in charge of DTC revenue and missed the projected number. Still, to drive that revenue the VP’s dependent on the product team producing and delivering the right product at the right time. That VP’s dependent on the marketing team cooking up the right assets, branding, and copy. That VP’s dependent on the C suite allocating the proper budget to drive the expected dollars. That VP’s depending on a lot of variables – and on the overall institution – that are out of their control. Likewise, Trae averaged 26 ppg, 10 apg, and made the NBA All-Star team this year. Yeah, he wasn’t perfect on defense and he turned the ball over a fair amount. Still, he’s dependent on institutional variables, too, such as the front office picking up the proper complimentary pieces before (and during) the season. He’s dependent on the ownership group hiring the right basketball, medical, nutrition, and training staff. And, he’s dependent on all of his teammates. With all of that in mind, no matter who is at the top of a company or team, it takes certain factors to be successful. You have to have clear goals and incentives need to be aligned. You have to have outstanding communication. You have to trust one another. You have to, lastly for now, respect one another. If one of those key elements is missing, leadership is going to be on the hook. Which is why we say: Heavy is the head, in this case Trae and our VP of DTC, that wears the crown. #leadership #business

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One of the best pieces of advice to founders as they’re about to pitch VCs “Be dumber” 1. Much more common to lose people or open up a random can of worms than to wow someone with some overly complex point 2. Simplifying something into plain English is a form of mastery

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Founders aren’t the only ones switching between “peacetime” and “wartime” modes—Venture Capitalists do it, too. Just like entrepreneurs must pivot from strategy and innovation in peacetime to survival tactics in wartime, VCs also need to adapt their approach depending on the situation. Supporting thriving companies and guiding struggling startups require different skills and mental resilience. “As an investor, I’m involved in some companies operating in peacetime and others in wartime. There’s a lot of emotional dissonance during the day as I go back and forth between them. I’ve learned how to be calm in both modes.” — Brad Feld #oldbutgold #startups #venturecapital

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I'm absolutely FIRED UP to share Superfiliate's biggest product expansion to date.. Superfiliate is officially releasing our TikTok Shop integration to help agencies and brands win on the platform. If you're anywhere close to e-commerce/influencer/affiliate marketing, TikTok Shop has been dominating the conversation for months now. But, with how new it is, people and platforms are struggling to figure out how to make it work and where it fits in their strategy. Well, we're here to help you! We've been working directly with the incredible TikTok Shop team (Danny Hsiung, Oliver Silzer, Sophia Maltesen) to bring TikTok Shop closer to your existing marketing efforts and optimize all parts of the funnel. We're onboarding dozens of our merchants to leverage the integration which helps them: - Discover 1000s of target creators in minutes - Reach out to them at scale - Auto-invite them to a TTS target collaboration - Double down on top performers to partner across other owned channels - Uncover insights on what's driving success This is just the tip of the iceberg with what's to come between Superfiliate x TikTok Shop, and a HUGE shoutout to the entire team for bringing this to life so quickly! I might start sounding like the boy who cries wolf with these announcements with how much Anders Bill and Co are cooking up! Reach out if you want to give it a try - we're just getting started!

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Remarkable story of building a billion dollar food brand. Started with just a few gluten-free tacos and Ziploc bags because she had Lupus. Turned out the market was huge. The team (family of 7) eventually took investment from private equity, but only after thorough vetting--the PE folks had to hang out with the family (including grandma) and workout with the team at the gym to ensure culture fit! --- When they walked into their local food cooperative a decade ago with a Ziploc bag of homemade tortillas, Veronica and Miguel Garza had no clue that they would one day have a billion-dollar business. At the time, they didn’t have a business of any kind. Veronica had just started making grain-free tortillas from her Texas kitchen, and her wildest dream was selling them at a farmers market. But after that fateful day, she founded a company with Miguel, her youngest brother. They called it Siete Foods—siete as in the seven members of the Garza family. In only 10 years, their products have gone from a single grocery store to just about every supermarket. These days, Siete’s collection of grain-free snacks includes tortillas, chips, taco shells, cookies, churro strips, beans, queso puffs, salsas and sauces. What started as a side hustle has become one of America’s most successful food startups. And it was just acquired by PepsiCo for $1.2 billion. Source: WSJ, link below.

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❌ Every founder I work with has had a "great call" with a VC that goes something like this... 👨‍💻 Founder: "The call was great! They're super interested!" 😅 Me: "That's awesome, what are next steps?" 🤔 Founder: "Uhm, not sure they just said they'd get back to me soon..." This isn’t the right way to go about it. ALWAYS make sure to ask investors questions during your call to gauge their interest. Below, I’ve listed some questions I suggest founders use to drive CLEAR next steps. 🎯 Based on our conversation today, how interested would you say you are in considering an investment in our startup? 🎯 Could you share your level of interest in our company on a scale from 1 to 10? What would help to make it a 10? 🎯 What does your typical due diligence process look like? What's the timeline? 🎯 Are there immediate steps we can take that would help you in making a decision regarding investment? 🎯 As we move forward, who else within your team or organization should we connect with to discuss this opportunity further? 🎯 What further details would you need from us to fully understand our business model and the opportunity it presents? A good rule of thumb: pay close attention to body language throughout the conversation. Pause when you see eyebrows raised, head nodding, or other signs of engagement, and use these moments to check in. Frequent check-ins keep everyone engaged. Now go get that paper!! 💸 #fundraising #startupsuccess #startupjourney

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The best early stage founders are able maximize the value of capital raised by perceiving the raise as a loss of their equity/ future value, not as a reward they’ve earned bc of their hard work.

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When’s the perfect time to hire? Spoiler: there isn’t one. 🕰️ After speaking with numerous founders and partner VCs recently, I’ve noticed that hiring is a hot topic, again 🙁 In my experience, there are only two scenarios when it comes to hiring: 1. Too early ⏳ 2. Too late 🕒 Hiring too early means spending more money upfront. 💸 Hiring too late means missing out on potential opportunities. 🚀 With 25 years in recruitment and involvement in over 10,000 hires*, here’s my take: 👀⤵️ Generally, the cost of missed opportunities (hiring too late) is higher than the cost of spending money early (hiring too soon). But with AI transforming the workforce, my perspective is shifting. Productivity and collaboration solutions are driving significant changes. Changing the way we work.
 🆘 Founders, if you need help, send me a DM for free advice. *I’ve lost count, so it might be more than 10,000. #founders #investors #changethewaywework #thefutureofworkisnow #firstdegree #aiworkforce #aiproductivity #aicollaboration

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Hardest thing for founders in AZ to understand is that “grinding” wont get you funded for your pre seed or seed. Relationships will. Bond with founders who have angel networks and people who know investors so you can ask for intros (and get to a point where they feel comfortable making them). How to get them comfortable? - grab dinner with them - go to concerts with them - do an activity with them AKA, experience a good time together. Only then will you unlock deeper conviction levels from them…

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“Founder-Market Fit” gets thrown around a-lot. I first heard of the concept in 2016 when 🧬 🤖 ⚙️ Alex Iskold wrote a Josh Kopelman-inspired post about it. Since then, it’s become a default checkbox for early-stage investors, as mainstream belief now is that it’s a key predictor of a startup's success. Yet, it feels awkward every time I see it used to reference different situations. Founder solving a problem that took the life of a loved one? ✔️ FMF! Founder with 25+ years in the same domain they’re building in? ✔️ FMF! See what I mean? Super different. While the nuance might not always matter, I think it should be understood. That’s where better defining variations of FMF can provide a helpful framework to, situationally, evaluate the type of fit a founder has. The 4 types of Founder-Market Fit I’ve observed: 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder feels a deep sense of purpose to solve a problem with their company, and they’ve become obsessed with doing so. Emi Gal is a great example of this with what he's building at Ezra. 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder has meaningful experience operating in the domain, and therefore has a unique vantage point and insights to build from. 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder's technical skill and/or SME transcends the top .1% in their field - creating high barriers to entry - and uniquely positions them to win. This fit is often required for founders building in hard sciences (eg biotech). 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder already spent time building relationships and trust in the market, ideally with buyers they’ve sold, and can leverage this “native” network. The GTM motion this creates is a wildly powerful advantage for a founder. Each type of fit is an asset with unique value for founders and compounding effects are certainly at play. Fundamentally, I think it comes down to this question: 𝘋𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 (𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮) 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘳 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘧 𝘴𝘰, 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘵, 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯/𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮? It’s proven FMF is not required to build a successful company, but founders having some prior alignment with the market usually impacts outcomes. HT to James Currier over at NFX who, from what I can tell, has written the most on how he thinks about FMF distinctions. So, what do you think I'm missing here? How do you think about FMF?

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Investors and Seasoned Entrepreneurs: what would you say are the 3 most important things a founder must have or know in order to go from idea to launch successfully? I am testing my own hypotheses about early stage success, but very curious for other thoughts - ESPECIALLY if you think these things are different for Black founders versus other founders.

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There are Billions of dollars in non-dilutive grants and other funding for startups, especially those in Medical Devices, Digital Health, and Healthcare overall! Are you tapping into these sources of free capital where you don’t have to give up any of your equity? There are also people who can help you better prepare to win your grant applications (see below)!

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Founders, you're losing deals by not having a clear discovery call plan. I've seen this a lot where founders looking to scale up their early sales efforts are going into it thinking the product will get them through the sale In most cases, this isn't the truth You need to have some sort of framework to make the selling motion more repeatable Instead of demo'ing the product, try learning more about them and their challenges first. Your goal should be to know enough to build a customized demo for them. This will help in building solid relationships, build value throughout the process and likely speed up deals on the back end of it. If you don't know where to start, hit me up and I'm happy to lay out some early sales structure for founders! Go crush it out there 🤙

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Founders Need a Backup Plan This has been a tough year for many startups that were king of their hill just a few years ago. The fundraising and acquisition situations we are seeing are incredibly stressful for founders, to say the very least. But whatever is going on, you still need a backup plan. If you want to fundraise, you cannot rely on your existing investors needing to protect their position alone. If that doesn't work out, you will need to pursue other options and it will be a lot easier if you make those plans early. For acquisitions, it's a similar situation as the outcome is far from guaranteed. It's not enough to hope your company will close its sale or else simply shut down. You need to collect multiple offers, even if they're bad; generate fundraising alternatives and even consider replacing yourselves if you're ready to move on. Reality is cruel and nobody is coming to save you. You need to give yourself multiple options. You need a backup plan.

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Idea I’d love your thoughts on! Cohort-based zoom calls for VC Demystified🪄 annual subscribers. I’m thinking of doing something where annual subscribers of my newsletter get to hop on a zoom with me to ask me anything about VC recruiting. For a while now I’ve been trying to figure out how I can scalably chat with more of you live and this idea popped into my head. It would be cohort-based depending on when you signed up. What do you think? Let me know in the comments: 1) Interested! 2) Not interested (respectfully) 3) I have a better idea Would love to hear your feedback ☺️ If this post gets enough love, I’ll launch it!🫡 #venturecapital #vc #startup #founder

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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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