Dan Rua

Rolling into another day of the Primary Summit. Hit me up if we should connect onsite. Kudos to the Primary Ventures team so far, as yesterday’s Pre-Seed Summit was on point. Mar Hershenson, Benjamin Sun, Chris Douvos, Zach Weinberg, and Graham Pingree all dropping helpful nuggets for fund managers. Some paraphrased highlights: - Chris Douvos (AHOY Capital) - Most fund decks are terrible. Start with your people (not your strategy) and know you have about 6 slides of his attention. - Zach Weinberg (Curie.Bio ) - beleives SF’s AI talent is a significant advantage over NY, wouldn’t build AI in NY. Also questions if VC exits can keep up with VC expansion (generally hilarious and smart Twitter follow) - Mar Hershenson (Pear VC) - VC is so much more competitive now. It’s not enough to be an ex-founder with a great network and domain expertise. Have a better “why you are different” or do something else! - Benjamin Sun (Primary Venture Partners)- still sees arbitrage in going long NY venture (vs. SF). Do the work to keep various influential networking nodes aware of what you’re doing and how you think.

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Great time on the Embracing Erosion podcast w/Devon O'Rourke! We talked about: 🚀 How to scale a company from concept to 9-figure exit 🔄 How to break away from the traditional consulting model and apply product approaches ⏩ Why it’s important to iterate quickly and often with messaging 💸📈What signals are important to pay attention to when investing in startups and much more!

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What do you do when you don’t want to raise venture funding, or don’t have the option? Jive got started in 2001—my first day with the founders was September 11. We had no other choice but to bootstrap, which we did for five years. Eventually, we reached a crucible moment: We could stay independent and bootstrapped, or we could ride the social software trend to something much larger—but we’d have to raise money. I spoke with Lighter Capital CEO Melissa Widner about what it took to take Jive from a small open-source project to an IPO-ready SaaS business, and how it shaped my ideas on when and how to fund startups to optimize success. It’s not about funding versus bootstrapping, but about when and how much. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gDQSmuFy #Entrepreneurship #Startups #VC #IPO #Reignition

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Hitting $1.5M Rev in 3 years is impressive... but should he have sold the firm? Was reflecting on this recent podcast with Jordan Sublette, CPA. Clearly he had rapid success both in growing (and then selling to his successor). Can't help but wonder ... with a firm growing so quickly, did he sell too early? On the other side of it, the future is unpredictable and now he has some financial security... What do you think? 🤔 https://lnkd.in/gCnRh8MV #accountingfirm #acquisition #sale #CPAfirm

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Last week at the All Raise VC Summit, Heidi Roizen and I co-hosted a roundtable on being a great coach and navigating board room dynamics. Here is the BOARD framework we shared. It's a check-list for any investor who wants to help their CEOs master the board room, getting the most out of the experience in the room and on their cap table. This is written from an investor's perspective. If you're a founder and you want this level of involvement and coaching from your investors, ask them. Building a coaching relationship takes time, energy, and openness on both sides. The BOARD Framework for Positive Board Dynamics: B - Build the Relationship 1) Establish a coaching relationship with the founder 2) Connect with other investors before / after meetings to get to know one another and share perspectives O - Outline Expectations 1) Discuss the purpose of board meetings with the founder - what makes a great board meeting? 2) Set board norms and expectations and reiterate them each meeting 3) No surprises in the board meeting! A - Advance Preparation 1) Help founder prepare to get what they need from the meeting. Encourage them to write down the ideal outcome from the meeting and set the agenda + manage the timing accordingly. 2) Ask the founder to share with the board the ideal outcome(s) for the meeting e.g. are you looking for the board to provide input, make a decision, approve a plan? 3) Offer to preview materials ahead of time, before they're sent to the board. 4) Once final materials are sent, read them and provide questions before the meeting. R - Reporting Consistency 1) Give examples or templates of board materials. 2) Create a reporting document and structure that works for the founder and the board, and keep it consistent for every meeting. D - Deliver Feedback 1) Provide direct feedback to the founder after the meeting. Share your takeaways on the business items discussed, as well as on how they managed the meeting and the board dynamics and ways to improve. 2) Offer your support for the next board meeting. 

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If you're a SaaS, CPG, or e-commerce business collecting revenue in every state you need to worry about sales taxes now 😫 . Every state has slightly different rules too! I just made an investment in the space to solve this problem, read below 👇 I'm excited to announce a new investment that's targeting that problem. Zamp is announcing it's series A, they work with over 400 companies already (a mix of CPG, SaaS and E-commerce). If you're looking for a solution to the complicated situation of collecting sales taxes for your business, look no further.

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Orb (#uncorrelated) raised $25M to continue building their pricing and billing platform that lets companies automate a range of different billing modes e.g., usage-based, subscriptions, or a mix, marry analytics and billing, collect and meter product usage data, invoice customers, generate revenue reports, draw on product usage insights to find revenue opportunities, model out alternative pricing plans (thus enabling experimentation), orchestrate changes in real time, schedule future price changes for certain customer cohorts or contract renewals, directly embed draft invoices into product billing portals, surface past-due invoices, and recover failed payments automatically. "Orb gives companies a single source of truth that can connect every unit of product usage to revenue. We’ve found a particularly strong fit in AI, cloud infrastructure, fintech, and dev tools, and have seen most of our growth come from those verticals.” Orb’s revenue grew 5x in the past year, and the customer base tripled to include brands such as Vercel, Replit, Pinecone, and Perplexity. https://lnkd.in/gYh4y2tg

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TechCrunch's Mary Ann Azevedo discusses our list of 85 potential M&A target predictions for Ramp Watch this list of targets If you're a corp dev team and want to quickly build a target M&A list in seconds, we got you note: We made some predictions for Wiz M&A targets earlier this week (see first comment) https://lnkd.in/ezQ7mmex

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It’s funny, every technology has adoption curves. Like any technology, whether it be string, steel, software, or hydrogen-fuel- the limitations are on the business model and implementation, and cross-domain ingenuity. Short-term thinking is a real hazard. A big issue today is that people think we are somehow in a different place than we were 100 or 1000 years ago. The past is much closer than modern Americans realize. Things like software, which are magic-tools, are just a domino in the long line of dominos that is human invention.

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Catch another episode of This Week in Startups where Upfront Managing Partner Mark Suster interviews Max Altman and Ben Braverman, two of the three co-founders of Saga Ventures. With Saga’s new $125 million fund, the trio talk about: ➡ Fundraising challenges the co-founders faced as a first-time fund and the playbook of how referrals can be the best leads for increasing the chances of success ➡ Nuances of determining a fund size to maintain competitive advantages in deal strategies ➡ Ben’s learnings from working with Ryan Peterson at Flexport as well as Max’s experience and unique advantages working with his brothers Jack and Sam Here's a short clip below about the attributes of successful founders that they look for, including those willing to take unconventional risks 👇

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Hey folks, I think you might be aware that what we're building at DeepCast includes a podcast discovery and exploration platform for listeners at www.deepcast.fm. We also recently unveiled www.deepcast.pro -- a promotions, marketing, and monetization platform for podcasters (and folks like networks and agencies who support them). "You make the shows, let us help you with what comes after." Shows claimed and processed via DeepCast Pro are also published for listener consumption on DeepCast. High value all around! If you're a podcaster, claim your show at www.deepcast.pro to get started. Free speaker-labeled transcripts for all your episodes as well as generated insights for each (key takeaways, quotes, topic & keyword sets, summaries, and more) plus many more features—and growing daily! We're shipping fast over here! (Thanks to Rachel Perez Hosna Qasmei Kim Burgaard Benjamin Moon Rachel Magana Hari Ramachandran!)

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Dilution can be confusing, especially if you have multiples SAFEs/Convertible Notes stacked on top of each other. In my Atlanta Ventures blog, I write about how to understand dilution, as well as provide a simple tool to forecast the impact of a fundraising round: https://lnkd.in/eVFBS2At

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On my way to London to work with a portfolio company at their QBR and annual planning process. Another example where having investors on your cap table that understand how to build companies vs just show up and pontificate at your board meetings will help you to build world class outcomes. Remember why we do this - build world class organizations that drive meaningful economic outcomes for employees, customers, shareholders, and investors. Lead from the Front!!! #vc #growth #venturecapital

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In learning more about VC Lab (and applying to their latest cohort), I came away impressed with them -- both as a venture capital accelerator and for their mission of transforming venture capital into a force for good. In particular, I learned of their Mensarius Oath for ethical investing and fully support it, particularly the sections on transparency and equality. If interested you can read it here: https://lnkd.in/db-iq2F4

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After the first deep dive discussion w/ founders I often hear a comment "I wish I had heard about this alternative [to all-in must-become-a-unicorn] way to build a startup earlier as I have wasted years in pursuing the wrong thing". Our mission is that no founder would ever need to say that again as it is such a waste. Us preaching the gospel 1:1 just doesn't scale, hence we use mass media to multiply our efforts - that's how Gorillacast came to be. The 1st episode is out, featuring yours truly. "How can you know what food you like unless you taste everything" said a chef. How can founders make informed choices about the best strategy for them to follow unless they know of all alternatives? This might not be of interest to you but pls spread the word so that the founders who should hear it can find it. I have a dream!

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KNOW YOUR REAL BUSINESS ECONOMICS • GAAP Revenue • Cash Flow • Cash • Contribution Margin • CAC • CAC Payback FUNDRAISING: PRESENT & SUBSTANTIATE FINANCIALS • Investor needs to know what your forecasts are • They need to believe them David Weiden, Khosla Ventures

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I have a big announcement to make.  In life, you back your winners. You back the people who exceed your expectations, exhibit a high level of integrity, energy, grit and give you as a leader leverage. Matthew Thompson is one of those special leaders, and today he is being promoted from GM of our public sector business to Chief Revenue Officer for all of Socure globally. Matt’s leadership at Socure has been transformative.  He has been at the forefront of our public sector business, leveraging his vast experience to build and scale our operations in an incredibly short period of time.  After only 2.5 years of serving the Fed and SLED Markets, Socure is now supporting 22 state agencies, 3 federal agencies, 1 Higher Ed Institution, and we’re in talks, pilots and integrations with dozens more.   On top of that, we’ve formalized 20+ meaningful strategic partnerships and already achieved several of the critical security and compliance milestones that are essential to doing business with the government. For anyone not familiar, that rate of growth is unheard of in the public sector. Matt’s commitment to excellence and putting in the extra effort that separates winners from the rest of the pack, has been nothing short of inspiring. He’s a tremendous motivator, communicator and possesses a rare sense of extreme ownership and accountability, something you want in every teammate. One of the most amazing things about Matt is his humility.  But he did share some numbers in a recent post that demonstrate the incredible transformations our team has created in the public sector under Matt’s leadership. 🔹 For one of our government customers, we were able to process 100% of applicants, with 95% being onboarded through auto-approval in less than one second. 🔹 For another agency, we showed them how using our solution would save their constituents more than 157,000 hours of time annually during digital onboarding 🔹 We replaced a bureau in another agency where we’ve demonstrated the ability to approve 24% more people that were otherwise being rejected while also stopping 82% in fraud losses that they were letting through 🔹 We are verifying almost 40% more 18 year olds than any competing solution on the market and verifying 92%+ of Gen Z constituents with almost 100% coverage of the US adult population I can’t wait to see what we will achieve together in Socure’s next stage of growth. Congrats Matthew Thompson! #identity #fraud #leadership https://lnkd.in/gpH8vDnX

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Early stage founders run into this all the time: So much to do and not enough resources. The best advice: 1) pause; 2) think through the what, the why, and the how. That’s how you’ll achieve your goals. In our newest episode, Bryan Karas and guest Catherine Donaldson, startup and Go-To-Market leader, dive into the Go-To-Market landscape and the common challenges that early-stage founders face at different inflection points. Are you at an inflection point? Tune in and you’ll find out. Link in the comments.

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