David Greenbaum

If you enjoyed our first blog on the metrics that matter for Verticalized SaaS then don't miss on the Part II of the series where my colleagues Devraj Hom Roy and Matt Schaar discuss the strategic and operational choices to improve these operational indicators. https://lnkd.in/g5QkCrcH

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Our revamped newsletter, The Angle by Angular Ventures, officially launched today! We hope this new format will make it easier to read, share, and subscribe. Back to it, in this week's column, Gil Dibner covered the spirit of risk-taking that inspired Angular to venture into unusual spaces. While, of course, we invest in AI and SaaS, as of late, we have been investing in more and more contrarian spaces - from quantum, to spacetech, to energy, etc. in search of the supposedly impossible - the truly contrarian. Read the full column via the link.

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Today, GTMfund’s is excited to announce to launch of Operator, its first incubated company. Max Altschuler (founder of GTMfund) teamed up with co-founder Adam M. (design engineer and 0-1 builder) and co-founder Mark Kosoglow (Outreach employee #1 and former SVP of Global Sales) to create Operator.ai alongside an insanely talented team Pleasant Middelhof, Jeremy Jonas, Carl Gunderson. We've entered a period called “The Great Ignore”. Spam and irrelevant, poorly-automated outbound campaigns are running rampant.   Operator gives you an easy-to-use Growth Engineer that allows you to build and enrich lists with accurate data, and run experiments and queries using AI to generate highly targeted outreach.    Check out their website to get updates, early access, and see how they are taking the world back to 2 touches meant to attract buyers into conversations that convert, instead of 20 touches meant to make sure you hit your activity number: https://www.operator.ai/

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‼️ ICYMI: High Alpha's Benchmarks report is live! SaaS founders and teams—this is a must-read, filled with actionable benchmarks designed to help you build smarter, measure success, and accelerate growth. From growth rates to cash efficiency, it’s all in there. I cannot stress this enough—pay attention to your NRR. Top-line growth is nice, but delivering outsized value to customers proves how indispensable your product truly is. More below!

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Non-Engineering Roles at Early-Stage Startups Offering $120K+ Base Salary with Meaningful Bonus and Equity: Chief of Staff @ Milo (Consumer), Remote Biz Ops Lead @ Fractal Agriculture (FinTech), Remote; Backed by Virta Ventures Chief of Staff @ CakeAI (AI SaaS), NY; Backed by Primary Venture Partners Demand Generation Specialist @ Rootly (Consumer), Remote; Backed by YC, 8VC, Gradient Ventures Account Executive @ CommandBar (Enterprise SaaS), Remote; Backed by Soma Capital, YC, Insight Partners Product Marketing @ Slope (Enterprise), Remote; Backed by YC, Union Square Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures Supply Planning Manager @ PROVEN Skincare (Consumer), Remote; Backed by YC, FJ Labs, Soma Capital, Social Capital Account Executive @ Accrue Savings (Consumer), NY; Backed by Ground Up Ventures, Tiger Global Chief of Staff @ UNIGRID Battery (Climate), CA; Backed by Union Square Ventures, LiquidMetal Ventures Job details and the full list (40+ opportunities) are in the comments below. If you're interested in non-tech jobs focused on specific industries like HardTech, HealthTech, Climate, etc., then DM me or let me know in the comments.

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Third and last part of my post with some insights from the #fundraising of our latest fund. Some of the tools we used and how we managed to get the finish line successfully!

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This part of my conversation with Joao Barbosa, co-founder at the world’s leading wellness platform Gympass (now Wellhub) valued at $2.4 is a testament to the fact that nothing big actually started big 👇 It took Gympass 5 pivots and 2 near death experiences to find the business model that works and is scalable across the globe What I found really interesting is the framework that the team had around pivots - the tripod approach towards creating value. This approach could benefit many founders especially in marketplace kinda businesses Head over to our channels on Spotify, Apple and YouTube to watch / listen to the full conversation link in comment 🔗 The J Curve #thejcurvepodcast #podcastrecommendation #gympass #pivot #entrepreneurship #founder #venturecapital

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Founders, besides valuation and terms, board members can make or break your company so make sure you factor that in when selecting your next investors. #Governance #VC #BoD

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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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I'm excited to announce that Canapi Ventures has led OpenYield's seed round. OpenYield is redefining how bonds are traded and who gets to trade them. Despite being one of the largest global asset classes, fixed income has long lagged behind equities in terms of innovation. Outdated systems, fragmented liquidity, and barriers to access have made bond trading inefficient, opaque, and inaccessible to many, particularly retail investors.   OpenYield is changing that. By delivering an equity-like trading experience for bonds, the platform transforms the fixed income market into a space defined by transparency, efficiency, and access. With real-time pricing, seamless execution, and intuitive workflows, OpenYield is making bond trading easier and more effective for institutional players, market makers, and retail investors alike. This progress wouldn’t be possible without the exceptional leadership of Jonathan Birnbaum and Hilton Lipschitz, whose decades of experience in capital markets and fintech have earned them the right to build a category leader in this market. Also hard to believe that meeting Jonathan over 20 years ago led to this partnership today!   For Canapi’s network of financial institution LPs, OpenYield represents an exciting opportunity to enhance wealth platforms, attract new client assets, and deepen advisor relationships. As the competition for wealth clients intensifies, access to efficient fixed income trading will be a critical differentiator, delivering real value for customers and strengthening client loyalty. Thrilled to be partnering with Ben Savage and Ned Daoro at Clocktower Ventures. Shoutout to Harrison Kioko. More thoughts on our investment thesis here:

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Summary: Keith Rabois, managing director of Khosla Ventures, is on a mission to turn Miami into the next Silicon Valley and has been actively promoting the city as a tech hub. Despite some challenges and opposition, Rabois remains optimistic about Miami's potential and the growth of its tech ecosystem. Key takeaways: Keith Rabois is determined to make Miami the next Silicon Valley and has seen progress with a growing number of seed investments in the city. Khosla Ventures, where Rabois works, has made multiple investments in Miami, including one into a startup aiming to "reinvent education." Rabois continues to split his time between Miami and San Francisco, but believes that Miami offers a better quality of life and potential for building a thriving tech community. Counter arguments: Some big name investors, such as Andreessen Horowitz, have pulled out of Miami, suggesting that the city does not offer the same opportunities as other established tech hubs. Miami still has a relatively small share of total U.S. seed investments (2.6%-3.5%) which may indicate a lack of resources and opportunities compared to other cities. #venturecapital

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A little late, even though this process started in July.... Excited to share our latest investment in Heads Together Health!! We met Steve DeVrieze in October last year, and we think they are poised for impressive growth! Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ecYcqqkn #earlystagestartup #earlystageinvesting #VCinvestment #ncstartups #nctechstartups

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One of the things we see quite often at Grit Capital Partners, is a newly minted CEO. We see a big difference in the transition to CEO based upon the historical lane the CEO is coming from. There are different new muscles if you are coming from Product, Engineering, Finance, etc. In this article, we go deep on the CRO to CEO transition, which includes some thoughts from Rosie O'Meara, a particularly fine example of someone who has made the transition quite well. What were your biggest transition moments? https://lnkd.in/eEB-K2ZU

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The (Healthcare) Ground Beneath Our Feet… This year it is likely that over $10 billion will be invested in the digital health sector – a robust amount, no doubt, but inconsequential when compared to the amount of capital tied up in healthcare real estate assets, which is estimated to be $1.2 trillion by Jones Lang Lasalle. Of that amount, approximately $790 billion is in the hospital sector while the remaining $490 billion is in medical office assets. It is estimated that there are 48.6k facilities with 3.4 billion square feet of healthcare real estate, 42% of which are owned by REITs and another 33% held by other private investment vehicles. Much of the digital health investment is meant to make the physical healthcare infrastructure more productive: greater operating efficiencies, greater patient throughput, more relevant personalized care models with better outcomes. As the healthcare system is being pushed to be more distributed to lower cost sites of care, accelerated now by the rapid proliferation of automation and AI capabilities, the potential impact on healthcare infrastructure assets will be profound. Thoughts on what that might look like... https://lnkd.in/eTfAdUbS #digitalhealth Flare Capital Partners

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PE - PE Acceleration Toolkit (i.e. not Playbook) What commercial, GTM and growth areas do you cover in your "PE Portfolio Company Toolkit" (i.e. some funds like Vista Equity Partners call it a Playbook but I refer to it as toolkit with the aim of it being a participatory, not a prescriptive playbook)? Some ideas* come to mind - what else? (* i.e. Commercial/GTM/Revenue Growth - not including Product, Engineering, R&D and other functions) 1. Sales Optimization   - Sales Org Structure   - Sales Management Process   - Sales Prospecting & Outbound   - Sales Process Engineering - Pipeline Management - Forecasting & Commit Process - Forecasting Rollups - CEO & Board   - Sales performance metrics and KPIs   - Channel Sales, Partner and alliance programs   - Rev Ops & Sales Enablement   - Sales Quota, Compensation & Incentives   - Sales Tech & Automation 2. Marketing Optimization   - B2B Demand Generation strategy   - Marketing Management - Marketing Process Engineering - Defining Lead Nomenclature - Campaign Management - Strategic Messaging Architecture   - PLG - Product Led Growth   - Digital & Inbound marketing    - Account-based marketing (ABM) - Customer Marketing - Product Marketing - Marketing/Sales Alignment & SLAs   - Marketing Metrics / KPIs   - Marketing Tech & Automation 3. Customer Management, Success and Retention   - Customer onboarding processes   - VOC - collecting and analyzing customer feedback   - Customer Segmentation   - Customer Management Processes   - Proactive customer Engagement   - AM & Expansion Sales   - Renewal strategies   - Customer loyalty strategies   - Customer support optimization   - Customer metrics and KPIs 4. Pricing and Packaging   - Pricing strategies   - Value-based pricing   - Discounting strategies & pricing transparency   - Subscription and usage-based models   - Pricing experimentation and A/B testing   - Competitive pricing analysis 5. Operational Efficiency   - SaaS metrics (CAC, LTV, churn rate, etc.)   - Process automation and workflow optimization 6. Talent & Culture   - Leadership & Management    - Attracting and retaining top talent   - Building a high-performance culture   - Performance Management   - Remote work best practices   - Continuous learning and development 7. Community Building   - Community creation & engagement   - Building an ecosystem around the product   - Customer Advocacy Programs 8. Data and Analytics   - Data-driven decision-making   - Business intelligence (BI) tools and dashboards   - Data governance, security and privacy   - AI applications Other: 9. Product (& GTM Alignment) 10. M&A (Commercial/GTM integration) 11. Finance (Supporting the GTM org) 12. GTM Board Updates & KPIs 13. Etc. ------------------ #pe #privateequity #business

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⛳ Emerging fund managers pulse check. PitchBook tracks over 10,000 funds that are raising money, with 45% being emerging fund managers (defined as firms with less than 3 funds). Despite a dip in available capital—down to 16% from the pre-pandemic 23%—these managers are finding creative ways to stay competitive, like partnering with larger firms. 💼 Joanna Drake (founder turned investor) shared how "wildly different" it is raising a fund versus for a startup. One key datapoint she shared on the fund side was how little feedback you get along the way (and the years you can wait for it). The “long-winded and challenging process to raise capital” inspired Drake and Ben Black to create RAISE Global, a community for emerging fund managers and the “forward-thinking LPs” who back them. (A decade later, several hundred emerging managers with AUM under $200m are on the platform) They've found the newest emerging managers are more diverse and geographically dispersed than Silicon valley, and more were able to crack the ceiling and raise larger $100m funds (although this is still a small % of the market, requiring partnership with larger funds at the late stage). ▶ And not a hugely surprising datapoint: A lot of action is in the sub $49 million range, where roughly 50% of emerging managers are raising. Theresa Sorrentino Hajer, Head of U.S. venture capital research at Cambridge Associates warns that past success isn't actually a strong indicator on it's own to assess emerging managers. We've had a valuation reset. And newer managers with investments during the 2019-2021 "party days", need to build relevant track record and play to their strengths. A lot of emerging managers are specializing (70% who applied for Raise had a thematic focus), and betting on getting in as early as possible in the startup's lifecycle (Raise: 31% at accelerator/ pre-seed stages, and 47% at seed stage). “Emerging managers have to compete on a different dimension,” Nick Moran from New Stack Ventures. You're no longer just dealing with capital. Emerging VC's need to be as innovative and nimble as the startups they invest in, having a unique thesis and insights. They also play a role at the top of the deal-flow funnel: helping larger firms find promising companies, so finding a thesis, sector or philosophy aligned partner at a larger firm is helpful. Onwards! #EmergingManager #Startups #VC

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Last week at Stripe Sessions, we at OMERS Ventures, in partnership with Recall Capital and Gusto Embedded, hosted a few founders, builders and investors to chat about current and future trends in embedded fintech and vertical software. A few of my big takeaways from the evening: 🤖 A lot of us on the media and content side see AI as an existential threat, but many of those on the SMB and entrepreneur side actually view it as a solution to the 'cold-start' problem of 'wtf do I actually put on my website?' when they sign up for a Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, whatever and have to actually populate a customer-facing surface for the first time 🥞 Point solutions are increasingly losing out to full-stack offerings, even in vertical markets where requirements up and down the stack are unique. Everyone building a point solution is looking at how and when to expand. I think the differentiator will be in what the starting line was and how that cascades through the company's DNA as it adds additional features and capabilities. 👩‍💻 Technical integration of embedded solutions remains a complex and frictionful process, even for so-called 'two lines of code' 'simple' plug-ins (they end up not being this when they encounter complicated, aging legacy codebases). Is this a place for AI to excel – can agents handle heavy lift codebase stitch-ins without the time and effort it takes devs on either or both sides now? All in all a fantastic evening with great discussions and a terrific panel hosted by Somrat Niyogi! Thanks to Fred (Fady) Helou, Elizabeth Olveda, Charity Hudnall, Jackson Reynolds, Jeremy Butteriss, Lucy Wang, Isabelle Cole, Sarah Tierney Niyogi, Matt Bocci, Yi Liu, Yanett Burgueño and many more for provoking the above thoughts and many more!

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Interesting concept to rename rounds by milestones. But "Series Client Expansion Extension" just doesn't have the same ring to it 😋 . Maybe we can start incorporating it into a descriptor to add context, "Series Seed Extension: client expansion." #startups #venturecapital

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I've seen as many founder breakups as failures to reach product market fit. We’ve talked a lot on First Funders about product-market fit. Still, in my conversation with Julie Lein and Clara Brenner of the Urban Innovation Fund, they reminded me of the importance of a cohesive team. Is there a fit between the co-founders? I've started calling this cofounder-to-cofounder fit. As early-stage investors, we often only meet the CEO Founder during our process and not the rest of the team. It's a delicate balance not to take too much of a team's time, but it's also critical to understand working dynamics. Think about the last time you evaluated visit cofounders of a company together. How did they interact? Did they agree on the big things? Did they seem to actually … like each other?! These are all key observations investors need to make so they can choose founders with rock-solid relationships – not just ones who have opposite skills. I've hosted founder dinners to allow me to get to know teams. Julie and Clara take the time to go to the startups' offices, which is a great option! What else are investors doing to understand team dynamics better while respecting the team's time? #founders #cofounders #investors #vc

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