Greg Isenberg

Do you know any companies that are stuck or going through a rough time? At Palm Venture Studios, we believe some companies close that don't deserve to. Our mission is to identify these hidden gems and provide the support they need to thrive. We specialize in investing in and scaling companies, leveraging our expertise to turn challenges into opportunities. If you know a company in need of a lifeline or a fresh new chapter, let's connect and explore how we can help. #BusinessGrowth #Investing #CompanyTurnaround #Founders

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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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How do you do messaging for multiple ICPs? What do you do when one of these scenarios applies? · Expanding from one ICP to two (or more) · Needing to talk to several ICPs at once · Messaging when you're a multi-product company · Writing home page copy for multiple audiences Anthony Pierri 🎸and I are gonna talk about it for 60mis, and discuss what makes sense when. We'll share our overall thinking about the matter, but will mostly focus on audience Q&A. Come join us next Wed (June 12) to discuss this topic. Bring your questions. Free event. Registration link in the comments.

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Congrats to the Revive team for the latest fundraise led by Equal Ventures, as well as the new brand! I’ve had the honor of working with Allison Lee (Founder/CEO) and team for almost six years as their first institutional investor. My gosh, it’s been an incredible–and at times harrowing–journey… ‘Revive’ is such an appropriate name for this company, on multiple fronts. First, it describes the core business well, where this platform helps large retail apparel brands to upcycle garments and deadstock into new products, thereby substantially reducing apparel waste. But it also accurately describes Allison Lee herself. Allison is one of the most resilient humans I’ve ever met, and she’s gone through hell and back to create this outstanding company. When we were first introduced to Allison in 2018 (thanks Bebe Kim for that intro!), Allison was a solo founder experimenting with mall kiosks that provided on-demand hemming services for retail apparel consumers. Over the years, Hemster (the name of the co back then) scaled up to become a substantial business, with her own warehouses and staff to handle hemming for top apparel brands throughout the US. But then the pandemic happened. Brand clients budgets collapsed, along with her business model, and Allison had to reduce her team down to just one person. Herself. This was a dark time. I remember reaching out and attempting to check in with her during a six-month period where she was at her loneliest as a founder. She pretty much locked herself in her apartment, mulling new directions for her company by herself. But she figured it out. In 2021, she saw that the consumer retail market was shifting as Gen Z was strengthening their purchasing power. This new generation of shoppers were more climate and sustainability conscious, and wanted to hold big brands’ feet to the fire for products that conformed to their values. Allison saw an opportunity to retool Hemster into a top platform to help facilitate upcycled products for apparel companies. And it worked! Allison breathed new life into her company and business has been growing quickly ever since. Her business’ thesis is even stronger and bigger than the one she initially launched with. Beyond her being a skilled founder and operator, Allison is also a fantastic human being. She is relentless and un-killable as a founder. And also so warm, kind, and present as a friend. I’m grateful to call her a friend today, as well as a role model. Allison’s journey is still in the early days with Revive, and no doubt she is going to build something that has a huge impact on this world. Hustle Fund is nothing but grateful that she said YES to us, and allowed us to be part of this amazing and inspiring journey. Congrats again, Allison and team!

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This thread provides hard data on how influencers.. did not influence anything. At least in the hotel industry. I've said before that influencers cannot get people to engage in complex behavior. E.g. booking travel or voting if they weren't already planning on it. I think the current investment in influencers by the DNC is great to drive hype and keep the vibes going (this is important). But it's not going to have a direct impact on turnout, and the ROI is probably not measurable (or its zero, one of the two). https://lnkd.in/gVF9qEzJ

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Can you imagine getting 30 new paying clients in just a few months. Yes, that sounds impossible in this crazy, bot-saturated marketplace we're in today. Here's how I did it... and all without lead gen tools, sales automation or any marketing spends too. It just works, and it only needs a few minutes a day. Here's the story of how I did it, and you too can leave the noise behind and get the results you're wanting. It's all here in this free e-book: https://lnkd.in/gp_aPnaZ #referrals #relationships #sales #trust #growth

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X’s broken strategy with brand advertising Elon Musk has owned Twitter / X for nearly two years, since October 2022. From my perspective, X has made very few improvements to its direct response advertising tools in that time. That X is still locking horns with brand advertisers and taking increasingly desperate and severe measures to convince them to remain on the platform is proof of this fact. And while some might claim that X is structurally incapable of supporting scaled performance advertising, Reddit’s Q2 2024 earnings results suggest otherwise.

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tl;dr: Finding external advocates for your product is one of the most foolproof ways to build developer trust. If you’re generous enough with your incentives, loyal customers don’t just become endorsers — they become revenue-generating machines. Your biggest fans could be generating 10% of your revenue. At ScraperAPI, our affiliate program did just that by converting loyal users into top salespeople. Here’s how we spotted the opportunity: We realized that a lot of our customers would outsource web scraping tasks to freelance software engineers who would use the same tool over and over again for different companies. That left us with a great opportunity to build relationships with those freelancers who had the potential to bring us more and more new customers over time. Here’s how we did it in practice: It’s super simple. We offered killer incentives to everyone involved: -25% recurring commissions for affiliates -10% first-month discount for the new customers they referred Because our product was well-designed and easy to use, freelancers were happy to recommend us over and over again.

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And my second investment at defy is in 🐶 zeroETL puppies 🐶... I mean PuppyGraph, which is all the beauty of a graph database, none of the data migration or continuous upkeep of a graph database. Sounds like magic? So are puppies 🐶 . Puppygraph is NOT a graph or a database. It is graph analytics engine that answers graph questions on your existing data warehouses, whether that is a Databricks datalake, Google BigQuery or postgres. Compared to SQL, it's faster, handles way more complexity, scales and has almost no upkeep. How did I get to conviction? 1. Tailwinds - 🌊 Lakehouses 🌊 have helped enterprises put all their data in one place, enabling Puppygraph to unlock insights previously unavailable. - 📚 LLMs! 📚AI and RAG cannot easily traverse fragmented data. Puppygraph's Graph RAG unlocks insights with their Knowledge Graph and spoonfeeds to the LLMs. 2. 👯 Team 👯 We have graph experts from Google, LinkedIn, Databricks, Tigergraph, and Instacart who are uniquely able to build this solution. 3. 💸 Customers 💸 . My alma mater Coinbase is a proud user. The feedback from my former colleagues was off the charts! A blockchain is very much a graph database and Puppygraph tracks down fraudulent transactions that go through mixers and helps identify patterns. Huge congrats to Weimo Liu Danfeng Xu Lei Huang Zhenni Wu Gary Hagmueller, defy.vc is proud to be an investor!!

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Should you pilot an AI-first team that operates separately from your agency? I'm starting to hear of more large agencies choosing that path. It's a classic innovators dilemma Option 1: Do you do the work you need to do to operationalize AI inside your current team and services? Pros: - Immediate incremental improvements - Limited new headcount costs Cons: - Resistance to change - Integration complexity Option 2: Or do you cannibalize yourself, and figure out how to merge the two later? Pros: - Faster - Usually cheaper - More dynamic Cons: - Internal pushback - Competition with core teams As with any strategy, there's no one-size fits all approach. But interesting trend. What do you see happening? p.s. I've gotten very positive feedback that our Intro to AI Ops for Agencies webinar is helping folks navigate this decision. If you want an invite to the one this week, DM me!

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𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗚𝗧𝗠 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹? Meet Collin Stewart art, Co-Founder and CEO  Predictable Revenue™ Inc. If you're looking to build your first acquisition channel, skip the AE and talk directly with Collin. 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 CloudTask Marketplace Today! 🔗https://lnkd.in/eK6YV4B3 #Startup #LeadGeneratino #ProductMarketFit

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Hiring alert! One of our newest MKT1 portfolio companies is hiring a founding marketer. nodaFi is vertical SaaS that understands a wedge-in strategy. The team is scrappy and values marketing--and really understands their ICP - facilities managers. If you're based in the Bay Area and interested in helping bring a tech-first approach to an industry that operates with pen & paper, take a look. The founders are awesome (cc Jacob Pandl & Michael Loyda) JD link in the comments.

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“Consolidation doesn't have to be negative!” Listen to Daniel Keiper-Knorr of Speedinvest discussing the current market situation for early-stage startups on the latest episode of the TNW Podcast 👇

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I think new subcategories are one of the most effective ways to differentiate. You're not creating something entirely new (category creation), but establishing a sub-branch of an existing category - by introducing new must-have capabilities. It's what we're doing at Wynter. Yes it still involves more risk and making bets than the traditional way of competing, but with a much bigger upside. To find an opportunity to develop a new subcategory, you need to create a new set of "must-haves". These are characteristics early fans truly care about. Requirements to win the positioning game by building a new subcategory: - new or improved *must-haves* that provide a different/significantly better outcome or user experience - there's a visible brand driving this - early adopters jumping on this (word of mouth) The pre-requisite to subcategories is feature parity with the traditional categories. Tesla needed to argue that their battery range was adequate before people would seriously consider the new electric car subcategory it created. And then Tesla added new "must-haves" like crazy acceleration, big screens and self-driving capabilities to outcompete. Offerings without new "must-haves" won't be relevant, visible nor credible. Winning is no longer based on "my brand is better than your brand", but rather on being the ONLY (or at least the most relevant) brand for this subcategory. In case of Wynter, we deliver insights from B2B decision makers (detailed targeting options), on-demand, typically in 24 hrs, through a self-serve platform. Other players in the market research / qual insights space can't do any of that. Competitors lose because they lack the new "must-haves" this subcategory brings. The ultimate goal is to have your brand be the only one that is visible and credible with respect to delivering these new “must-haves", so choosing you over others becomes an obvious choice.

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A recent chat with a portco founder reminded me that #B2Bsales 101 says you can’t sell your product to anyone - the customer has to buy it. Which means, the product you think you are selling is not necessarily what they are buying. A classic example would be a kitchen knife. Who buys a kitchen knife just to put it in a drawer? No one. People buy a way to chop vegetables. If it’s a knife, a sword or a lightsaber - doesn’t matter. They want their vegetables chopped. What are you really selling? A way to chop vegetables. That means your first task in a B2B sale is to find out: what does the customer think they are buying? What do they actually need? If it’s chopped vegetables, show them how neatly you can cut them; don’t spend time showing how amazingly long the knife is or how well the sun reflects off the blade. Or in the B2B context: hey Mr. Customer, what is the problem you’re trying to solve? Great, let me show you how my product solves it for you. Extra points: give your customer credit that they’ve tried other products. It’s perfectly valid to ask: “what have you tried so far? What is it you did not like about the other solutions? (=this is the unmet need. Focus on that and you increase the changes to close the deal)

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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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Struggling to bridge the gap between your media buyers and creative team? Kevin Park, founder of Mycelium Marketing, shares how Atria AI has helped his agency collaborate better when it comes to making higher converting ads. Here are 3 key takeaways: 1️⃣ Seamless Integration: Atria's creative analytics tool bridges the gap between media buyers and the creative team, enhancing collaboration and data accessibility. 2️⃣ Improved Ad Performance: His teams use this data to create iterations and design better-performing ads efficiently.  3️⃣ AI Review Mining: This feature is crucial for new client onboarding, mining customer reviews to extract valuable insights on product strengths and concerns.   👉 Start your 7 day free trial with Atria AI to get creative analytics + ad inspirations + AI in ONE tool. #marketingtools #creativestrategy #roas #facebookads #analytics

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That's why it's often very difficult to recognize new leaders – their ideas go beyond the conventional frameworks we're accustomed to. Keep your mind open. Don't let yesterday's templates define your future. #Leadership, #Innovation, #OpenMind, #FutureThinking, #venturethinking,   https://lnkd.in/eASPGsuu

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Here's how we're using AI to improve time-to-value for our clients: I want to help agencies get their first AI win. Build momentum. On the way to the big stuff. But finding the "wins" takes really getting to know our client Ideally, we'd know our client as deeply as we can BEFORE we start working with them Some of this you can find online through research. But other parts, need to come through talking with the team. At first, I thought we'd get most insights through the sales process... But when I asked my AI to answer critical things from our sales call transcripts - we realized we want to know way more So we revamped what we want to know, and are testing new ways to collect that - AI first I'm not sure whether this will technically be in the "sales" process, or if we'll add an interview step to the onboarding But without leaning into AI, we'd either: - Ask our team to repeat the same questions that WERE addressed in the sales calls, frustrating the client and wasting time - Or, not have the opportunity to go a little deeper upfront Testing new ideas now. Interested in me reporting back on how it goes? What about you? What do you focus on learning in your sales processes?

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