Jamie Lee

**In-person SWE roles at top NYC startups** Things are heating up at July, and we’re on the hunt for a fresh face to join our new office and take the last open desk (for now)! As a company, we’ve always kept things lean, operating with a “hire slow” philosophy to make sure we only bring on absolute KILLERS — and every one of them have been found through LinkedIn. If you’re looking for a new opportunity and want to play at the highest level, I would challenge you to apply. What we're looking for: 1️⃣ Side project junkies (people who love to build) 2️⃣ People who obsess over the details 3️⃣ Founder mentality 4️⃣ Those that love to hustle and want to level-up in all areas If not with us, a few of my good friends are also on the hunt for similar candidates. Daniel Andrews (Playground), Benjamin Döpfner (Vesto), Avante Price (Posh), Keyan K. (222), and Steven Schwartz (Whop), are also on the prowl for talented NYC based engineers that fit the above description. Comment your email down below and someone from our team will reach out with more information about the role! If you don't want your current employer to see you're interested in joining the dark side, DM me! I hope to chat soon 😉 #nyc #startups #growth

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Wild to see New York Tech Week be such a thing still 2 years later. When we started it at Capital, I had to fight, scratch, claw, and (sometimes) beg people and companies to host events. Didn't look like that publicly because we drove a ton of hype and momentum to it. Eventually, the hype becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. But the 0 to 1 to keep that hype going required a ton of effort. Now the whole thing has a momentum of it's own. For example, two companies that told me no to hosting events just invited me to their tech week events for this year. The lesson - drive enough momentum and eventually something becomes the default. Inevitable. Inevitability can be engineered.

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We struggled to hire engineers for our first startup in college. As non-tech founders, finding the right talent was: - saturated - not transparent - a daunting experience We went through: → Various directories → Google searches → Friends’ recommendations Unfortunately, we got burned. We lost money, time, and energy. Determined to solve this problem, we moved to Berlin to test our hypothesis: “Are we the only ones struggling to hire tech talent, or is this a common problem?” Turns out, it’s a widespread issue. That’s how we built our company– to help others avoid the same pitfalls. 👍 if you’ve been there ♻️ repost to help others learn

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There is no single answer to this question. But founders should at least know the impact on current effective valuation and the ability to hire complementary talent. So interesting to follow comments for the original post!

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For the past year (and then some), I’ve been working closely with my Partner Will Rayner to build and launch something that we’re super excited to now make public - Lookout Ventures: a new seed stage fund, backing infrastructure and B2B software startups outside of Silicon Valley. We’re building on almost a decade spent sourcing and leading deals at TDF Ventures. While there, we saw the majority of the VC industry chasing and bidding up the same set of SaaS deals - based in a few select ecosystems like the Bay Area - and demonstrating the same set of well established go to market benchmarks. We’re not here for those deals. What we are looking for: *Regions*: The days of needing to be in Silicon Valley to succeed are over. Startup culture has spread to many metropolitan areas from Raleigh-Durham to Washington DC to Houston to Chicago. Those cities have a combination of great universities, major corporate headquarters, and local accelerators and incubators, which are the key ingredients for startup creation. We’re particularly focused on the Southeast, Midwest and Texas. *Stage*: Founders are probably sick of big brand investors telling them that their traction is too early but they’d love to stay in touch for the next round. While Lookout won’t often invest pre-revenue, we do invest before product market fit. Whether it’s called a seed, seed prime, or early A, we want to work with founders as soon as they know they have a solution ready to scale. *Sectors*: We’re comfortable investing early because we’re staying focused on topic areas in which we’ve built our expertise and networks during our past decade of investments around infrastructure software and vertical SaaS. Within those areas, we have more specialized interests ranging from MSP (managed service provider) tooling to cybersecurity serving the small business to SaaS focused on field workers in various verticals. We’re actively writing checks and are excited to already be working with great teams from Arpio, hotglue, inforcer, and CloudCapsule. If you’re building or investing in these areas, drop me a line and let’s catch up.

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Brilliant new software to copilot for corporate strategy for growth-stage companies, backed by YC. Check out the video to see how they analyze complex competitive landscape in minutes: https://lnkd.in/edMc3y56 From the incredible team of Abigail Grills and @Erica Clark

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First, a fun announcement, and then some thoughts on content marketing as a channel. 1) First, we got into YC and are doing the summer batch! 2) I'm going to be winding down my linkedin / twitter content marketing in favor of other channels that YC provides us for finding customers. First, I'm very excited to tell my network that I'm doing YC in SF this summer. Couldn't be more excited for an in-person program with some of the most ambitious founders in the world, all working on super disruptive technologies. It's going to be a great time. Second, we're going to start leaning more into YC channels for GTM. One thing I've learned as a second-time founder is that distribution and reaching customers is key. Through this experimentation phase I've been posting *a lot* to get the attention of potential customers. It's worked pretty well. I think the content I've been posting has driven upwards of 75% of the current customers we have using the product (n=~70-100 customers we've talked to), and it's been an incredibly effective channel. The problem with content, especially when you're going through your personal channels is it can kind of wear out your network (too much can be borderline insufferable), especially when you're experimenting and pivoting and might not stick to an idea. When you're early, something is better than nothing though so it works, but long term I don't want to do that. I will keep posting and talking about cutting-edge tech, early stage startups etc. But maybe fewer company announcements. Will leave that to the YC channels to get us distribution. If you want my pure train of thought, in a place where it's more appropriate to post more frequently, follow me on twitter @carlcortright

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Was chatting with a product leader from a Y Combinator company last week. 🚀 He'd reached out because they needed greater control and flexibility around pricing & packaging, specifically bundling & unbundling features. 🔄💡 He explained it like this: "The issue we're running into is that it's actually really difficult for us to attach features to plans and quickly move features between plans. Any changes we want to make require dev cycles to support. The goal is to be able to move feature A to plan B or feature B to Plan A rapidly & without code changes, so that we can be a lot more agile with testing optimal packaging." 🔗🛠️ #pricing #packaging #featuremanagement

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Big News: Peloton Interactive now does rental! 👀 Here's why I think it's a super smart play: One of the biggest issues Peloton faces? High price, high commitment product ($1,000s up front + monthly membership) And selling this in a notoriously fickle, flakey market (gym memberships and diet books go unused All. The. Time) Committing to owning a Peloton bike is a BIG decision for most people. However: 💡 Bringing in a rental option significantly increases the "conversion pool" of people who are willing to become a customer. Now, they're able to service three different types of customer: 1/ Those who are 100% committed and KNOW they'll use the product all the time. These people will still buy from new. 2/ Those who are committed, but are on the fence with regards to price. These people will still buy refurbished for a discount. 3/ Those who've heard of Peloton and like the idea, but are worried it'll just be another failed fitness attempt along with the unused diet books and gym memberships. Until recently, the only options for that third group were: 😤 Suck it up and pay 😭 Don't buy at all I'd guess that A LOT of people chose the latter. But now? Instead, you can: Rent a bike. Cancel anytime. Get the membership included. Buy your bike at any point. It's effectively a paid "try before you buy" that opens up a whole new world of customers for Peloton. Plus, they can now position themselves against a gym membership in a much stronger way. Why join a gym when you can get the equipment and classes in the convenience of your own home for a similar price? Overall, a super exciting move from Peloton. Seeing brands like this shift towards usage-based billing is incredibly validating of our vision for Supercycle 😎 P.S. I have thoughts on how Peloton has gone about pricing their offer. Would this be a useful separate post? Let me know in the comments. 

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Excellent data to have when raising capital. #Automotiveindustry #electriccar #electricvehicles #automotive #electricvehicle #emobility #futureofmobility #EV #electric #electriccars #fleets #fleet #electricvehicle #emobility #futureofmobility #fleetmanagement #startup #impactinvesting #VC #angelinvesting #venturecapital #Entrepreneurs #privateequity #familyoffices

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Hot take on a lot of early-stage digital health companies out there: You're not a tech company. Most tech-enabled care companies I've seen over the past two years are only tech-enabled in the sense that they use telehealth as their delivery mechanism for care. There are exceptions to this, of course - companies who build computer vision and applied AI tools to better the doctor-patient experience, companies who build tooling around risk scoring and stratification to enable more personalized medicine, companies who build truly novel intakes to better route patients to the appropriate care, etc. These companies have real technology chops and, if they sell it right to the market, can get credit for this from investors. But if you're truly a telehealth provider, you need to realize now that the goal post has shifted dramatically from 2021 and you're going to be valued at maturity at something like 3x EBITDA. That's profit. Not revenue. Throw a revenue multiple out the window. That's not the world we live in if you're a virtual doctor's office. Think of how that impacts venture math. If you're raising a seed round at $15M post-money (or $12M pre-money), it means you'll have to generate something like $150-200M in annual EBITDA to be a fund returner for your seed investors. Maybe even more with dilution, since telehealth businesses are not traditionally capital efficient and will likely need to raise material additional capital to reach that scale. You need to be ridiculously profitable (probably on $800M-$1B in annual revenue since you're likely going to be a 40% gross margin business). Here's the good news: you can set yourself up well (and probably be a contrarian founder relative to your peers), by talking about EBITDA growth and how you can grow into a fund-returning outcome based on realistic mature market comps. This will stand out for the investors you're pitching, even at the early stage. This is how you can beat the malaise of the tech-enabled care market. Focus on the right metrics and the right type of growth. You don't have to have all the answers (no founder does), but you need to make sure the ship is headed in the right direction. A focus on profitability for "tech-enabled care" (*ahem* telehealth) businesses is a good first step.

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🎙️ Excited to share a recent convo I had with Justin Wolz on #FounderWellness and #Burnout. Reflecting on my last ten years in tech and especially these four intense years as a founder, I’ve learned a lot about what keeps us going in high-pressure roles. At Ambient, we're focused on Chiefs of Staff, Heads of Ops, and Founders—people who thrive in ambiguity and uncertainty. Through my conversations with many of you, it's clear we share many of the same challenges and strengths. ✨ These roles demand courage, as they often involve stepping into the unknown and solving complex problems before they're fully defined. Ambiguity is where you SHINE! ✨ 🔥 Building #RESILIENCE is key, and it's something we talked about a lot on the podcast. I think there are valuable takeaways for anyone who’s navigating high-stakes environments. 🥂 Cheers to all #ChiefsofStaff #CoS #Founders #BizOps #COO

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Engineers aren’t the only team members who ship product—marketers can, too. Let me explain. Last week, we rolled out something big at OpenPhone. A gorgeous monthly stats email that gives our customers a snapshot of their usage. I’m so excited! Here’s why: → It's been on our wishlist forever. One of those "wouldn't it be cool if..." ideas that kept popping up in meetings. → Our Marketing team pulled this off without a single line of code from Engineering. They shipped this. All on their own. → As an OpenPhone user myself, I get to show off just how much I rely on it. It’s not “marketing” in the traditional sense. But it’s going to become a core part of our product experience now.  It adds value. It delights our customers. It makes OpenPhone stickier. Whoever said Marketing can’t ship their own “products”? Huge shoutout to my colleagues, John MacGaffey Carolyne Gardener Brian Sun and Phil Jones for knocking this out of the park. John recently shared some behind-the-scenes of how they built this on his profile, so go check that out. And for all our OpenPhone customers—hope you're enjoying your new monthly stats! ps - we're growing our Marketing, Customer Success and Engineering teams. If you love to ship stuff as much as we do, join us :)

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I used to think raising money was good After three raises, I've grown a little jaded I now focus on dollars raised per hour of my time as the guiding metric P.S. For first time founders, I think higher marks on this metric are almost always achieved from going to angels when raising sub $1m. Spending 300 hours of process for a $100k cheque is insane (I have done this and hope to never repeat it). Raising more than $10m, the metric will almost certainly be a lot higher with VCs;' especially so with good ones Between those two lies the realm of art, not science. P.P.S. This metric should consistently rise if a business is doing well. I think I sit north of $20k per hour now. Back in early days, $1k per hour was likely optimistic. I'm targeting c. £100k per hour for our series A. #founder #shipsandshipping #raising #seriesa #maritime

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🚨 The former CFO of Dropbox, Sujay Jaswa oversees the investment and operating activities as a founding partner at WndrCo, alongside media vet Jeffrey Katzenberg. He joins us for VC Wednesdays.🚨 🖋️  You recently closed a $460 million VC fund. Where are you looking to deploy that? Everything we do is around the idea of the future of work and helping people optimize how they get work done. That’s why we're investors in companies like Airtable, Figma, Databricks, Deel, 1Password and others. That won’t change, but now, you'll see us really focus on the applications of AI that will meaningfully disrupt how work gets done, like in finance, HR and customer support. 🖋️  Why should founders work with WndrCo? One thing that we do that's different is starting one to two companies a year in areas that we think have the potential to yield big returns. So, when we talk to entrepreneurs, our operating experience stays current, and that angle on venture is fairly unique. The second is that each partner at WndrCo has built something, so we have the empathy that comes from that experience. Third, we do only five to seven deals a year, versus bigger firms that do hundreds. Because we have a smaller portfolio, entrepreneurs can get a hold of literally every partner within a couple of hours, 365 days a year. 🖋️ Which startup pitch sticks out the most in your memory over others and why? My favorite is one that’s not a household name yet, even though the business is absolutely on fire. It’s Aura, an all-in-one product to protect you and your family online. The idea is that unlike the physical world, you have no idea what your kids are doing on their phones and devices. Aura gives parents the tools to navigate raising a kid in our mobile-first and digital-first world. When the founder, Hari Ravichandran, walked me through how he would take it to market, it was love at first sight. He's an extraordinary entrepreneur and the best go-to-market person I've ever met when it comes to consumer products. 🖋️ What’s one investment you regret passing on and why? At the end of the day, this whole business is built on being part of monster companies as early as possible. One of the best enterprise companies of the last decade is Databricks. The founder and CEO, Ali Ghodsi, is a very good friend of mine, and for whatever reason, it never occurred to me in the early years to twist his arm to try and let him take our money. We invested in Databricks later than I’d have liked to. 🖋️  What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned working with Jeffrey Katzenberg? The biggest thing I've learned is that you can't be him, and it’s impossible to keep up with him. He's relentless, and I have never met someone who works harder than him. If he says he's going to do something, no matter how hard, if it's within his capabilities, he'll do it. He's a doer, and he just gets stuff done. I admire that so tremendously. #VCWednesdays #vc #venturecapital #startups #TechonLinkedIn

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Bilt Rewards went from $0 to $1.5B valuation in under a year post launch. I had the pleasure of hearing Ankur Jain, Bilt’s founder and CEO, speak at FintechMeetup. It was extremely inspiring and I had to dig deeper. What is Bilt? The core idea of Bilt Rewards is simple and compelling. Why can’t your rent payments contribute towards home ownership in the future? Most of us pay rent through our bank since paying with a credit card adds an additional 2.5-3%. With the Bilt MasterCard, you not only avoid fees but earn points on your rent payments: redeeming 1 point for every dollar spent up to 100K points per year - that you can apply towards your down payment. Fascinating tidbits: 1. Before Bilt, you weren’t legally allowed to use points towards a down payment. So Ankur and team spent 18 months working with regulators to create the regulations required to make a system like this possible. 2. Ankur worked on the idea by himself for a year, pitching to real estate owners and finessing the model before even hiring the first employee. 3. Almost every real estate owner Ankur pitched to initially was opposed to the idea. Over the course of 4 years, Bilt built a distribution network of 4M+ rental homes that allows residents to pay with Bilt. Ankur shares lessons valuable to every entrepreneur: 1. Distribution and customer acquisition strategy needs to be at the forefront of your pitch. 2. Creative relentless vs hard-headed relentlessness: “No just means ask again differently. Slightly different changes. Slightly different approach. Slightly different person you are asking. That’s the key. Doing the same thing over and over again will only get you the same results.” 3. A great product will not sell itself. To break through change aversion and transform consumer behavior, you must out execute with relentlessness: “The irony is when you think about building a company, you’ve gotta have the right product to solve a real problem. You have to have the core business economics and all that stuff. But what people don’t talk about - it doesn’t matter how good your idea is or how perfect the timing is. If you are not relentless at taking no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no over and over again and still being willing to come to the plate, it doesn’t matter. That is the single most important trait I’ve found. Because for whatever reason, the world likes to reject change. There is such inherent resistant to anything different. So you have to literally will your idea into existence. It’s exhausting but fulfilling.” Keeping especially the last takeaway in mind as we forge new paths ✨

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Some thoughts after spending some time with a handful of builders and investors in NYC this past week! 1. New York City is quietly fostering one of the most vibrant and underrated consumer founder communities in the country. This ecosystem is bursting with innovative energy, driven by founders who are deeply embedded in culture and consumer behavior. For those who haven’t tapped in yet, I strongly recommend paying attention—it’s a hotbed of potential that’s primed for growth. 2. Understanding and valuing consumer products demands more than just financial acumen; it requires a deep understanding of culture, trends, and human behavior. Many investors are stepping away, not because the space isn’t viable, but because they lack the nuanced taste and cultural insight necessary to identify and nurture truly impactful consumer products. This gap presents a massive opportunity for those who “get it” to dominate the market with culturally relevant investments. 3. In today’s world, a product or service that lacks a strong community component is missing the mark. Community isn’t just an add-on; it’s the foundation upon which modern consumer brands are built. Doubling down on building and nurturing a community around your product can create a powerful network effect, driving organic growth and fostering long-term loyalty. 4. The next wave of consumer social platforms won’t look like the traditional social networks we’ve become accustomed to. Instead, we’ll see social experiences seamlessly integrated into other aspects of daily life, such as fashion, education, and real-world interactions. This evolution will redefine how we connect, share, and engage, creating new opportunities for innovation at the intersection of technology and everyday life. 5. Simplicity wins — In a world overflowing with options and information, simplicity is the ultimate competitive advantage. Products and services that cut through the noise with straightforward, intuitive designs and clear value propositions will stand out. Complexity might seem impressive, but simplicity is what drives adoption and sustained success in the consumer market.

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📢 The fall fundraising season is here! These are probably the best 10 weeks to raise capital... Real talk: a successful fundraise is (a lot) about running a structured process. In the past 12 months, we've raised over $10M for Auba across pre-seed and seed series backed by top Silicon Valley and Latam VCs.... thanks, in large part, to our process. I truly believe in the power of founders helping other founders; thus, I've written a step by step fundraising process guide, with the process we followed, for other founders to use. I believe these steps could lead to successful outcomes for pre-seed, seed, and series A entrepreneurs. What's in it? how to build an investor CRM, how to prepare for a pitch, how to build a powerful narrative, what does traction mean, who to target and how, deck vs. memo, closing deals and negotiating term sheets. Comment "fundraise" in the comments below and I'll send you the guide to help you get funded this season. I'm also sharing a special moment: this photo was taken just a few weeks after our pre-seed close when, thanks to that, our then team met in person for the first time. Happy times! (PS: I'd appreciate any likes/shares/comments to reach as many founders as possible!)

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Here's my extra cold-take on the whole TikTok divestiture brouhaha because no one asked: I was listening to Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz of The Verge go through the list of companies that have the funds to buy TikTok (if ByteDance was selling). After going down the list of Apple, Google, Meta Platforms Ltd. and other likely and unlikely candidates, the Vergecast hosts concluded not one company would A) want to buy TikTok, B) have the funds to buy TikTok, AND C) be allowed to buy TikTok by the feds. But Nilay, David, and Alex weren't thinking wide enough, IMO. My long-shot, chaos play is for Samsung Electronics to buy TikTok. Who knows, maybe ByteDance would be more willing to sell to another Asian company than a US company. Samsung has the funds AND, as a Korean company, wouldn't be under the jurisdiction of the US Gov. Then Lee Jae-Yong can pull a double-reverse Apple move on Tim Cook and make TikTok a 2nd-class app on iPhones. Now, I'm not advocating that Samsung degrade the end-user experience of TikTok on iPhones for the general consumer. But what if the best experience for content creators was on Samsung devices? What if videos posted from iPhones were just a little bit grainer, or were just a little bit slower to load? What if all the newest and best content creation tools came first to Samsung phones, and then much later come out for iPhones? What if videos posted from iPhones had a little "Posted from a non-Samsung device" green bubble at the bottom? How big a dent would that leave on iPhone US market share? (Samsung Electronics, feel free to DM me so we can discuss my commission on the acquisition idea.) https://lnkd.in/gF28QqQi

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