Maria Casella

Aon published a study this week showing that a Fortune 500 Lyra Health customer saved more than $3 in health care costs for every $1 they spent on Lyra. This is a staggering return on investment. Lyra can deliver the highest value in mental health care because it delivers the best outcomes in the field, having tirelessly invested time and expertise in creating the best care available. This blog is a follow-up from the one I wrote a couple months ago showing that Lyra can also prove sustained savings over four years. Proud of our team for all that they do to help those in need and proving that what’s best for people can also be best for business’ bottom lines. https://bit.ly/4fopHoX 

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The new quarterly review is live! Each quarter, I dive into the latest trends and shifts in the venture capital market, covering both the broader macro perspective and the unique insights we’re seeing at Florida Funders. Check out my latest article to stay informed on what’s shaping the VC landscape and how we're navigating it at FF. Always eager to hear your thoughts – let’s keep the conversation going! #VentureCapital #FloridaFunders #MarketInsights

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Inspired by what we’re building at Build Momentum. We realized tech recruiting is broken—non-technical recruiters struggle to find and attract the best talent. That’s why we’ve flipped the script and developed a community-based recruiting approach: a trusted network of elite engineers, embedded within Latam’s top tech communities. The best engineers know the best engineers, and we tap into these deep, authentic connections to deliver top talent faster and with better fit. Want to see how we’re doing it differently? Check out our post

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How do you find Limited Partners and get them over the line? Find out in this webinar next week!

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Congratulations to our friends at San Francisco-based consumer-focused buyout private equity fund manager Encore Consumer Capital on the acquisition of Chalet Desserts in partnership with founder and CEO David Laukat and the existing management team. Chalet Desserts, based in Sacramento, CA, is a specialty manufacturer of frozen bakery desserts and baked good inclusions that are sold into the in-store bakery at #supermarkets and #convenience stores as well as #foodservice and #ingredient end-markets. The #partnership will focus on add-on acquisitions in the frozen baked goods space. Encore Consumer Capital are one of the US' leading consumer-focused private equity fund managers having raised 4 funds and over $900 million in committed capital and invested in over 40 companies in the sector. Encore Consumer Capital’s current and prior investments include food and beverage manufacturers and marketers, pet products companies, personal care/beauty companies, and food distribution companies. The firm targets companies with between $10 million and $150 million in annual revenues where Encore Consumer Capital’s strong expertise in strategy development, brand marketing, manufacturing and supply chain optimization, and distribution expansion can drive performance. It was great to spend time with the Encore Consumer Capital team in Chicago this past week and looking forward to seeing you again soon! #alternativeinvestments #privateequity #fundmanagers #buyout #consumer #frozenfood #bakedgoods #capitalmarkets #privatemarkets #chicago #sanfrancisco #acquisitions #valuecreation #desserts

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🚨 Key Framework for Successful Exec Searches 🚨 When it comes to hiring execs, most founders don’t spend enough time on one crucial step: setting up the search right from the start. I recently joined Daniel Huerta and Stephen Huerta for the The Modern People Leader podcast to talk through this and Index's latest book Scaling Through Chaos. Things to bear in mind with exec searches: 1️⃣  Define Priorities Early: Before jumping into the search, figure out the must-haves and nice-to-haves. And get your team involved early. 2️⃣  Choose the Right Partner: A great search partner should not only be able to tell your story in the market but also be willing to give you tough feedback when needed. True partnership = accountability. 3️⃣  Think Creatively: Don’t focus solely on hiring the person who checks all the boxes today. Look for the candidates who can grow into the role and lead you into the future. 4️⃣  The Hiring Doesn’t Stop When They Sign: onboarding is just the beginning. It takes a year or more for a new exec to fully hit their stride, so it’s crucial to keep supporting them beyond day one. Check out the podcast link in the comments to the full episode! #ExecutiveSearch #Founders #Leadership #HRLeadership #Hiring #Scaling #PeopleOps

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I often feel like "Future of Work" means everything and nothing all at the same time. But what does it mean when we say we are investing in the future of work at Reach Capital? In general, I like to think that we are investing in products and tools that help to elevate workers and create pathways for economic mobility, wherever they are in their careers - exploring careers, landing the job, up killing / Reskilling, supporting and augmenting them throughout their work, providing the benefits/enablers they need to thrive in the workplace, and more. We've invested in companies, including WorkWhile (a worker-first on demand labor marketplace for hourly workers), Replit (collaborative IDE for developers), Stepful (training for the allied healthcare workforce), Take2 AI (simulation-based talent acquisition), Hopps (on-demand expert help marketplace), and so much more. As the concept of work, continues to change rapidly we've surrounded ourselves with an amazing advisory board that supports us and our portfolio companies (Maisha Gray-Diggs (MGD), Dermot O'Brien, Gordon Trujillo, Ekpedeme "Pamay" M. Bassey, Guillermo Miranda, David Landman, Ph.D., Q Hamirani) and have committed to continuously learn (check out our latest ReImagineWork report linked in the comments).  If you're building a company that is focused on improving the future of work, please reach out! You can find me at [email protected]. Some areas I'm personally interested in right now: 👩‍⚕️ Tools to augment clinicians and reduce burnout (e.g. workflow automation tools, business-in-a-box for self employment, health system focused retention and engagement tools) 👩‍🏭 Products that help to increase supply / liquidity or improve the productivity of existing supply, through learning in the flow of work, in supply constrained markets (e.g. manufacturing) 💻 Skills inference tools that surface skills insights from the work people actually *do* and help large enterprises with workforce planning

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PE - a People & Relationship Business ------------------ "We are actually in the talent business." - Graham Weaver, Alpine Investors (Source: Capital Allocators / Ted Seides - https://lnkd.in/eV5NSXjb) ------------------ - Graham Weaver highlighted on the Capital Allocators podcast that PE is a people/talent business - it's not just about deals and finance because people/talent is the key to success - Relationships and great people are what drive value creation in both portfolio companies and the PE firms - All PE leaders like Orlando Bravo at Thoma Bravo, Jon Gray at Blackstone and many others also prioritize people - focusing on strong relationships to drive lasting performance and growth P.S. People = the #1 success factor in PE --- #pe #privateequity

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Christian & Timbers recently completed an analysis of C-suite compensation trends ➡️ https://bit.ly/3NN8Dwo - at private-equity backed tech companies. ▪️ We examined data from over 100 companies and 400 leaders, covering compensation for CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and more for 2023-2024. ▪️ The data shows a 2.1% increase In total cash compensation over Q3 2023 with a 2.4% increase in equity compensation and a 1.8% increase in cash compensation. ▪️ The study provides additional insights into variations based on company size and investment stages, ranging from $10 million to $1 billion in revenue ▪️ Women occupy significantly fewer leadership roles, making up only 21.6% of C-suite positions, including 4.2% in CEO roles. Check out our latest newsletter ➡️ https://bit.ly/48uwkTJ - featuring industry trends, recent successes, and current open searches. If you or your portfolio companies have any executive searches or leadership needs coming up, I’d love to catch up and see how we can help. Let me know if you’d be open to a call! #leadership #executivesearch #csuite #compensation #pe #pebacked

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The next Companyon Ventures lunch & learn is going to be one you’re not going to want to miss! Tom Lazay and I are pumped to host Laura Sillman (Left Lane Capital), Max Abram (Scale Venture Partners), and Harrison Lieberfarb (Canvas Ventures) in a roundtable discussion on December 12th covering the Series A & B fundraising environment and what to expect in 2025. Whether you’re a founder planning to raise your next round or an investor supporting your portfolio companies in their next stage of growth, this is a fantastic opportunity to connect with top VCs and hear their perspectives. We’re tackling questions like: 📈 Where’s the market heading? 🤖 Is AI hype slowing down or just heating up? 💡 What should founders focus on to stand out at Series A/B? 📊 What metrics actually move the needle? Comment below to add a question that you would like covered (top responses will receive a shoutout!) and if you’re a founder that recently raised a Series A/B, share your #1 takeaway! ➡️ And don’t forget to RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/euTH3WxM #fundraising #marketenvironment #SeriesA #SeriesB #founders #venturecapital

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RETHINKING RETIREMENT We've been investing in the Future of Work since we launched BBG Ventures, targeting underserved segments like deskless workers (Anthill, OX) and solopreneurs (Topline Pro). Over the summer we spent time digging into another deeply underserved segment of the workforce: Boomers. By the end of this decade, the entire generation will have hit retirement age and, for the first time, Americans 65+ will outnumber those under 18. This has huge implications for every aspect of society, and it mandates that we start thinking differently about retirement. The question for all of us is this: Can we re-focus healthy Americans 60+ on a new phase of productivity, a “third act” that enables them to keep learning, keep earning, keep socially-engaged and contributing to the nation’s economic growth? And what role can AI play in helping every senior identify their unique skill set and personal priorities — and connect them with the right opportunities? We have some thoughts on how to make this happen, and we'd love you to give it a read, add your feedback, forward it to a founder who's working in this arena (or who you think might be intrigued), and share it! AgeTech has been too focused on death and decay; it's time we embrace longevity and give older Americans a way to keep working -- on their terms. cc: Carol Magalhães Isaacs, CFA Nisha Dua, Claire Biernacki, Drew Silverman Fennessy

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Just touched down in Miami for the VC Platform Summit Here’s what I’m most interesting in discussing with peers (and press!)… - hybrid VC service models & the Dragonfly SLA - platform’s role in the future of fractional work - a16z sizing themselves out of the early stage game (and the opportunity that creates) - the marginalization of crypto founders in the startup vendor ecosystem - the difference between platform in APAC and the US Reply or DM to link up!

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I'm excited to share my thoughts about closing our latest fund at Companyon Ventures. Raising a VC fund as an emerging manager is tough enough without the added challenge of rising interest rates and inflation, punctuated by the 2023 banking crisis unfolding during our fundraising cycle. After countless meetings and hearing "no" more times than we'd like to remember, we're grateful for the support and introductions from our LPs and fellow VCs like Bob Mason. We surpassed our minimum target, raising $41M with an additional ~$20M from our LPs available for SPVs in our companies, bringing our AUM close to $100M. While small in today's VC world, we're very proud of how we've deployed that capital. My partners Firas Raouf, David McFarlane, and Ronny Chatterjee did much of the heavy lifting with the fundraising, but our entire team significantly contributed to the effort. Here are a few highlights and thank-yous we’re excited to share: 🙏 First, a huge thanks to the founders who accepted our investment during our fundraising process. Your powerful visions and amazing execution proved to our existing and prospective LPs that we can identify and attract some of the best founders in the industry. Thanks Stephen Gendron, Doug Neumann, Hersh Tapadia, Avante Price, Eli Taylor-Lemire, Zaid Rahman, Daniel Pelaez, and Ali Ansari! 🌟 With a larger fund than our 2020 fund, our focus and thesis have not changed. We believe we are the top firm to lead late seed, post-seed, and early Series A rounds when companies are navigating the tricky transition from a founder-led startup to the first stages of a scalable enterprise. 💰 We launched a new Capital Markets function in this fund built by my colleague Ronny Chatterjee. This has been massively impactful for our portfolio CEOs. Ronny has showcased our portfolio to more than 200 Series A, B, Growth, and PE funds, and dozens of debt providers with great success. His job is to find the right follow-on capital for our portfolio companies while saving our CEOs countless hours of blindly prospecting for dollars. 🛠 We still average ~4 new investments each year from the thousands of companies we encounter. It’s tough to pass on many of them, but our approach of offering deeply embedded GTM talent and playbooks requires a concentrated portfolio approach so we can provide the attention and bandwidth that our founders expect. 📈 We’re proud that about half of our existing portfolio from this fund and our prior fund (2020) have either already crossed the critical $10M ARR threshold or will likely do so within the next year. We're confident that many more will follow shortly after. Most were at or below $2M ARR when we invested. 99% of that operational success can be attributed to those founders, but we like to think that our 1% was well-timed and impactful. Thank you to everyone in our community who has supported us in so many different ways! https://lnkd.in/eFauhT4Q #venturecapital

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One of the challenges that we find our clients are having - indeed, probably their number one challenge - is that they need to hit their revenue targets so that they can raise their next round of financing. Can hiring a fractional COO help in scaling revenues? Have a quick listen to the thoughts of Jeremy Stein on this in the video below - and you can access the full interview and transcript over on our website: https://lnkd.in/eUgA6HRR Do you have experience of this yourself? Would welcome your thoughts in the comments. #COO #SalesGrowth #Entrepreneurship

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One of the challenges that we find our clients are having - indeed, probably their number one challenge - is that they need to hit their revenue targets so that they can raise their next round of financing. Can hiring a fractional COO help in scaling revenues? Have a quick listen to the thoughts of Jeremy Stein on this in the video below - and you can access the full interview and transcript over on our website: https://lnkd.in/eUgA6HRR Do you have experience of this yourself? Would welcome your thoughts in the comments. #COO #SalesGrowth #Entrepreneurship

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Pear VC Startup Equity Calculator for Early Hires Pear VC head of talent Matt Birnbaum created this calculator to determine the equity for early hires. You can read more here How to structure startup equity for early hires https://lnkd.in/ggmpT5-Y https://lnkd.in/gjsvths6

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📣 A Friday shout out to several people who truly are going above and beyond to support their peers, professionalize a function, and raise awareness of #VCplatform. Not only are these leaders devoting their time and energy (beyond their day jobs) to creating content and sharing knowledge with our cohort, but they are setting powerful examples of how to successfully build community and leverage the knowledge and experience of others (which translates into meaningful lessons and tactical tips platform leaders can apply in their jobs). There has never been a better time to be building (and learning!) in platform with this network that is growing and increasingly becoming more savvy and sophisticated, not only in our own respective roles, but in how the broader community communicates and the quality of resources available to help each one of us excel at our own VC shops. 📈 🚀 💡 Thank you to Olivia O'Sullivan with Platform Shift, Allie Mullen with #SoYouWantToWorkInPlatform, Cory Bolotsky’s new killer newsletter, Beck Bamberger, PhD with VC Comms, and Kristen Ostro w/Let's Talk Ops. #vcplatform #whatsnext

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Tip from a local NYCer: If you plan on coming to visit NYC anytime and you're looking for the most value for your time and money- plan to come to either in Tech Week (which this year was in June) or to Climate Week (which is now in September). Why? The amount of new business connections you'll get, the amount of meetings you'll arrange, the amount of people you haven't thought you'll meet, and the amount of other surprising outcomes you will get, will be much beyond your expectations. 2025 is around the corner. Preparing 2-3 months in advance for these weeks can lead to $0 event early bird ticket costs, ample time for relationship-building, and the chance to make a significant impact.

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