TJ Nahigian

This is quite interesting advice and also quite a non-consensus view in the B2B software world. Cross-border founders who are considering the US vs International incorporation question should consider this as valuable input.

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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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Big things on the horizon, we are motivated and blessed to be at the dawn of a new age for the internet. Read more about our journey below or listen to the podcast: https://lnkd.in/eJeNhvVa

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Series A or B wondering when to bring in a VP of Finance or CFO? It’s a crucial decision that can shape the future of your company. At this stage, financial leadership is not just about managing numbers but also scaling processes, securing funding, and driving strategic growth. My colleague Paul breaks down key signs that it’s time to hire and indicators for choosing between VP of Finance and a CFO #FinanceLeadership #CFO #StartupGrowth #SeriesA #SeriesB #NextGenLeadership

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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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Earlier this year, we surveyed our fellow Los Angeles-based GPs to get a pulse check on the LA venture ecosystem. Here’s what we found: 💗 Deal flow is healthy, and most LA venture investors (68%) are seeing the same or more deal flow YoY. ✈ LA investors are spending time in a variety of markets, with NYC, Austin, and SF following closely on LA’s heels. 🔍 Innovation is concentrated in AI and machine learning, space, and commerce. 💸 Funding is happening, but it’s barbell-shaped, with deals concentrated at the early and late stages. Funding post-Series A has been challenging. 🚩 LA is differentiated, but not without its challenges. Key difficulties include not attracting enough AI talent (despite having the largest number of engineers graduating from our region over any other in the United States); talent relocated to more tax-friendly or less expensive locations; and the great SoCal / NoCal divide 🙏 Thank you to all our many respondents! I’m so glad to be part of a venture ecosystem that includes great minds like Anna Barber, Brent Murri, W. Christine Choi, Sarah Tomolonius, Rob Smith, Win Chevapravatdumrong, John Tabis, Jill Royster, Jesse Draper, Ashley Balla, Britt Danneman, Tram Lai, Carmen Palafox, Elaine Russell, Deborah Benton Amanda Schutzbank, Brian Lee, Petra Griffith, Minnie Ingersoll, Shamin Walsh, Gabe Greenbaum...wow, this list could go on forever...plus too many other exceptional humans to name. You know who you are! Explore our findings more deeply with our survey dashboard: https://bit.ly/3JsaLaB

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We’re excited to partner with Tidemark on the first-of-its kind Vertical & SMB SaaS Benchmark Report! Congrats to Michael Tan, David Yuan, Andrew Walsh and Courtney Mullin for putting this together. If you are a Vertical SaaS CEO or executive looking for benchmarking data to help make product/strategy decisions, then this report is a must read for you. Just leave a comment "Vertical SaaS" in this post, and I'll share the link to the full report in your DM.

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WE DID IT! After 2 years of pushing through the biggest downturn in VC in decades, Matthew Stotts 🌐 and I made it to the finish line with Fund I! We couldn't have done this without One Small Planet (Will Peterffy and Jack Wielebinski 🙏), Regen Network and Regen Foundation (Austin Wade Smith Gregory Landua and Will Szal), and a dozen other family offices and angels who believed that we can build a nature-positive economy utilizing our eye for software and our history as founders from day 1 A shout out goes to all of our founders (only four announced today, but watch this space - there are multitudes!) who trusted us enough to give us a spot on their cap table for this 10-15 year journey. This is the best job in the world, and it's because we get to work with people like you who have weird ideas in the best possible way. Using Bitcoin as anchor base load to decarbonize residential housing in America's most expensive energy market? Make every complex supply chain legible to machines so we can find and eliminate deforestation in commodity supply chains? Build deeply liquid environmental asset markets to price ecosystem services, on a blockchain, that no one needs to know is a blockchain? I'm so excited to get to work on this stuff for the next 10-15 years minimum, and to see what we can accelerate with our tiny fund in the next 5-6 years as we approach 2030 Onward! https://lnkd.in/gy3B-DFe

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I recently joined Tyler Hogge and Sterling Snow on the IO Podcast to discuss frameworks for growth-stage companies and what sets great companies apart from the rest. Listen to our conversation here: https://lnkd.in/edRyAmbz And linking to the blog posts we get into on the pod for easy reference: 1️⃣ R&D is one of the most critical yet challenging capital to allocate. How to get it right: https://lnkd.in/gQ-bN87N 2️⃣ For growth-stage companies burning cash, these are the essential questions to answer before going public: https://lnkd.in/gdjT-Fy2 3️⃣ AI is revolutionizing computing. More on what we can learn from SaaS market dynamics as we enter this new era: https://lnkd.in/ePjw7SvT

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ANNOUNCEMENT- I’m delighted to share that Asset Class has partnered with Palantir Technologies to bring AI to the Alternatives and Private Capital Markets. At Asset Class we will integrate the AIP platform and Foundry capabilities of Palantir with our Fund Operating System (Fund OS). We will work with the AIP Platform and Palantir's Foundry Ontology to support highly complex tasks / co-pilot features that will allow us to leverage the FULL dataset that comes with the Asset Class Platform. By linking EVERY step of the Investor and Fund journey on a SINGLE platform, we have a uniquely complete dataset that can inform our AI actions. Over time we will integrate this as part of our Asset Class Network. This will continue to ensure Asset Class is a far more powerful system than any other in the market. We are a platform - not just an app. In the near future, we will be an AI Enabled, Networked Platform I cannot wait to bring the power of AI to our platform to enable our clients to super-charge their investment in our platform. See announcement here: https://lnkd.in/eCSy5Tnu

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Happy news from one of our Fund I portfolio companies (which willl hopefully make our investors happy, DPI baby!): https://lnkd.in/e5bPu5qx Personal Thoughts: - My great admiration for the Biocatch team, I've witnessed your achievements and ultimate interim payoff - Bold move from Permira, you got yourselves a strong asset - Constantly reading aggregated data from the VC industry, which is good, but also very misleading. Why? Because as in the economy, even in a bear market, the good and healthy companies will ultimately thrive. Don't rely on aggregated data only

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I’m thrilled to be announcing that Notion Capital is leading the $15m Series A investment in Cogna today. In the industry, we like to think that software has been eating the world. But when you look at the data a better description would be more of a nibble. Depending on what source you look at the software industry represents between 5-8% of global GDP. Contrast that with the services industry that represents between 60-70% of GDP and worth around $25 trillion on a global basis. Most services have been out of reach for the software industry. They have either been too complex or too specialized for off the shelf software to access in any economically viable way. But that’s beginnning to change with GenAI leading to the emergence of ‘service as a software.’ Cogna is at the forefront of this opportunity - building precision software at scale and delivering huge productivity gains for traditional industries. We know Ben Peters & Lars Mennen well having backed their previous company Five AI that was acquired by Bosch in 2022. And we’re very excited to be backing them again together with Hoxton Ventures & Chalfen Ventures Read my full blog post on why we invested here. Radu Bozga Ben Peters Lars Mennen Bryan G. Mike Chalfen Hussein Kanji Kirsten Connell https://lnkd.in/eh8mhcJb

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Has the outlook for venture funding improved as we near the halfway mark of the year? Recent data reported by SaaStr paints a challenging picture for startups. Currently, only 10-15% of VC-backed startups may meet the criteria for raising another round, highlighting a tough fundraising environment. Another significant trend is the increasing time between funding rounds, underscoring the need for capital efficiency. This reinforces our long-held view that we appear to be in a new venture cycle, where a natural consolidation is occurring. Startups that secured funding easily over the past decade, particularly in 2020 and 2021, are now confronting the challenge of scarce and costly equity funding. As a result, many emerging companies may face closure. Despite these challenges, founders should explore alternative financing options. Debt, especially for late-stage companies nearing profitability, may offer a less dilutive path to growth and a successful exit.

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Great episode for early stage VC's and capital allocators to check out. https://lnkd.in/ekz7JHJd #vc #fundraising #venturecapital

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The Information and Martin Peers are out with an alarming report about something most people take for granted….#wirelessspectrum. According to the CTIA carriers will run out of available spectrum, at current growth rates by 2027. Before people go blaming the #wirelesscarriers the CTIA points the finger exactly where it belongs with the Federal Communications Commission failing to appoint a commissioner. Long story short reach out to your elected official since wireless capacity impacts everything from the trivial #socialmedia posts to more important things like #E911 calls, #alarmsignals, and even #telemedicine monitoring. The growth in data usage is breathtaking and unlocking more revenue will help finance the government. What do you think? #management #venturecapital #privateequity #wirelesscarriers #capitalmarkets #

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Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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I always like to share positive news in the capital markets. Per PitchBook, "the value of US PE exits climbed in Q3 to reach an impressive $107.1 billion—the highest quarterly reading since Q1 2022, according to PitchBook’s latest US PE Breakdown. The exit count in Q3 rose 29% from the previous quarter to 394, exceeding pre-pandemic volumes for the first time in two years." This is an important, if still small, step in the right direction. The capital markets can be likened to an assembly line. The inputs on the front end are early-stage companies and startups. The middle of the assembly line consists of venture capital and private equity funds of all shapes and sizes. The 'finished product' on the back end is exits in the form of sales, mergers, or IPOs. If the exit mechanism on the assembly line is broken - which it has been for a few years now - it screws up the entire system all the way back down the line to startups. Any step in the right direction is good news. It would appear if the assembly line is beginning to restart. It will take some time and patience to clear the line, but hopefully this most recent market correction is in the rear view mirror. Endeavor Colorado Tegan Stanbach Zeb King Kathryn Dickson #privateequity #venturecapital #innovation #entrepreneurship #founders #startups #investing https://lnkd.in/gqdN4ZYy

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I enjoyed going on Nick Telson-Sillett’s podcast, Pitch Deck by Forward Pursuit. Nick is a serial founder and investor (founded and exited DesignMyNight) so knows both sides of the table which always makes for an enriching chat. Some things we discussed: - The perceived power dynamic between VCs and founders can hinder productive conversations. - A compelling product demo can significantly influence investor interest. - Founders must focus on solving real customer problems to succeed. - Hiring standards are crucial for building a successful startup team. - Behavioural roadblocks can prevent the adoption of new solutions. - Validation from potential customers is key for pre-revenue startups. - The early-stage funding landscape has become more efficient and selective. - Pace of execution is a critical factor in attracting investment.

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