Travis Hedge

After the first deep dive discussion w/ founders I often hear a comment "I wish I had heard about this alternative [to all-in must-become-a-unicorn] way to build a startup earlier as I have wasted years in pursuing the wrong thing". Our mission is that no founder would ever need to say that again as it is such a waste. Us preaching the gospel 1:1 just doesn't scale, hence we use mass media to multiply our efforts - that's how Gorillacast came to be. The 1st episode is out, featuring yours truly. "How can you know what food you like unless you taste everything" said a chef. How can founders make informed choices about the best strategy for them to follow unless they know of all alternatives? This might not be of interest to you but pls spread the word so that the founders who should hear it can find it. I have a dream!

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Good morning, especially to #founders. Missed the buzz about Brian Chesky's "Founder Mode" speech? And #PaulGraham's essay distilling it? The Cliff Notes thoughts, extracts, and links follow. 🗨️Conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken... people advised him [Brian] to run the company in a certain way for it to scale..."hire good people and give them room to do their jobs." He followed this advice and the results were disastrous.💣💬 Enter #FounderMode. The thesis is that "Founder Mode is not Manager Mode". More from Paul: 🗨️Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs. Sounds great when it's described that way, doesn't it?... One theme I [PG] noticed both in Brian's talk and when talking to founders afterward was the idea of being gaslit. Founders feel like they're being gaslit from both sides — by people telling them they have to run their companies like managers, and by the people working for them when they do. VCs who haven't been founders themselves don't know how founders should run companies (❗), and C-level execs, as a class, include some of the most skillful liars in the world.💬 Sages and snarksters more experienced than I in dissecting management theory, founding startups, and writing viral essays have all boarded the Founder Mode buzz train. Catch some of the chatter in the comments. In the five years that I've been close to the #insurtech founder world, I've watched this play out: 😤the frustrations created when founders and investors don't have a Venn diagram on mission or financial expectation; ❎the bad advice given and taken & ✅the good guidance given and taken; 📈the focus on scaling, on return, on exit leading to 😕diversion from mission and purpose 🙄the stereotype around founders having "bright shiny object syndrome" 💟the community that founders are now creating around best practices, as collectively we enter the next phase of startups. Bobbie Shrivastav, MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM Colby Tunick, PMP Zechari T. Michelle Bothe Judson Norton Sri Ramaswamy Jerry W Willis Chrysa Jones Cassandra "Cassie" Hand-Gallegos, AIC ​Amrit Santhirasenan Pat West Valkyrie Holmes Jamie Luce https://lnkd.in/eVYAFZkc

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We love seeing founders be able to keep their equity and take advantage of non-dilutive funding sources⚒️. We're excited to collaborate with Stacy Chin, PhD leader of KeepYourEquity.co, who has secured over $15M in SBIR/STTR grants for startups across various sectors. She's written a guest blog post sharing her insights on navigating the competitive landscape of grant funding 💰. Some highlights: ❇️ Understanding SBIR/STTR: A lifeline for startups, offering up to $2 million in non-dilutive funding! ⏺️ Learning how to overcome hurdles and capitalize on the golden opportunity. ❇️ Gaining essential tips on outlining your go-to-market strategy, choosing the right program, and preparing thoroughly. ⏺️ Benefiting from Stacy Chin's 10+ years of grant writing experience and her extensive track record in securing funding for startups. Read More in the blog post linked in the comment below 👇🏾 #SBIR #STTR #GrantFunding #StartupSuccess #SmallBusiness #KeepYourEquityCo #ShayCPA #cpafirm #techaccountants #startupaccountants #techstartup #techcompany #nondilutivefunding

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Well-written and sourced article describing what's going in seed-stage venture market. At 9point8 Collective we tend to orbit the seed-stage (both ideating and developing companies to reach seed and helping post-seed companies refactor and scale in anticipation of A) and for many companies it's a critical inflection point which determines their long term success or failure. The main takeaways I was able to gather: 1️⃣ Many startups that raised seed rounds in 2021-2022 are struggling to secure Series A funding due to tighter market conditions and increased investor expectations. 2️⃣ Seed investors are becoming more cautious, leading to longer diligence processes and a preference for startups with strong traction or experienced founders. As a result, valuations have stayed relatively high even as deal flow reduces. 3️⃣ Startups are adopting various strategies to navigate this challenging environment, including cutting costs, raising bridge rounds or convertible notes, and M&A/acqui-hires. 4️⃣ Despite the challenges, there are opportunities for both startups and investors in this new landscape, particularly for those who can adapt to the changing market conditions. Investors are accumulating dry powder -- and with rates on the decline -- will be looking to deploy into companies with stronger fundamentals than their 2021-2022 counterparts.

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Ever wondered how VC investors figure out who gets paid and how much when a startup hits it big? Dive into Verb Ventures' latest VC Blueprint on the Waterfall Model to get the scoop — and check out our model template inside!🌊 From senior VCs to the folks in the trenches, find out how money flows when an exit goes down. Whether you're dabbling in investments or running your startup, this breakdown is a must-read to keep your finance game strong!💸 https://lnkd.in/e-UaBVHY

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The secret—if it ever was one—is out on private equity fondness for vertical software. While PE-backed acquisitions were down 50%+ from a peak in 2021, vertical buyouts have continued to grow, and the fervor seems to be gaining steam. In today’s essay, we will pose an answer to one question: is PE a viable path to exit for a venture-backed startup?

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Do you think AI will replace insurance brokers? 🏴‍☠️ A producer recently asked me that question. My take: no Derek Sivers famously said, “if more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs”. We can already Google our way to most employee benefit answers. AI can now help us synthesize information faster, with more accuracy and less training data. Output is becoming indiscernible from a human. So why not replace the broker? There are slices of every professional services industry that will be replaced, or supplemented, and in truth this applies to the benefits broker too. Repeatable tasks like spreadsheeting proposals, merging claim files, financial reporting, billing audits, and commission statement reconciliation ought to be run through an AI workflow first. Tolerance for errors is low — trained benefit professionals should keep their hand on the wheel, but these execution-oriented tasks are not what employers are paying a brokerage $200-$300 per hour for. They’re paying for 𝚊̲𝚍̲𝚟̲𝚒̲𝚌̲𝚎̲. A small employer spends a small fortune on their health plan (hundreds of thousands), and a mid-to-large sized employer spends even more (millions). These decisions have a real impact on employees, drive the overall budget, and can have a long tail — taking calendar years to shift strategies. Maybe this bias will evolve over time, but our perception of advice from a human versus a computer is not the same. We trust algorithms to make reversible decisions like selecting the next TV show or song, but when making important, long-lasting business decisions we want guidance from other humans — rooted in their judgment, creativity, and hard-won knowledge. A benefits advisor embodies this. As a business owner with a benefits background myself, I can’t help but feel that while I have access to all the information in the world I still want guidance when making big ticket benefit decisions. Am I asking the right questions? Am I applying the answers to my specific situation in the optimal way? How does this decision fit into a multi-year strategy? Presumably others ask themselves the same. Whether that credibility is real or perceived, we feel better about the decision – it’s hard to replicate that feeling with a computer. AI is poised to make the industry smarter and more efficient, but I don’t believe it will replace the bespoke advisory services that brokers provide. Those who blend cutting-edge tech with human insight (and a personal touch) will continue to deliver the best outcomes for their clients. Hat tip to Jake Saper and Jessica Cohen of Emergence Capital for helping me see some of these ideas through the lens of their ‘Death of the Big 4’ post. Link in the comments.

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People buy software for 2 main reasons: 1. Increase Revenue 2. Reduce Cost You can hear more form Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures on this week's episode of TFR.

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Vertical LLM Agents with vertical specific business context are the new $1B SaaS opportunity. This is why our laser focus on the $1.3T Insurance industry - built on the foundation of the team’s decades of experience in this industry, with a deep understanding of the nuances of the insurance industry, the technology systems that power this industry, trust from the real humans that work in it, the business processes that create real LAE, Opex and ultimately Combined Ratio impact - allows us to reach real scale with AI Agents and gives me conviction in our purpose.

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💥Equal Ventures "Prepared Mind" Deep Dive Alert 💥 The Insurance Agency "GBO" aka Acrisure 2.0 While many VCs contend rollups aren't a fit for VC, more value has been created by the leading insurance agency consolidator in the last decade than all VC backed insurance startups COMBINED Learn why insurance agency consolidation is so effective and how we feel technology can super charge returns in creating another $20b+ company in this space Our blog post below with link to our deck in comments CC Adam Chadroff

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I've been a bit surprised recently with the number of decent-sized software businesses (i.e. $15M+) that don't have a legitimate VP of Finance or CFO on their leadership team. I think some product and/or industry-expert founders and CEOs view finance as simply "accounting" vs. a strategic partner to help them properly scale the business. This seems to particularly be the case with first-time CEOs. They likely haven't seen "what good looks like" when it comes to a finance leader and the positive impact they can have, so they hire an outside firm or individual to manage their finances...treating it like a "necessary evil." The role is far more critical than that. I've found that the right CFO is a fact-based, unemotional partner and sounding-board for the CEO, and an invaluable resource to other members of the leadership team as they determine strategy, budgets, etc. Plus, referring back to another recent post of mine (https://lnkd.in/eTjvqdnv), having the right CFO allows your company to better represent itself and speak the language of your investor / buyer. P.S. I was fortunate to have two strong partners as CFO at Daxko. Jonathan Sides and Winston Gillum both made a world of difference!

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TL;DR I run into all types of interesting phenomenon when puling together diligence materials. Some good, some not so good. In this case, private insurers involved in the government’s Medicare Advantage program made hundreds of thousands of questionable diagnoses that triggered extra taxpayer-funded payments from 2018 to 2021, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of billions of Medicare records found. The questionable diagnoses included some for potentially deadly illnesses, such as AIDS, for which patients received no subsequent care, and for conditions people couldn’t possibly have, the analysis showed. Often, neither the patients nor their doctors had any idea. Medicare Advantage, the $450-billion-a-year system in which private insurers oversee Medicare benefits, grew out of the idea that the private sector could provide healthcare more economically. It has swelled over the last two decades to cover more than half of the 67 million seniors and disabled people on Medicare. Instead of saving taxpayers money, Medicare Advantage has added tens of billions of dollars in costs, researchers and some government officials have said. One reason is that insurers can add diagnoses to ones that patients’ own doctors submit. Medicare gave insurers that option so they could catch conditions that doctors neglected to record. The insurers make new diagnoses after reviewing medical charts, sometimes using artificial intelligence, and sending nurses to visit patients in their homes. They pay doctors for access to patient records, and reward patients who agree to home visits with gift cards and other financial benefits. I imagine it would be quite disconcerting to look at my chart online to discover that I have HIV and cataracts for which I am receiving no additional treatments. Medicare is a $450b/yr system, this is to be expected. All the more baffling why both sides of the political aisle are clamoring to be the first to express their strong belief that these types of entitlement programs shouldn't be touched, ever. We can do better.

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What a brilliant idea from OMERS Ventures! This #benchmarking request from Dave Wechsler needs sharing and ❤️. You know what to do. Vertical software companies are the future of #SaaS.🔮 And of the #MobilitySociety. If your company is a vertical software company, then you can help build the “Vertical Industry SaaS Benchmark” and assessment tool. Let’s get this thing built. If this is you Take the Survey. ✅https://lnkd.in/gvY7iWww 🔁and repost original OMERS post, below Michelle Bothe Douglas Ver Mulm Christopher Frankland 🌎 Colby Tunick, PMP William Ross Megan Bock, CPCU, ARM Chrysa Jones Bobbie Shrivastav, MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM Joseph Emison Pat West Guy Kohn Jerry W Willis Cally Myhrum Watts Bill Glueck Kerry Macca Judson Norton Bryan Falchuk Alison McLaney Michael Fiedel 🇺🇸 Nick Lamparelli Patrick Kelahan Filip Sierpinski Emilio Figueroa Adam Price #industryvertical #solutionsproviders #verticalsoftware #insurtech #innovation #investment #founders

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Do you know how many hyper-growth public software companies are growing by over 40% this year? According to the latest June Guggenheim report… Zero. Not a single public SaaS company is growing over 40%. Do you know how many are growing their next twelve months (NTM) revenue over 30%? Also, zero! With that context, I was strategizing with my team on the most impactful ways companies can change their growth trajectory, and one thing we landed on solving immediately was time to integrate. If a company growing at 30% can pull in all net new integrations and thus revenue by just 1 month over the course of the year, it can increase its growth rate by almost 5%. For simplicity, assuming a $100M annual revenue, a 10% discount rate, and a 5-year valuation period, using a DCF, the company’s present value would not be 5% more valuable, but closer to 20% more valuable for all shareholders. The power of compounded growth rates. Game changer, and with just the smallest adjustments. That’s why smart companies are investing heavily in new customer onboarding and no-code, low-code technologies, like lightweight agents, hosted or embedded UIs, and more. The Socure team is ahead of the curve—ask our people about what we’re building and how we can help you accelerate your revenue growth.

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Great analysis by the AGC team on SaaS public company comps. It's worth a look as we recalibrate mid-way through earnings season. The analysis aligns with the broader Nasdaq equity performance, where the Mag 7 (or fab 4 now :-)) have shown more resilience than the rest of the market. #AGC #SaaS #EarningsSeason #Nasdaq #EquityPerformance

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Big rounds are back. VC Funding is flowing. In April, there were 28 fundraising rounds announced with >$10M in funding. We've seen private market (pre-launch) deals valued >$3B recently. Private Markets are hot. Public Market comps (FDVs) are hot. But who will buy our multi-billion dollar bags? Deal Flow Digest April w/: - Recap of largest web3 funding rounds - Airtable with ALL the data - Hackathons & Demo Days - VC Fundraises Read more here: https://lnkd.in/g7V4KrAj

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🌟Innovative VC Firm Overcomes Exits Drought with Secondary Sales🌟 ⛵Navigating a challenging landscape where exits are scarce, Santa Barbara Venture Partners (SBVP) has pioneered a novel approach to sustain its growth and attract investors for its second fund: secondary sales. Instead of waiting for traditional exits like IPOs or acquisitions, SBVP opted to sell shares of its portfolio companies, demonstrating its ability to generate returns for investors and stand out in a competitive market. 🎤According to Dan Engel, founder and managing partner of SBVP, these secondary transactions have been a game-changer, sparking investor interest and bolstering the firm's credibility. By leveraging its recent successes, including a lucrative stake in sports-betting company DraftKings Inc.' acquisition of digital lottery app Jackpocket, SBVP seized the opportunity to return profits to its limited partners (LPs) and pave the way for its second fund. 💡Engel highlighted the challenges faced by young VC firms in raising subsequent funds, particularly amid a downturn in exit activity and heightened investor scrutiny. With traditional exit routes becoming increasingly elusive, the pressure is on for firms to demonstrate tangible returns and establish a track record of success. ✨"For us, secondary sales have been a game-changer. They've helped us return profits to our LPs and attract investors for our second fund," said Dan Engel. 💰For SBVP, the decision to pursue secondary sales was driven by the need to provide liquidity to LPs and validate its investment thesis in the eyes of prospective investors. By strategically offloading portions of its holdings in high-performing portfolio companies like Bark Technologies and Rad AI, SBVP not only generated substantial returns but also bolstered investor confidence in its ability to deliver results. ⚠Despite the complexities and potential stigma associated with early share sales, Engel emphasized the importance of prioritizing investor returns and seizing opportunities to unlock value for stakeholders. With a focus on profitability and transparency, SBVP remains committed to its mission of delivering sustainable growth and maximizing returns for its LPs. 🔍 "Returning profits to our investors is our top priority. By strategically selling shares, we're proving our commitment to delivering results and driving value for our stakeholders," added Engel. As SBVP continues to explore secondary transactions and expand its investor base, the firm stands as a testament to innovation and resilience in the face of market challenges. 🚀 ✅ Looking to raise capital for your #fund and increase the international pool of your LP #investors?   🤝 Need warm #LP introductions?   📝 Selling #secondaries to increase liquidity?   🧐 Looking for co-investments?   ▶ G+QUANT's link for inquiries and fund decks: https://lnkd.in/gjC_EuTE #VCInnovation #SecondarySalesSuccess #InvestorReturns #ValueCreation 

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Valuations are starting to (only slightly) be in check. Investors looking for revenue, quality of revenue, margins, and repeatable GTM. This has the best founders focused on what matters, and reaching out to their Boards and advisors for real advice and guidance. Good stuff.

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