Meka Asonye of First Round Capital joined me to share this really valuable insight for founders (when choosing a VC partner): “Choose the person who is going to help you make your company worth 10x.” In our conversation with Meka, we talk about this and get into how the VC ecosystem and modern GTM engines are more similar than you’d expect. Here are some of the highlights that stood out to me from the conversation: There's more money and more venture capitalists now than ever before. Now, there are 100s of seed round players and even angel investors who can write seed checks. He talks about how First Round Capital has an edge in this game to stand out from the noise: “We think of ourselves as a professional services company. We are in service of founders. We will do anything, at any hour, to help give you a slight advantage.” But the game is still about fighting for those inches every single day. “A lot of people forget that those advantages are made in the moments when no one is watching.” Our conversation led us discussing correlations between VC and the modern GTM engine. We talked about how combining 1st and 3rd party data for a GTM team will give them the edge needed to win deals. The power of turning this data into insights to create that slight advantage is how we’re thinking about it at ZoomInfo. One of my favorite takeaways from Meka when talking about this: “When you’re sitting side by side with your customers, they give you the raw and real feedback that you don’t get in any other way. You see it, feel it, and understand what you need to build when you’re building alongside your customers.” This perfectly captures our approach at ZoomInfo Labs. We're in the trenches with our customers, building the future of GTM together. Finding that slight edge is the path to victory, It’s a great conversation. Listen to the full episode – link in the comments.
Meka Asonye - one of the best!
EVP, GTM Strategy & ZI Labs at ZoomInfo
4moApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-round-capital-partner-meka-asonye/id1757547464?i=1000662372827