**2024 Catalyst Curriculum Guide Now Available!** 👇 Application deadline: July 12 (next Friday!) Explore Our New Curriculum Guide: Dive into the topics you'll master and the expert instructors you'll learn from. Check it out below. What's Stage 2 Capital Catalyst? It's our 12-week go-to-market accelerator program, designed to help founders build the foundation of their revenue engines using our Science of Scaling methodology. We provide 1:1, hands-on guidance to execute GTM strategies in our founders’ current context. Interested or know someone who might be? ➡ Share this post with your network. Ready to apply? Visit: https://lnkd.in/ggzmVRA2
Stage 2 Capital
Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
The venture capital fund led and backed by elite go-to-market professionals
About us
Stage 2 Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in early stage B2B software companies and sits shoulder to shoulder with leadership teams to operationalize sustainable revenue growth and sales operations. Backed by top go-to-market professionals from leading tech companies, Stage 2 Capital leverages its deep sales expertise to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses in addition to providing capital.
- Website
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http://www.stage2.capital
External link for Stage 2 Capital
- Industry
- Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
- Company size
- 2-10 employees
- Headquarters
- Virtual
- Type
- Partnership
- Founded
- 2018
- Specialties
- Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, B2B Software, Venture Capital, Go-to-market, Scaling, Growth, Revenue, Acceleration, Strategy, Sales process, Repeatable Sales, Efficiency, Capital, and Investing
Locations
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Primary
Get directions
Virtual, US
Employees at Stage 2 Capital
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Ray Rike
Enabling B2B SaaS companies to make better metrics-informed and benchmark-validated decisions using our industry benchmarks, primary research…
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Paul McGhee
Accelerating Field Productivity | Revenue Enablement
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Andy Jolls
C-Level Marketing Executive & Advisor | B2B SaaS | AI Enthusiast & Practitioner
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Suresh Khanna
President at Treez. Co-founder at Pieces and Kasa Indian. Former AdRoll/Google. Early-stage advisor and investor.
Updates
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Ever clicked on an ad for a product you loved, only to find it's out of stock at your local store? What if that ad could tell you exactly where to find the product nearby? This is the problem Pear Commerce is solving for CPG brands. Last week, we announced our investment in Pear Commerce. Today, we’re sharing why we're excited about their vision for the future of CPG marketing. Pear is tackling two important challenges in the complex world of CPG digital advertising. 🏪 Where exactly is my product in stock? 🛒 Did that ad click actually lead to a purchase? They're gathering millions of inventory data points daily from over 3,000 retail locations allowing brands to create unique experiences, like social ads that show local inventory and guide consumers to nearby stores. Pear's approach feels both timely and transformative. They're not just tracking inventory - they're reimagining how brands connect with consumers. We're honored to lead their Series A alongside some fantastic co-investors. If you're curious to learn more about why we believe in Pear's mission, you can read the full blog article here: https://lnkd.in/g24KGrmW Psst… If we've piqued your interest, Pear Commerce is hiring for several critical roles (VP of Engineering, VP of Sales, Head of Customer Success, Senior Software Engineer) https://lnkd.in/gw-T6Wxp #CPGMarketing #AdTech #RetailTech #SeriesA
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This week's Dear Stage 2 is all about finding the right comp plan for your first enterprise reps.
💌 DEAR STAGE 2: We’re an early startup chasing true enterprise deals. Our senior AEs have ~10 target accounts and the deals can be anywhere for $250-750K. It’s a feast or famine model where 1-2 deals can make a rep’s year. Have you seen any early-stage cos with this model recently?Structuring comp plans for enterprise AEs is tricky. How do you motivate reps when one deal can make their year? This week on Dear Stage 2, we're talking enterprise sales compensation. We asked Graham Collins, Head of Partnerships at QuotaPath, for his advice.Here are 3 models to consider: 🎯 MBO Based on Leading Indicators 💰 Higher Base Salary with Lower Commission 🔄 Draw or Guaranteed Comp with a True-Up Each model has its pros and cons. The right choice depends on your team's experience and your company's stage. Enterprise sales is a long game. Your comp plan should reflect that balance of motivation and stability. Read Graham D. Collins's full advice in this week's Dear Stage 2. 👉 https://lnkd.in/eZJzUtuc
Choosing the Right Sales Comp Plan For Your First Enterprise Reps
dearstage2.com
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🎧 Start your weekend with the latest episode of The Science of Scaling podcast. This week Mark Roberge speaks with Ryan Longfield, former CRO of Gong to discuss "How to Run Your Sales Org Like a Billion Dollar Company." They discuss: ➡ How to chart your career path based on priority and life stage 📚 Why content marketing is your best differentiator early on 🔎 What to look for in choosing the next company leader you work with https://lnkd.in/gsRzcXid
How to Use Gong Like The Team Who Developed It w/ Ryan Longfield (fmr CRO, Gong) by The Science of Scaling
megaphone.link
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Today we're announcing our lead investment in Pear's $10 million Series A funding round! 🎉 🍐 Pear Commerce
We’re beyond thrilled to officially announce Pear’s $10 million Series A funding round, led by Stage 2 Capital! This funding will help us continue to grow our incredible team, unlock new innovations, and enhance our product offerings to empower CPG brands with the tools to drive meaningful growth through retail ecommerce. We can’t thank our partners, customers, and investors enough for your unwavering support. 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦! 🔗: https://lnkd.in/g2yWu9NG #PearCommerce #SeriesAFunding #RetailEcommerce #Shoppability #CPG
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As we reach mid-year, many #RevOps leaders face the challenge of adjusting compensation plans. Whether due to economic shifts, leadership changes, or changes in company direction, making tweaks mid-year can be hard to manage. Stage 2 Portfolio company QuotaPath has responded to this need, drawing insights from numerous customer conversations. They've announced new product updates, positioning themselves as the most #adaptable solution in the market. RevOps leaders: What's the biggest challenge you've faced when updating comp plans mid-year? Share in the comments 👇
We launched QuotaPath in 2018 to simplify commissions and address broken compensation processes. It was an easy mission to support, as many of us had poor experiences calculating commissions and getting reps paid on time and accurately. Six years later, it turns out this is a really hard problem! We learned that simplification didn’t always match how our customers thought about solving the problem. Instead, we needed to match their teams' adaptability. Today, I'm excited to announce a huge upgrade to the QuotaPath platform, making us the most adaptive platform in the market. These features support your team’s movement and growth — Manager Plans, Dynamic Team Assignments, Multi-Level Approvals, Mapping Manager — while upholding transparency and accountability over earnings. We also continue to expand our integrations to meet our customers' tech stacks, adding Xero and Microsoft Dynamics, plus an app on Salesforce AppExchange so that you can view your approved earnings directly in Salesforce and run custom reports. Build comp plans that are as dynamic as your business—plans that motivate reps with transparency, keep pace with growth, and scale with you. Check out some of the additions and links below. And, of course, thank you to our customers and the hard work of our team to make this possible!
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Tempted to ramp up your sales and CS teams? Hold that thought. Have you really nailed your product-market fit yet? Holding off (and getting your PMF right) might be the smart move that sets your company up for long-term success. It’s advice from Sean Foster, the CRO at Anomali and one of our Catalyst mentors. Today we asked Sean to share what common challenges he hears from founders and what he's looking forward to in this year's cohort. 💰 What's the most common challenge you see young companies face? "Cash flow is of course the key component every startup must have an eye on at all times. That said, I think young companies must spend a lot of time on product market fit and ideal customer profile. Too many times, I see companies want to spend money on sales and customer success when they don't have their PMF and ICP down cold. It's a big money and time waster...spend that time and money on really dialing in your PMF and ICP." 🌠 What's one piece of advice for founders? "I know it's easy to say but, 'Enjoy the journey!' Every day is hard in startup land, just take a minute at the end of each day and write down the one or two things that you did well or something new that you learned...you'll be amazed at the end of each week, month, quarter, how much the company is actually progressing even though the numbers may not say the same thing." 📚 What are you most excited about as a Catalyst LP? "Learning about new ideas and technologies that can potentially change the industry and to be able to help those founders ramp as fast as possible by sharing my experiences (and mistakes) so they can grow as quickly as possible." Applications for this year's Catalyst cohort close on July 12. If you know someone who may be interested, give this post a like, share or send them the application link (https://lnkd.in/ggzmVRA2).
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📬 DEAR STAGE 2: The NRR and GRR data shows that the ecosystem really struggled in these areas in 2023, and that 2024 hasn’t been much better. A bit better, but not by a huge margin. People are trying to figure out how best to stabilize and right size here, and are wondering who should own these numbers, where should that team sit, who to hire, incentives, etc. What are you seeing and what’s your advice to Founders who are wrestling with this problem? ~Topline Hosts This week Liz (Cain) Christo is answering one of the questions she fielded during her recent guest spot on the Topline podcast. (If you missed it, you can listen here: https://lnkd.in/gC-Bi_QB) Liz shares six specific ideas for you to consider as you work to stabilize and improve both GRR and NRR in 2024: 🎯 Retention and customer growth are not *just* for CS. Align executives on a North Star Metric to ensure company-wide focus on retention and growth. 💎 Deliver tangible value throughout the customer journey to build loyalty and reduce churn. (Your executive team should be engaging with customers regularly to gather feedback) 🔍 Evaluate your existing customer base to identify patterns among those with high retention rates - which segments are outperforming? Refine your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) based on data to target high-retention segments. 💰 Explore Pricing Models and Upsell Mechanisms: Do you have something to upsell? If your model is seat/unit based and you are relying on your customers to grow for upsell, that’s a very difficult place to sit in the current environment. 💼 Incentivize Sales: Structure compensation plans that reward sales reps not only for closing new deals but also for the retention and expansion of existing accounts are becoming the norm. 👑 Having dedicated leadership focused on retention (and growth!) is crucial. (This could be a Chief Customer Officer, VP of Customer Success or Head of Account Management. Establish dedicated leadership for retention and growth to drive cross-functional initiatives and maintain organizational focus. You can read the full Dear Stage 2 article here: https://lnkd.in/ggv4XJXK #NRR #GRR #Startups #Founders
Strategies for Stabilizing (and improving!) GRR and NRR in 2024
dearstage2.com
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🎙 Add The Science of Scaling podcast's newest episode to your weekend playlist. This week, Mark Roberge interviews Jen Grant, COO of Cube to tackle the topic "How to Build an Advisory Board."
Co-Founder @ Stage 2 Capital, Prof @HarvardHBS; Founding CRO @HubSpot; Author of Best Seller "The Sales Acceleration Formula"
You are a first time founder, CEO, sales leader, or marketing leader. Your startup is crushing it. You just landed the big $10 million Series A check. Congrats. Now you're at your board meeting. The multi-decade venture capitalist is feeding you with advice and counsel, and you take it. The problem is... sometimes the advice is wrong. But how do you know? You've never been in this seat before. And how can you push back on someone that just wrote a $10M check? In this episode of #TheScienceOfScaling, I call on my friend and Stage 2 Capital LP, Jen Grant. Jen has experienced the startup ecosystem from almost every viewpoint. She has been a product leader at Google, marketing leader at Box, Elastic, and Looker, CEO at Appify, and is currently COO at Cube and sits on 3 boards of directors. She is one of the few people in the ecosystem that has seen the board meeting unfold from every seat in the room. We dissected the ups and downs of those meetings. Here are a few of my take-aways: (1) A common suboptimal piece of advice from a new investor is to go upstream to the enterprise too early and too quickly. Jen walks us her narrative to manager the pothole that entails explicitly agreeing with the strategy but listing out the organization capabilities needed to do so, the incremental milestones to measure progress toward those requirements, and an estimated timeline with corresponding revenue growth targets that will only be unlocked if the milestones are achieved. (2) Diligence your prospective VC partners. A lot can be learned from the questions they ask about your business through their diligence process. Do these questions spark fresh perspective on your business that you value? Or do these questions signal a lack of understanding on your vision, opportunity, and business model? And, always talk to founders that took that partners in the past to dive deeper into the working relationship. (3) The saying goes, "it is lonely at the top". Jen points out it doesn't need to be. Nearly 100% of Series A term sheets require an independent board member. A critical role for that member is to be a coach and a sounding board (and sometimes a therapist) to the Founder/CEO. Pick someone that has been through the journey in your seat before. Lean on this independent to help filter and manage counsel from the investor board members. (4) Build an advisory board with 1 advisor for each functional leader. Cap the term to 6 months to ensure the advisors are relevant to the upcoming phase of execution. As the CEO, hold a quarterly advisor-only meeting to gain a different lens into the status of each function and enable another communication mechanism through which to drive cross-functional strategic alignment. As a bonus, Jen and I role play how she handles a VC board member that wants the organization to scale revenue faster than it is capable of. Listen to the role play and the entire episode here: https://lnk.to/TSOS!mr
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The clock is ticking... 🕰 We're just over 3 weeks away from the deadline for Catalyst applications, and we can't wait to unveil this year's cohort of 15 companies. Are you planning to apply? If so, take a look at these tips from our Stage 2 Partner, Sean Po, on what to include in your application: ⚡️ Your ideal customer profile and the individual persona you're selling to ⚡️ Your traction, key performance indicators (KPIs), and other metrics you're currently tracking ⚡️ Your current go-to-market (GTM) strategy and areas where you think there are gaps Catalyst provides access to 1:1 coaching and mentorship sessions with elite GTM and operating experts from industry leaders such as Salesforce, Atlassian, Snowflake, Klaviyo, Zendesk, Crossbeam, HubSpot, Stripe, Zapier, Toast, Udemy, Seismic, Datadog, Checkr, Databricks, and SailPoint, among others. https://lnkd.in/ggzmVRA2 Best of luck and we hope to see your application for this year’s cohort! Applications close on July 12.
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