Andrew Gazdecki

A few spots left for this awesome workshop with Justin Gray of In Revenue Capital. Every successful founder I know learns to develop and maintain high performing relationships. This is a skill like anything else and can be developed. Founders, if you want to build a high-growth company, learn to build high-performing relationships. This workshop will help you do that. Hope you can join us.

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If you’re interested in strategies for scaling start-ups, this episode is for you.

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What sets off alarm bells in my head? 🫨 Hearing early-stage founders make statements like, “We have a consumer product and a business product.”  🚨 Or “We are expanding to four new vertical markets this year.”  🚨 Or “We’re going to light up our reseller channel now.”  I see a lot of startups on the other side of getting stuck and I can tell you lack of focus is a huge problem. I get it: Staying true to your core—the one thing you do well—is tricky when you feel the pressure to grow from investors or people you hired to grow the business.  What’s key is being in deep alignment with your board and team around the reality of the learning process and what really matters. Stay lean and disciplined until you have proven your “one thing” beyond a doubt. Then you can raise money and grow faster when it’s irresponsible not to.  #Startups #Entrepreneurship #Reignition #Focus #Metrics

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There's a magic growth pattern VC's salivate over: The coveted "Triple, Triple, Double, Double, Double" What's all the rage, and how does it work? The Concept: SaaS businesses can follow the “T2D3” growth pattern and go from $1-$2 million...to over $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just 5-6 years… And as a result, earn a +$1 billion valuation. Keep in mind that $100M is broadly thought of as the minimum annual revenue threshold a company needs to hit the public markets. The Pattern: If you can scrape and claw your way to $1.5M in ARR, in successive years you’ll want to: Triple to $4.5 million Triple to $13.5 million Double to $27M Double to $54M Double to $108M The Conclusion: As you can see from the chart above, it’s a well trodden path for successful software companies. They went from seven to nine figure top lines in just a handful of years, and then transitioned to hyper growth in the public markets... Wait, there’s one more part of the equation - you can’t grow at these rates without getting funded and staying funded. And to secure funding, you need to be able to tell the story of your business. You want accurate, reliable, and easy to access SaaS metrics when you raise. If you’re in B2B SaaS, you should look at today’s sponsor, Maxio. They understand the challenges SaaS companies face in reconciling bookings, billings, GAAP revenue, and SaaS metrics.

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There are two main things we did to give ourselves more runway with Harlow while bootstrapping the business: 1. Cut costs so that we operate at break-even, which extends our business runway infinitely to give us more time to do focused tests to figure out PMF and which growth channels will work for us. 2. Brought on consulting clients so we could make money, which extends our personal runway infinitely by allowing us to feel more safe and comfortable while building. How are my other bootstrapped founders making it work?

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Someone asked me how to move from SW to HW / robotics as a kickass builder excited to jump in. Love it! My response: robotics needs more great SW leaders who treat HW like a commodity, figure out a huge market need / GTM path, then pull in a team to unlock that.  With a SW mindset and SW architecture thinking. A lot of MechEs in love with their tech and the HW.  The HW is commodity - hard but commodity - and SW is where the interesting stuff is.  Simpler is better.  Most important is problem selection.  That is where you make / break the company and idea. And yes - there is HW innovation to be had - and I love folks doing that and doing it well. But there are far, far more opportunities for automation and problem solving with huge value creation now, with basically commodity OTS HW and SW. Choose problem, assemble solution, kick butt.

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I'm excited to reshare this timeless episode of #Supermanagers featuring David O. Sacks, a member of the PayPal Mafia, founder of Yammer, Inc., and General Partner at Craft Ventures. David offers invaluable advice for CEOs, managers, founders, and anyone looking to elevate their organization. In this episode, David dives into:  - Introverted leadership - Managing hyper-growth - Knowing when to throw out processes  - And so much more. Don't miss out on his unique perspective and leadership journey. Tune in to learn from one of the best in the business! 🎧 Link in comments 👇

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🚀 AlleyCorp Closes $250M Fund to Fuel Tech Innovation in NYC and Beyond🗽 🌟 Founded by NYC internet entrepreneur Kevin Ryan, AlleyCorp incubates and invests in transformative companies across diverse verticals including Diversified Technology, Healthcare, Robotics, and Impact. 💡💰 🤝 The fund, backed by a select group of LPs, supports AlleyCorp's mission to originate ideas, hire teams, provide initial funding, and maintain integral leadership throughout the company’s lifecycle. 🌱🔍 💼 With about 20–30 new investments and 5–8 incubations per year, AlleyCorp has a track record of nurturing early-stage tech pioneers. 📈🌐 🦄 Notable investments include MongoDB (NASDAQ: MDB), Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, Zola, and Nomad Health, shaping the landscape of tech innovation in NYC. 🌆🌟 🔬 AlleyCorp also announces the incubation of Radical AI, pioneering AI-driven materials design, and Conduce Health, revolutionizing access to personalized healthcare specialists. 💻🏥 ✅ 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 #VentureCapital #TechInnovation #NYCTech #StartupInvestment #Incubation #AlleyCorp #ImpactInvesting #HealthTech #AI #Robotics #DiversifiedTechnology #InvestmentStrategy

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This is a big deal. A new #investment structure for #startups like this is a big #deal. Helping more #founders connect with more #angelinvestors is a great project that can have beneficial ripple effects of increasing #startup investment worldwide. Thanks to the Angel Capital Association for initiating this work to help #entrepreneurs. Pat Gouhin Ronald Weissman John Harbison Tony Shipley Marcia Dawood Silvia Mah PhD, MBA Eli Velasquez Nicole Washington Damien Delgado TCA Venture Group TCA Venture Group Orange County David Friedman Digvijay (Sunny) Singh, Ph.D. Parisa Khosropour Dave de Csepel Pat Hwang StartupCouncil.org

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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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Hardware drives the return for VC in AI.

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I chatted with VC general partners recently, and they shared something obvious but still very important for startup founders that is often missed. To succeed, you need three critical roles among the founders: Sales, Product, and Engineer. ✅ Sales is the person who gets customers and drives revenue. ✅ Product is the visionary who shapes the product and keeps it on track with customers' real needs. ✅ Engineer is the one who builds the product and makes it work. Having these three roles covered is crucial! It balances the team and covers all the bases. 💡 If you're starting something new, ensure these roles are in place. It can make all the difference. #StartupLife #Founders #Teamwork #Fintech

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Did you know that 68% of small businesses report having cash flow problems, and many small businesses rely on the owner's personal funds to stay afloat? Relay exists to solve this and the best part is it's actually working! Which makes this announcement even sweeter: We raised a USD $32.2 million Series B round. What does this mean? - More spend management tools to improve financial visibility - More products to give small business owners flexibility - More integrations to streamline operations - And ultimately more businesses making better and smarter financial decisions Exciting times ahead! PS We're hiring: https://lnkd.in/gMT2mN25

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🚨 Startup friends - If you bank with Evolve through one of their fintech partners (such as Mercury or Stripe Treasury), take some steps now to try to protect your identity. If you aren't sure if you bank with Evolve, you can confirm by looking at your wire details in your account. I recommend: 1. Setting up credit freezes with each of the major bureaus 2. Signing up for an identity protection and credit monitoring service, such as Lifelock (especially if you aren't able or willing to do #1) 3. Be hyper vigilant for phishing attacks 4. Change your passwords with the fintech partners (while allegedly credentials were not leaked, I say better safe than sorry) Lastly, consider diversifying your financial stack (happy to chat about this with folks, just DM me). From SVB last spring, to Synapse's collapse, to this - there's always something.

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Secondaries are becoming a super attractive asset class. Just this month, StepStone announced a new $3B+ fund dedicated to secondaries. Late-stage private companies are still trading at a discount relative to their 2021-2022 highs. But the venture capital advisor exemption requires firms to keep their secondary positions less than 20% of total investments. I think this will encourage fund managers to get creative with registration/legal structures in order to unlock greater exposure to secondaries as attractive deals come through. https://lnkd.in/e_3_xitM

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Going from Zero to Product Market Fit is like getting out of a Bermuda Triangle For every direction that works out, an equal and opposite direction works too It is shocking how few get to product market fit Only 15 out of 100 SaaS companies get to a million dollars in revenue When you have PMF, it is an awesome feeling Everything is going smoothly for you It also feels scary and out of control You push one unit, and ten units of progress happen But when you don’t have it…. You push ten units of effort, and not even a unit of progress happens It feels like a Sisyphean punishment Moving a boulder up the mountain In the GenAI age, I hear arguments that go “The focus should be on the core functionality. Like how musicians concentrate on the music itself” This is clearly a faulty analogy Businesses providing playback formats (cassette tapes, CDs) are obsolete today Gen AI brings AI below the API No more does one need to stand up a team in ML Spend a few million dollars to “translate languages” or “transcribe accurately” GenAI now assures that Getting to PMF boils down to the basics - Do you understand the problem deeply - Can you build a 10x better solution - Can you execute & iterate faster - Don’t die in the process (cash) What has worked for you to get out of the Bermuda triangle?

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Let the wave begin! Pioneer Fund company Recall.ai *grew their revenue 10x* in the past year, has 300 enterprise customers, and just raised a $10M Series A led by Ridge Ventures. David Gu and Amanda Zhu dropped out of college at age 19 to start the company. They've grown it exponentially with a tiny team. They make it easy to build meeting bots that are cross-platform. They're aggregating all these different APIs into one unified API, the way Twilio did with cell phones. At first it "sounds" easy to build a meeting bot -- just integrate with the Zoom API. But in fact there's a huge long tail of things you need to build, security and privacy pitfalls, automations, transcription complexities, integrations, the calendar invites where someone is using Google Meet or Teams, staying up-to-date with the libraries, etc etc. Recall takes care of all of that. It's WAY easier to build on top of Recall.ai and focus on the features that make you unique. Congratulations to the Recall team!

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