Rufus McLain

Reviewers vs Builders Managers in corporate can be broadly divided into 2 types- reviewers and builders (with notable exceptions). Depending on the stage the company is in, both breeds are useful; a mature org will be overindexed on reviewers and a start-up will be overindexed on builders, usually. You can identify them by their calendars, quality of answers etc. Reviewers calender will be pre-booked into multiple 1-hr blocks with recurring meetings etc. Day is generally so well planned that there is no chunk of time to solve meaningful problems. They keep moving from one meeting to the next with the same stock answers to FAQs in different fields, be it sales or geopolitics. Their answers are like first responses of chatGPT, sensible but rarely (if ever) useful (fix availability and visibility, focus on 4P etc). They think in multiples of 5 (5X plan, 10X vision) because real maths will not look as clean. Their failure to deliver in their roles will be masked as foundations of success on which their successors must deliver. Builders calendar will be unstructured (or blocked with pseudo meeting) so that they can avoid unnecessary meeting and get bigger blocks of time to get things done. Their answers will not be fluent, but will come from a place of expertise, more context-specific, more useful. They probably have a 3.2X plans because maths worked out so. Building is personal and so is failure to deliver. Balancing both kinds is critical to success. Reviewers should understand the cost of stalling builders with avoidable busyness while builders can benefit from structured thinking of reviewers and calibrate their direction.

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Rubbish is partnering with Replate to bring AI to food recovery 🍝🎉 Our goal is to use image recognition to estimate the quantity and weight of food recovered from donors. Replate is one of the largest food recovery organizations in America - when you have thousands of meal pickups a week, saving precious minutes on filling out forms means getting food to those in need sooner and fresher. We’re excited to apply the computer vision technology we’ve been fine-tuning for waste, litter, and brand recognition to this important and impactful space. We couldn’t ask for a better industry partner than Maen Mahfoud and the amazing team at Replate. We’re at ReFED this week to explore how Rubbish can help with food recovery can as part of its mission to create clean, healthy, and sustainable communities for everyone. Check out some live in-conference demo action 🎥👇 https://lnkd.in/gKD6AzzJ [Fixed the video link so it's not tiny.] #refed #foodrecovery #sustainablewastemanagement #circulareconomy #ai

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At Costanoa Ventures, we pride ourselves on identifying and supporting exceptional founders poised to create impactful, lasting change. Hona is a shining example, driven by a trio of extremely talented founders: Manny Griffiths, Joshua Christensen, and Matt McClellan. They each bring unique, differentiated expertise to the table, and Amy Cheetham and I are extremely excited to partner with them. There are approximately 450,000 law firms in the United States, with half of those firms being B2C - think personal injury, mass tort, or immigration law as opposed to BigLaw. One of the reasons we love how Hona is tackling this market is their focus on B2C law firms and product excellence - B2B firms are historically difficult to sell brand new software products into, but B2C firms are completely different buyers. Oftentimes there's just a handful of lawyers and paralegals in a partnership, and any piece of technology they can use to give them an edge would be valuable. 44% of negative Google reviews on law firms directly reference poor communication as the reason for a negative experience, and the number 1 reason for Attorney Bar complaints in the U.S. is "lack of communication". On the lawyer's side, attorneys, paralegals and legal assistants spend an average of 7.4 hours per week on unnecessary updates, redundant communication, and activities that aren't directly contributing towards getting a client's case solved. Manny and the team at Hona are working to change all of that. Hona delivers a tightly-integrated communications platform to help facilitate better communication between law firms and their clients. During legal proceedings, client communications tend to be a large resource-stressor for law firms. Clients will frequently call firms for case updates, legal explanations, or general administrative questions that tend to eat away at firm resources without providing any additional progress toward case resolution. Hona exists to ease that burden - it’s a platform that allows law firms to efficiently communicate with their clients over text, easily build customizable web pages and embed videos, and share information on case status and basic legal process education. This crucial communication processes allow attorneys to focus on their job – moving cases forward, while keeping their clients informed and educated. If you're a lawyer dealing with these problems - don't hesitate to reach out to us or the Hona team! It's a privilege to work with Hona on this journey. The company has been growing at a rapid pace, and they're delivering meaningful technology to help people get through legal proceedings in a much more fluid, transparent, and easy process. Manny, Joshua, and Matt are exceptional founders whose combined skills and dedication to continuous learning position them perfectly to lead Hona to success. They're just getting started, and we can't wait to see what they'll achieve.

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Today: This is going to be a remarkable conversation! Alondra Nelson is joining us for the inaugural episode of the Glitch Speaker Series, where we talk about the hardest problems that coders and product teams face *outside* of the actual code. The first topic, no surprise, is going to be talking about AI. Most devs agree the tech is pretty interesting, but that the most extreme hype is... not as interesting. So how does a thoughtful person navigate balance? Who better to help answer the question than a brilliant thinker and academic who helped catalyze the creation of the AI Bill of Rights while at the White House. Join us live, or watch the stream replay here: https://lnkd.in/emGfJvi2

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Employee terminations: they're a topic no one wants to discuss but that every company has to navigate. Thankfully, Melanie Naranjo and wonderful Ethena advisor (& Gusto's former People Leader) Jess Yuen are tackling this tricky topic for the next Ethena webinar. Register if you want to learn more about these topics: How to pressure test whether or not termination is the right course of action Best practices for communicating termination decisions How to minimize risk and choose the best course of action when things get tricky Critical pitfalls to avoid

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Reading through earnings reports can be quite insightful, and I stumbled upon a line from a leading retailer that caught my attention: “Revenue was also impacted by the growth of its commission-only marketplace model.” In other words, the company is sacrificing margin on every sale, regardless of whether it’s a new or repeat customer. Interestingly, we’ve heard from brands using a closed-affiliate verification provider’s marketplace that 50-80% of the traffic is from repeat customers. These are customers that the brand has already acquired on another channel, so there's no need to pay additional commissions to reacquire them. At our company, we take a different approach. We believe that the brand should own the relationship and first-party data with the customer, not the verification provider. This approach gives brands the power to remarket and engage with customers without paying commissions on future sales. It's a win-win situation for both the brand and the customer.

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Had a great time chatting with Oliver and Doug at today’s panel discussion! ViSenze AI Multi-Search is solving some complex search problems using GenAI, helping customers find exactly what they want more efficiently. Check them out! Excited about the future of retail search and discovery! #NRFAPAC #RetailInnovation #GenAI #Fynd #ViSenze #AWS

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I could talk about product positioning all day. Good product positioning makes it easy for buyers to see themselves, their routines, and their goals reflected in what you're offering them. Sometimes it's shifting your product positioning from "what we do" to "what we do for you". What a dream getting to meet and talk with Daniel Murray of The Marketing Millennials podcast about: ➡ Creating product positioning that resonates (and how we think about it at Recharge ➡ Sustaining brands in the routine economy ➡ Why your first marketing hire should be a product marketer, and more Check out the full episode ✨

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Some midweek wisdom from Y Combinator founder, Paul Graham, on why startups shouldn't stress over competitors. According to Graham, based on Y Combinator's extensive data set, few of their startups are actually killed by competitors. He compares the protection a startup has against competitors to the vastness of space, emphasising that the market is large enough for multiple players to thrive. Graham's analogy likens encountering a competitor to suddenly finding another runner in your race lane - the best course of action? “It’s sort of like if you’re running the hundred meters and suddenly a lane appears with another runner in it. What should you do? Run as fast as you can, just like you presumably were.” #Startups #Competition #Entrepreneurship #wearehiring

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🚨 The former CFO of Dropbox, Sujay Jaswa oversees the investment and operating activities as a founding partner at WndrCo, alongside media vet Jeffrey Katzenberg. He joins us for VC Wednesdays.🚨 🖋️  You recently closed a $460 million VC fund. Where are you looking to deploy that? Everything we do is around the idea of the future of work and helping people optimize how they get work done. That’s why we're investors in companies like Airtable, Figma, Databricks, Deel, 1Password and others. That won’t change, but now, you'll see us really focus on the applications of AI that will meaningfully disrupt how work gets done, like in finance, HR and customer support. 🖋️  Why should founders work with WndrCo? One thing that we do that's different is starting one to two companies a year in areas that we think have the potential to yield big returns. So, when we talk to entrepreneurs, our operating experience stays current, and that angle on venture is fairly unique. The second is that each partner at WndrCo has built something, so we have the empathy that comes from that experience. Third, we do only five to seven deals a year, versus bigger firms that do hundreds. Because we have a smaller portfolio, entrepreneurs can get a hold of literally every partner within a couple of hours, 365 days a year. 🖋️ Which startup pitch sticks out the most in your memory over others and why? My favorite is one that’s not a household name yet, even though the business is absolutely on fire. It’s Aura, an all-in-one product to protect you and your family online. The idea is that unlike the physical world, you have no idea what your kids are doing on their phones and devices. Aura gives parents the tools to navigate raising a kid in our mobile-first and digital-first world. When the founder, Hari Ravichandran, walked me through how he would take it to market, it was love at first sight. He's an extraordinary entrepreneur and the best go-to-market person I've ever met when it comes to consumer products. 🖋️ What’s one investment you regret passing on and why? At the end of the day, this whole business is built on being part of monster companies as early as possible. One of the best enterprise companies of the last decade is Databricks. The founder and CEO, Ali Ghodsi, is a very good friend of mine, and for whatever reason, it never occurred to me in the early years to twist his arm to try and let him take our money. We invested in Databricks later than I’d have liked to. 🖋️  What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned working with Jeffrey Katzenberg? The biggest thing I've learned is that you can't be him, and it’s impossible to keep up with him. He's relentless, and I have never met someone who works harder than him. If he says he's going to do something, no matter how hard, if it's within his capabilities, he'll do it. He's a doer, and he just gets stuff done. I admire that so tremendously. #VCWednesdays #vc #venturecapital #startups #TechonLinkedIn

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🌱 For pre-seed/seed founders 🌱 The early stage vc markets have changed drastically -- but many founders don't truly understand how or how much things have shifted until its too late or they are deep into the fundraising process already. This recent Allocate pod lifts the veil on the pre-seed/seed 2024 markets. SO MANY GEMS are packed 💎 into the first 20 min, I had to listen twice. Key takeaways from pre-seed VCs I'm a big fan of Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures, Kirby Winfield at Ascend (PNW represent!) & Nate Williams. 💎 The market in one word: 'turbulent' 💎 Fundraising bi-furcation; 2X founder building in AI (rounds take weeks) vs All Others (rounds take up to 6 months). 💎 "Leading VCs" (ie. first check in) are putting in a TON of work - building conviction & then helping founders fill the round. 💎 Up to 5 rounds pre-A; need lower early valuations to enable step ups 💎 Pre-seed entry valuations have corrected to $5-8M 💎 Round sizes have increased at pre-seed & seed for extended runway Many more insights in the full pod here: https://lnkd.in/gYf-DMr6 #venturecapital #preseed

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Should we prioritize people, or tech innovation in our large-scale development projects? The strategy's slowly shifting to people. And that’s exactly how California Forever CEO Jan Sramek wins over skeptics like Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. Not bad. “There’s a lot of baggage that tech has created in building new cities that, unfortunately, we are at the receiving end of”, explains Sramek. So smart cities and tech libertarian network states aren't the focus here. Quite the contrary. He calls the project (in this context) “really, really boring.” The focus: ∙ More housing ∙ Walkable cities ∙ Affordable by design* ∙ Improving the country for residents *(housing prices to start at $400k) I recently covered California Forever, dubbing it a future ‘Tech Utopia’ given its massive Silicon Valley backing. So it’s exciting to see Sramek's positioning and skillful handling of the grilling. Is the era of the smart city over due to its 'baggage'? Time will tell. More on California Forever and other visionaries designing new cities from scratch here: https://lnkd.in/e9-i386q Full interview: https://lnkd.in/eMnT8QhU #futureofcities #urbandevelopment

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🔥Join Jessica Z., COO of Talentful, and Matt Bradburn, CEO of People Collective, for a workshop on designing people experiences like a product leader at Pando Horizons. Register here 👉 https://bit.ly/3V8U6yd Learn how to treat the development of your organization's culture and employee interactions as a product, applying business-side strategies and metrics to retain and optimize your talent. What You'll Learn:  ✔️ How-to apply product development principles to the employee lifecycle ✔️Tactics for aligning teams and programs to business metrics and outcomes ✔️Strategies to continuously improve your people experience programs #peopleops #hrevents #hrtech #agile #eltv #peoplestrategy

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Are you working in experimentation / conversion optimization? Come to the flagship industry event Experimentation Live (formerly CXL Live), Oct 10-11 in Austin TX It's an event designed mostly for networking and peer-to-peer sharing, but also has a killer lineup: — Diana Jerman, Director of Product Experimentation at Disney Streaming — Stewart Ehoff, Head of Experimentation at RS Group — Luke Mortensen, Senior Director of Experimentation at Capital One — Chad Sanderson, CEO at Gable — Melissa Weiss, Director of Product at Eventbrite — Lukas Vermeer, Director of Experimentation at Vista — Sidhant Bakhru, Director of Growth, Product, Marketing, and Experimentation at Hulu — Shanelle Mullin, Experimentation and Analysis at Shopify Even the workshops (on the day before) are rocking: 1 — Ron Kohavi: Advanced topics in practical A/B testing (P-values misconceptions, power and false positive risk, why give positive results a haircut, when and how to correctly peek). 2 — Various practitioners: Application of AI in experimentation (how to use AI for ideation, hypothesis, problem statement and exploration, discovery). Early bird tickets end this month. Get 35% off early bird coupon — 'earlybird35'.

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For those of you focused on building high performing teams, our (virtual) Culture First conference is back again in May with some great speakers lined up! Here's one: Do high performers benefit from making time for play? Ben Crowe, professional mentor and leadership coach, will lead a session at Culture First Global exploring what it takes to truly transform your mindset and become more resilient. To join this session, be sure to follow this link to register.

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A post from Rob at Balderton Capital pointed me at this piece from TechCrunch, and it perfectly aligns with what I've seen in the market: When things (aka: building businesses) are getting harder, founders seem to be more aware of how to structure ownership within their team. I've recently seen a few transactions where mostly experienced founders insist on longer vesting schedules for them and their team (👋🏻 Mario from Enpal revealing this week the whole company runs on 7y vesting schedules). Avoiding dead capital on the cap table is one of the key priorities we try to make founders aware of when raising rounds - be cautious with part-time, non-operative 'co-initiators', professors, accelerators or angels that don't add much value beyond the very initial stages, or co-founders that decide to move on. Enforcing strong (read: long) vesting mechanisms including cliffs (no need to stick to the 1y cliff market standard either) can be a simple mechanism to align interests for the long-term.

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supply chain traceability is another great use case for blockchains and Algorand is leading the way.

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At last week’s ClimateTech Coffee 🚲 Bryan White and I were joined by Kimberly Gilbert, PhD to hear about her work on Carbon Neutralization and Ocean Storage (CNOS) through her company pHathom. Here’s a recap: The ocean naturally absorbs CO2 over time, but we’ve added so much that the ocean has become increasingly acidic. Ocean pH has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 globally over the last hundred years, and as pH drops it becomes harder for coral-based organisms to form shells. To combat this, Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) is an intervention that both reverses ocean acidification and removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Challenges with traditional OAE: - When you add the alkalinity into the ocean, it spreads out. It’s hard to measure the change in pH. - You don’t know exactly when the extra CO2 will be absorbed. Modeling and measurement companies are trying to help with this problem. Advantages of CNOS: - Co2 is captured directly at a coastal power plant or refinery, and then the concentrated Co2 is pumped into water that has limestone (and/or other alkaline materials) in it.  - This means the Co2 is dissolved onsite and the pH can be equilibrated onsite, which makes accurate measurement more feasible. Factors that affect progress:  - We’ll start seeing more companies enter in this space as the chemistry and its impacts are better understood and seen as safe  - Local and national permitting are a huge bottleneck - On the international permitting level, the London Protocol has a blanket ban on ocean geoengineering for anything except for research. There were good reasons for doing that, but it’s unclear who decides when that can change and the circumstances under which the ban is lifted. (Note: pHathom is not doing geoengineering; it’s doing water treatment on-site and releasing it back as ocean water) Open questions for the category/technology: - Can they come up with enough low-cost alkalinity sources, and get them in a way that doesn’t cause additional environmental damage or Co2 emissions?  - This approach will require pumping a lot of water. How much will that cost and how can the cost be driven down?  - Putting 100 plants’ worth of bicarbonate into the ocean is likely fine for ocean health relative to the climate benefit, but what is the point where the tradeoffs cross over? Some groups doing good work in this space:  [C]Worthy Carbon to Sea Initiative  University Research: UC Santa Barbara, University of Tasmania, GEOMAR, Dalhousie University, Scripps Join us for the next one in May! Details coming soon, and you can get updates by subscribing to the series page here: https://lnkd.in/g7DTGm2V

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