Jason Calacanis recently started inviting three startups at a time to pitch for a $25,000 investment from his Launch Fund as part of his 12 week Founder University program, which is for very early startups working on their MVP.
Startups pitching to investors is not easy but it's a great way for others to learn what works well for pitches and the type of questions investors ask.
In this episode, three startups pitch, Sticker, Outmost and PaySquad...watch to see which one Jason selected!
Most startup founders have heard about the importance of a building a minimal viable product, but what's next?
In this graphic from Founder University, part of Launch from Jason Calacanis, the MVP (minimal viable product) works well for a beta version.
In the next phase, your Minimal Marketable Product is when you can show someone will pay for it and generate some type of revenue.
That is followed by your Minimal Lovable Product...users or customers are like what you have and are willing to pay for it. You are now ready to scale.
This helps break down the phases and it's important to note the earliest phase of MVP is where you can experiment the most and figure out what works and what doesn't.
- - - Podium is a venture fund across sports and entertainment, based in Silicon Valley.
During a visit to the All In Podcast from Twitter HQ, Elon Musk reflects on the first two months and the roller coaster ride of fixing Twitter.
Whatever you think of Twitter, Elon or the debate on free speech vs censorship, there is no doubt the changes at Twitter are having a broader effect across Silicon Valley and tech on how companies at scale can implement product innovation and avoid being bloated and clunky, especially in challenging economic conditions.
Founders, company leaders and investors are (or should be) asking...
...can you do more with less?
...can you make decisions fast?
...are you going for incremental improvements or swinging for the fences?
...is your company financially positioned to survive and thrive?
When Doug Leone got his start
The impact selling secondary shares has on founders
“The founder’s job is to make the receptionist rich”
Mentoring the next generation of investors
Sometimes incredible companies make the founder
The greatest founders Doug has worked with
Providing companies with a running start, but not doing too much
Investing in China
Entrepreneurship in Europe
“Hope is not a plan. Let’s make a plan.
- - - Podium is a venture fund across sports and entertainment, based in Silicon Valley.
PodiumVC's founding partner Akif Malik recently joined Silicon Valley-based success coach Raheel Bodla to share how sports is changing the game for technology and venture capital.
In this discussion (September 2021), Akif shares his journey into sports, tech and VC as well why the intersection of sports + tech is booming.
Thanks to Paklaunch, a community of over 10,000 founders, investors and professionals in the tech and startup ecosystem, for hosting.
To the rest of the world, it looks like paradise with such success.
In reality, there's often chaos behind the scenes.
Scaling technology or infrastructure is one thing. Maybe you need to expand your cloud capacity.
Startups that began as a small team handling everything to scaling into a larger company with user growth means having to figure out how to adjust the organization itself.
Our friend Jason Calacanis interviewed David Sacks (PayPal, Yammer and now Craft Ventures) about a recent Medium post about the operating philosophy of startups.
We HIGHLY recommend checking out both the original post and the video discussion above.
Here is an excerpt from The Cadence, David's post:
Let’s face it: most startups are a shitshow. Perhaps the most pervasive problem afflicting venture-backed startups, once they achieve a basic level of product-market fit, is managing the organizational chaos that results from rapid growth. Almost by definition, this is a chronic challenge of Series A-C stage startups since the rapid expansion of the team to chase a new market opportunity is the purpose of that venture funding in the first place. During this time, the growing pains of the startup will reach such a crescendo that the founders and board will cry out as one, “we need a COO!”
As with any potential problem in a startup, it is possible to posit that a perfect hire could solve that problem, but the more direct route is simply to solve it yourself. Putting your startup on an operating cadence is the way to do that. The Cadence is an operating philosophy that I first learned as COO of PayPal (during the so-called “PayPal Mafia” founding era) and then adapted for SaaS as founder/CEO of Yammer, which Microsoft acquired in 2012 for $1.2 billion. To this day, Yammer is still the fastest unicorn exit among SaaS startups, and a lot of that success is due to the Cadence. The Cadence helped us scale to almost 500 employees and $56 million in annual sales in 4 years.
The Cadence is most needed when scaling from 50 to 500 employees. This is when a pivotal transition in the way the startup operates is required. Before then, all of the employees fit into a single room (either physically or virtually), everyone knows what everyone else is working on, and founders can easily run around telling everyone what to build and what to do.
But at around 50 employees, this approach stops scaling. So the org chart is broken into silos for sales, marketing, customer support, and other functions, and product managers are hired to guide the development process. These new levels of hierarchy create a feeling of compartmentalization and disconnect in the organization. Meanwhile, a lack of leadership for some functions creates a sense of disorganization. Disconnect plus disorganization equals chaos. Ironically, the better the startup is doing, the more chaos there is. This is one of the few startup problems that growth doesn’t solve — in fact, it’s caused by growth.
The Cadence is designed to synchronize the major functions of a SaaS startup so that the team works together in lockstep. It brings order to the chaos; it turns the shitshow into an army. It brings together disconnected areas so everyone understands what is happening and what they should work on. It replaces erratic release dates and sales targets with concrete milestones for shipping and selling. The impact of hitting those milestones, quarter after quarter, has a huge compounding effect on the performance of the business and its culture.
Ironically, the better the startup is doing, the more chaos there is. This is one of the few startup problems that growth doesn’t solve — in fact, it’s caused by growth.
So what is the Cadence? It’s based on a few simple insights:
First, the four major functions in a SaaS startup — Sales, Finance, Product, and Marketing — are all best run on a quarterly cycle.
However, it’s not the same cycle. Sales and Finance are on one calendar; Product and Marketing are on another calendar. I call these the Sales-Finance System and the Product-Marketing System.
If you snap these two calendars together, it will create a single operating cadence for the company.
The key milestones and events in these systems create opportunities for company-wide communication and collaboration — a kind of superstructure for the organization.
- - - Podium is a venture fund, accelerator and community across sports and entertainment, based in Silicon Valley. Learn more at www.podium.vc 💌 newsletter | twitter | FB | linked-in | IG
