Hot in Enterprise IT/VC - What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #292
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #292How we thought about scaling our seed firm from a team of 2 + $1M proof of concept fund to a partnership of 4 & $367M of new funds
So we announced this… For solo GPs and others running small firms like Eliot and I, let me share with you some of our thought process around growing our team. The first question Eliot and I were faced with was how do we keep supporting our founders from day one and continue to be the first call until exit. Along those lines, we mapped out how much time we spent in various areas from meeting new founders, supporting existing ones, raising capital and all else we needed to do to grow a firm. Ultimately we landed on an operating partner model and given that we have often written about capital being more of a commodity, than people, enter Natalie Ledbetter. Natalie came referred to us from Dipti Salopek who was VP People at Snyk, a portfolio co, and has an operating background having helped scale Stash in the fintech space from 7 to over 300. She’s taken a huge load off us and helped implement a best-in-class framework to think about hiring, put systems in place, and also attract and find talent. Over the years we added Ab Gupta, formerly VP Ops & Strategy at Kustomer, another portfolio co to help founders with team dynamics, ops, and all of the other things technical and product driven founders are experiencing for the first time on the business side. Finally, Eliot and I were faced with the question of getting bigger and if so, how big. One thing we did know based on experience is that we never wanted to get so big that we would leave our swim lane of finding founders and leading rounds at company formation. We know that in venture you can either go big, go niche, or go home. We know our niche, partnering with highly technical founders from day one and having the capital to back them through exit. Once we decided we wanted to get bigger then naturally it came down to adding future partner level talent. Taking a step back, Eliot and I had a hard time raising capital until the middle of 2019 so our first 9 years of existence was quite rough. I remember the many discussions with Eliot on who the right partner could be and many a potential LP suggested adding an established partner to our firm who already had significant LP relationships and could jumpstart our fundraising process. As much as we were tempted by the notion and shortcutting our fundraising process, we decided to stick to our focus and our unusual way of partnering with founders and thought best to build from within. Fortunately, we got to know Shomik Ghosh from our LP Top Tier Capital. While not on the LP side, we collaborated with Shomik over a couple of years as he was leading direct investments in enterprise startups like CircleCi, Shape Security and Anaplan. We first met Ellen many years ago as we were an investor in her startup Dark where she was also CEO. She brings an incredible product and engineering mentality to the team and always offers the founder perspective. Fast forward and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have them both as Partners. What I ❤️ most is how both Shomik and Ellen encapsulated their learnings during the last two years which shows the true boldstart culture of being a true believer for founders from day one but also done with their own flair and creative twist. As always, 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues! Scaling Startups
Enterprise Tech
Markets
If you liked this post from What's Hot in Enterprise IT/VC, why not share it? |
Older messages
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #291
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Starting small to go BIG 💪🏼 + the importance of focus
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #290
Saturday, May 21, 2022
Story of survival + success from the Dotcom crash - how Greenplum sold to EMC + eventually IPOed as Pivotal
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #289
Saturday, May 14, 2022
Why lead investors matter + simple portfolio triage for seed investors
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #288
Saturday, May 7, 2022
Stay calm and carry on, growth at all costs is over, the prudent ones can keep building 🏗️
What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #287
Saturday, April 30, 2022
Building in a 🐻 market and getting ahead while you have the 💰
You Might Also Like
Inside Grindr's plan to squeeze its users
Friday, March 29, 2024
The company's bet on AI boyfriends and other paywalled features is making some employees nervous Platformer Platformer Inside Grindr's plan to squeeze its users By Zoë Schiffer • 28 Mar 2024
Inside Grindr's plan to squeeze its users
Friday, March 29, 2024
The company's bet on AI boyfriends and other paywalled features is making some employees nervous Platformer Platformer Inside Grindr's plan to squeeze its users By Zoë Schiffer • 28 Mar 2024
SaaSHub Weekly - Mar 28
Thursday, March 28, 2024
SaaSHub Weekly - Mar 28 Featured and useful products Loach logo Loach Say goodbye to unachieved OKRs with Loach, an OKR management solution that empowers your team to seamlessly align their daily work
84 new Shopify apps for you 🌟
Thursday, March 28, 2024
New Shopify apps hand-picked for you 🙌 Week 12 Mar 18, 2024 - Mar 25, 2024 New Shopify apps hand-picked for you 🙌 What's New at Shopify? 🌱 New login requirements for the Order Status Page Changed ⸱
We've Been Tinkering
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Join Our Beta! ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
AMA with Chiedo John, Director of Growth @ GitHub
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Live on Wednesday, April 3rd, starting at 9 AM PST͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
red hot startup intel
Thursday, March 28, 2024
FULL SWOT analysis on Ramp, Databricks, Cohere, Devoted Health, and Coalition inside Scouting Reports on 🔥 Startups Download Now Hi there, Psst. Want competitive intel on the top 5 industry leading
The Ultimate Amazon Guide: Strategies For Sellers In 2024
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Learn from Melisa Vong for FREE in the Start Your Ecommerce Business Summit ! Another day, another exciting opportunity to introduce you to one of our 20+ ecomm trailblazers in the Start Your Ecommerce
[SaaS Club] Overcoming Early Struggles to Bootstrap to $22M ARR
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Hey Reader Let's connect on LinkedIn! Follow me to stay in touch! Here's a quick round up of what's been going on at SaaS Club: 🎧 Podcast Hubstaff: Overcoming Early Struggles to Bootstrap
The ultimate 9-5 escape plan
Thursday, March 28, 2024
This is from THIS episode - Spotify - iTunes Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) once said “Entrepreneurship is like jumping off a cliff and building a parachute as you go down.” 😅🪂 I don't know