Eno Reyes

PSA: If you send a founder product nits + feedback with concomitant screenshots/mocks you instantly vault into being an S-tier user. (Friction logs are even better, of course.)

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How to pitch: The company has zero traction —> “We’re early” You only have 2 customers —> “We’re working with design partners” You currently have no revenue but hoping some pipeline finally closes —> “we’re on track to exit this year at $3M ARR” You’re in the natural kill zone of a FAANG —> “We view them as partners rather than competitors” There’s no way the tech can actually work —>“We’re manifesting the future” And of course: One of your developers uses Co-Pilot to write some front end code —> “We’re an AI company”

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TWO OR THREE-STEPPING TO SERIES A A lot of software founders are still trying to raise a $4-5M seed round from a pre-revenue standpoint to get to Series A. I get that we all want more buffer nowadays but it's also a harder calculus to go from pre-monetization, to early customers, to giving yourself enough sales cycle time in order to hit $1-2M ARR proxy for a strong A. Which is why inevitably, more founders end up having to raise messy extensions/bridges/Seed II or whatever you want to call them. So my advice is that IF you have the luxury of starting a company today, PLAN AHEAD. Even prior to even raising your first angel round. Break up your path to Series A into 2 or 3 tranches of mission-driven capital. Each tranche has a clear goal that you can rally your team and investors around. For example: First tranche to build the product and get early design partners. Second tranche to get to $300K of ARR. Third tranche to get to Series A. This will help support higher operating discipline and awareness. Incremental purchasing and hiring decisions will instantaneously shorten your runway in a way that a larger $5 million seed round obfuscates. And you'll be motivated to find GTM efficiency faster in the journey. Great habits for long term success. For context, Peter Walker of Carta recently sent an update on the arduous path from Seed to Series A. The survival rate is about 1/2 of what it used to be: "Something like 20-24% of startups that raised a seed round would graduate to their Series A in 24 months or less. For companies that raised their seeds in H1 2022, only 13% have made it to Series A across the 6 industries in the chart."

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You think building a startup requires a lot of effort? Consider the effort required to live a life without aligning your soul/self with market and community. Best time to plant a tree/build a startup-- 10 years ago. Next best time is right now. Try this: https://lnkd.in/ggF8bGbv

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Calendly is a $3B call scheduling app, but it didn't start that way: Attempt 1: Dating app [FAILED ❌] Attempt 2: Selling projectors [FAILED ❌] Attempt 3: Selling grills [FAILED ❌] Attempt 4: Calendar app [SUCCESS ✅] Lesson: Stay true to your startup journey, not the idea. #startup

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FOUNDERS STOP DEMOING On net, early stage founders should stop demoing their products on the first sales call. I've watched dozens of Fathom videos of pre-seed and seed stage founders I've invested in, and its the number one culprit for wasting time and derailing your sales motions. Your product demo is SACRED and should only be shown to qualified buyers. In complex sales, the goal of your first sales call is NOT to sell, but determine whether you are talking to a qualified prospect: an influential champion at a company with a real usage case, that will actually buy your product in a reasonable amount of time. Demoing can incite an excitable stakeholder with no power, and organizations with no real need, to progress a deal. This false sense of progress creates an escalating sense of sunk cost that makes it hard for founders to abandon the deal. You end up spending a ton of time in follow up hell chasing a bad prospective design partner. In the early stages, all you have is time and resource costs. Don't squander it chasing bad customers. While its tempting to use slides or a product demo as a crutch, it completely derails your ability to run a productive "discovery" call. FOCUS on the conversation and if necessary prepare a list of 20 questions, sequenced by batches, that unlocks true understanding of the stakeholder's role / power, their organization buying process, and whether they may have a real usage case and urgency to make a purchasing decision in the next 2 quarters. If they don't, throw them in your nurturing campaign and move on. Your time is better spent focusing on setting more meetings.

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The journey from $1 to $10M in ARR is typically an exercise in finding your first channel-market fit as a GTM/Marketing leader and/or founder. After prioritizing the top 1-3 channels you believe are most likely to be a fit for your product, finding channel-market fit is typically an exercise in experiments and iterations. If you’re flying blind bc you don’t have the systems, processes, and data hygiene setup to measure and test quickly inside a framework, it’s going to be a difficult journey. Check out the podcast I did with the team at Evron for more mistakes to avoid on your journey from $1M to $10M ARR.

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Excited to officially introduce Layouts - customizable filters and views to track POs and production on a granular level. 🍚 A Director of Ops we work with wanted two things: Complete control and complete flexibility when it comes to managing their production runs. With granular logic powering layouts, operators saw an immediate impact thanks to: ⚡️ Advanced filters (Vendors, Expected Ship Dates, Payment Status, Tags +) ⚡️ Saving custom layouts for your team to monitor (eg; POs where invoice is unpaid but status is received, etc.) ⚡️ Ability to toggle between multiple layouts (Classic Apparel Vendors, Footwear POs, etc.) Centro Layouts gives you the flexibility to filter and customize your PO data to see exactly what you need, when you need it. Save time flipping through spreadsheets and fast track critical decision making. Drop a comment or send me a DM if you want to see a quick demo of Centro Commerce in action. :) #inventorymanagement #procurement #production #brandoperators #shopify

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I love this breakdown. Entrepreneurship is hard. Raising money is hard. Bootstrapping is hard. There are different types of exits and valuations vary widely. It’s important to understand what you will walk away with, so do the math ahead of time, before you agree to funding or an outright sale.

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If you are a founder in AZ, you are doing yourself a disservice by relying only on the AZ investor ecosystem. Try to tap into SF, NYC, LA, etc. to give yourself more leverage, and even more importantly, a POV that spans beyond the desert.

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InVision has experienced the biggest fall from glory in Silicon Valley's recent history. $350M raised with a peak valuation of $2B. And now they are shutting down. Not acquihired or "acquired by private equity" or strategic tuck-in. Just a hard stop. It's so easy to s**t on them. They got out-innovated, they were not product driven etc. etc. But, the truth is most startups that raised monster rounds in ZIRP days could face this deadend. You raised too much money: 1/ So you are too expensive to acquire 2/ So you raised your burn too high to finance a big GTM team 2/ So you got complacent on product 3/ So you got lazy on shipping There will be a lot more inVisions in the next 24 months as startups run out of capital. It's sad. The employees & founders at these companies gave it their all, but raising too much money sealed their fate. For the next gen of startup founders, heed this advice: raise little, keep your burn low, ship fast!

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Well said, Jen Abel. And even beyond these ARR guardrails, startups often instinctively throw in enterprise and SMB as dual strategies. Or direct and PLG. Outbound and channel. And more! #startup #sales #GTM #SMB #channel #enterprise #PLG #directsales

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A recent conversation with a founder: His company developed a B2B SaaS product. They showed some initial promise but ultimately couldn’t achieve meaningful growth. They didn’t reach product/market fit. Then they kept developing more features. And some more features. All of a sudden, they had a product with 12 different main features, none of which was a killer differentiator. The product surface area was so large that the engineering team was always busy just maintaining the codebase. As founders, we all know this isn’t the best way to go. But avoiding this trap is easier said than done — it's just how human psychology works. We get backed into a corner, and our instinct is to work harder and do more things. Occasionally, in the history of products, there have been those that were stuck but finally achieved breakthrough growth with that one key feature. We feel we have to keep the team busy; we can’t have them idle. The list goes on. That’s why, when stuck, sometimes the team needs to slow down at least a little bit and use their brains more than their bodies (i.e., building more features). Startups don’t have abundant resources, so the only edge they can have is to do one thing (which will turn out to be the game changer) really well. It’s about finding that one game-changing thing, not doing more things.

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YC is an accelerator. Faster networks, faster fundraising...it's about getting back to what you do best: BUILDING. Laduram Vishnoi isn't just talking the talk. Proof? He raised $6.5 million in his seed round, topping his entire YC batch in both funding and valuation. 💪 Could he have raised even MORE? Absolutely. But his focus? Scaling smart, with the resources to drive growth for years. YC success stories are inspiring...but THIS is the kind of outcome that gets founders REALLY paying attention. Want to hear the whole story? Watch the full episode here - https://lnkd.in/eqawwxcX . . . . . #startup #startups #founderstory #ycombinator #ycrejects #funding #seedfunding #venturecapital #entrepreneurship #techstartup #software #microservices #monitoring #observability #cloudcosts #saas #devops #cto #techfounder #middleware #lobstertalks

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Nic Poulos and I wrote an essay for Euclid Ventures, "An Era for Vertical Software." The TL;DR is that vertical SaaS is a distinct, enduring discipline that we believe is poised to dominate the software landscape over the next decade.   "2024 will represent a turning point, perhaps even a new era for venture capital. While the fog feels like it’s lifting, the path forward isn’t yet clear. One includes a soft landing for the US economy and the continuing recovery of software multiples, with ZIRP-era behaviors continuing around hot themes. Another sees a recessionary period in which VC capital inflows remain stagnant and startup funding the year dips below $100B. Either way, a more measured VC market in 2024 is a certainty. For many investors, that will come with a rude awakening as their strategy becomes more difficult to execute or their thesis of choice is negatively impacted by tightening markets.    We see this reversion of the venture ecosystem to its mean as a strong tailwind for Euclid and vertical software. As a category, Vertical SaaS is uniquely well suited to thrive in volatile market conditions and produce fund-returning outcomes. The sections below aim to answer the question: why is vertical software different? Our answer discusses the factors driving the natural market resilience we see in vertical software as a category–resilience that will help them thrive in 2024 and beyond."

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Weekly Update 4.26.24 ⚡ • Kicked off some development work to lay the data foundation for the next-gen evolution of our platform. There was a slide on this in our Seed fundraising deck 3+ years ago... now it's time to build. More to come over the coming months, but until then, we're heads down! If you're an existing customer, let us know if you're interested in sharing some product feedback! • Our event schedule is dialed in with events with Nik Sharma next week, Eli Weiss this summer, and our first pop-up shop (#SaturdaysOnKinney) coming up on May 18th with brands like True Classic, Clare V., NATION LTD, Awe Inspired, SKATIE, Hammitt, and Jumbo Time Wines. With all these parties, I could use a healthier Venice Ecommerce Run Club... who's down? • Shipped many quality of life improvements for merchants. One example: adding a note to the order in Shopify when a merchant extends a trial on behalf of the shopper. • Expanded our GTM Advisor program, which serves as a replacement for a traditional sales team. If you're interested in learning more, leave a comment and I'll share details. #TryBeforeYouBuy #TryNewThings #ShopifyPlus

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Alex Lieberman just shared a cool side project: YourStack. He shared storyarb's & Morning Brew's tech stack + got Noah Kagan to share his too. (more founders to come) As it scales, I thought that a few simple features could be useful, like: ↳ seamlessly see which softwares/services are most commonly used ↳ all founders' reviews of a given tool aggregated in one place ↳ how many founders use a given tool While still keeping it simple, of course. Made them in Notion + Super already. WDYT? Is this overcomplicating it, or would it be useful? ( hoping this reaches Alex :) )

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