Zeno Rocha

Your role as a founder must evolve, or your company will be at risk. What does that mean precisely? Every company has an evolution. Your company will move through the Stages of Development, and there will be inevitable ebbs and flows. But growth, your movement forward, doesn’t happen by accident. It’s created by intentional decisions every day about the focus of your company, your team, and yourself. One of those decisions? When — and what — to delegate. Here’s just a few of the benefits: 1. You can shift your focus to your passions as well as doing what you’re best at doing (hopefully, these are similar). 2. You will empower your team to do the work they love. 3. You’ll foster a strong, cohesive, agreements-based culture. Let’s be clear — there is an art and a science to delegation, and it’s a skill you must master if you want to scale your company. If the idea of delegation terrifies you (or worse), take a read below. I’ll walk you through: → How your current Stage of Development matters → Understanding your company layers (aka Strata) and where distinct degrees of complexity and decision-making live → How to apply the 90/80/70/60/50 principle → How to get out of your own way

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One of the vehicles to monetize my SaaS podcast and Youtube Channel in the Spanish speaking market is to create an investment fund. Invest Seed Rounds in SaaS companies in Latin America. This could have worked. I wanted to invest in: @Leadsales_io by Roberto Peñacastro Ortega (later raised $3.5M with $2.5 ARR) @iventas_oficial by Aleks García @gigstackpro by Santiago Carrancá @revie_ai by Juan Sotres Vania Rivero de Pricelabsolutionscom Great companies that are solving real problems in LATAM. 3 of them solving problems with WhatsApp 👏🔥

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Brex is one of my favorite fintechs. Ever wonder what their journey from $0 to over $300M in revenue within 7 years looked like? 2017-2018: The Birth of Brex • Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, both 22-year-old Stanford dropouts, decided to flip the fintech world on its head by launching Brex, a corporate credit card tailored for startups. • With their co-CEO model (which has become popular), they doubled their management bandwidth. Internal & external duties? No problem when you have twice the number of CEOs to lead folks 2019-2020: Rapid growth • Brex quickly partnered with big names like DoorDash, Flexport, and Roblox. • In 2019, they secured $300 million in funding, catapulting their valuation to $2.6 billion. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you’re swimming in a pool of investor cash. 2021-2022: Diversification and challenges • Brex expanded its product suite to include expense management, bill pay, & travel booking services. If you’re going to burn through cash, you might as well make it convenient. • Despite their success, they faced some “minor” hiccups. Layoffs in 2022 were a delightful reminder that even fintech unicorns aren’t immune to cutting costs by cutting people. 2023: Strategic shifts • Transitioning to a single CEO model, Pedro took the helm while Henrique became chairman. Having two brains was slowing things down? • They continued to innovate, integrating AI into their platform. By the end of 2023, Brex hit over $300 million in revenue, proving that even with all the chaos, they were still making bank​. 2024: Path to profitability • With a goal of being cash-flow positive by 2025, Brex halved its cash burn by chopping 20% of its staff and focused on sustainable growth. Making money instead of burning it is always a sound strategy. • Serving 30K+ customers globally, Brex’s commitment to transparency & customer-centric solutions has kept them in the game. They’re not just participating – they’re rewriting the rules. Want to copy their homework? 1. Identify a significant pain point in an industry and create a solution that addresses it. Please don't start a business without doing this. 2. Utilize a strong co-founder dynamic to maximize efficiency & divide responsibilities effectively. Two heads are better than one, until they aren’t. 3. Secure early partnerships with influential companies to build credibility and a customer base. It’s always about who you know. 4. Listen to your customers. & Expand your product offerings to meet their evolving needs. 5. Maintain a strong focus on transparency & trust to build a loyal customer base. People surprisingly prefer not being lied to. 6. Strategically manage growth, and make tough decisions like layoffs when necessary to ensure long-term sustainability. 7. If you want to go public, be profitable. Did I miss anything?

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Three lessons from building and launching a P2P payments app without doing the proper customer validation first (despite knowing better): 1) Building something you need is a great starting point - but not enough to validate an idea. As someone drawn to building solutions, I’m an early tech adopter. This led me to overestimate consumers’ willingness to onboard, especially with a P2P payments app that requires KYC/KYB compliance and relies on a network effect to be useful. 2) Manual solutions are often best to start with It’s good business to be in business - transitioning from ideating to operating as early as possible is the BEST way to learn effectively. While the move fast and break things mindset has attracted well-deserved skepticism, getting stuck in a multi-year build trap distracted me from critical real-world validation. 3) Consumer appetite shifts quickly In my case, the proliferation of free and instant P2P payment options like Zelle added additional pricing pressure that I couldn’t compete with. This disincentivized the consumer event/payment collection market, turning my bottom-up go-to-market strategy upside down. Pitch (https://www.pitch.fun) is currently on the back burner as I’ve begun building custom solutions in various industries to sharpen my skills, solve specific problems, gain a hands-on understanding of operations, pain points, and workflows, and build a network of experts to lean on as I keep my eyes peeled for high-impact opportunities.

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Between April 2023 and March 2024, the top category in seed rounds in both capital raised and valuation was (gasp!) HR. Despite the typical skepticism around HR tech, data from 1,271 priced seed rounds show that HR startups outpaced other industries with the highest median pre-money valuation and the highest median cash raised. This trend contradicts some investors' perceptions and highlights the growing importance of human resources technology and its potential to drive significant value and attract substantial investment. h/t Peter Walker and the always insightful Carta data.

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Monetization is the underrated, underutilized revenue growth lever. It can yield a 2x to 4x more significant impact than acquisition and retention initiatives. I’ve just completed the Monetization and Pricing course by Reforge. Here are my key takeaways: Common mistakes: - Lack of alignment with how customers perceive your product value. - Treating monetization as a silo, separate from other growth initiatives - Failing to account for all costs to acquire and retain revenue, considering all revenue as good revenue. - Looking at monetization as just a price tag. - Not adapting the monetization strategy as the market evolves (set-and-forget approach). - Be short-sighted on monetization changes, focusing on short-term goals. HOW TO GET IT RIGHT: Define and measure your monetization strategy: > First, define the use case: problem, who (persona), alternatives, why, and frequency. >> After that, you define the monetization model: value metric, scale, what, amount, and when. >>> Third, you evaluate how much friction your monetization model generates. In addition to the use case and the monetization model, consider customer views, growth loops (business objectives), and the cost of revenue. If there’s a disparity between the use cases, the monetization model, and any of the other three parts, you have a monetization opportunity.   To find this disparity, you can analyze customer value metrics, feature value, customer willingness to pay, and charging period using surveys and interviews (Van Westendorp, max-dif, cojoint). Once you find the opportunity, look for ways to improve existing and add new use cases to your product: 1. Improve how price scales for customers. 2. Enhance product packaging. 3. Adjust product pricing. 4. Optimize when you charge customers. 5. Introduce a new use case. If there are no opportunities (or no prioritization) for model changes, you can still optimize your current model. Deploy strategies such as increasing the depth of use cases, moving or adding users to new use cases, creating anti-conversion flows, using incentives, and more. Steps to Optimize: 1. Define the Customer State: <> Potential Customers: Haven’t transacted but have high potential. <> Existing Healthy Customers: Paying customers engaged with the product. <> At-risk Customers: Used to be healthy but are now at risk of churning. <> Churned Customers: Used to be healthy customers who have stopped transacting. 2. Define the Path: <> Map the customer journey from the initial state to the target new state, aiming to convert them into Healthy Customers on the path to expansion. <> Each conversion involves specific tactics that work better for that group of customers and often requires tests and experiments.

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I had an absolute blast with Michel Gagnon and the Stun and Awe crew - THANKS again for having me... Sneak peek of the substance below: > Micro SaaS companies can be just as safe and stable as larger businesses, offering lower valuations and less competition from institutional players. > Founder-product fit is crucial, as founders solving their own problems often create useful products with great retention. > Founder burnout can be a buying signal, indicating a solid business with a founder ready to move on. > The first 90 days post-acquisition should focus on visibility, documentation, transition, and validating diligence assumptions before pursuing growth. > Building transparently and maintaining open communication with users post-acquisition helps preserve the human element and avoid the pitfall of going silent. > Simplicity equals mastery - if it takes a complex explanation to justify an acquisition, you probably don't fully understand the business. > Establishing reasonable incremental growth goals based on baseline performance (systems over goals) is more effective than setting arbitrary targets. > Fostering a culture of care and respect enables honest feedback and allows teams to move faster through a shared commitment to truth-seeking.

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🎉On Point Capital is now part of the Notion Creator Community! I founded On Point to empower growth companies and their leaders to build tomorrow's economy and achieve their full potential. Being part of the Notion community couldn't be a better fit. It's a place where we can share, grow, and empower others. To celebrate, we’re rolling out our first-ever #NotionTemplate - a Strategy Toolkit designed to help you: ✅ Make better strategic decisions ✅ Prioritize what matters most ✅ Organize your teams for success Our new Notion template packs 10 Essential Strategy & Planning Frameworks used by elite consulting firms like McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Deloitte PwC into a ready-to-use, easy-to-follow, customizable format. Link below. ⬇ It’s perfect for anyone looking to enhance their decision-making and strategy acumen. Go for it! 🚀 #OnPoint #NotionCommunity #Leadership #StrategicPlanning #Empowerment #Growth #Innovation #StrategyToolkit, #management #leadershipdevelopment #nocode

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Welcome to our #ECommerce Web Spotlight series. Today, we present Pipcorn Heirloom Snacks (pipsnacks: pipsnacks.com), a beautifully designed website that utilizes Shopify as its platform. Why spotlight the company? There's an interesting story behind the brand and the #shopify #website features great plugins. The website and the product packaging were designed by Murmur Creative agency. 🛒 🛒 🛒 The company officially sells on #Amazon (https://lnkd.in/eeNWENqp). 🛒 🛒 🛒 Pipcorn products are also available on #walmart, but they seem to be sold by a third-party seller (https://lnkd.in/e8bFdKf3). Perhaps it's a good time for Pipcorn to join and become a brand owner on the #marketplace? Just a thought :). 🛒 🛒 🛒 Below are a few interesting Shopify plugins powering the site: * Back In Stock (https://lnkd.in/e9wsQxBm) - an integration that allows customers to sign up for back-in-stock email alerts. * accessiBe (https://accessibe.com/) - a widget that creates a simpler and more accessible browsing experience for users. * Justuno (https://www.justuno.com/) - a widget focused on social marketing with tools that help convert website traffic into recurring customers. * Easy Gift (https://lnkd.in/ennbUr8y) by 506.io - a tool that enables sellers to automatically add free products or promotions to customers' carts based on customizable rules. * Postscript (https://postscript.io/) - an SMS and MMS marketing software. * AMP (https://useamp.com/) - a service that provides a set of tools to help with Shopify store growth. * Yotpo (https://www.yotpo.com/v2/) - a social widget that allows customers to read and write reviews. Additionally, the company has a very interesting bundle creator, but this seems to be a custom build. Our more detailed review with screenshots is available here https://lnkd.in/eC5UfNQw. #eCommerce, #WebDesign, #Shopify, #OnlineBusiness, #DigitalMarketing, #BrandStrategy, #UserExperience, #TechInnovation, #WebDevelopment, #RetailTech #ecommerce #retail #marketplace #onlinebusiness #retailtrends #digitalmarketing #consumerbehavior Teresa Tsou Jeff Martin Jennifer Martin Joe DePetrillo Sonia Ortiz Justin Lindenmayer Catherine Renee Dimalla Tory J Cunningham Andrew Bolton Angela Larisch Tristan MacInnis Dekel Skoop

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#Restaurant prices are rising due to rising food and labor costs, and a whopping 80% of consumers say they're eating out less due to rising prices. 📈 𝐒𝐨 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭? These apps and websites will save you money every time you eat out... 1. Groupon: Discounts and BOGO's at select restaurants. 2. Too Good To Go: App gives discounts on surplus food at reduced prices. 3. Feedplan: Discounts at restaurants you already love. 4. Honey: Discounts via app and browser extension. 5. Dining Advantage: Discounts and BOGO's at local restaurants. 6. Restaurant.com: Deals at local restaurants 7. LivingSocial: Discounts at local restaurants 8. Entertainment Coupon Book: More discounts at local restaurants Dušan Šenkypl Brice Gumpel Mette Lykke Win Feigle Alex Chriss Ketan Thakker

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What’s the real value of web-based payments for mobile games? Deploying a web-based storefront that maps 1:1 with the IAPs available in a game doesn’t capitalize on the power of the medium, which is that it facilitates rapid experimentation and personalization. The mobile app stores, but particularly Apple’s App Store, offer primitive tools for testing. The web provides a much more robust setting than the mobile app stores for price testing, dynamic offers, and bundles. Those benefits should be utilized in order to compensate for the friction inherent in moving users from a mobile game to the web.

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Like many VCs, I find inspiration in the stories shared by founders. Usually, it's the breakout founders who’ve already achieved tremendous success that catch my attention. I have a habit of listening to a current podcast and then going back to their earliest interviews to hear how the story and the leader evolved over time. (If you haven’t tried this, I recommend you give it a shot.) This morning, I had an epiphany while watching a recent interview between Condoit founder, Ian Hoppe, and Matt Hottle. It dawned on me that I am watching a spectacular story unfold in chronological order. Ian's industry knowledge and expertise are unparalleled—a textbook example of founder-market fit. Having actually done the job he is working tirelessly to improve, Ian’s understanding of the user goes down to the electron level (solid wordplay). I haven't been this inspired by a founder in a long time and am immensely proud to have Ian in our portfolio. Founders: I recommend taking time to watch this interview. There's a wealth of inspiration waiting for you, including Ian's unwavering obsession on his customer, his valuable insight on go-to-market, and his perspectives on investing in tech... plus some bonus pro tips on optimal tool selection! Most importantly, listen to the clarity with which Ian articulates the north star for his business. (If you're pressed for time, you can catch this piece at 17:30.) Fantastic job, Ian – keep making us proud! (NOTE TO SELF: Repost this interview in five years after Condoit has completely upended to electrical industry.) Overline | Redhawk Advisory, LLC #BirminghamTech #BirminghamStartups #FounderResources

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⚡ INSART is now on Substack! Check out its Fintech Scaleup Radar newsletter for growing startup founders: https://lnkd.in/emHegEyU You'll find some interesting tools for growing Fintech startups 💡 #fintech #startup #fintechstartup #financialdata #AI #datadriven

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What's the deal with everyone going crazy over Miami's tech scene? It's like they're trying to force it to be the next Silicon Valley or what New York City and Austin used to be. Let's be real, though. We're not there yet. People talk about driving #Miami to be the tech capital of the USA. There are this "enlightened" people that feel they are the drive to this move, they organize one event and suddenly: I made Miami a tech hub. But let's call it what it is. Companies aren't coming here for some magical ecosystem. They're here for the tax breaks and lower costs compared to their home states. Startups? They're struggling to even afford a decent office or studio with the insane prices here. How can anyone declare this as the go-to city for startups when most #tech people I know are leaving because it's just too damn expensive? Salaries don't match the cost of living, and it's a constant battle to make ends meet. I've been here for 12 years, coming from Barcelona, and let me tell you, this isn't the tech paradise they paint it to be. It's outrageously pricey, and everyone's scraping by while the wealthy take advantage of tax loopholes, leaving us with inflated prices and little room to grow. Miami's "tech hubs/city hubs" love to talk about supporting tech entrepreneurs (not going to name names), but the reality is harsh. They'll say they'll help, but if you haven't raised a ton of money, suddenly you're not relevant. Believe me my office is next to one of them. Who's going to support you then? It's a lonely road for #startups here. Honestly, I'd rather be in #Tulsa. At least there, the tech scene is actually growing, and you can afford to live without selling your soul. Companies actually care about entrepreneurs there. Right Brian Brackeen & Charlton Cunningham? Miami's tech scene and scene in general often feels like a facade, where people show off wealth they don't necessarily have. It's like the other day watching a Maserati deliver UberEats to my doorstep, like what???. Don't get fooled by the hype. My advice: don't come here at all. #buildinginpublic #startup #miami #investor #dockaboat

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This is what we stand for at Codingscape: Continuous improvement doesn’t just apply to our work, it applies to our core values too. If a team member says: “We could do a better job at this” or “I think we need to update this section” We'll adapt our values to meet these changes. They're not written in Sharpie, they’re not even written in pen. They're a work in progress—and everyone has a say in shaping them.

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New Framedrop.ai blog post straight from the oven by Filipe Pessoa. How you can monetize a podcast in 5 steps: 1. 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗲: Wait until you have an established audience base.     2. 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲: Understand their interests, pain points, and preferences.     3. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗩𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗦𝘁����𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀: Sponsorship, affiliate marketing, donations, premium content, merchandise, events, memberships, product sales.     4. Click to read the full article 🎣     5. Click again 😅 It includes 10 tried-and-tested ways 🤓

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Amazing Nubank! Funded 9 years ago is the most influential finance company, not only fintech but financial company, in 2024  1. Nubank got a higher valuation than Paypal, $62.9 billion (Nubank) vs $61.9 bn (Paypal).  2. In 2023, Nubank hit $1 billion in profit, a first for any Western online-only bank. Nubank in 2023 launched 40 new products with 9000 employees (around a quarter of what Santander has in Madrid for Tech Support) And remember that it was set up for 1 main expat founder, with no bank experience and a bunch of interns doing research and MVPs in Brazil. https://lnkd.in/dnbMAqdT Now tell me that the insurance industry is working well globally and that will not have similar change-makers.  Who is in? 😉 🚀

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🚀 Ready to Launch Your Marketplace? 🚀 In advance of our Marketplace Founder Bootcamp with Nautical Commerce; we’ve compiled a comprehensive guide to help first-time marketplace founders navigate the launch process. From defining user personas, conducting competitive analysis, gathering actionable feedback, and balancing quality with feature development, we've got you covered. Learn how to strategically prepare for a soft launch, integrate analytics tools, and ensure your marketplace is user-centric and ready for success. https://lnkd.in/gnrXWFK9 👉 Read our full guide to turn your marketplace vision into reality and build a thriving community. #MarketplaceLaunch #Entrepreneurship #ProductDevelopment #StartupSuccess

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