Wojciech Drewczyński

What makes you Exceptional, Remarkable or Extraordinary?? As a pre seed / seed founder, this is what you should be pitching to investors. Well, at least that’s my opinion. What’s your thought on this? Very well described by Sam Marchant in his post ⤵️ #founders #investors
#alwaysbelearning #changethewaywework #thefutureofworkisnow #firstdegree

4

Speed is everything in startup life. Read a post the other day that put it better than I ever could: “The faster you can collide your ideas against reality, the faster you get feedback. By increasing the speed at which you can act on the context, trying new things will become cheaper for you — and so you will take more risks, and extract more information from the context. Write faster, prototype faster, ask for feedback faster. Velocity is underrated.” Couldn’t agree more.

16

2 komentarze

From 12-18 to 24+ months: Raising between two rounds is getting longer, but is it really bad for founders? •In the past couple of weeks several data points showed that the time between two successive financing rounds is getting significantly longer. •Pre-2022, most VC backed startups raised money every 12 to 18 months until the Series B. •It concretely means that startups had to hit specific milestones every 12 to 18 months to be able to raise again. •And these milestones depended on the “VC zeitgeist”. It could be growth rate, revenue level, product milestones etc… •Fast forward today it’s around 24 to 32 months between two rounds. While it shows that access to funding is getting tougher, is it really a bad thing? First of all, what does it fundamentally change for founders? ----------------------------------------------------------- •Obviously founders need to adjust their burn rate so that they can survive longer than 12/18 months with what they have raised. •They need to focus on sustainable growth. The current “VC zeitgeist” is not about “growth at all costs” milestones anymore but about “sustainable growth” oriented ones. To raise the next round you need to have healthy unit economics. •Board meetings have often dramatically changed. It’s sometimes an almost schizophrenic experience to go from a board that asks you to be super aggressive with growth to a board that asks you to build a sustainable business. •It’s better to have VCs that can support you through bridge rounds over a longer period of time. I know a couple of early stage founders that have raised €1-1.5M with syndicates and small VC firms and are now stuck because they cannot do bridge rounds. So, all in all is it a bad thing? ---------------------------- •If you make the correct adjustments (and most early stage founders have probably done it) I do not think that it’s such a bad thing for founders. •I know many founders that were uncomfortable with the pre-2022 VC Zeitgeist and didn’t feel good when they were pushed by VCs to hire aggressively or spend more money to grow faster. •And many prefer the current situation where the emphasis is on building a real business from day one and accelerate only when it makes sense. And not the other way. The real problem for most SaaS founders is not the longer time between two rounds, but rather to get the very first checks with VCs that are ready to support them over a longer period of time (through bridge rounds).

3

Currently, rollups are fragmented, leading to poor UX and disjointed liquidity. Here the first demo of Javelin by our portco NodeKit With Javelin, users can synchronously send messages and move funds across #rollups on NodeKit within a single 2s block.

11

🤖 ChatGPT tip: You have a PDF of a signed contract & there are future dates where specific things need to happen. How can you easily extract the important points to get them on your calendar and keep them organized? 📅 My signed contract PDF for this example: Upcoming speech in September where I need to - - Book a hotel - Book a flight - Provide a bio & headshot by a certain date - Provide a PowerPoint presentation by a different date - Confirm the date (aka deadline adherence) or find a replacement speaker by yet another date - Request expense reimbursement with receipts by a certain date following the speech ⌨️ ChatGPT prompt: Attach the PDF and ask, "Please analyze this PDF, extract the important points, and output as markdown text." What will you get as an output? A set of code you can easily copy/paste in Word, Notion, Trello, or your favorite project management system. Add your dates to your calendar, reference the document when needed (instead of trying to search for the PDF somewhere you forgot you saved it on your computer) and you'll feel confident about what you're doing when. ❓How are you using ChatGPT and other AI tools to keep yourself organized? #chatgpt #ai #aitools

9

Today is the big day! We’re launching Tailent on Product Hunt! Please support us here: https://lnkd.in/dK_qKnRH Tailent can help you hire developers 5-10 times faster, easier and without bias. AI-HR assistant will create a vacancy for you based on your needs, impartially choose candidates out of 150,000+ CVs, check their skills and give you the top 10 most motivated ones. Tired of looking through tons of CVs? AI will do it for you! 🎁Especially for Product Hunt users, we suggest 20% OFF for one of the plans. Find the special link in the first comment. Please support us using the link: https://lnkd.in/dK_qKnRH #producthunt #hr #hiring #ai

11

2 komentarze

AI startups are a different game altogether compared to those based on more conventional technologies. The pace of change in AI is so fast that what we worked on last month can already feel like old news. This rapid evolution is why 𝗔𝗜 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴, 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹-𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀. At Miros, here’s what we’ve learned: • 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 is about striking the right balance—it needs to be loose and explorative enough to uncover new ideas, while also being focused enough to deliver business-relevant outcomes. • 𝗜𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 is key. The faster you can experiment and learn, the faster you can innovate. That’s why having a 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 with POCs that are 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 is crucial. It allows us to move quickly, without risking disruption to the core business. This approach has allowed our research engine to run smoothly, constantly surprising us with new innovations that not only excite us but keep us ahead of the curve. 🚀 #AI #Innovation #AIResearch #Startups #MachineLearning #ArtificialIntelligence #Miros #Ecommerce

25

2 komentarze

Crafted specifically for business, our AI is designed to comprehensively understand your organization, including its intricate process flows, and adeptly manage all conversational interactions and track data like never before.  Check out the article below... To learn more, text EXPLORE to 317-428-2025 or visit us online at www.klaunch.io #conversationalai #aiforbusiness #youownalldata #proprietaryAI #omnichannel #datadriven #realtimedata #powersallconversations #softwarethathelpsyourbusiness

12

1 komentarz

Understanding the Rule of X for SaaS Scaleups For SaaS scaleups, the Rule of X offers a straightforward framework to estimate revenue multiples. It was originally developed by Bessemer Venture Partners and supplemented with data last week by Dealroom founder Yoram Wijngaarde. It emphasizes that growth significantly outweighs profitability, even amid VC crunches. However, when growth is constrained, profitability becomes essential. Framework Overview: The Rule of X combines growth rate and free cash flow (FCF) margin to evaluate company value, using a multiplier (typically 2-3x) on growth. Datadog Example: With a 25% growth rate and a 25% EBITDA margin, Datadog achieves a Rule of X score of 100%, implying a 15x revenue multiple for 2024. Importance of Growth: Growth has a compounding impact on valuation, significantly outweighing FCF margins. Subscribe to ‘Siliconnector’ Telegram channel for insights and news from Tech world and Silicon Valley: https://t.me/siliconnector

9

2 komentarze

Hey everyone! The latest episode of the Brand Boost Podcast is out now! We chatted with Elena M., partner at Flyer One Ventures, with over 5 years of experience and 20+ deals led. 😎 In this episode, Elena shared many valuable insights about pitching to VCs and building a strong startup brand. We talked about: 😱 Why a company name could be a disaster for your startup ⏰ The surprising truth about how long VCs actually look at your pitch deck 🙅‍♀️ Why being too good at personal branding might backfire 🤯 The secret to getting featured in TechCrunch 🌟 When to start building relationships with VCs Elena had so many great things to say, and the insights are truly game-changing! 🌟 You have to check it out! Remember, it's all about "Numbers, Not Adjectives" when it comes to impressing VCs with your startup's brand! Find link to the podcast in the comments.

33

1 komentarz

🙈 The only guide on startup fundraising in 2024 you’ll ever need 2 months ago, Slava Solonitsyn and I hosted a 1.5h private webinar on “How to raise in 2024 — a guide to parallel fundraising” as part of FundraisingHackers.com. Slava is definitely not your average tech founder — previously a VC (with 2 unicorns out of his seed portfolio, cc Ruvento Ventures), he turned to being a founder, went through Y Combinator twice, and co-founded one of the top YC companies, Mighty Buildings. Slava has raised over $180M in his entrepreneurial career. In this guide, you’ll find: 📅 Data on the current market conditions ✅ Benchmarks on the funnel/conversions 🖇️ CRM/weekly plan/taskforce templates 📡 Introduction to parallel fundraising/taskforce concepts ...and much more! Slava has spent more than 10 years applying and perfecting this playbook and you can now get it and read/watch implement it for free — at Fundraising Hackers we believe that fundraising knowledge should be free for all and it’s our mission to do our best to share our experience. Want to get the links to the recording and slides? ✏ Drop a "+", emoji or any other comment below ☑️ Make sure to follow me or I won’t be able to DM you I'll start sending them today. #fundraising #startups #YC #AI

129

319 komentarzy

UPDATE: For anybody who hasn't received the link: https://bit.ly/3UWrGYg Are you a pre-seed startup? Here’s a list of +𝟴𝟬 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆-𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗩𝗖𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗡𝗬, ready to believe in your vision—before you've even launched your product. Find "Pre-Product OK" investors who understand that great ideas need fuel to start. This allows startups to develop their MVPs and reach initial milestones like setting up their business infrastructure, refining their product design, and acquiring their first customers. 🫣 Sneak peek of standout investors on the list: boldstart ventures Human Ventures K50 Ventures Comcast Ventures Bayes Ventures Bowery Capital Interlace Ventures Brooklyn Bridge Ventures APA Venture Partners ANIMO Ventures +++ investors specializing in diverse sectors like healthcare, SaaS, e-commerce, AI, and more! Explore and connect with potential partners who can turn your vision into reality. Comment 'NY' and I'll send you the link! Queue music 🎶 "𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘧" 🏙️🗽🚕 Reshare this list to help more pre-PMF founders raise funds. If you're a founder and need investment to develop your MVP, connect with me so we can work on a solid pitch deck and strategy to secure your funding. Register here for free: https://lnkd.in/eicGcsek #Startups #Tech #Fundraising #VentureCapital #Investing

90

120 komentarzy

VCs should ONLY fund digital products, where the founder already built the first working prototype him/herself with No-Code. Besides Deep-Tech stuff, everything is doable by someone who put in the effort. #NoCode #Bubble #VentureCapital #Product

28

5 komentarzy

A great summary on the current state of startup investments by GeekWire I have seen this first-hand with my campaign to build my network of Angel investors Most Angels in the Seed / Preseed stage are currently requiring strong revenue traction early on This creates a big shift in the approach for early stage companies as the article outlines: "Tech startups have gone through a major mindset shift in the past few years. The era of growth-at-all-costs and easily accessible venture capital is over. The focus is now on demonstrating the ability to grow — but in a profitable and efficient way, without the need for additional investor dollars." Many early stage founders are bootstrapping longer, leveraging more friends and family, or bringing on early customer partners to pay the bills while they find the traction needed to get funds https://lnkd.in/dXg8kE8V #bootstrapOrDie #startups

3

Starting a business is CHEAP. Let's run through what we use for everything we build. It's less than $50. Website -> Framer ($30) ↳ I made a short guide on how we built https://lnkd.in/dsrUZQ-X in 1 day. If you want it, tell me what you had for breakfast in the comments and react to the post. I'll send it over. Planning -> Milanote (starts at $0, then only $10) ↳ An absolute hero of tools. Seeing everything visually on a board-like design is game changing. Turned organizing, planning, braindumping and taking notes from tiring to exciting. Domain, email, meetings, files -> Google (Starts at $0) ↳ Needs no introduction. Always cheap and reliable. Designs -> Canva pro ($12) ↳ Does 80% of our design work for us. Communication -> Slack/Telegram ($0) ↳ Organization needs Slack. Small, few people teams can rely on Telegram just as well. Marketing/Leads -> Instagram, Tiktok, Linkedin ($0) ↳ We are one foot in the new era where gatekeeping information is becoming not even worthless, but harmful. Change is becoming so fast, that it's not the information, but an ability to act rapidly is valuable. Less is more. With these few, you can do A LOT. So leave the comments cause I'm genuinely very interested in what people eat, get the guide, and try it for yourself.

13

5 komentarzy

My last post was two months ago, so it's time for an update. As a founding developer or a developing founder, you always run out of time—either for development or all the other stuff. After two months in coding mode, it’s time to share an update. The articles by Stefan Grasmann, covering his interview with Jón Egilsson from Monerium, the commentary by Dr. Sven Hildebrandt on recent developments at Deutsche Bundesbank, and Jakob Bosshard's post about Janus Henderson Investors exploring on-chain asset management have led me to the conclusion that I should speak up again. Why? Monerium has always been a pioneer in bringing EURO e-money to the blockchain. Monerium was the first to achieve compliance with EU regulations, and they did it well—especially for us developers who need a way to bring cash on-chain. They’ve delivered excellently. If you want to leverage the possibilities of a Turing-complete money execution machine, there is no better way. For non-developers: this is HUGE! Dr. Sven Hildebrandt spoke about Deutsche Bundesbank because the bank is explicitly searching for someone to operate its platform in a private, hybrid public environment. The latter is important. While there are arguments for private blockchains, I believe in public ones. The reason is simple—there were arguments for intranets as well, and while they still exist, it was the internet that made the difference. I believe it will be the same with private vs. public blockchains. We now have a protocol for value transfer. Do we really want to limit it to in-house transactions or just for a set of institutions in Germany? Sure, we can imagine exporting our private tech to the whole world, but let’s be honest—the probability is tiny. Do we really want to be a gated financial community while everyone else plays without us? (Hint: BlackRock deployed their BUIDL fund on the public Ethereum blockchain!) Jakob Bosshard mentioned Janus Henderson Investors, a $360B asset manager, taking its first steps into blockchain by partnering on a tokenized treasury fund, joining industry giants like BlackRock. This is amazing. Every asset manager will move on-chain in the next ten years. That’s my prediction. Why? The technologies mentioned above will streamline the process of setting up funds, monitoring investments, and investing in funds in an unprecedented way. Our proof of concept shows how you can set up a fund infrastructure, including a payment channel and product pipeline, in minutes—obviously without BaFin approval (that takes a bit more time 😉). All transactions are transparent, secure, and verifiable because we use public blockchains. We use Enzyme for the fund infrastructure, Cashlink for issuing eWpG-compliant fund shares, and Monerium for achieving settlement times of 30 seconds. Check out our One-Pager if you want to learn more: https://shorturl.at/uJct6 What is your take on this?

28

When a seed stage company hits $2M in ARR, they control their destiny: (a) default alive (b) default a Series A target Either choice is great and it’s all in your control. $2M in ARR should be the default goal at seed.

176

5 komentarzy

🚀 The Top 100 SaaS Startups to Watch in 2024 🚀 Sifted has just released their 2024 Rising 100 ranking, showcasing the most promising SaaS companies in Europe and Israel. Here are a few key trends from this year's list: AI Dominates: No surprise, AI continues to lead the pack. Seven AI-focused startups made the list, with V7, a London-based GenAI company that automates office tasks, taking the top spot. Other standout AI companies include Parloa (Conversational AI) and Poolside AI (code-writing automation) 📈. Enterprise Software Leads: 45% of the ranked companies operate in enterprise software, catering to the growing need for businesses to streamline processes. Yokoy (ranked #8) exemplifies this trend by helping finance teams automate spend management. Younger Startups, Lower Funding: This year’s cohort is significantly younger, with almost 50% in seed or Series A stages, and their average funding has dropped by 24% compared to previous editions. The youngest company on the list, Adaptive ML, was founded just last year! 💡 Geographic Powerhouses: London continues to dominate with 31 companies on the list, followed by Tel Aviv, Berlin, and Paris. This reflects the sustained strength of London as Europe’s leading tech hub. Diversity Still Lags: Only 17% of the startups have women founders, showcasing the ongoing challenge of diversity in the SaaS sector. While this number is low, it’s crucial to acknowledge the progress and push for more inclusive growth in the future 🌍. 💼 Investors Take Note: VC firms like Balderton Capital and Speedinvest are leading the charge, backing 12 companies each. This indicates where major investors are placing their bets for the future of SaaS in Europe.

12

OpenAI has acquired Multi Software Co., a startup specializing in a videoconferencing platform for software development teams. The acquisition highlights the integration of Multi’s team and technology with OpenAI. Read the full article for more details. #openai #ai #technology #softwaredevelopment #collaboration #focusgts

4