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Wealth and Disruption – Part 2
Culture Con NY winners announced, Kevin Hart, Serena Ventures, and which quadrant is your company in?
Amy Lattimore
September 14, 2023
Hola from Tenerife, Spain 🇪🇸
Hola Amigos! 💚
Welcome to all the new Green Room members this week. We are energized by your presence. You certainly belong here! If you were forwarded this email, come on in and hit that subscribe button one time.
Rest IS disruption. Breathe in…
Let’s dive in…
We are rounding out our European jaunt this week. After 10 days of sightseeing, scouting, and catching up with old friends while working intensely through late nights and jet lag, we are taking these next 5 days to rest in Spain. Over the weekend, we visited La Sagrada Familia and Park Güell and reflected on Spain, both past and present. The more we read and travel, the more it is evident that building global wealth is in our DNA (I may start my next pitch meeting with that). But, because of exploitation and slavery, we’ve yet to reap the benefits of that labor. Now, is our time to create wealth for ourselves and our communities and labor sustainably. The way to do it? Build + Rest.
Rest is underrated and resting in nature is even more underrated. Nature is a natural medicine that can offer healing in minutes. Studies show that simply being outside for 20 minutes a day reduces your blood pressure, improves your focus, and regulates your nervous system. When I learned this fact, I wanted to share it with the world because it meant that rest and recovery were much more accessible than I thought.
While more time, more travel, and more support are all amazing when we can tap into it, the reality is that “life be life-ing.” As a full-time entrepreneur, wife, and mother of an energetic toddler boy, many other things easily take priority over rest. But what’s the point of building financial wealth if our physical, mental, and relational health are out of whack?
As we wrap up our coverage of TC Disrupt 2022 and continue the theme of wealth and disruption, we hope that you take note that creating time and space for rest and recovery is a way to capitalize on your wealth of time (even if it’s just 20 mins a day) and a way to disrupt the status quo of the entrepreneurship grind culture.
Your rest deserves to be a priority.
💚 Amy & Bryan
💸 💸 💸 P.S. Culture Con NY raffle winners are announced below!!
Zoom in: TC Disrupt 2022 (again)
Last week we gave you the full overview of the conference. Read Wealth and Disruption (Part 1) here to catch up. This week, we’re going to get straight to the point and are sharing the key quotes and highlights from a few talks across the remaining 2 days of the conference. Conversations from days 2 and 3 will help you…
Think about what failure truly means
Understand where your company falls in the success quadrant
Consider the reality of what true product-market fit means
Day 2
Based on where I come from, I’m not supposed to be in the room, I’m not supposed to be at the table. But I am.”
The Art of Inclusivity with Kevin Hart and Hartbeat Ventures Co-founder and President Robert Roman, with Michael Elanjian, Head of Digital Investment Banking & Digital Private Markets, JP Morgan
Kevin Hart, the comedian we all know, is also a kid’s book author, founder of a fast-food vegan restaurant, and investor. Hartbeat Ventures, an early-stage VC firm with a focus on lifestyle, media, and technology, is focused on inclusion — financial inclusion, specifically. A portion of the new fund, with investments from JP Morgan, will be allocated toward supporting minority and underrepresented founders.
What's the unifying thread between all of your businesses?
“ Happiness in doing what I love and finding new energy and discovering how many levels I can achieve, and the boundaries that can be broken in the world of entrepreneurship.”
Let's say down the road HartBeat Ventures has 100 LPs. As the firm expands, what do you think about control and making sure that you don't lose as much control or say as you currently have?
“This is a space where egos can't exist, right? The only way to improve is to empower and I think the beauty of aligning yourself with people that have operated in this space at a high level and who have done the business well over the years is trusting the direction in which they feel we can go. This is a table where we sit and we talk, we ideate, and we come up with the best solution-based ideas that we feel ultimately help the entity.
It's a relationship business. I don’t have all of the relationships. And in this space, if I want more of the right relationships, I have to be willing to do the work to obtain more.”
I actually don’t like the word failure I think it should be called “I had an opportunity to learn.”
Acing Venture with Serena Williams, and Allison Rapaport Stillman, Founding General Partner of Serena Ventures
Serena ventures a $100M fund invest in pre-seed, seed, and Series A. They prioritize companies that make everyday lives better for the everyday person and solve problems that disproportionately affect women and people of color. It's an opportunity to do good and do well. Additionally, Serena Venture’s LPs are 40% women and people of color: “We made a really big effort to include people who looked like us and looked like the people we were serving. We even have an all-women of color legal team. It took us a while to find but it was awesome to do.” Allison Rapaport.
Serena, you are famously competitive. Most startups fail, and in VC winning is 20% of the companies invested in have big returns or acquisitions. That feels like it might be a hard adjustment.
“It is a big adjustment and usually, when you’re investing early stage like we are, you typically don’t get 100% winners. And I start to think, wait, did I do something wrong? Is there something happening? We still want to have as many winners as we can. But the reality is that we can’t pick 100% winners. And also realizing that winning looks different. It doesn’t always look like a unicorn or having a $500M company. But you know how winning looks for me, so I’m still trying to find that balance.”
What are you looking for in founders?
“What have you not been successful at? That tells me about what you do when things are not great. I think failure is great. I actually don’t like the word failure I think it should be called “I had an opportunity to learn.” So I look at what big learning experiences you have had. I also look at if you’re doing this because it’s a wide space or because it’s something that is near and dear to you. The winning combo is doing it because it’s a wide space, and it’s near and dear to you.”
Think beyond the recession. You need to make sure buyers know about your brand when they re-enter the market.
LinkedIn presentation and interview: All-weather marketing with Gyanda Sachdeva, VP of Product Management, Linkedin, and Daniel Day, Head of Marketing, Monte Carlo
Gyanda kicked off with a presentation focused on how to be efficient with marketing spend in a way that helps you maintain your marketing efforts during tough times. Then Daniel Day followed with an interview to offer practical, real-life guidance based on his experience leading Marketing and growth for Monte Carlo during these rainy times. Monte Carlo is a data observability platform that ensures your data is reliable at every stage of the data pipeline.
Making Good Decisions in Bad Times
Gyanda, VP of Product Management at Linkedin, explains that “the worst of times produces the best businesses.” Did you know these companies were founded during economic downturns: Airbnb, Uber, Venmo, Salesforce, Microsoft, and IBM?
During an economic downturn, it’s often that the first thing companies do is cut down their marketing expenses. However, research shows that companies that increased their marketing spend during economic downturns are the ones who grew the most when the market bounced back. Jason Lemkin talked a bit about how sales often get too much air cover in startups than marketing here in this recap video of his Q&A at Saastr Europa 2023.
The worst of times are actually the best of times to get efficient: When we are in good times, 95% of your buyers are not in the market for your product or services. So implement these practices that allow you to be more efficient during a downturn:
Re-run your old creative: Research shows that the most effective creative is the one that’s been running for a really long time. Repeat your message over and over again. Case and point: Just Do It – Nike
Refine your approach: Consider your distribution channels. What are your highest-performing channels? Focus on those.
Reinvigorate your presence: Leverage organic marketing and free channels like podcasts, newsletters, and live events to build a community and push your marketing dollars further.
A CFO who is all-in on marketing: For Monte Carlo, the CFO is closely connected to the marketing metrics, including how it leads to revenue generation, how they drive pipeline, costs per lead, etc.
Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) should be your north star: Create a data-driven ICP and focus all your efforts and energy on talking to the right person at the right time. Optimizing marketing channels for the sake of growing the funnel is worthless if those who are in the pipeline are not your ideal buyers at the right time. “It doesn’t matter how many leads we generate, how many marketing qualified leads we generate, it matters that we’re talking to the right people at the right time. It’s satisfying to know that, in partnership with sales, the content and demand we are generating and creating is going to be followed up and lead to the growth and impact of our company.”
On the bond between sales and marketing: “Build solid relationships with sales to develop a strong handoff process. Go lead by lead, opportunity by opportunity to identify and define what good vs. great looks like when converting the ICP.”
Optimizing a campaign’s metrics is not as valuable as doubling down and being able to clearly communicate the overall impact and return on investment marketing has on the growth of the company.
Day 3
People want to be whole. They want to be connected to their work, but they also want to be connected to all of the other things that they enjoy.”
How to Secure Those Hard to Find Hires with Chris Herd, CEO of First Base, Janine O’Neill, Talent Director, Sequoia, and Emil Yeargin, VP of Talent, Gusto
This conversation offered in-depth insights into what it means for startups to hire great talent, build their employee value proposition, and handle the changing tides of the hybrid workforce, especially in an economic downturn.
The crux of the conversation hinged on finding talent market fit, which can be defined as when your employee value proposition and talent pool align for hiring and retaining quality talent. To achieve Talent Market Fit, consider…
Having a strong narrative– Founders have an opportunity to capitalize on telling the story of their growth, impact, and trajectory in order to attract talent. However, it’s about the narrative– how are you telling the story of your company in a way that matters and is equitable?
Having a strong stance on the company’s purpose – People want to care about the mission and prefer not to work for companies that are exploiting things.
Being transparent about what’s hard – Startups are hard and you need people who understand how hard it is and how vastly different it is from a 9-5.
Having a strategy for sussing out values – As a founder, you need to understand as soon as possible what the individual cares about. Do they prefer the security of a larger and more established company or are they mentally equipped to handle the pace and flexibility required for a startup?
Creating a personalized experience – In a remote/hybrid workforce, doing all that’s feasible to personalize the hiring and onboarding experience is important. For example, Janine shared a story about how certain founders in the Sequoia portfolio flew out to various locations to meet big hires in order to build that in-person connection.
Expanding your geographies – We’re in a hybrid/remote work culture. Capitalize on the fact that great talent can be found globally, which in many cases can also reduce your costs overall.
Contracting hires – If you are cost-sensitive, then strongly consider hiring contractors to cut down on the overhead costs of hiring a full-time employee.
Founders should spend 70% of their time on hiring. Even as your company scales, your fingerprints are all over the hiring and onboarding process. Build a platform and brand as a founder that allows you to always be hiring.
There’s a lot of what out there, but people need to convince me why they are the right fit for this problem/solution. I’m looking for if that person has the figure it out muscle to see through the mystery.”
The Art of the Pitch with Amy Jo Martin, Investor, Founder & CEO of Renegade Global, and Aaron Ronquillo, Co-founder, Investor and Advisor, Nakoshi
This panel was hosted and sponsored by Dell. Amy Jo Martin is a 3x founder and investor, author of the bestselling New York Times book, Renegades Write the Rules, host of the Why Not Now podcast, and runs an accelerator program as the CEO of Renegade Global. Aaron Ronquillo is a sales and business development executive advisor, an investor, and the CoFounder of his subscription-based merch company called Nakoshi.com
Connection Converts
Go connection first: Humanize yourself prior to getting to the pitch. When we humanize, we can monetize – connection converts. Aim for deeper connections by researching and learning more about the historical and current business and personal state of the person(s) you are pitching.
Have a go-to story: It should be 1-2 mins that share who you are, why you do what you do, and what your problem and solution are. You can take your listener back to the moment you decided to start your company. Make it real, make it a performance, make it human. This story should highlight your passion and healthy obsession for the company you are building. Then wrap it in data. This is the greatest way to influence and impact change.
Master the art of the pitch: The art is far more important than just impressing investors. It allows you to attract great co-founders, recruit early team members, and eventually just fine-tune your idea.
Do this when pitching…
Build a real connection with who you’re pitching.
Be precise
Lead with a story. Tell it in the present tense.
Wrap the story in data. Story + data = a 1,2 punch.
Be human.
Tell them why you started and why your team is the right team
Have extra time for Q&A
The sustained early fight with Uber was by far the hardest part of this journey. Uber raised the most money as a private company. We had 5 months to live. Uber was trying to shut us down in the back channels. But with a team who had a focus on the mission and a passion for what we were doing, we were able to go from single-digit market share to 30-40% and even 50% market share in some places. That was by far the hardest.
State of VC in 2022 with Niko Bonatsos, Managing Director at General Catalyst, and Caryn Marooney, General Partner at Coatue Management, LLC.
General Catalyst began as a VC fund, then raised a growth fund and became a registered investment advisor after learning that their founders wanted to remain private longer. Caryn, at Coatue, is focused on AI, Open Source and Enterprise. They also have a focus on climate, have recently opened an office in Europe, and made their first investment in Singapore. When they think about Crypto, it’s from a payments perspective.
Thinking in quadrants, Caryn describes how companies, based on their identified quadrant, should consider and respond to a potential (now actual) market correction.
What happened to founder terms?
The dream story: Hopin, for example, had the perfect business at the perfect time, it was growing at a high clip, and it was profitable. It was a competitive investing round, and because the founder had 10 offers, some VC had to sweeten the deal. This paved the way for the Hoppin founder to cash out in such a big way– $200M shares and still owns 40% of the company.
Today’s reality: The market correction is making it harder to have founder terms as sweet as Hopin’s. Now, the name of the game is staying alive. Before, all you needed was to raise 12 months of capital; now it’s 3 years of capital. This correction is also helping build the skills of sequencing. It once grew and did it all now it’s about sequencing the steps and the resources. From how can you hire, attract, and build to how can you sustain, sequence, and continue the momentum?
Zoom investing: COVID paved the way for investors to meet more companies outside of their typical ecosystem in a more seamless way via Zoom. Zoom investing won’t go away. It makes the process much more efficient. Investors are taking the 30-minute meeting to gauge interest and then digging deeper from there.
Don’t skip the board meetings: It’s a great way for founders to use their investors as the “bad cops” to organize and rally and get shit done. “Don’t miss the opportunity to have a deadline for your team. Your board can help you hold your teams accountable.” - Caryn Marooney.
Stop thinking about the future of work. Start thinking about the future of living. As a consequence of that you will be able to hire better people.
From point A to point unbelievable: How Buoy Health Scaled from Idea to an Unbelievable AI Success Story with Andrew Le, CEO and CoFounder
Buoy Health, formed out of Harvard Innovation Labs in 2014, began when Andrew realized how it's almost impossible for you to shop for health care because you have to be like a doctor and an insurance expert rolled into one. Because that knowledge gap can leave you feeling unempowered, Andrew built technology that talks to you like a clinician. It reasons based on clinical literature, and after about two minutes of what looks like you are texting with someone, you figure out clinically what's most likely going on. Andrew launched this in 2017 and now they have about 30 million users who come to Buoy organically every single year. Andrew was named by a business insider as one of the 30 healthcare leaders under 40 to watch.
On lessons learned so far
Early on, cash is very expensive “and cash is like oxygen. If you can just prolong the period of time in which your fixed costs are low enough that you can build enough traction to get into later and later stages, then raise money. This way, you get out of the more expensive phases of cash needs. You can do this by:
Keeping your day job
Living with your parents
Not buying a house
Stay lean in order to get as much traction as possible.”
Because cash is like oxygen, “the CEO's job is to have cash in the bank. And when you do decide to flip that switch to raise money, raise as much as possible. The opportunity to raise can go away like that.”
Real product market fit comes after the chasm: “The scaling is the thing that keeps me up at night, and product market fit. Product market fit, in my opinion, is, is a dynamic thing. You can have it, and then you can lose it. And I think with scale (I'm defining scale here as you have more users, or you have more clients), as you penetrate a market, you have your innovators, your early adopters, and then you have this massive gap, this chasm. And then you get to the early majority, late majority, and laggards. And so many companies get product market fit in the innovator and early adopters stage. And then they hit scale, trying to get that next wave of users or clients. But the product market fit in that world is different than the product market fit early. And so they end up dying in the chasm. That keeps me up at night because we're building a two-sided marketplace which means we could die twice in two different chasms.”
On hiring and building a team: “I strongly believe that the most important ingredient to a healthy company is trust. We had these five core attributes at Buoy…
Being kind
Being a linear communicator
Being gritty
Being intellectually curious
Having a growth mindset.
We figured out that there were certain people who just didn't fit into our journey over time. So now we have interviewers that are trained to look at all five attributes. This has allowed us to scale with like minimal mistakes.”
And the winners are…
THREE Green Room community members will receive tickets to CultureCon happening on October 6 + 7 in New York. And the winners are…
Kemi O., VIP Ticket Winner
Ja’Toria H., VIP Ticket Winner
Marissa D. W., Gen Admin Ticket Winner
Email us at [email protected] to confirm and claim your ticket!
Congratulations!! Thank you for being in The Green Room with us and bringing so much love! 🖤
…Breathe out. Ways to work together? 👋
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