Expert Dojo’s Post

We recently sent out our thoughts reflecting on Q2. Our general view is that a new normal has arrived in the private markets. For our LinkedIn community, you’ll find below the news we highlighted from the FourBridge portfolios: Portfolio News: AuditBoard was sold to HG for the largest venture-backed exit of 2024 to date. Battery Ventures was the largest shareholder, and Mucker Capital was one of the first investors. Congratulations to an amazing company and our partners! Sift raised its Series A from Google Ventures. Founded by SpaceX alums, this company is in the Fika Ventures portfolio building new observability systems for hardware sensor data. DatologyAI raised its Series A soon after Amplify Partners led their seed round. The company is building automated data curation to help smaller AI models achieve performance competitive with much larger models. WindBorne Systems, backed by Susa Ventures, was featured in a WSJ video discussing how they are fundamentally changing the way weather is predicted. Our long-time partner, Ampersand Capital Partners, was again named the top performing private equity manager by Preqin. We don’t usually pay attention to these sorts of rankings. In this case, we know this firm is a top performer in generating returns and how they conduct business. Congratulations to the Ampersand team on this well-deserved recognition. Expressable raised its Series B as it has grown through hundreds of providers. The company is reinventing how speech therapy care is delivered. NextView Ventures led their seed round early during our first vintage investing as FourBridge. 

Our partnership with the Venture Capital Association of Alberta (VCAA) extends our commitment to driving innovation and growth across the venture ecosystem. Leveraging our global expertise in venture building and technology, we continue creating high-impact, scalable ventures positioned for long-term success. For our investment partners, this is a strategic step in expanding our reach and delivering value across markets and industries. #VentureBuilding #DigitalInnovation

🥳 So proud of Laura Wheeler and her co-founder, Wayne Morris, on the exciting launch of RVNU today! For any start-up, the path toward $20M ARR is like navigating a GTM minefield.....learning lessons the hard (and costly) way.  But what if it didn't have to be like that? 🌟 Imagine a world where founders don’t build sales teams prematurely. 🌟 Imagine a world where reps repeatedly hit or exceed quota. 🌟 Imagine a world where a revenue leader’s shelf life isn’t just 15 months, but 4 years. 🌟 Imagine a world where founders don’t burn capital unnecessarily. 🌟 Imagine a world where startups raise capital to thrive, not just survive. 🌟 Imagine a world where founders build profitable, fast-growth startups. 🌟 Imagine a world where founders bootstrap to unicorn status. 🌟 Imagine a world where founders can breathe— Being a founder is hard. RVNU brings calm to your chaos. Today is the day, RVNU has officially launched!  RVNU's mission is to build access to products and services so that more startups succeed, add cents on the dollar of every VC investment, and improve GTM execution across the board. With their proprietary GTM Debt assessment and growth framework, founders and GTM teams can identify the path & build strategy toward healthy revenue far beyond $20M ARR.  Be sure to give Laura Wheeler, Wayne Morris, and RVNU's page a follow and check out what they're doing!

𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩𝐬? Out of 312 cloud startup acquisitions by big tech in the past 10 yrs, ca 25% had participation from 20 global investors. These investors not only boasted the highest number of exits overall, but also - each of them - between 3 and 9 exceptionally successful investments (10x CoC, or $500M exit). I often advise founders on fundraising strategies. Start by identifying their dream investors (Tier 1), and their Tier 2 and 3 investors. Start pitching your Tier 2s, and then quickly move your way upwards or downwards depending on the traction. As an entrepreneur in the cloud infra & application space, you will likely want the investors on the chart to back you. In Europe, the VC landscape is not as dominated by the big name funds as in the USA, but there are a few players that have shown great success in cloud infra/application space too, incl. Kima Ventures (FR), Index Ventures (UK), Pitango (IL), Frontline Ventures (UK), Atomico (UK), Creandum and Glilot Capital Partners (IL). If you are an early (pre-seed) stage founder in the cloud space, looking for a first investor, reach out!

Finding the right investors and understanding what they want to see from founders and businesses is an all too familiar struggle for many SaaS leaders... luckily, these investors insights have come straight from the source 👀 ⤵️ Tae Hea Nahm, Co-Founder and Managing Director Storm Ventures, described how companies can unlock high growth by finding go-to-market (GTM) fit. In practice, a company with GTM fit has: 🏃♀️ Found urgency amongst it’s ICP 🎯 Nailed their go-to-market fit model 🏆 Built a repeatable go-to-market playbook to find and win customers over and over again Telling a story beyond the numbers: investors from NotionVC, Bessemer Venture Partners, Point Nine, and Dawn Capital shed some light on how to do this successfully.  💬 Make sure the data points you share add value to your narrative 🤝 Show a deep understanding of your ICP and how you can sell to them We've got a cracking lineup of investors joining us in Austin next month to share their insights on funding in 2024. Sessions include: 🚀 How to execute a successful pivot to grow: Creating a new product category - Mary D'Onofrio (Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners) and Ev Kontsevoy (CEO at Teleport). 💸 From $0 to a $3B valuation: Unconventional secrets behind Remote’s growth - Christine Esserman (Partner at Accel) and Marcelo Lebre (Co-Founder, CEO and President at Remote). 🔥 How to scale your technical SaaS startup beyond $50M ARR - Casber Wang (Partner at Sapphire Ventures) and Kyle Hanslovan (Co-Founder and CEO at Huntress). ✅ Lessons from over $50B in exits: What makes a business worth more? - Thomas Smale (CEO at FE International, Inc.). 👾 Building successful products in the AI era - SC Moatti (Managing Partner Mighty Capital). 📊 A comedy of ARRs: How to approach fundraising in the profitability over growth era - Brandon Gleklen (Principal at Battery Ventures). https://lnkd.in/evWKYZ8M #SaaS #investorinsights #SaaStockUSA #funding #fundraising #ARR #growth #product #startups #scale

I believe that this is the best time to start a company and the time when the best companies emerge. When there are too many startups, artificially propped up by VC investment it enables non-sustainable ideas and business to float. I spoke with a founder, who I very much respect, a few weeks back. He told me how right after they raised $45M, they started to "dream big" without any constraints. They hired all sorts of aspirational roles, and high-level people - but they were not accountable to profitability. 6 months later he had to let go 75% of those hires. Now he is back to scaling, but with an eye towards sustainable growth and profitability. If the answer was capital, legacy solutions would always win. The answer is scrappiness, resilience, creativity. Smooth seas do not make great sailors. Failure rate of new ideas is a good thing, it leads to better ideas and new innovations. Also, if VC dollars get harder --- Corporate Deals and Partnerships become more valuable. The point of business is to do business. https://lnkd.in/eXBWmZpA

I am so excited to share that Vanta has raised a $150 million Series C at a valuation of $2.45 billion. We’re honored to have Sequoia Capital lead our round. This marks three consecutive rounds that they’ve participated in, including leading our Series A in 2021. We’re also thrilled to welcome new investors Goldman Sachs & J.P. Morgan to Vanta. Having their support speaks to the strength of our enterprise penetration and the incredible opportunity we have ahead of us. 2024 has been a big year for Vanta: -Surpassed $100M in ARR just five years after entering the market  -Nearly doubled global customer base to over 8,000 companies  -Achieved 90% YoY growth in international customers -Expanded to over 500 employees globally -Launched hundreds of new product features to help teams build, maintain, and demonstrate trust If 2024 is any indication, the future looks bright for Vanta. We’ll be leveraging this latest round to continue accelerating our upmarket momentum by displacing manual, cumbersome GRC tools; solidifying Vanta as the peerless choice for ambitious startups; and deepening our global presence. Finally, I am incredibly grateful to Christina Cacioppo, Stevie Case, Jeremy Epling, Ari Shahdadi and the 500 other Vanta’ns for being world class partners and helping us unlock this milestone. We are just getting started! https://lnkd.in/gY9FXDgB 

We're hosting a Denver Startup Week session on 9/19 on how to drive your business FORWARD on the route to growth and scale - presented by Ascent CFO Solutions! Learn how to confidently navigate the road ahead so you don’t have to slow down. The panel discussion features a successful tech founder, seasoned venture capitalist, go-to-market executive, and fractional financial executives: ·  Paige Goss Founder & CEO, Point Solutions Group, LLC ·  Diana Sankovic, VC Investor ·  Rebecca Rogers at R2 Narrative ·  Dan DeGolier, Founder & CEO, Ascent CFO Solutions ·  Matt Kelly, Fractional CFO, Ascent CFO Solutions, Moderator Get ahead of potential roadblocks to growth by: ·  Building out your navigation dashboard. Avoid driving blindly without metrics and KPIs to guide you. ·  Creating a strategic roadmap. See where you are, where you’ve been and where you’re going. ·  Using your fuel wisely. Understand the most effective ways to spend your Series Seed/A/B/C financing and/or bootstrapped capital ·  Removing bottlenecks and widening the lanes. Bypass operational and staffing slow-downs. ·  Not getting caught speeding. Ensure you avoid some of the most common legal and tax issues facing rapidly growing companies. Ask questions and learn from those who’ve dealt with this challenging terrain.   We hope to see you on September 19th, 2024 from 3:30 - 5:00 PM at Cresa's Denver Office, 1512 Larimer St. A happy hour with light bites, refreshments, and continued conversation will follow from 5:00 - 5:45 PM.   Register Here: https://lnkd.in/egNmVj8f 1. Click "Add to Schedule" via the link above 2. Sign in or create a DSW account 3. You'll receive a confirmation email with event details!   As part of Denver Startup Week, the event is free and all are welcome.   #AscentCFOSolutions #Cresa #DenverStartupWeek #ColoradoBusiness #DenverBusiness #FractionalCFO #Startup #Scaleup #Growth

🇺🇸 Are you a Dutch scaleup looking to accelerate your growth in the US and/or fundraise across the pond? Register now for our founders trip to Salt Lake City & San Francisco (March 24-29). The founders & investors you’ll meet: 🚀 Founders Eric Rea from Podium, David Blake from Degreed and Stephan Jacob from Cotopaxi will bring valuable insights on scaling strategies and navigating the US market. 💼 Investors John Mayfield, Sid K., and Diogo Myrrha from Album, and managing partner Blake Modersitzki and general partner Jeff Kearl from Pelion Venture Partners will bring a wealth of experience around US investment trends and funding strategies. 💪 We're also in the process of curating even more industry leaders to join this exceptional lineup. This dual-city trip, developed with support from ScaleNL is designed to equip our Techleap for Scaleups community members with the tools and connections necessary for successful expansion in the US market. ✅ Sign up here 👉 https://hubs.li/Q02gLYCD0 #DutchTech #Scaleup #Techleap #TechleapforScaleups #USExpansion

Making sense of the PPA market through generative AI. Super stoked to continue our support of Seyed H. Madaeni, Ph.D. and the #Verse team. Verse has created a SaaS platform called Aria that uses generative AI to ensure companies get their desired mix of carbon-free energy round-the-clock in just minutes. Aria lets companies define, design, manage, and report on optimal portfolios of clean energy assets to meet their financial and emissions-reduction targets. To achieve this, Verse's tool matches companies with clean power plants and digitally controls them through AI and machine learning. To making decarbonization economical!