Tag: ECL

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Check out the tech leaders joining us on Extra Crunch Live in May

Extra Crunch Live, our weekly event series that connects founders with tech leaders, is really picking up speed. Recently, we had a conversation with Accel’s Dan Levine and Scale’s Alexandr Wang about how sometimes, unconventional VC deals are the best deals.

We’ve also taken a walk through early decks from companies like Poshmark, Steady and Justworks.

Steady’s Adam Roseman and investor Emmalyn Shaw outline what worked (and what was missing) in the Series A deck

But we’re only getting started. We have an amazing lineup of speakers hanging out with us in May.

As a reminder, Extra Crunch Live goes down every Wednesday at 3pm ET/noon PT and is open to anyone who wants to join. We talk to investor/founder duos about how their deals came together, including the challenges, and usually take a look at their original decks. We also look at pitch decks submitted by audience members and our guests give their live feedback. If that sounds like something you’d be into, you can submit your deck using this form.

One other note: On-demand access to this content is reserved for Extra Crunch members (who also get unfettered access to loads of premium content like market maps, investor surveys, EC-1s and more). If you’ve been on the fence about joining Extra Crunch, just do it.

So without any further ado, let me tell you a little bit about our May lineup.

Extra Crunch Live: FirstMark Capital and Orchard

May 5 – 3pm ET/noon PT

Court Cunningham launched Orchard (formerly Perch) in 2017 and turned it into one of the brightest stars in the universe of prop tech. The company has raised more than $350 million to rethink the way people buy and sell homes (simultaneously). Rick Heitzmann, managing partner at FirstMark Capital, led the company’s Series A, adding to a long list of ultimately successful early-stage companies that Heitzman has bet on. Hear this duo talk about the growth of prop tech, how they came together on that Series A deal and what’s next in the world of startup venture.

Register here.

 

Extra Crunch Live: Toyota AI Ventures and May Mobility

May 12 – 3pm ET/noon PT

The mobility industry has evolved rapidly in the last decade. On Extra Crunch Live, we’re lucky to be joined by Toyota AI Ventures’ Jim Adler and May Mobility’s Nina Grooms Lee and Edwin Olson. We’ll talk about how Toyota AI Ventures led May’s seed round, and how May went on to raise more than $80 million. Adler, Lee and Olson will also give their live feedback on decks submitted by the audience.

Register here.

Extra Crunch Live: Sequoia and Vise

May 19 – 3pm ET/noon PT

Shaun Maguire, partner at Sequoia, has been on both sides of the table, as an entrepreneur and investor. His portfolio includes Stripe, Opendoor, IonQ, SpinLaunch, Lambda School, Dandelion Energy, Clutter and Vise. Samir Vasavada co-founded Vise in 2016 to bring AI to financial advisors and has raised more than $60 million. Hear these two discuss how the fintech landscape is evolving, how to successfully raise funding in fintech and how they overcome challenges together.

Register here.

Extra Crunch Live: Bessemer and Toast

May 26 – 3pm ET/noon PT

Kent Bennett has invested in companies like Blue Apron, Bevi and Toast, among others. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say he’s an expert in retail and hospitality tech. Aman Narang founded Toast in 2011 and the restaurant POS service has raised more than $900 million. Hear these two discuss how they came together for Toast’s Series B deal and how they work together today.

Register here.

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CEO Manish Chandra and investor Navin Chaddha explain why Poshmark’s Series A deck sings

Mayfield partner Navin Chaddha and Poshmark founder and CEO Manish Chandra met all the way back in 2003, well before Poshmark was even a glimmer in his eye. They stayed connected over the years, through Chandra’s sale of his startup Kaboodle to Hearst and after he left.

At a breakfast one morning, Chandra told Chaddha he was going to try to do everything from his iPhone for the next six months.

Over the course of that time, the idea for Poshmark started to percolate into something more concrete. Chandra, following Kaboodle, knew he wanted to do several things differently. The first was create an engagement and revenue model that was symbiotic, rather than starting with engagement and having to build out a business model later. He also knew he wanted to start with people first, and build a founding team that had deep DNA in the fashion world to pair with his technical background.

He met Tracy Sun, brought her on, and got to work.

This was back in 2011, and Chandra was absolutely adamant that he wanted Poshmark to be an app, not a website. So adamant, in fact, that during beta he actually provided 100 users with video iPods. (He recalled that he only got 20% of them back.)

“Lead with love, and the money comes.” It’s one of the cornerstone values at Poshmark. The company practiced that early on by holding IRL, and then virtual, parties, allowing users to show each other their wares and create an engagement cycle that offered instant gratification. The user base grew from 100 to 150 to 1,000 and so on.

“We still to this day use a similar kind of strategy in a much more compressed timeframe as we go to different countries,” said Chandra. “We focus on building the community first and then scale that community.”

Chaddha and Mayfield led the company’s Series A deal a decade ago. On the latest episode of Extra Crunch Live, Chandra and Chaddha sat down with us and walked us through that original Series A pitch deck (which you can check out below). They also participated in the Pitch Deck Teardown, giving their expert feedback on decks submitted by the audience. If you’d like your deck to be featured on a future episode of Extra Crunch Live, hit up this link.

Poshmark’s Series A Deck

Time stamp — 11:00

Poshmark was built on a couple fundamental premises. The first was that the iPhone would transform the way we do just about everything. The second was more pointed: That fashion, at the time underserved by technology, was a discovery process over a direct search process. A decade ago, Chandra envisioned a fashion marketplace that mimicked shopping in the real world — walk into a shop and let natural attraction do its thing — without holding any inventory.

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Steady’s Adam Roseman and investor Emmalyn Shaw outline what worked (and what was missing) in the Series A deck

When it comes to Steady, the platform that helps hourly workers manage their income, maximize their income, and access deals on things like benefits and financial services, the strengths of the business are clear. But it took time for founder and CEO Adam Roseman to clearly define and communicate each of them in his quest for fundraising.

To date, Steady has raised just under $30 million with investors that include Loeb.nyc, Recruit Strategic Partners, Propel Ventures and Flourish Ventures. In fact, Flourish’s Emmalyn Shaw sits on the board, having led the company’s Series A round in 2018.

As a partner at a $500 million fintech fund, her expertise in not only how fintech companies should think about fundraising but what it takes for them to be successful is invaluable. Lucky for us, we got the chance to sit down with both Steady CEO Adam Roseman and Emmalyn Shaw for a recent episode of Extra Crunch Live.

The duo were gracious enough to walk us through Steady’s Series A deck, explaining the importance of highlighting the strengths of the business. They went into detail on how Steady was successful in that during that fundraising process, and what the company could have done differently to be more effectively.

Shaw and Roseman also gave some fantastic advice for founders during the Pitch Deck Teardown, wherein speakers give their expert feedback on decks submitted by the audience. (If you’d like to have your pitch deck featured on an episode of Extra Crunch Live, hit up this link.)

Relationships first

Roseman shared that the best investors are ones that not only understand the business but understand you as a founder and a person. He explained that he and Shaw had plenty of time to get to know each other before the Series A deal.

“I’ve been a part of businesses in the past as an entrepreneur and on boards where it’s been the worst situation, especially when they don’t understand your business,” said Roseman. “Flourish took the time to understand it through and through and was entirely aligned. That makes for the best long-term partnership.”

While it’s a cliche, it remains true that investors often place bets based on a team and not an idea or a product. But what exactly makes a great team or founder? According to Shaw, it’s about vision and passion.

“In Adam’s case, he has a direction connection to what Steady is trying to do,” said Shaw. “That makes a huge difference in terms of commitment because you have ups and downs. They bring experience in terms of understanding the space, how to penetrate and scale and a deep understanding of fintech.”

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Julia Collins and Sarah Kunst outline how to build a fundraising process

Julia Collins is the first Black woman to co-found a venture-backed unicorn. So it should come as no surprise that investors lined up to bet on her latest venture, Planet FWD.

Investor Sarah Kunst says Collins’ branding skills are on par with Supreme, the ubiquitous lifestyle brand.

“The thing that Supreme has done incredibly well is the same thing I think some very exceptional founders like Julia can do very well, which is to build a brand that stands for something,” said Kunst. “Smart people know that the best time to get aligned with a great brand is at the drop. A Supreme shirt that costs $100 bucks in the store will cost $1,000 online. So, as an investor, I am just a kid on the street corner flipping sportswear.”

Kunst and Collins met well before Collins even had a clear idea for Planet FWD, but the duo knew they wanted to work together in the future. Kunst essentially told Collins that, whatever she was planning to do next, Kunst wanted to invest in it, sight unseen.

Kunst said Collins’ ability to “see around the corner” with Zume gave her the confidence to proceed. When Zume launched, there were a lot of naysayers, recalls Kunst.

“Now, you look at where the world is and there are multibillion dollar companies in the space,” she said. “Some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, like Travis Kalanick, are leaning into ghost kitchens, which are just less efficiently delivered versions of Zume Pizza robots. To quote Wayne Gretzky, because I’m from the Midwest and therefore care about hockey a tiny bit, you want to skate to where the puck is going.”

The two formed a friendship and eventually, Collins started building out Planet FWD and prepping to raise. By then, the foundation was there. Kunst got in on Planet FWD’s seed round.

Fundraising is a process

Collins says one of the biggest lessons she learned from her time at Zume was to limit distractions and focus on one thing at a time.

“I felt this disorientation at times, and it was hard to navigate,” she said, noting that she not only was starting a company but also settling into the Bay Area. “Now, it’s much easier for me to cut through a lot of noise and focus on a single conversation, a single product’s development, a single thing that I need to get done.”

In that same vein, Collins has learned to be incredibly deliberate when it comes to fundraising. It’s also worth noting that she’s raised some $400 million+ in the last five years.

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Ironclad’s Jason Boehmig: The objective of pricing is to become less wrong over time

In 2017, Ironclad founder and CEO Jason Boehmig was looking to raise a Series A. As a former lawyer, Boehmig had a specific process for fundraising and an ultimate goal of finding the right investors for his company.

Part of Boehmig’s process was to ask people in the San Francisco Bay Area about their favorite place to work. Many praised RelateIQ, a company founded by Steve Loughlin who had sold it to Salesforce for $390 million and was brand new to venture at the time.

“I wanted to meet Steve and had kind of put two and two together,” said Boehmig. “I was like, ‘There’s this founder I’ve been meaning to connect with anyways, just to pick his brain, about how to build a great company, and he also just became an investor.'”

On this week’s Extra Crunch Live, the duo discussed how the Ironclad pitch excited Loughlin about leading the round. (So excited, in fact, he signed paperwork in the hospital on the same day his child was born.) They also discussed how they’ve managed to build trust by working through disagreements and the challenges of pricing and packaging enterprise products.

As with every episode of Extra Crunch Live, they also gave feedback on pitch decks submitted by the audience. (If you’d like to see your deck featured on a future episode, send it to us using this form.)

We record Extra Crunch Live every Wednesday at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. GMT. You can see our past episodes here and check out the March slate right here.

Episode breakdown:

  • The pitch — 2:30
  • How they operate — 23:00
  • The problem of pricing — 29:00
  • Pitch deck teardown — 35:00

The pitch

When Boehmig came in to pitch Accel, Loughlin remembers feeling ambivalent. He had heard about the company and knew a former lawyer was coming in to pitch a legal tech company. He also trusted the reference who had introduced him to Boehmig, and thought, “I’ll take the meeting.”

Then, Boehmig dove into the pitch. The company had about a dozen customers that were excited about the product, and a few who were expanding use of the product across the organization, but it wasn’t until the ultimate vision of Ironclad was teased that Loughlin perked up.

Loughlin realized that the contract can be seen as a core object that could be used to collaborate horizontally across the enterprise.

“That was when the lightbulb went off and I realized this is actually much bigger,” said Loughlin. “This is not a legal tech company. This is core horizontal enterprise collaboration in one of the areas that has not been solved yet, where there is no great software yet for legal departments to collaborate with their counterparts.”

He listed all the software that those same counterparts had to let them collaborate: Salesforce, Marketo, Zendesk. Any investor would be excited to hear that a potential portfolio company could match the likes of those behemoths. Loughlin was hooked.

“There was a slide that I’m guessing Jason didn’t think much of, as it was just the data around the business, but I got pretty excited about it,” said Loughlin. “It said, for every legal user Ironclad added, they added nine other users from departments like sales, marketing, customer service, etc. It was evidence that this theory of collaboration could be true at scale.”

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Felicis’ Aydin Senkut and Guideline’s Kevin Busque on the value of simple pitch decks

Even though Kevin Busque is a co-founder of TaskRabbit, he didn’t get the response he was hoping for the first time he pitched his new venture to Felicis Ventures’ Aydin Senkut. Nonetheless, he said the outcome was one of the best things that could have happened.

“I’m kind of glad that he didn’t invest at the time because it really forced me to take a hard look at what we were doing and really enabled us to become Guideline,” said Busque. “That seed round was an absolute slog. I think I spent seven or eight months trying to raise a round for a product that didn’t exist, going purely on vision.”

Eventually, that idea evolved into Guideline, which describes itself as “a full-service, full-stack 401(k) plan” for small businesses. Eventually, Senkut did write a check — Felicis led Guideline’s $15 million Series B round. Today, Guideline has more than 16,000 businesses across 60+ cities, with more than $3.2 billion in assets under management. The company has raised nearly $140 million.

This week on Extra Crunch Live, Busque and Senkut discussed Guideline’s Series B pitch deck — which Senkut described as a “role model” — and how they built trust over time.

The duo also offered candid, actionable feedback on pitch decks that were submitted by Extra Crunch Live audience members. (By the way, you can submit your pitch deck to be featured on a future episode using this link right here.)

We’ve included highlights below as well as the full video of our conversation.

We record new episodes of Extra Crunch Live each Wednesday at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. GMT. Check out the February schedule here.

Episode breakdown:

  • How they met: 1:30
  • Building trust: 11:30
  • Inside Guideline’s Series B deck: 16:00
  • Pitch deck teardown: 33:00

How they met

Senkut and Busque met nearly a decade ago, when Busque was still at TaskRabbit. Several years later, Busque launched out on his own and went fundraising for his original idea. Even though he got a no from Senkut, it wasn’t an easy decision.

Looking back, Senkut said he had much more freedom to follow his instincts while angel investing.

“As an institutional fund with LPs, we were feeling the pressure of checking all the checkmarks,” explained Senkut. “It’s amazing how, sometimes, being more structured or analytical actually does not always lead you to make better decisions.”

When Busque came back around after the pivot, looking to raise a Series B, Senkut called it a “no-brainer,” particularly because of the type of CEO Busque is.

“My opinion of Kevin as a person is that he’s an excellent wartime CEO, but also he’s a product visionary,” said Senkut. “We call them ‘missionary CEOs.’ There are mercenary CEOs who can extract every ounce of dollar from a rock, but we are gravitating much more toward CEOs like Kevin who are focused on product first. People who have a really acute vision of what the problem is, and. a very specific vision for how to solve that problem and ultimately turn it into a long-term scalable and successful company.”

Busque said he was drawn to Senkut based on his level of conviction, explaining that Senkut doesn’t always have to go by the book.

“If he wants to write a check because the founder is great or the product is great, he does it,” said Busque. “It’s not necessarily that he has to see a certain metric or growth pattern.”

Building trust

Obviously, years of staying connected and communicating (and not just about Guideline) laid the foundation for building a relationship. Busque said the honesty in their conversations, including Senkut’s initial rejection, lended itself greatly to the trust they have.

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Lightspeed’s Gaurav Gupta and Grafana’s Raj Dutt discuss pitch decks, pricing and how to nail the narrative

Before he was a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, Gaurav Gupta had his eye on Grafana Labs, the company that supports open-source analytics platform Grafana. But Raj Dutt, Grafana’s co-founder and CEO, played hard to get.

This week on Extra Crunch Live, the duo explained how they came together for Grafana’s Series A — and eventually, its Series B. They also walked us through Grafana’s original Series A pitch deck before Gupta shared the aspects that stood out to him and how he communicated those points to the broader partnership at Lightspeed.

Gupta and Dutt also offered feedback on pitch decks submitted by audience members and shared their thoughts about what makes a great founder presentation, pulling back the curtain on how VCs actually consume pitch decks.

We’ve included highlights below as well as the full video of our conversation.

We record new episodes of Extra Crunch Live each Wednesday at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. GMT. Check out the February schedule here.

Episode breakdown:

  • How they met — 2:00
  • Grafana’s early pitch deck — 12:00
  • The enterprise ecosystem — 25:00
  • The pitch deck teardown — 32:00

How they met

As soon as Gupta joined Lightspeed in June 2019, he began pursuing Dutt and Grafana Labs. He texted, called and emailed, but he got little to no response. Eventually, he made plans to go meet the team in Stockholm but, even then, Dutt wasn’t super responsive.

The pair told the story with smiles on their faces. Dutt said that not only was he disorganized and not entirely sure of his own travel plans to see his co-founder in Stockholm, Grafana wasn’t even raising. Still, Gupta persisted and eventually sent a stern email.

“At one point, I was like ‘Raj, forget it. This isn’t working’,” recalled Gupta. “And suddenly he woke up.” Gupta added that he got mad, which “usually does not work for VCs, by the way, but in this case, it kind of worked.”

When they finally met, they got along. Dutt said they were able to talk shop due to Gupta’s experience inside organizations like Splunk and Elastic. Gupta described the trip as a whirlwind, where time just flew by.

“One of the reasons that I liked Gaurav is that he was a new VC,” explained Dutt. “So to me, he seemed like one of the most non-VC VCs I’d ever met. And that was actually quite attractive.”

To this day, Gupta and Dutt don’t have weekly standing meetings. Instead, they speak several times a week, conversing organically about industry news, Grafana’s products and the company’s overall trajectory.

Grafana’s early pitch deck

Dutt shared Grafana’s pre-Series A pitch deck — which he actually sent to Gupta and Lightspeed before they met — with the Extra Crunch Live audience. But as we know now, it was the conversations that Dutt and Gupta had (eventually) that provided the spark for that deal.

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Get live feedback on your pitch deck from big-name VCs on Extra Crunch Live

Your startup’s pitch deck could be the difference between getting funded or getting ignored. It’s often the first point of contact between a company and venture investors, but it’s also a bit of a black box.

How do these investors consume this content? Are they speed-flipping through the slides or taking their time? Do they prefer more information on the team or context on the industry? More numbers or more words? How many slides is the right number of slides?

There are too many questions to count, and often very few answers. But we’re popping the lid off of that black box with the Pitch Deck Teardown. We’ve done Pitch Deck Teardowns at events like Disrupt and Early Stage 2020, and this year we’re cranking it up a notch.

As a part of Extra Crunch Live, our weekly event series that connects investors and founders, we’ll be offering EC members the chance to get live feedback on their pitch decks from our guests. You heard that right. Every single week, VCs and big-name tech founders will look through pitch decks from the Extra Crunch community and offer their two cents.

That’s where you come in. We’re asking EC members to submit their pitch decks right here!

Only EC members will have the chance to get their pitch deck looked at, so please use the same email attached to your Extra Crunch account when you submit.

Last week, we shared what you can expect from Extra Crunch Live in 2021. Here’s a refresher:

  • Series A – Learn how others have fundraised! We’ll have a segment dedicated to hearing from founder/investor duos who walk us through the Series A pitch deck that led to investment. 
  • Pitch Deck Teardowns – Extra Crunch members will have the opportunity to submit their pitch deck and get feedback from our guests, which will include VCs and founders (EC members can submit their pitch decks right here!). 
  • Live Pitch-offs – Audience members can raise their hand to practice their elevator pitch in front of the audience and get real-time feedback from VCs.
  • Networking!! – The Extra Crunch membership is a community. ECL will be an opportunity to meet your fellow audience members, even in a virtual environment. Who knows? Maybe you’ll meet your next co-founder or investor! 
  • Consistency – ECL will always be at 12pm PT/3pm ET on Wednesdays. When it comes to your calendar, set it and forget it. 

We’re super excited about ECL in 2021 and can’t wait to get started. More on upcoming speakers very soon!

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Why Bessemer’s Byron Deeter thinks SaaS companies could grow even faster in 2021

Byron Deeter is not backing down from his optimism about the cloud and the end of the COVID-19-induced wave of software buying doesn’t have him too worried.

Of course, Deeter is an investor at Bessemer, a venture capital concern that has done well betting on the cloud, so you might expect him to stay a cloud bull. But during a recent chat with TechCrunch as part of our Extra Crunch Live series, his answer was worth re-reading.

The Extra Crunch Live series continues: Click this to see what’s coming up on the agenda.

We asked the about what might happen once the newly announced vaccines arrive and the pandemic-led digital transformation acceleration loses its tailwind.

“Will that growth decelerate? [Or] was it a point-in-time moment for COVID? Or has this been a pulling forward of overall trends? Certainly, you’re going to have both,” he said, adding that he doesn’t “think in a year from now, we’re going to be spending 10 hours a day on Zooms,” but that in his view Zoom will remain “foundational in the economy.”

In Deeter’s view, “we’ve just set a new baseline [for software] and the beauty of these subscription businesses is that they’re not going to turn them off.” The result of all of that? Bullish growth expectations.

Drilling in further, we asked if he expects Bessemer software portfolio companies will grow faster in percentage terms in 2021 than they did in 2020. Saying that the cohort profile will change, he added that “on balance,” he thinks that “there’s a real case that [the group] could grow the same or faster.”

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Greylock’s Asheem Chandna on ‘shifting left’ in cybersecurity and the future of enterprise startups

Last week was a busy week, what with an election in Myanmar and all (well, and the United States, I guess). So perhaps you were glued to your TV or smartphone, and missed out on our conversation with Asheem Chandna, a long-time partner at Greylock who has invested in enterprise and cybersecurity startups for nearly two decades now, backing such notable companies as Palo Alto Networks, AppDynamics and Sumo Logic. We have more Extra Crunch Live shows coming up.

Enterprise software is changing faster this year than it has in a decade. Coronavirus, remote work, collaboration and new cybersecurity threats have combined to force companies to rethink their IT strategies, and that means more opportunities — and challenges — for enterprise founders than ever before. In some cases, we are seeing an acceleration of existing trends, and in others, we are seeing all new trends come to the forefront.

All that is to say that there was so much on the docket to talk about last week. Chandna and I discussed what’s happening in early-stage enterprise startups, whether vertical SaaS is the future of enterprise investing, data and no-code platforms, and then this rise of “shift left” security.

The following interview has been edited and condensed from our original Extra Crunch Live conversation.

What’s happening today in the early-stage startup world?

Chandna has been a long-time backer of startups at their earliest stages, with some of his investments being literally birthed in Greylock’s offices. So I was curious how he saw the landscape today given all that prior experience.

TechCrunch: What sort of companies are exciting for you today? Are there particular markets you’re particularly attuned to?

Asheem Chandna: One is digital transformation. Every company is trying to figure out how to become more digital, and this has been accelerated by COVID-19. Second is information technology today and its journey to the cloud. I would say we might be about 10% or 15% of the way there. Some of the trends are clear, but the journey is actually still relatively early, and so there’s just a ton of opportunity ahead.

The third one is leveraging data for better predictability along with analytics. Every CEO is looking to make better decisions. And you know, most leaders make decisions based on gut instinct and a combination of data. If the data can tell a story, if the data can help you better predict, there’s a lot of potential here.

I view these as three macro trends, and then if one was to add to that, I would say cybersecurity has never been more important than it is today. I’ve been around cyber for over two decades, and just the prominence and importance and priority has never been more important than today. So that’s kind of another key area.

I want to dive into your first category, digital transformation. This is a phrase that I feel like I’ve heard for a decade now, with “Data is the new oil” and all these sorts of buzzwords and marketing phrases. Where are we in that process? Are we at the beginning? Are we at the end? What’s next from a startup perspective?

Due to COVID-19 and because of the way people are working today, digital’s become the primary medium. I would still say we’re early, and you can literally look sector by sector to see how much more work there is to do here.

Take enterprise sales itself, which is early in what I consider digitalization. It’s even more important today than it was a year ago. I’m using video to basically communicate, and then the next piece would basically be trialing of software. Can I allow even complex software to be self trials and can I measure the customer journey through that trial? Then there’s the contracting of the software, and we go to the sale process, can all that be done digitally?

So even when you take something as very mundane as enterprise sales, it’s being transformed. Winning teams, winning software entrepreneurs, they understand this well, and they’d be wise to examine every step of this process, and instrument it and digitize it.

Vertical versus horizontal plays in enterprise