It’s an endless debate: product, market or team. Which matters most? That depends on whom you ask. The beauty of this startup conundrum is often in the eye of the beholder VC. Even the most prominent firms rooted on Sand Hill Road can’t agree on what matters most in funding decisions. “The difference between venture firms in a lot of ways is how they rank the importance of market, product and team,” Marc Andreessen said. To better understand why, we took a look at the…
“ As a founder, there is no variable more important to manage adeptly than momentum” – Glenn Solomon, GGV Settling on a single definition for “momentum” in an early stage business is difficult. There is product momentum — delivering on the value proposition you promise to existing and potential customers time and time again. There is team and hiring momentum — fostering a culture that effectively attracts and retains great people. There is revenue momentum – building a predictable growth engine that…
If you are anything like our team, you are always on the lookout for beautiful (and inexpensive) photos to use on landing pages, sales docs, or fundraising materials. That is where Ohio-based Death to the Stock Photo shines. In July 2013, Allison Lehman and David Sherry set out on the mission to help brands, bloggers, and creatives find images that fit their “vibe and tribe”. What started with sending image packs to friends and family has turned into a company trusted by…
Seattle SaaS startup Rival IQ uses Visible to keep investors in 4 states and 2 countries engaged in the growth of the business. The Challenge Rival IQ is a digital marketing analytics tool that gives customer an edge in executive SEO, social and content strategies. They are based in Seattle and have raised money from top VC investors, individual angels, and angel groups. With investors in 4 states and 2 countries the company needed a low- friction way to send investor updates and keep all…
Listicles + SaaS Surveys = the best blog post ever. For those of you that don’t know, Pacific Crest Securities puts together one of the most robust SaaS surveys and reports in the industry. Last week we were fortunate to attend The State of SaaS in Indianapolis that was put on by High Alpha and Pacific Crest Securities. The event started with David Spitz, Pacific Crest’s Managing Director and Head of SaaS investment banking sharing some highlights from the report (you can find…
Recently, Visible CEO Mike Preuss joined Bootstrapping in America, a show on the tastytrade network to talk about Visible, the Chicago startups tech ecosystem, and what it is like to run a company. And if you’re still not sold, the show’s intro song deserves immediate induction into the TV show jingle hall of fame.
This post is the first in an series focused on companies who use Visible to tell the story of their growth. You can download a PDF of the Safello Startup Story here. Who is Safello? Safello is a Sweden-based bitcoin spending platform that started with the simple idea that the market needs a company it can trust. Just two years since being founded, the company now supports 32 countries and thousands of customers with a safe and simple way into bitcoin. In…
As a distributed company with team members living and working across the world, we’ve taken to Slack to stay in touch to handle some aspects of just about every mission critical business process. One of those processes is sharing interesting business tactics, thought provoking posts, and general randomness that we come across on a day to day basis. Each week, we collect some of the things that got us talking here in our Startup Show-N-Tell post. This week, we took in interest…
For the last few years I’ve gifted Rules for My Unborn Son, a book by Walker Lamond, to almost everyone I know that is graduating from high school or college. Now that I am a newly minted dad, I’ve revisited my own copy of the book to see if there is any useful knowledge I should be passing on to my own son. As I have come to find out over the last few weeks, one of the only things tougher than…
As a distributed startup with team members living and working across the world, we’ve taken to Slack (who hasn’t?) to stay in touch handle some aspects of just about every mission critical business process. One of those processes is sharing interesting business tactics, thought provoking posts, and general randomness that we come across on a day to day basis. Each week, we collect some of the things that got us talking here in our Startup Show-N-Tell post. Does your team or company…
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