Caryn Marooney
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Extra Crunch roundup: Finding GTM, China’s edtech clampdown and how to define growth
Early-stage startups tend to claim that their go-to-market strategy is fully operational. In reality, GTM is a stark numbers game, and even with a solid plan in place, it can be easily foiled by common problems like turf battles and poor communication.
Finding GTM fit is a milestone for any startup that includes everything from expanding the engineering team to launching your first media buy. But how do you know when you’ve reached that magic moment?
“You have to consider three metrics: gross churn rate, the magic number and gross margin,” says Tae Hea Nahm, co-founder and managing director of Storm Ventures.
High churn means customers aren’t delighted, low gross margins mean poor unit economics, and that so-called magic number?
“You can calculate it by taking new ARR divided by your marketing and sales spending,” Nahm writes. “But keep in mind that the magic number is a lagging indicator, and it may take you a few quarters to see a positive result.”
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If you are methodical in your approach to building a larger customer base, it is not difficult to foster steady growth.
Marketers who shift with whichever way the wind is blowing — or blindly follow someone else’s idea of best practices — are less likely to be successful.
“The not-so-secret secret here is that the key to great retention is really simple,” said growth expert Susan Su recently at TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing and Fundraising. “It is building a product that solves a real and especially persistent problem for people.”
In conversation with Managing Editor Eric Eldon, Su delved into several issues, including tips on how founders should discuss growth with investors, and her methods for developing a sample qualitative growth model.
“I firmly believe that every founder should try their hand at growth,” said Su.
Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week!
Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist
How we built an AI unicorn in 6 years
Image Credits: Lucas Knappe/EyeEm (opens in a new window)/ Getty Images
Few startups go to market with the exact product their founders first envisioned.
Today, Tractable is known for developing tech that allows drivers to upload photos of their vehicles after a collision so its AI can assess the damage. Its first paying customer, however, used Tractable to inspect plastic pipe welds.
And as fate would have it, that customer also fired them just as the founders were raising their first round.
“We struck gold with car insurance,” says co-founder Alex Dalyac, as it was “a huge and inefficient market in desperate need of modernization.”
In an Extra Crunch guest post, he shares several takeaways from the last six years spent scaling a unicorn that have value for founders of all stripes. Step one?
“Search for complementary co-founders who will become your best friends,” advises Dalyac.
The European VC market is so hot it may skip its summer holiday
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim continued their exploration of the scorching global VC market, this time taking a look at Europe.
For perspective, they analyzed data from Dealroom and spoke to four VCs about the continent’s investment climate:
- Diana Koziarska, SMOK Ventures
- Vinoth Jayakumar, Draper Esprit
- Simon Schmincke, Creandum
- Javier Santiso, Mundi Ventures
“There’s little indication that what we’ve seen thus far from Europe in 2021 will slow in Q3 or Q4,” Alex and Anna write.
“Even though Europe has a reputation for lengthy summer vacations, investors don’t expect much — if any — slowdown to come in Europe during this sun-drenched quarter.”
Startups and investors are turning to micromobility subscriptions
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin
“Amid the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and the murky path to profitability for shared electric micromobility, an increasing number of companies have turned to subscriptions,” Rebecca Bellan writes in a roundup about the future of micromobility.
“It’s a business model that some founders and investors argue hits the profit center sweet spot — an approach that appeals to customers who are wary of sharing as well as paying upfront to own a scooter or e-bike, all while minimizing overhead costs and depreciation of assets.”
What Robinhood’s warnings about crypto trading say about Coinbase’s near-term future
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
After noting that Robinhood anticipates a decline in revenue in the third quarter as a result of slowing crypto trading, Alex Wilhelm got to thinking about what that forecast means for Coinbase.
“The now-public unicorn has lived through crypto ups and crypto downs,” he writes. “A decline in consumer interest in the next few months or quarters is not a huge deal, assuming one keeps a long enough perspective and the crypto-infused future that its fans expect comes to pass.”
But will it?
Dear Sophie: Should we look to Canada to retain international talent?
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
Dear Sophie,
I handle people ops as a consultant at several different tech startups. Many have employees on OPT or STEM OPT who didn’t get selected in this year’s H-1B lottery.
The companies want to retain these individuals, but they’re running out of options. Some companies will try again in next year’s H-1B lottery, even though they face long odds, particularly if the H-1B lottery becomes a wage-based selection process next year.
Others are looking into O-1A visas, but find that many employees don’t yet have the experience to meet the qualifications. Should we look at Canada?
— Specialist in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley comms expert Caryn Marooney shares how to nail the narrative
Image Credits: MediaNews Group/Bay Area News via Getty Images (opens in a new window)/ Getty Images (Image has been modified)
Caryn Marooney, a Silicon Valley communications professional turned venture capitalist, spoke extensively on storytelling at TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing and Fundraising.
Throughout her time in Silicon Valley, she helped companies like Salesforce, Amazon, Facebook and more launch products and sharpen their messaging. In 2019, she left Facebook, where she was VP of technology communication, and joined Coatue Management as a general partner.
Marooney uses the acronym RIBS to describe her basic strategy for startup messaging: Relevance, Inevitability, Believability and keeping it Simple.
Canada’s startup market booms alongside hot global VC investment
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
For The Exchange, Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim looked at Canada’s VC market in the first half of 2021, and if you’ve been reading their work, you know what’s coming.
Canada, like the rest of the globe, was absolutely scorching in the first half.
“Canada’s venture capital results now rival those of the entire Latin American region, with exits and mega-deals coming in roughly on par in the second quarter, and a similar number of total venture capital rounds in the period,” they write.
“That caught our attention.”
Greylock’s Mike Duboe explains how to define growth and build your team
With more venture funding flowing into the startup ecosystem than ever before, there’s never been a better time to be a growth expert.
At TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing and Fundraising earlier this month, Greylock Partners’ Mike Duboe dug into a number of lessons and pieces of wisdom he’s picked up leading growth at a number of high-growth startups, including StitchFix. His advice spanned hiring, structure and analysis, with plenty of recommendations for where growth teams should be focusing their attention and resources.
Last-mile delivery in Latin America is ready to take off
Image Credits: Erlon Silva/TRI Digital (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Thanks to sprawling fulfillment centers, seamless logistics networks and ubiquitous internet access, consumers in many regions can now order groceries and a new set of cookware during breakfast and reasonably expect everything to arrive in time for dinner.
In Latin America, a lack of technology infrastructure makes delivery operations complex, and these supply chains are often managed with spreadsheets, paper and pen.
Algorithms that manage delivery routes or automatically dispatch drivers “are almost unheard of in the Latin America retail logistics sector,” says Bob Ma, an investor at WIND Ventures.
But thanks to growing consumer demand and expanding investment in last-mile delivery startups, Ma says the region is at a turning point.
Since Latin America’s middle class has grown 50% in the last decade and e-commerce constitutes just 6% of all retail, several unicorns have emerged in recent years, with more waiting in the wings.
China’s expected edtech clampdown may chill a key startup sector
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
China’s edtech industry is estimated to be worth $100 billion, but its leaders are reportedly considering a plan that would require these firms to operate as non-profits.
“When it comes to control, the Chinese government doesn’t mind wiping out a few dozen billion dollars in market cap here and there,” writes Alex Wilhelm in this morning’s edition of The Exchange.
“That’s not a great system.”
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Extra Crunch’s top 10 stories of 2020
I edited hundreds of stories in 2020, so choosing my favorites would be an exercise in futility.
Instead, I’ve tried to gather a sample of Extra Crunch stories that taught me something new. (Which means this top 10 list betrays my ignorance, a humbling admission for a know-it-all like myself.)
While narrowing down the field of candidates, I realized that we’re covering each of the topics on this list in greater depth next year. We already have stories in the works about no-code software, the emergence of edtech, proptech and B2B marketplaces, to name just a few.
Some readers are skeptical about paywalls, but without being boastful, Extra Crunch is a premium product, just like Netflix or Disney+. I know: We’re not as entertaining as a historical drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II or a space western about a bounty hunter.
But, speaking as someone who’s worked at several startups, Extra Crunch stories contain actionable information you can use to build a company and/or look smart in meetings — and that’s worth something.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a very happy new year.
Full Extra Crunch articles are only available to members
Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription
1. The VCs who founders love the most
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
Managing Editor Danny Crichton spearheaded the development of The TechCrunch List earlier this year to help seed-stage founders connect with VCs who write first checks.
The TechCrunch List has no paywall and contains details and recommendations about more than 400 investors across 22 verticals. Once it launched, Danny crunched the data to pick out 11 investors for which “founders were particularly effusive in their praise.”
2. API startups are so hot right now
Image Credits: Juana Mari Moya(opens in a new window)/Getty Images (Image has been modified)
Alex Wilhelm uses his weekday column The Exchange to keep a close eye on “private companies, public markets and the gray space in between,” but one effort stood out: An overview of six API-based startups that were “raising capital in rapid-fire fashion” when many companies were trying to find their COVID-19 footing.
For me, this was particularly interesting because it helped me better understand that an optimal pricing structure can be key to a SaaS company’s initial success.
3. ‘No code’ will define the next generation of software
4. Tracking the growth of low-code/no-code startups
Image Credits: Richard Drury(opens in a new window)/Getty Images
Two stories about the advent of no-code/low-code software that we ran in July take the third and fourth position on this list.
I have been a no-code user for some time: Using Zapier to send automated invitations via Slack for group lunches was a real time-saver in the pre-pandemic days.
“Enterprise expenditure on custom software is on track to double from $250 billion in 2015 to $500 billion in 2020,” so we’ll definitely be diving deeper into this topic in the coming months.
5. ‘Edtech is no longer optional’: Investors’ deep dive into the future of the market
Image Credits: PM Images(opens in a new window)/Getty Images
Natasha Mascarenhas picked up TechCrunch’s edtech beat when she joined us just before the pandemic. Twelve months later, she’s an expert on the topic.
In July, she surveyed six edtech investors to “get into the macro-impact of rapid change on edtech as a whole.”
- Ian Chiu, Owl Ventures
- Shauntel Garvey and Jennifer Carolan, Reach Capital
- Jan Lynn-Matern, Emerge Education
- David Eichler, TCV
- Jomayra Hererra, Cowboy Ventures
6. B2B marketplaces will be the next billion-dollar e-commerce startups
Image Credits: Kmatta(opens in a new window)/Getty Images
In 2018, B2B marketplaces saw an estimated $680 billion in sales, but that figure is expected to reach $3.6 trillion by 2024.
As companies shifted their purchasing online, these platforms are adding a range of complementary services like payment management, targeted advertising and logistics while also hardening their infrastructure.
7. Facebook’s former PR chief explains why no one is paying attention to your startup
Caryn Marooney, right, vice president of technology communications at Facebook, poses for a picture on the red carpet for the 6th annual 2018 Breakthrough Prizes at Moffett Federal Airfield, Hangar One in Mountain View, Calif., on Sunday, Dec. 3, 2017. Image Credits: Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group
Reporter Lucas Matney spoke to Caryn Marooney in August at TechCrunch Early Stage about how startup founders who hope to expand their reach need to do a better job of connecting with journalists.
“People just fundamentally aren’t walking around caring about this new startup,” she said. “Actually, nobody does.”
Speaking as someone who’s been on both sides of this equation, I most appreciated her advice about focusing on “simplicity and staying consistent” when it comes to messaging.
“Don’t let the complexity of your intellect cloud what needs to be simple,” she said.
8. You need a minimum viable company, not a minimum viable product
Image Credits: alvarez(opens in a new window)/Getty Images
In a guest post for Extra Crunch, seed-stage VC Ann Miura-Ko shared some of what she’s learned about “the magic of product-market fit,” which she termed “the defining quality of an early-stage startup.”
According to Miura-Ko, a co-founding partner at Floodgate, startups can only reach this stage when their business model, value propositions and ecosystem are in balance.
Using lessons learned from her portfolio companies like Lyft, Refinery29 and Twitch, this article should be required reading for every founder. As one commenter posted, “I read this thinking, ‘I need to add some slides to my deck!’”
9. 6 investment trends that could emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic
10 January 2020, Berlin: Doctor Olaf Göing, chief physician of the clinic for internal medicine at the Sana Klinikum Lichtenberg, tests mixed-reality 3D glasses for use in cardiology. They can thus access their patients’ medical data and visualize the finest structures for diagnostics and operation planning by hand and speech. The Sana Clinic is, according to its own statements, the first hospital in the world to use this novel technology in cardiology. Image Credits: Jens Kalaene/picture alliance via Getty Images
During “the early innings of this period of uncertainty,” an article we published offered several predictions about investor behavior in the U.S.
Although we posted this in April, each of these forecasts seem spot-on:
- Future of work: promoting intimacy and trust.
- Healthcare IT: telemedicine and remote patient monitoring.
- Robotics and supply chain.
- Cybersecurity.
- Education = knowledge transfer + social + signaling.
- Fintech.
10. Construction tech startups are poised to shake up a $1.3-trillion-dollar industry
Image Credits: Steve Proehl(opens in a new window)/Getty Images
I’ve always found the concept of total addressable market (TAM) hard to embrace fully — the arrival of a single disruptive company could change an industry’s TAM in a week.
However, several factors are combining to transform the construction industry: high fragmentation, poor communication, a skilled labor shortage and a lack of data transparency.
Startups that help builders manage aspects like pre-construction, workflow and site visualization are making huge strides, but because “construction firms spend less than 2% of annual sales volume on IT,” the size of this TAM is not at all speculative.
11. Don’t let VCs be the gatekeepers of your success
Image Credits: PM Images(opens in a new window)/Getty Images
As a bonus, I’m including a TechCrunch op-ed written by insurtech founder Kevin Henderson that describes the myriad challenges he has faced as a Black entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
Some of the discussions about the lack of diversity in tech can feel abstract, but his post describes its concrete consequences. For starters: he’s never had an opportunity to pitch at a VC firm where there was another Black person in the room.
“Black founders have a better chance playing pro sports than they do landing venture investments,” says Henderson.
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Supabase raises $6M for its open-source Firebase alternative
Supabase, a YC-incubated startup that offers developers an open-source alternative to Google’s Firebase and similar platforms, today announced that it has raised a $6 million funding round led by Coatue, with participation from YC, Mozilla and a group of about 20 angel investors.
Currently, Supabase includes support for PostgreSQL databases and authentication tools, with a storage and serverless solution coming soon. It currently provides all the usual tools for working with databases — and listening to database changes — as well as a web-based UI for managing them. The team is quick to note that while the comparison with Google’s Firebase is inevitable, it is not meant to be a 1-to-1 replacement for it. And unlike Firebase, which uses a NoSQL database, Supabase is using PostgreSQL.
Indeed, the team relies heavily on existing open-source projects and contributes to them where it can. One of Supabase’s full-time employees maintains the PostgREST tool for building APIs on top of the database, for example.
“We’re not trying to build another system,” Supabase co-founder and CEO Paul Copplestone told me. “We just believe that already there are well-trusted, scalable enterprise open-source products out there and they just don’t have this usability component. So actually right now, Supabase is an amalgamation of six tools, soon to be seven. Some of them we built ourselves. If we go to market and can’t find anything that we think is going to be scalable — or really solve the problems — then we’ll build it and we’ll open-source it. But otherwise, we’ll use existing tools.”
Image Credits: Supabase
The traditional route to market for open-source tools is to create a tool and then launch a hosted version — maybe with some additional features — to monetize the work. Supabase took a slightly different route and launched a hosted version right away.
If somebody would want to host the service themselves, the code is available, but running your own PaaS is obviously a major challenge, but that’s also why the team went with this approach. What you get with Firebase, he noted, is that it’s a few clicks to set everything up. Supabase wanted to be able to offer the same kind of experience. “That’s one thing that self-hosting just cannot offer,” he said. “You can’t really get the same wow factor that you can if we offered a hosted platform where you literally [have] one click and then a couple of minutes later, you’ve got everything set up.”
In addition, he also noted that he wanted to make sure the company could support the growing stable of tools it was building and commercializing its tools based on its database services was the easiest way to do so.
Like other Y Combinator startups, Supabase closed its funding round after the accelerator’s demo day in August. The team had considered doing a SAFE round, but it found the right group of institutional investors that offered founder-friendly terms to go ahead with this institutional round instead.
“It’s going to cost us a lot to compete with the generous free tier that Firebase offers,” Copplestone said. “And it’s databases, right? So it’s not like you can just keep them stateless and shut them down if you’re not really using them. [This funding round] gives us a long, generous runway and more importantly, for the developers who come in and build on top of us, [they can] take as long as they want and then start monetizing later on themselves.“
The company plans to use the new funding to continue to invest in its various tools and hire to support its growth.
“Supabase’s value proposition of building in a weekend and scaling so quickly hit home immediately,” said Caryn Marooney, general partner at Coatue and Facebook’s former VP of Global Communications. “We are proud to work with this team, and we are excited by their laser focus on developers and their commitment to speed and reliability.”
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Facebook’s former PR chief explains why no one is paying attention to your startup
At TechCrunch Early Stage, I spoke with Coatue Management GP Caryn Marooney about startup branding and how founders can get people to pay attention to what they’re building.
Marooney recently made the jump into venture capital; previously she was co-founder and CEO of The Outcast Agency, one of Silicon Valley’s best-regarded public relations firms, which she left to become VP of Global Communications at Facebook, where she led comms for eight years.
While founders often may think of PR as a way to get messaging across to reporters, Marooney says that making someone care about what you’re working on — whether that’s customers, investors or journalists — requires many of the same skills.
One of the biggest insights she shared: at a base level, no one really cares about what you have to say.
Describing something as newsworthy or a great value isn’t the same as demonstrating it, and while big companies like Amazon can get people to pay attention to anything they say, smaller startups have to be even more strategic with their messaging, Marooney says. “People just fundamentally aren’t walking around caring about this new startup — actually, nobody does.”
Getting someone to care first depends on proving your relevance. When founders are forming their messaging to address this, they should ask themselves three questions about their strategy, she recommends:
- Why should anyone care?
- Is there a purchase order existing for this?
- Who loses if you win?
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Marketing, PR and brand building, oh my! TechCrunch Early Stage goes down July 21 and 22
Your product may solve problems. It may cost less and do more. It may very well change the world. But unless you can get the word out, ensuring the right group of people know about it and are willing to use it, pay for it and evangelize it, then your hard work is in vain.
At TechCrunch Early Stage, we’ll hear from some of the world’s top minds in the fields of marketing and brand building. They’ll talk through different growth marketing tactics, from creating growth assets for paid channels to capitalizing on podcasts to SEO to email. They’ll cover the complicated world of PR, and they’ll teach us about how to develop a brand that users can relate to.
Of course, this is just one slice of the pie. At Early Stage, experts across a wide variety of startup core competencies — fundraising, legal, recruiting, tech stack, scaling and more — will take the virtual stage to give early-stage founders the tools they need to get out there and succeed. What’s more, these experts have made time to answer audience questions, so don’t be shy!
Here’s a look at all the marketing sessions you can expect at the show:
Why should anyone care? (Making your brand stand out) with Caryn Marooney
Startups often struggle to create a narrative that stands out. As a general partner at Coatue, former head of Comms at Facebook and co-founder of the OutCast Agency, Caryn Marooney has seen it all. Come learn the brand and messaging framework that can help your company stand out (while staying true to yourself.)
Growth Marketing: Minimum viable email with Susan Su
Love it or hate it, email is here to stay. But understanding where it fits into the conversion funnel and how to maximize its impact can be arduous. Learn from Sound Ventures partner Susan Su how to optimize open rates, deliverability, unsubscribes and conversions for consumer and enterprise products alike.
How to build a high-performance SEO engine with Ethan Smith
Hear from Ethan Smith, who has worked with brands like MasterClass, Ticketmaster and Thumbtack, as he shares some of the most effective modern SEO strategies. Starting with a deep understanding of the user and their intent, the most successful modern SEO strategies focus on building a data-driven approach to drive user experience, content and conversion to ultimately beat the competition.
Be the best at preparing for the worst with Margit Wennmachers and Miguel Helft
Inevitably, something will go wrong — from product recalls and lawsuits to executive firings and sexual harassment allegations, so you better be prepared. Hear from Margit Wennmachers, operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz and a co-founder of OutCast Communications (now The OutCast Agency) and Miguel Helft, editorial director at Message Lab, about how to develop a framework for crisis and withstand through tough times.
Growth Marketing: Podcasts as a secret weapon with Krystina Rubino and Lindsay Piper Shaw
Podcast advertising is widely viewed as a nascent medium, but smart companies know it can be a powerful channel in their marketing mix. Opportunity is ripe — get in early and you can own the medium, box out competitors and catapult your growth. Krystina Rubino and Lindsay Piper Shaw have launched and scaled successful podcast ad campaigns for early-stage startups and household name brands and will be sharing their strategies for companies to succeed in this often misunderstood channel.
How to get people obsessed with your brand with Emily Heyward
During her 12-year tenure running Red Antler, one of the leading brand companies for startups and new ventures, Emily Heyward has launched more brands than anyone. In this session for TechCrunch Early Stage, she’ll share the modern rules of brand building, breaking down the traditional notions of how modern brands look, feel and behave. Covering a few case studies and tactical applications, Emily will outline the best practices for driving obsession from day one while also building a foundation for long-term growth.
How to create great growth assets for paid channels with Asher King Abramson
Learn about the right ways and wrong ways to create great assets for paid channels, landing pages and more in this teardown workshop with Asher King Abramson, a top growth marketer who has worked with 100+ successful startups. Submit your landing page and ads beforehand for a chance to receive feedback live onstage.
A brand personified with Anna Pickard
Anna Pickard is the head of Brand Communications at Slack, responsible for establishing the company’s voice and tone. Hear Anna share how to bring together the various functions of your organization to create a distinctly unique brand voice that engages and delights customers.
Early Stage goes down July 21 and 22. You don’t want to miss it. Tickets are almost gone — register for your ticket here.
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The 7 deadly sins of startups
Caryn Marooney is general partner at Coatue Management and sits on the boards of Zendesk and Elastic. An advisor to Airtable, in prior roles she oversaw communications for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus and co-founded The OutCast Agency, which served clients like Salesforce.com and Amazon.
Pride. Greed. Lust. Envy. Gluttony. Wrath. Sloth.
You’ve probably heard of the Seven Deadly Sins, but I bet you’ve never wondered how they apply to starting a company. The answer: surprisingly well!
Over the years, I’ve talked about the seven habits every company should try to avoid and the seven (non-biblical) virtues each company should strive for. Done right, they will help founders focus, save time and avoid some common — and painful — mistakes.
For the purpose of this post, I’ve paired each sin with its closest corresponding virtue.
Sin No. 1: Lust (don’t focus on what other companies have)
As a founder, you have to pay attention to your competitors. Just don’t let that attention turn into lust for what they have — whether it’s a flashy marketing campaign, a fancy office or a killer staff.
Executive lust: Lusting after leadership can be especially tempting. So your competitor hired a rockstar executive who seems to be doing all the right things. It’s easy to think you need your own COO, or CRO, or CCO right now — and they need to be just like the person filling that role at the other successful company that looks nothing like yours.
Think carefully about what you need, why and what role that person will play day in and day out. What strengths and weaknesses do they have? What gaps do you need to fill? And what matters most to your customers and your business? It’s also important to think about your stage and your go-to-market model. When it comes to personnel, one size never fits all.
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Jeff Clavier, Sarah Guo, Ali Partovi and Caryn Marooney to speak at Early Stage SF
Early Stage SF is sneaking up on us and there is plenty to be excited about. The one-day event, which brings together a wide variety of startup experts to host breakout sessions, is going down on April 28 and we have a handful of speakers to announce.
So without any further ado:
We’re thrilled to announce that Jeff Clavier, Sarah Guo, Caryn Marooney and Ali Partovi will be joining us at the event.
Jeff Clavier is managing partner and founder at Uncork Capital, with portfolio companies that include Eventbrite, SendGrid, Fitbit, Vungle and Mint.com. His current investments include Vidyard, Postmates, Molekule, Shippo and Front.
Seed Funding Tips and Tricks – Jeff Clavier
There are now a thousand micro-VCs entrepreneurs can raise capital from, creating confusing market dynamics. Learn tips and tricks on fund raising from Uncork Capital’s managing partner, Jeff Clavier.
Sarah Guo joined Greylock Partners in 2013 and led the firm’s investments in Cleo, Demisto, Sqreen and Utmost, and sits on the boards of several startups. Before Greylock, she was at Goldman Sachs, where she invested at the growth level in companies like Dropbox, and advised pre-IPO tech companies and public tech companies alike, including Workday (the former) and Netflix, Zynga and Nvidia (the latter).
SaaS Fundraising and Growth – Sarah Guo
Sarah Guo, partner at Greylock, is an early-stage investor in enterprise software, with over half a dozen investments made across cybersecurity, AI, HR and health. She’ll give a rundown on why strong storytelling, a focus on solving a single problem well and a thesis on defensibility are all essential in a pitch, and why making seed and Series A investments often comes down to betting on the founding team.
Ali Partovi runs Neo, a mentorship community and VC fund that brings together tech veterans with diverse startup leaders. Partovi has backed the likes of Airbnb, Dropbox, Facebook and Uber, and also founded Code.org. Partovi also has experience as an entrepreneur, selling his first startup LinkExchange all the way back in 1998.
Hiring Your First 5 Engineers – Ali Partovi
The first few employees determine a startup’s trajectory. Learn the dos and don’ts of hiring your early engineers.
Caryn Marooney is a partner at Coatue Management, sitting on the boards of Zendesk and Elastic, with an advisory role at Airtable. Before Coatue, Caryn oversaw communications for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus for eight years. Marooney is also a co-founder of the OutCast Agency, where she worked with companies across a wide spectrum of industries and sizes, including Salesforce, Amazon, Netflix and VMware.
Why Should Anyone Care? (Making Your Brand Stand Out) – Caryn Marooney
Startups often struggle to create a narrative that stands out. As a general partner at Coatue, former head of Comms at Facebook and co-founder of the OutCast Agency, Caryn Marooney has seen it all. Come learn the brand and messaging framework that can help your company stand out (while staying true to yourself).
There will be about 50+ breakout sessions at the show, and attendees will have an opportunity to attend at least seven. The sessions will cover all the core topics confronting early-stage founders — up through Series A — as they build a company, from raising capital to building a team to growth. Each breakout session will be led by notables in the startup world on par with the folks we’ve announced today.
Don’t worry about missing a breakout session, because transcripts from each will be available to show attendees. And most of the folks leading the breakout sessions have agreed to hang at the show for at least half the day and participate in CrunchMatch, TechCrunch’s great app to connect founders and investors based on shared interests.
Here’s the fine print. Each of the 50+ breakout sessions is limited to around 100 attendees. We expect a lot more attendees, of course, so signups for each session are on a first-come, first-serve basis. Buy your ticket today and you can sign up for the breakouts we are announcing today. Pass holders will also receive 24-hour advance notice before we announce the next batch. (And yes, you can “drop” a breakout session in favor of a new one, in the event there is a schedule conflict.)
We’re absolutely thrilled for this event, and we hope you are, too. Buy a pass to Early Stage SF 2020 right here!
Interested in sponsoring Early Stage? Hit us up here.
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