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TC Early Stage will dive deep on how to fundraise for your startup
Despite the fact that capital is abundant and dozens of startups get funding every day, the process of raising institutional capital is anything but simple.
From getting an investor’s attention to nailing your virtual pitch meeting to the legal aspects of your term sheet, there is plenty to navigate.
Luckily, TechCrunch Early Stage is bringing together some of the biggest VCs to share how to manage the process proactively and successfully secure capital from the right VCs.
Just take a look at the fundraising sessions going down at TC Early Stage, which takes place later this week on April 1 – 2.
How to Get an Investor’s Attention – Marlon Nichols, MaC Venture Capital
Marlon Nichols is an expert in early-stage investments, having invested in countless successful ventures such as Gimlet Media, MongoDB, Thrive Market, PlayVS, Fair, Wonderschool and Finesse. Right now, there is more seed-stage fundraising than ever before, and Marlon will speak on how to get noticed by investors, how to grow your business and how to survive in the crowded, competitive space of tech startups. He will provide insights on how to network, craft a great pitch and target the best investors for your success.
How to Nail Your Virtual Pitch Meeting – Melissa Bradley, Ureeka
The rules of the pitch meeting have changed. Instead of traveling across the country, wasting time in planes, trains and automobiles, founders can take upwards of 30 meetings in a day from the comfort of their home. Entrepreneur and VC Melissa Bradley will outline how to make the most of that half hour on Zoom and lock in the next one.
How to Kick the 10 Worst Startup Habits – Leah Solivan, Fuel Capital
With voices across the internet giving their two-cents on how to run a great business, Fuel Capital’s Leah Solivan will share a list of things that a founder should NOT do. Avoid the pitfalls that could break your momentum, or worst case, your company, and ask Solivan your own questions.
Bootstrapping and the Power of Product-Led Growth – Tope Awotona, Calendly and Blake Bartlett, OpenView
Building a bootstrapped company forces you to be creative. For Calendly, it pointed the company toward a product-led growth model built on virality. Hear from Calendly’s Tope Awotona and OpenView’s Blake Bartlett as they cover pro tips on bootstrapping, PLG and when a profitable company should consider raising capital.
Four Things to Think About Before Raising a Series A – Bucky Moore, Kleiner Perkins
Founders looking to raise Series A capital know that it’s an entirely different ball game than seed-stage funding. Hear Kleiner Perkins partner Bucky Moore outline the most important ways to mentally prepare for heading into Series A fundraising.
Fundraising Terms That Affect Your Business – Dawn Belt, Fenwick & West
With each funding round, there is an exciting opportunity for growth, but it’s important to fully understand the implications of those terms. Fenwick partner Dawn Belt will discuss the key legal terms to focus on in your seed and Series A rounds and how they affect the control and operational freedom of your company.
TC Early Stage takes place on April 1 – 2 and is jam-packed with breakout sessions led by tech leaders, from VCs to operators. Each session will include audience Q&A so founders can get answers to their specific questions. On Day 2, we’ll be holding a pitch-off with some fantastic companies.
All in all, it’ll be a fantastic event. You should def come hang out! Get a ticket here.
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Dual-event ticket prices to TC Early Stage 2021 increase this Friday
We’ve all heard the adage, less is more. But when it comes to learning all the complex ins and outs of building and launching a successful startup, more is definitely the way to go. Enter not one, but two bootcamp experiences for the early-stage crowd: TC Early Stage: Operations & Fundraising on April 1-2 and TC Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising on July 8-9.
Here’s another relevant adage: A penny saved is a penny earned. Kill two adages with one click, buy a dual-event pass at the early-bird price and you’ll save $100 or more. More knowledge for less money — what’s not to love?
Big, fat caveat: Procrastinate at your own peril. Prices on dual-event passes go up this Friday, March 26 at precisely 11:59 pm (PST).
Both TC Early Stage events focus on the essential skills every founder needs to succeed, and you’ll learn from leading industry experts. Each bootcamp features a discrete set of speakers, range of topics and presentations, but they’re all dedicated to helping founders in the early stages of the startup journey build a solid foundation.
We have a tremendously talented group of people ready to share their expertise and experience with you. Check out the TC Early Stage agenda for April.
Here’s another cool commonality: Day two of each bootcamp features a TC Early Stage Pitch-Off. You’ll tune in live to watch 10 global early-stage companies pitch to a panel of top VCs. The ultimate winner will be featured on TechCrunch.com, receive an annual Extra Crunch subscription and attend TC Disrupt this September — gratis.
Contenders for the April pitch-off are ready to go, but we’ll be opening the application process for July soon, so keep checking back for your chance to bring the heat.
We’re busy building out the agenda for July’s TC Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising, but we’re thrilled to share that Lisa Wu, a partner at Norwest — with investments like Calm, Plaid, Opendoor and Grove Collaborative — will join us to discuss how to ace a one-hour pitch. Spoiler alert: think like a VC.
Get more and spend less is the best possible adage (okay, we made that up). But hey, saving $100 or more on a dual-event pass to TC Early Stage in April and July is just a smart way to go. Buy your pass before the deadline hits this Friday, March 26 at 11:59 pm (PST).
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Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra is coming to TechCrunch Early Stage in July
The frequent difficulty of founders finding product-market fit has been a topic of constant (and ever-evolving) discussion at TechCrunch conferences over the years.
Superhuman founder and CEO Rahul Vohra will be joining us at TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising in July to dive into the much-obsessed topic of product-market fit. We’re looking to dig into what exactly finding product-market fits means to the startup ecosystem of 2021.
The repeat founder’s email service platform has raised more than $33 million in funding from firms like Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital, providing users with an algorithmically-sorted email app that has set a lot of trends in emerging enterprise software on both the design and go-to-market strategy front.
The startup is oft-referenced as a prime example of the “consumerization” of enterprise software trend which has seen more and more workplace SaaS apps level-up their focus on user-centric design. We’ll ask him how he feels about the fact that “Superhuman for X” has grown to be a fairly common formula for workplace elevator pitches.
We’ll also talk with him about how he found an audience for a $30 per month subscription app and how the company has scaled its product to meet their customers’ other needs. In addition to the hat he wears as the founder of Superhuman, we’ll ask him about how he views the challenge from the other side of the table as a prolific angel investor. The fund that he manages with Eventjoy founder Todd Goldberg announced a $7 million fund last year and the duo has backed several startups, including Clubhouse, Mercury and Coda.
We think it’s going to be a conversation you can’t miss and it’s just one part of a two-day event exploring the many aspects of early-stage startups this July. And if you move fast, you can check out Rahul’s session in July as well as all of the great content happening at TC Early Stage: Operations & Fundraising in April with a dual event ticket — check out the entire April event agenda lineup here.
Our first TC Early Stage event is coming up fast, so be sure to grab your dual event ticket to TC Early Stage on April 1-2 and July 8-9 to save $100 or more before prices increase this Friday.
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Talking product-market fit with Sean Lane, whose company tore through 28 products to become a unicorn
Occasionally, it’s easy for startups to achieve so-called product-market fit, but more often, it’s a struggle. Perhaps no one knows this as well as Sean Lane, co-founder and CEO of Olive, a company whose software completes so many tedious administrative healthcare tasks for hospitals that it is currently valued by investors at $1.5 billion.
Somewhat amazingly, the nearly nine-year-old company raised $380 million of the $445 million it has raised altogether just last year. In fact, Olive is now growing so fast, and clicking along so well, that Lane just raised $50 million in funding last month for a second startup that uses Olive’s same tech platform. He’s CEO of that startup, called Circulo, too.
It’s impressive. It also took Lane around 28 big and small pivots to build the kind of high-growth, fast-scaling businesses that he always wanted to create — moves he’s going to discuss with us at TechCrunch’s upcoming two-day, all-virtual TC Early Stage event coming up April 1 and 2.
The idea: to save other founders from having to undergo the same anguishing twists and turns by sharing what he learned along his own path.
Lane had some help. Specifically, he has long credited one of his early investors, Mark Kvamme of Drive Capital, for helping identify a big opportunity amid of sea of smaller opportunities. As Lane told the outlet Columbus CEO a few year ago, before meeting Kvamme, he had a nice life in Baltimore, with a house on the water with his wife. Lane, who was once a U.S. Air Force and National Security Administration intelligence officer, was angel investing, co-running a tech incubator and had co-founded a company called CrossChx to link fingerprints to electronic medical records.
A chance encounter with Kvamme, a Silicon Valley VC who had moved to Columbus, would change everything. To wit, after Lane talked with him about his endeavors in Baltimore, as well as having bigger ambitions to create an “internet of healthcare,” Kvamme persuaded Lane to abandon his various projects, relocate to Columbus and focus entirely on a newer, better CrossChx.
That’s now looking like a smart bet by Kvamme, who wrote CrossChx — later renamed Olive — its first check. But even with Kvamme’s support, Olive’s success hardly happened overnight. Lane has said he met with plenty of resistance as he tried and scrapped numerous products. As with many growing startups that veer in a new direction, there were painful layoffs. He also eventually parted ways with his co-founder, Brad Mascho, who left the company in late 2017 in an apparent cloud of exhaustion. He’d “worked his butt off for a good four years,” as Lane told Columbus CEO.
It’s many of these tough points in Olive’s trajectory — and particularly those product pivots — that we’ll be talking about in a few short weeks at our upcoming event. Indeed, for those who’ve struggled with their own ambitions, or their own product roadmaps, or who’ve wondered what they could be doing better or smarter or faster to grow their own companies, this is one conversation that should not be missed.
Even better, our talk with Lane is just one part of a two-day event exploring the many aspects of early-stage startups — check out the entire agenda line up here.
It’s coming up fast, so be sure to grab your ticket to TC Early Stage on April 1-2 — and, by the way, you can save $100 or more when you get the dual-event ticket for both our April and July events. The latter is coming up July 8 and 9. You can learn more here.
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Attend TechCrunch’s free virtual Miami meetup on March 11
TechCrunch is hosting a small virtual meetup this Thursday centered around Miami. We hope you can attend. It’s free.
This is our first (virtual) field trip to Miami. Even though we can’t be there physically right now, it’ll sure feel like we are. All lights will be shining on the Magic City. The area is quickly transforming thanks to active investors, interesting companies, a Twitter-proficient mayor and beautifully scenic living.
If you’re interested in what’s happening in Miami in general, seeking out a new, up-and-coming city to live in, looking for cool companies and talented founders to invest in, then you’ll want to register and drop March 11 on your calendar. This is a virtual event, but space is still limited, so register early.
Here’s just some of what you can expect:
- Networking – It’s what you can always count on us for. Companies are started and deals get done at TechCrunch events (yes, even the virtual ones!).
- Pitch-off – We’re going to tap into the local tech scene in Miami and bring on some VCs to take a look at your pitches. They’ll give you feedback live from the stage. Sign up to pitch by filling out this form.
- Panels – Meet the movers and shakers up close and personal. Hear about their journey, ask them questions and find out what’s special to them about Miami.
All along the way we’ll be asking for your feedback by way of polls, Q&As and surveys. We want to hear from everyone who lives in the birthplace of sunscreen, and we’re looking to you for suggestions on folks who should be getting all of the attention we can throw at them on March 11. Drop suggestions in the comments below.
It’s going to be one to remember, and it’s the perfect setup for when we can safely crash the city in person again!
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Early-stage investor Mayfield shows how to scale up your biotech startup at TC Early Stage in April
Founders in the earliest stages of startup life face a hefty learning curve. Just some of the core competencies you need to lock down include how to raise VC funding, recruiting the right people, finding product-market fit and building a killer go-to-market team. The list goes on and on…and on. You’ll learn about all those topics and more at TechCrunch Early Stage Operations & Fundraising taking place on April 1-2.
Do you science? Are you inspired to use biology as technology? If your entrepreneurial interests lean toward the scientific side of the startup equation, you don’t want to miss this special session — brought to you by Mayfield — at TC Early Stage 2021 on April 1-2.
Scientist Entrepreneurs — Scaling Breakout Engineering Biology Companies
Arvind Gupta and Ursheet Parikh, early-stage investors, company builders and Mayfield partners, along with Po Bronson, NYT bestselling author and managing director of IndieBio, will discuss scaling startups and touch upon three seminal areas that influence trajectory: fundraising, hiring and product design. Their insights draw on their experience with companies including ingredients-as-service leader Geltor (which raised a $91 million Series B in 2020); CRISPR platform Mammoth Biosciences (its dream team includes co-founder and Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna); and Endpoint Health (started by GeneWEAVE’s founding team and former YC Bio Partner Diego Rey).
Whether you’re a biotech entrepreneur, a researcher or a scientist tackling the daunting challenges of human and planetary health, this session will help you build a stronger, more successful startup as you take your product to market.
Mayfield will follow up this session with even more content at Disrupt 2021 in September. These sessions will reveal company-building insights from entrepreneurs, investors, industry leaders and policymakers. Mayfield invests in exceptional people whose mission in life is to create a better world — not just for our generation but for future generations as well. If you science, don’t miss your opportunity to learn from leading investors who have partnered with iconic biotech and health IT entrepreneurs — from Amgen and Genentech to Mammoth Biosciences.
Get your ticket for the April TC Early Stage event here. Or get a dual-event ticket for the April and July events for double the knowledge across operations, marketing, recruiting and fundraising — and save up to $100.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Early Stage 2021 — Operations & Fundraising? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
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Bain’s Sarah Smith, former head of HR at Quora, will share the recruiting playbook at Early Stage
If you’re a startup that’s worried about building your team today for tomorrow’s successes you’re not going to want to miss our session with Bain Capital Ventures’ Sarah Smith at TechCrunch Early Stage on April 1 & 2.
The current Bain Capital Ventures partner who invests in early to mid-stage companies saw what it was like to grow a startup business firsthand as the vice president of human resources at Quora, a position she held from 2012 to 2016.
While at Quora, Sarah built the HR and operations teams responsible for company culture, compensation, benefits, equity refreshers, performance reviews, HRIS/ATS implementation, people development, policy enforcement and content moderation.
She scaled the company from 40 to 200 employees across all hiring from university to executive search.
After that, she became the vice president of advertising sales and operations, where she led the launch of monetization and onboarding of more than 500 advertisers to the self-service ads platform.
Smith joins an all-star cast of speakers at Early Stage. They range from Zoom CRO Ryan Azus (“How to build a sales team”) to Calendly founder Tope Awotona (“How to bootstrap”) to Kleiner Perkins’ Bucky Moore (“How to prep for Series A fundraising”), and they are making themselves available to answer your burning questions on just about any topic. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Unlike other TechCrunch events, there is no “main stage” at our TC Early Stage events. Each session is designed to tackle one of the many core competencies any startup needs to be successful. But this isn’t just about listening — every session includes plenty of time built in for audience Q&A. Essentially, it’s all breakout sessions, all day.
What’s more — everyone who buys a ticket to TC Early Stage gets free access to Extra Crunch! Folks who buy a ticket to one of the two events get three months free, and folks who purchase a combination ticket (to both events) get six months free! An Extra Crunch membership includes:
- Weekly investor surveys
- Fundraising, growth, monetization and workforce advice from startup experts
- Market analysis
- Late-stage deep dives
- Access to weekly Extra Crunch Live events
- EC Perks Program (save big $$$ on services and products you already use)
- The TechCrunch List
Of course, TC Early Stage dual event ticket holders will get access to both events (April 1-2 and July 8-9) and have access to all the content that comes out of the event on demand. Plus you can take advantage of additional savings with Early Bird pricing for another couple of weeks!
Mercenary CEOs know all too well that this is about the most bang you can get for your buck. Period.
Check out the full list of speakers here and you can get your ticket now!
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Techstars’ Neal Sáles-Griffin will join us at TechCrunch Early Stage 2021 to talk accelerators
Should you try to get your startup into an accelerator program? How do you make the right impression on the application? Where does your team need to be before you apply — and once you’re in, how do you make the most of your time in the program?
Join us at the TechCrunch Early Stage event in April, where Neal Sáles-Griffin, managing director of Techstars Chicago, will help us figure it all out.
Neal has seen this industry from just about every angle — as a teacher, advisor, investor and repeat co-founder. In 2011 he co-founded what is often referred to as the “first coding bootcamp,” with The Starter League, acquired by New York’s Fullstack Academy in 2016. In addition to leading the way at Techstars Chicago, he is also a venture partner at MATH Venture Partners, an early/middle-stage VC fund.
TC Early Stage — happening April 1 and 2 — is an event that we’ve tailored to be absolutely packed with information for early-stage founders, with key insights from the investors, founders and executives who’ve been through it all before. Day one will cover everything from fundraising, to honing your pitch deck, to finding product-market fit; day two transitions into what we’ve dubbed the TC Early Stage Pitch-Off, where 10 companies will get a shot to pitch an incredible line-up of VC judges.
Oh, and it’s all fully virtual, so you can tune in straight from the comfort of your couch. You can find more details here, or get your tickets directly below.
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VCs are chasing Hopin upwards of $5-6B valuation
Virtual events platform Hopin is hopin’ for a mega valuation.
According to multiple sources who spoke with TechCrunch, the company, which was founded in mid-2019, is running around the fundraise circuit and perhaps nearing the end of a fundraise in which it is looking to raise roughly $400 million at a pre-money valuation of $5 billion for its Series C. The two names out in front, likely part of a joint ticket, are thought to be Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst.
Two sources implied that the valuation could have gone as high as $6 billion, but with greater dilution based on some offered terms the company has received. The deal is in flux, and both the round size and valuation are subject to change.
One source told TechCrunch that the company’s ARR has grown to $60 million, implying a valuation multiple of 80-100x if the valuation we’re hearing pans out. That sort of multiple wouldn’t be out of line with other major fundraises for star companies with SaaS-based business models.
Hopin has been on a fundraise tear in recent months. The company raised $125 million at a $2.125 billion valuation late last year for its Series B, which came just a few months after it raised a Series A of $40 million over the summer and a $6.5 million seed round last winter. All told, the roughly 20-month-old company has raised a known $171.4 million in VC according to Crunchbase.
When we last reported on the company, Hopin’s ARR had gone from $0 to $20 million, while its overall userbase had grown from essentially zero to 3.5 million users in November. The company reported then that it had 50,000 groups using its platform.
Hopin’s platform is designed to translate the in-person events experience into a virtual one, providing tools to recreate the experience of walking exhibition floors, networking one-on-one and spontaneously joining fireside chats and panels. It’s become a darling in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen most business and educational conferences canceled in the midst of mass restrictions on domestic and international travel worldwide.
It’s probably also useful to note that our business team uses Hopin to run all of TechCrunch’s editorial events, including Disrupt, Early Stage, Extra Crunch Live and next week’s TechCrunch Sessions: Justice 2021 event (these software selections and their costs are — thankfully — outside the purview of our editorial team).
Hopin may be the mega-leader of the virtual events space right now, but it isn’t the only startup trying to take on this suddenly vital industry. Run The World raised capital last year, Welcome wants to be the “Ritz-Carlton for event platforms,” Spotify is getting into the business, Clubhouse is arguably a contender here, InEvent raised a seed earlier this month and Hubilo is another entrant, which nabbed a check from Lightspeed a few months ago. Plus, quite literally dozens of other startups have either started in the space or are pivoting toward it.
We have reached out to Hopin for comment.
Post updated to report that Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst are in the lead.
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Join a conversation and AMA with Run The World on virtual events now and post COVID
Join TechCrunch for its first 2021 installment of the Ask Me Anything series, where TechCrunch interviews experts and answers your burning questions about virtual events.
Our first guest is Xiaoyin Qu, co-founder and CEO of Run The World.
Friday, February 26, 1 p.m. PT
Run The World is a one-stop shop virtual events platform with a focus on community engagement. TechCrunch has written about Run The World in the past. It launched in 2019, with backers like Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund, and skyrocketed in popularity when COVID canceled in-person events and created an overwhelming desire for one-on-one connection. Run The World has since grown to 45 employees and has hosted more than 10,000 events, including for TechCrunch.
At this AMA, Xiaoyin and TechCrunch will discuss:
- How COVID changed the virtual event roadmap
- What virtual events look like when in-person events come back
- Lessons learned from managing products at Facebook and Instagram
- What’s next for Run The World
- Audience Q&A
- 1:1 networking using Run The World
Who should attend? Event organizers, event marketers, event sponsors.
It’s free. Register here and submit your questions for Xiaoyin.
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