Mishti Sharma

NY Climate Tech Founders! 1) YES PLEASE save the date to join us at #techweek (6/3!), and 2) YES PLEASE share your top NY resources to complete our NY INSIDER GUIDE, in collab with NYCEDC!

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Next week is NY Tech Week, and on Wednesday, I'll be co-hosting TechWalk at 2 PM in Central Park. More details here: https://lnkd.in/eFey-aBd I look forward to connecting and chatting about the dynamic world of early-stage startup investing, go-to-market strategies, and the venture capital ecosystem. As a Venture Fellow at Fordham Angel Fund (FAF), I bring hands-on experience evaluating startups, conducting market analysis, and developing go-to-market strategies. Let's discuss founder due diligence, growth hacking techniques, and the nuances of crafting effective term sheets. I'm also passionate about discussing programs like Vencapital and Venture Cooperative that support minorities and women breaking into VC. Additionally, I'd love to share insights on content creation and storytelling from my experience hosting a YouTube podcast. If you're interested in personal branding, networking, or leveraging LinkedIn for career growth, let's connect! Join me for a walk and chat about the global business landscape, embracing diversity, and adapting to new environments. See you there! #NYTechWeek #TechWalk #Startups #VentureCapital #ContentCreation #PersonalBranding #Networking #GlobalBusiness #DiversityInVC

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Over the years I’ve seen the post going around in various forms of how Bessemer Venture Partners keeps a *robust* anti-portfolio on their website. It’s fun, self-aware, humbling, and differentiating. If you haven’t already, go have a look. (As an aside, I’ve been to their offices in Cambridge multiple times back in the day while visiting Kent Bennett, the venerable Felda Hardymon, my dear friend Steve Papa (if Steve was capable of “friendship”), and the young(er) founders of a company called Toast - Bessemer wallpapered their bathrooms with the rejection IRMs of said anti-portfolio). Anyone who has been in the game long enough probably has their own version. Companies they could have invested in, but passed on, only to be made a fool when said company later becomes a decacorn. My personal opinion - and I tend to think one that Bessemer shares - is 1) we all make mistakes, 2) we’re human and at times quite dumb, and 3) hell, at least we had access in the first place. Venture investing is about seeing as many amazing opportunities as you can, even if sometimes that means missing a few…dozen. Either that or I’m totally full of shit and we’re just plain idiots. What do I know. I’ve only been doing this for three years. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In any case, in the spirit of giving myself a Father’s Day gift of crow, which I plan to eat, here are some of mine: Toast: not sure if Steve P would have let me into his $4M or whatever it was round never mind the Seed or the A, but I feel like I could have convinced them. Steve F and Aman said they were going to fully rebuild a POS after running into integration nightmares with Micros, Aloha, et al, and I thought they were crazy. Old industry incumbents. Entrenched. Insert foot in mouth, and then pull it out and use it to kick my own ass. Klaviyo: TJ Mahoney was a pre-seed investor and he told me about it. Said AB was a stud. I passed without even talking to them. $8M valuation or around there I think. Shopify ecosystem play? Ew. Sigh. I’m a dumbass. Pillpack: mentored TJ a bit early when he was having some team stuff going on at Techstars. The hippie. $4M post or something. Said no. Whoops. Drizly: Nick Rellas kept stonewalling me, the little twerp, but pretty sure I had a small spot. Pat Kinsel would have got me in. Slept on it. Round closed. I’m an idiot. Draftkings: met Jason at a dinner and Ryan Moore told me to hop in at pre-seed - I already had a small play with a competitor. Jason and I became great friends (which we are to this day). Really knocked that one out of the park. Way to go, Phil! Good eye! Anyway, PLENTY more where that came from and I’m sure I’m currently in the process of creating one of the world’s most epic anti-portfolios at Impellent Ventures. But, again, c’est la vie. Better than sitting on the sidelines and wondering what could have been. At least I know what could have been - a gazillion more dollars than I have right now. Ah well. Batter up! *p.s. I’ve had some winners, too ;)

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Ep. 007 of The Feedback Loop is here! It's the first half of startup pitches from New York Tech Week, and from an almost-all-AI batch of companies. Joining me on this episode: returning fan-favorite, Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures! For those not familiar, every week, a guest venture investor joins me to give granular and unfiltered feedback to founders on their storytelling and their concept. It's all about helping founders construct a better narrative for their move-forward -- because across fundraising, sales, recruiting, and company-building, it's the core narrative and pitch that can often hold startups back. And Jenny currently holds the tenure jacket as my guest co-host, with this being her 4th time on stage delivering quick insights and context you just can't find anywhere else. Massive shout-out to the founders featured: Matt Shenker building MatterMore, Karl White building Wroom, Trista V. building Nunchi, and Jeremy Da building Acrylic! Relevant links below.

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Excerpt from my new piece that is dropping tomorrow on my recently launched substack. In my new weekly series "Noteworthy things for founders" I will recommend one tool, mention one startup to watch, and link one piece of content that I adore. The startup to watch this week is Synonym co-founded by the magnificient Edward Shenderovich. The series (and more) can be found here: mikemahlkow.com

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Let the wave begin! Pioneer Fund company Recall.ai *grew their revenue 10x* in the past year, has 300 enterprise customers, and just raised a $10M Series A led by Ridge Ventures. David Gu and Amanda Zhu dropped out of college at age 19 to start the company. They've grown it exponentially with a tiny team. They make it easy to build meeting bots that are cross-platform. They're aggregating all these different APIs into one unified API, the way Twilio did with cell phones. At first it "sounds" easy to build a meeting bot -- just integrate with the Zoom API. But in fact there's a huge long tail of things you need to build, security and privacy pitfalls, automations, transcription complexities, integrations, the calendar invites where someone is using Google Meet or Teams, staying up-to-date with the libraries, etc etc. Recall takes care of all of that. It's WAY easier to build on top of Recall.ai and focus on the features that make you unique. Congratulations to the Recall team!

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In the past week we’ve made a whopping $0 at Venture House…and I couldn’t be happier. We’re doing things a bit differently and thought I’d clarify our approach: We started Venture House as a go-to resource and community for rising VCs. Every piece of content is free. Memberships are free. The events we host are free. Yet, every conversation inevitably ends with… “So how are you monetizing this?” Classic venture response to any idea 😂 but that’s the problem. Venture House ISN’T a traditional business. We don’t measure ourselves on MRR, CAC, LTV, pipeline, etc. Our North Star metrics is simply: Did we add value today? Is this sustainable? Heck no. But the people we meet, the connections we make, and the value we add is immeasurable. Cold hard cash is great, but sometimes it’s not the end goal. (With this all said I’m accepting Venmo payments to fund my lavish East Village lifestyle) #venturecapital #community #startups #founders

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🚨 Announcing the 2nd cohort of the FundraisingHackers.com “Seed+ bootcamp” we’re hosting together with Slava Solonitsyn (ex-VC and top YC founder, $180M+ raised), read below. A few weeks ago we ended the 1st cohort and it truly was a blast 🎇 14 startups across Seed, Seed+/Series A stages (and US/Europe/Asia) participated, including YC alums and exited founders. A bunch of them have already successfully raised. Some are in the process right now. Some have postponed their raise saving them a bunch of time/nerves not spent on failed fundraising. This pic is from the final workshop we’ve hosted. If you’re fundraising (or planning to in the next 3-6 months) you defo wanna check this out. This is not a course — we’ve already outsourced our “parallel fundraising playbook” (comment with “playbook” if you want the link). Instead, we provide you with a deep dive into YC-style best fundraising practices and give you a supportive environment to go and raise, period: 1. Share the “off the record” ins and outs of the parallel fundraising playbook with real-life examples/stories we’re never going to share anywhere else publicly 2. Help you understand your momentum and fundraising timeline so as not to make the wrong (too early/too late) decision 3. Provide you with an accountability group of peer founders (your first taskforce members if you don’t have any yet!) 4. Help you to refine your story/narrative and pitch materials to meet the expectations of top VCs 5. Work through your challenges/questions during office hours/group workshops 6. Give you access to our exclusive FundraisingHackers.com workspace with tons of useful content: from investor databases to guides, tools, templates, and much more Places are limited and you can get in on a first come first serve basis, so hurry up and apply, link is in the comments.

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Building early stage startup momentum? Make sure your speed-to-help is measured in minutes. In today’s environment, you can’t wait days for help. You have to get unstuck fast. With timely advice, execution quickens. Thats the power of a safe-space community that’s built on ‘giving’. It’s our foundational value. You should give what we are building a try.  Zero risk.   DM me to learn more. We’re happy to tee up a call. Happy Wednesday, ya’ll. ———— Please consider ♻️ with founders in your network. As early stage founders, we at times, are a problem away from sinking or propelling forward.

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I was a top donor to Mark Zuckerberg’s piggy bank for 4 years. On Wiza's 5th birthday everything changed. 9/10 SaaS founders will say facebook ads are a waste of money, and they’re right. But the truth is, we didn’t stop spending on Facebook. In fact, we are spending 4x more. The only difference is, now I am also contributing to my own piggy bank. But how did we get here? This path wasn’t clear from the beginning; I was HYPER skeptical But looking back on the last 6 months, I connected the dots. Here’s the 3 things we did to; • Increase SQL’s by 620% • Decrease our CAC payback by 30% • Increase our conversion rate of free-trial signups by 22% Focused on creative more than tactics We decided to obsess about our ad creative. For months I would scroll through Foreplay.co every morning and every night. This triggered an impactful chain reaction. We had more ad ideas then we could execute on, backed by performance metrics. We went from testing 3-5 new ads a month to 10-20 new ads a week. (Throwing sh*t at the wall is where the froth is - but we didn’t have ideas) “Optimized” our Mobile Funnel 99% of the Facebook ad inventory is on mobile … you can’t really use our product on mobile and you still can’t. The simple fix wasn’t to build a mobile app - no one does real prospecting from their iPhone. We simply communicated and managed expectations through the signup flow. We also added a specific email to our welcome series for those who signed up on mobile. And most importantly… Hired a captain to steer the ship. 6 months ago Michael Kilcullen joined our team as a VP of marketing. Looking back on past failures many of them come back to focus and attention. We used to sling, spray and pray. Now with someone at the helm we are getting better every day - not simply making mistakes but learning from them and turning the learnings into action. That’s about it, we turned our Zuck Tax into an investment with a healthy payback. I hope you can do the same.

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🔥Tune In to the Latest Fireside Chat with a VC in Healthech🔥 What percentage of VCs are former founders? 30% maybe more? I'd think a fair amount, yet how *exactly* does that transition happen and what perspectives change *radically* afterwards? Sigvards Krongorns shared exactly that - his journey from PwC consultant to Healtech founder, to a VC shaping the future of Healthtech startups. What we talked about: ✨ Sigvards' transition from a PwC consultant to founder to a VC ✨ What steps are necessary to bring innovative medical devices from concept to market ✨ How being a founder can prepare you for a role in venture capital ✨ What strategies help navigate the regulatory landscape in healthtech startups ✨ The right way to engage with VCs for startup funding ✨ What future trends in venture capital and Healthtech look like #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation #StartupJourney #HealthcareInnovation #Entrepreneurship #FiresideChat #VentureCapitalInsights Full conversation can be found here:

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Going from Zero to Product Market Fit is like getting out of a Bermuda Triangle For every direction that works out, an equal and opposite direction works too It is shocking how few get to product market fit Only 15 out of 100 SaaS companies get to a million dollars in revenue When you have PMF, it is an awesome feeling Everything is going smoothly for you It also feels scary and out of control You push one unit, and ten units of progress happen But when you don’t have it…. You push ten units of effort, and not even a unit of progress happens It feels like a Sisyphean punishment Moving a boulder up the mountain In the GenAI age, I hear arguments that go “The focus should be on the core functionality. Like how musicians concentrate on the music itself” This is clearly a faulty analogy Businesses providing playback formats (cassette tapes, CDs) are obsolete today Gen AI brings AI below the API No more does one need to stand up a team in ML Spend a few million dollars to “translate languages” or “transcribe accurately” GenAI now assures that Getting to PMF boils down to the basics - Do you understand the problem deeply - Can you build a 10x better solution - Can you execute & iterate faster - Don’t die in the process (cash) What has worked for you to get out of the Bermuda triangle?

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When you're not in the board room, you're always wondering, "What's going on in there?". I have now worked with seven companies where I'd regularly present to a board, a mixture of PE and VC-led, and it's almost always centered around a few key topics. If you're meeting your numbers: - what's your future forecast  - how are you going to continue to grow - how will you grow faster and more efficient  - update on money in the bank and spend If you're not meeting your numbers (along with the things I mentioned above): - what is your plan to turn things around and meet your numbers (this includes new logo, back-to-base sales, and churn reduction) - what resources can they offer to help - do you have the right players in the right seat This is an oversimplification because many nuances are at play, but this is generally it. While board meetings can be stressful, almost every board I've worked with wants to be helpful. Of course, their interest is, first and foremost, that the business is healthy and growing, so there's always that undertone, but overall, they want to help. After all, they are guardians of the investments they make on behalf of others and have to report back on their performance. Think of them like they are CSMs for their investors (the folks that give them money). They need to get a great return on the investment they made on their behalf.

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A great The Angel Nest Podcast episode recorded yesterday with Thomas Wisniewski of newark venture partners! Really insightful conversation around trends in Seed stage investing, how metrics matter in communicating traction, and important aspects of financial modeling for early stage startups. Many thanks for your time Tom and thanks David Hemenway as always for hosting. Look out for the release of the episode soon! #angelinvesting #seedstage #startups #financialmodeling #venturecapital #startups

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❓❓❓ The biggest question in building tech startups is 👉 whether the founders must be coders to build a successful VC-backable biz? 💯 In our latest episode of the Close Call Show, Jade Cohen, the co-founder of Qualis Flow (Qflow) and I had an in-depth conversation where she shared several tips on: 1️⃣ . What proof points to show VCs when fundraising as non-coding founders 2️⃣ . During early days - how do you know what good looks like, esp for your customers --> this leads to setting up your North Star Metric 🚀 . 3️⃣ . How to focus on the most important thing amongst noise from the ecosystem Listen to the episode on Apple / Spotify podcasts. link in the first comment ✅ Want to be on the podcast? Fill this form: https://lnkd.in/gYTZRKQm #podcast #womeninpodcast #vc #femalefounder #seriesA #Climate

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Early-stage startup founders often have to deliver (and receive) incredibly difficult feedback with grace. Especially if they or someone isn't performing to the standard their company needs. While there is much written out there on delivering (and taking) feedback, my experience is the founders who do it best have a more implicit, functional, and humanE belief system that enables this: >> They Distinguish ‘Behavior’ from ‘Self’ << They don't presuppose an inherent flaw in their being or another being. For example, they don't judge someone as 'being' a terrible salesmen or saleswomen — only people who don’t possess the behavioral capabilities to perform well in a specific sales context. Imagine a man cuts you off as you drive on the road, nearly causing a traffic accident. Later, you find out that man was rushing home because his young son is ill and going into shock. It is difficult to conclude what sort of man he is based on his behavior alone. #feedback #founders #startups

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Over the past 15 years there's been an alarming trend in VC's and accelerator leaders having little or no operating experience. Why? Probably ZIRP and negligence on the part of LP's. Think about the top performing VC firms and accelerators. Who's running them? It's operators with at least a few startups under their belt. Operators that have done hard things, not just observed them. If you were having brain surgery next week, do you want a surgeon with 25 years experience, or someone that's watched a bunch of Youtube videos? If you're considering taking investment or joining an accelerator, it's worth an honest appraisal of who you'll be working with.

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Just shipped this week's Diaspora.nz podcast with Paul Copplestone, founder & CEO at Supabase. We talk about: ⚡️why open source is an unfair advantage — as a product development strategy, supercharging recruiting, and helping build customer community. ⚡️how they are building the end-to-end tech stack for AI startups — seeing many customers grow into the millions of users in just weeks, growing to be one of the most tagged products by makers on Product Hunt + most redeemed Y Combinator “perks.” ⚡️raising $116M, and scaling to ~80 people in 30+ countries over the past 4.5 years, operating as a distributed + asynchronous team. ⚡️building three startups over nearly a decade living in South East Asia. Subscribe + listen links in comments below👇 Subscribe at diaspora.nz for weekly episodes 🎧👈

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From what I’ve observed over the last 6 years and > 30 investments is that The best founders… A) progress and iterate with the highest velocity and, B) They nurture as many strategically aligned people as possible along the entire journey

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