Clay’s Post

So, today is my new favorite day.” – Winnie the Pooh. 🐻 Greetings Founders & Funders. I wanted to unpack the price of waiting in today's startup ecosystem. As founders, we wait to get customer feedback until the product is perfect. We wait to launch the new features thinking nobody will buy it. We don't send a thank you note within 24 hrs of an investor conversation. 😢 As funders, we don't give feed back (yes or no) fast so founders can get on to the next conversation that gets them to YES. We delay in investing in a company with great traction to see "who else is coming in on the cap table" even when we know this founder is a winner. 😡 Why wait till tomorrow to do ANY of this when we can do it today. Take advantage as time is precious and so are relationships. Don't WAIT till tomorrow when you have all of today to have an impact on your customers, team members and fellow founders. 🎉 Thanks to Winnie to today's inspiration. 🐻 #today #dontwait #founders #funders Click follow to help Steve Walsh Repost to help a friend

Congrats to Angeline Vuong and Jaclyn Johnson on the launch and TechCrunch feature. If anyone is looking for a new way to Angel Invest, check out Cherub!

My key takeaways from interviewing 100 startup investors on The Neon Show: 1. They have an exceptional ability to discover the best founders at the pre-seed and seed stage. 2. They don’t wait for a large target addressable market, they invest while the market is small and is getting built. 3. They don’t wait for traction, they invest before traction. 4. They put a premium on founder time and go where the founders are based. 5. They look for founders who have contrarian insights on how the future looks like. 6. They move super fast and don’t over-negotiate on terms. On the other hand, average investors look for the founders to reach out to them, over-negotiate terms, and miss the best deals. They constantly tell founders that the TAM is too small and have poor understanding that large TAMs are built by founders.

📣 Early-stage founders, January Ventures wants to hear from you! Our friends at January Ventures are building on years of research and kicking off their 5th annual company-building survey to understand what founders are experiencing. They're gathering data about: 📊 What it's like operating in the current environment 🚧 The challenges you're facing 🙌🏽 How the venture community can better support you Help them out by taking the survey here:  https://lnkd.in/gYZ9AtNN

It was a pleasure to interview my Osage University Partners (OUP) team members Manny Stockman and Anurag Agarwal for their thoughts on staffing academic spinouts. My favorite quote from the interview from Manny - "I think we will find in the next decade that there will be passion-driven entrepreneurs who want to work for something that matters. University spinouts should leverage this to attract great people and incentivize them to work there." Read my interview here: https://lnkd.in/e4b9hwU5

Weekend Fund published a well-researched dive into Wiz's market and journey. When I was asked why I invested, for me, it's simple. It's about the people. I look for founders who are high-quality decision-makers, imaginative, and magnets for talent. And uniquely, all four of Wiz’s co-founders, Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, Roy Reznik, and Yinon C., embody these characteristics. Vedika Jain and Ryan Hoover at Weekend Fund did a great job capturing the magic that is Wiz and why my fellow investors and I were so drawn to this team and this opportunity. Take a read, here: https://lnkd.in/eN4W_3HM

It's that time of the year again! The Sales Q4 Chaos is upon us, and offices worldwide are buzzing with activity as teams gear up for the ultimate game. From startups to enterprise giants, everyone is in on the action. As we enter the grand finale of the fiscal calendar, let the frenzied symphony of keystrokes and mouse clicks crescendo. Ready to share your Q4 saga? Please drop a comment, and let's toast to the warriors of the sales floor! 🥂 #SalesHumor #QuarterCloseChaos #BusinessAnalystHumor #EndOfQuarter #SalesStrategy #TeamworkMakesTheDreamWork #CRMAdventures #SalesTargets #NetworkingFun

Check yourself! My number one advice to first time #founders is to be aware of #confirmationbias. It's something most founders fall victim to their first time around (myself included). Imagine this. You have a great idea for the next billion dollar company. It's your brainchild, your baby. You spend a few weeks researching the concept and you're shocked that no one has built a solution like it before. You validate the idea with 20-25 potential buyers and the feedback is positive - you think you're really onto something. You spend the next few months crafting an MVP, building a beautiful product to spec with all the details that you and your prospects talked about. One final code push and you're ready to go to market. You reach back out to the buyers and let them know that you're in business, but for some reason, they shrink away. They string you along for a few weeks and continue to tell you that they're interested, but in the end, no one buys your product (or very few do). And you spend months trying to force a square peg into a round hole before realizing you made a wrong turn. 😰 This is what happened to Doug and myself in 2017 when we were first building Roots (Acquired by Deel). It almost killed our company. ☠ What went wrong? In the step where we were validating our idea with potential buyers, WE WEREN'T LISTENING. 🙉 We were telling people why what we were building was cool. And when they agreed it was cool, we took it as confirmation that a billion dollars was coming our way. But there were negative signals during those calls too, signs that what we were building would not work or that these folks would not buy it no matter how cool it was. In hindsight, these were obvious, but we were blind to them in the moment - confirmation bias had taken its hold. Lucky for us, we took part in the Forum Ventures accelerator program during this process. Through the connections we made and the lessons we learned, we began to recognize both positive AND negative signals during our discovery calls. We finally learned how to listen. With 6 weeks of runway left, we pivoted our product mid-program to something that solved much more urgent pain for our customers (rather than something flashy and cool). And guess what! People bought it. We had a handful of sales in the first few weeks and bootstrapped our way to millions in revenue the next 3 years before eventually getting acquired by Deel in 2021. 🚀 💪 Lesson learned. Check yourself. Be open to the fact that your idea may not be the right idea. And have some good people in your corner like Forum Ventures who can help you recognize your blind spots. To that end, if you or anyone you know is building a company and think an #accelerator might be a good path for you, reach out - we're always making new investments at Forum and I'd be happy to tell you more about my experience in the program. #entrepreneurship #startupadvice #successstories

🚀 As I step into my new role as Vice President of Sales at MetaGrowth Ventures, I'm reminded of this quote by Jordan B. Peterson. Over the years, I've learned that the gap between intention and action can sometimes be vast. At MetaGrowth, we’re committed to narrowing that gap for startups. We don’t just talk about building world-class sales teams; we act on it — 80 sales teams launched, 40,000 applicants processed, and 700 salespeople hired and counting! It’s one thing to articulate your values, but the real testament comes in the tangible steps you take. So, whether you're leading a sales team or any other initiative, remember to measure yourself not just by what you say, but by what you do. #MetaGrowthVentures #SalesLeadership #ActionOverWords #JordanBPeterson #SalesSuccess

Honestly, I couldn't be more grateful and proud of my team and the journey Faddom is rapidly sailing towards. Especially now, during these incredibly challenging times, this achievement feels even more significant. Being able to share some positive news is a great privilege, and I am truly honored that we have the opportunity to make it happen. TechCrunch | NFX & Viola Ventures "Faddom raises $12M to help companies map IT infrastructure wherever it lives." Now, let's make some big waves and turn this ship into a rocketship 👨🚀 Link in the first comment