Henry Davis

Learn a bit more about our DNA and how we operate at Acurio Ventures from Kate Cornell

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I love this! Thank you to Rachel Brown from Beauty Independent to kick-off this exchange with Andrew Ross' provocative thesis and have us all react to it. I truly enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts on the topic of the shortening lifecycle of beauty brands. Here is a snippet of mine: "Because beauty brand lifespans are shortening, it is important that we are able to differentiate brands with staying power from brands that will end up being a flash in the pan. There are much more of the latter than the former in the market right now, and if a brand is not well-positioned, it will be challenging for that brand to survive over the long-term. That’s why we focus on understanding each brand’s differentiators and long-term relevance." See more here: https://lnkd.in/esVbwnu2 and you will discover what Kevin Murphy, Odile Roujol, Rich Gersten, Tina Henry Bou-Saba, Oliver Nordlinger, Claire Chang, Manica Blain, Sonya Brown, George Birman had to say. #beautyindustry #beautyinvesting Stride Consumer Partners

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Worth checking out for any companies at the right stage.

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After the first deep dive discussion w/ founders I often hear a comment "I wish I had heard about this alternative [to all-in must-become-a-unicorn] way to build a startup earlier as I have wasted years in pursuing the wrong thing". Our mission is that no founder would ever need to say that again as it is such a waste. Us preaching the gospel 1:1 just doesn't scale, hence we use mass media to multiply our efforts - that's how Gorillacast came to be. The 1st episode is out, featuring yours truly. "How can you know what food you like unless you taste everything" said a chef. How can founders make informed choices about the best strategy for them to follow unless they know of all alternatives? This might not be of interest to you but pls spread the word so that the founders who should hear it can find it. I have a dream!

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Great time on the Embracing Erosion podcast w/Devon O'Rourke! We talked about: 🚀 How to scale a company from concept to 9-figure exit 🔄 How to break away from the traditional consulting model and apply product approaches ⏩ Why it’s important to iterate quickly and often with messaging 💸📈What signals are important to pay attention to when investing in startups and much more!

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Wei D. (Founder and CEO of unicorn Clipboard Health) dropped some major 💎 gems of wisdom during her fireside chat with PearX founders at Pear VC SF Studio yesterday. These really resonated: 💎 PMF isn't something you achieve once - staying relevant to your market is an ongoing pursuit 💯 (Wei shared that to date she still LOVES talking with customers and - even at 1000+ employees and with all the success already achieved - she continues to chase unlocks for the business and recently obtained her nursing assistant certification in order to stay close to users and unlock new insights with them 🥇) 💎 If you're scared of sales, don't think of it as sales -- you're just talking to someone who you're trying to help. Approach your customers with care and listen to them as you would a friend. The moment it's an actual conversation with a friend, that's probably where you're going to get your first sale. If it feels "salesy" you're probably not doing it the right way. 🤝 💎 Do whatever it takes to get in front of your customers! (For Wei this meant driving around at 8 months pregnant and walking up to DMs at nursing homes!) 🚗 💎 The users you speak with in your market will give you the key jargon you need to use to speak back to your market. Listen intently and adopt their language! 🗣 💎 There is little you decide that can't be undone. Be smart, make calculated decisions, but don't overthink things --- err on the side of action and quick decision making. 🏃‍♀️ 💎 Iterate until your users feel passionately about what you're doing (ie. they get angry when the product is down or doesn't work). You want your users to care A LOT about the problem you're solving. 😡 Wei's resilience, grit and work ethic are off the charts. What an inspiration! 👏 #femalefounders #inspiration #techfounder #unicornfounder #hero

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Pitched to 60+ VC partners & principals Key Takeaways 👇 - At pre-seed stage the team is critical. This means you 100% need a stellar CTO. Don’t even think of raising without a CTO - If you don’t fit a certain bias, your expectations have just doubled. So having more is always better. More customers, more traction, more validation! - ALWAYS get warm intros to investors. Rely on your network. Go build one bcz cold pitching never works! - Lastly be prepared to fail. Markets are brutal right now. Have a backup plan! #startups #founders #fundraising

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Ever since we launched SHAKTI, every quarter we write a letter to our LPs = Each letter includes an update on the portfolios, the GP's (our) view on the zeitgeist, an interview with a portfolio CEO and an interview with a TITAN = So far, we have 16 such letters = it's been on our "to do" list to share these publicly (i am lazy) = then Google comes along to save lazy people like me (thank you NotebookLLM) = here's a 10 min podcast summarizing our journey since Dec/2020 with the 16 LP letters as source = if you wanted to know what we are about, this is a pretty good place to start = https://lnkd.in/db7K2TrT cc SHAKTI

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