Randal B.’s Post

If You Don't Make Bold Bets, You're on Your Way to Obsolescence. Eric Poirier, CEO of Addepar, speaks from first-hand experience. Today Addepar has $5 trillion in client assets managed on its platform across 45 countries, and it tracks 250,000 unique LP interests related to private investments... but they weren't always this big. They got here by making bold technology bets early on in the company's journey. Mitigating short-term risks may feel safer, but bold moves are needed to stay competitive for the long run. Entrepreneurs should prioritize ambitious moves or face obsolescence quite quickly. Full Fintech Leaders episode ⤵⤵⤵ Substack: https://bit.ly/48TXDVX   Spotify: https://bit.ly/3IzaNwY Apple: https://bit.ly/48TNl8h

What Do Investors Want? This is the question every entrepreneur needs the answer to. In under 13 minutes today, you can find out. Your Mentor Moment today is with Marc McCabe. Marc was one of the first employees at Airbnb & now runs Nomad Capital, a seed-stage fund investing in early-stage B2B software and marketplaces. Listen Now Spotify: https://bit.ly/49rcXdV Apple: https://apple.co/3TdvbK4

For your commute - this is a stimulating & inspiring podcast! It’s about Neil’s approach to investing. The ingredients, mind-set and skills involved in a start-up. Who to listen to and who not to! Talking about failure and when time’s up. Having curiosity & creativity, but balancing the risk. And … at the end of the day it’s a people business, it’s important to look beyond the bottom line and tech. Brilliant!

Some Monday Founder Musings - During Y Combinator, Dalton Caldwell shared with us that we should think about being a startup founder as playing a series of mini games. Each mini game would lead you to a next game and level that requires completely different skills. Over the years I’ve appreciated how true this analogy is multiple times. I loved hearing Larry Liu version of this in a recent How I Built This with Guy Raz episode about Weee! Where he described the experience of growing his company as starting as a regional basketball team and then growing to college level and then NBA - where as you get better and raise your game, it also gets harder because you’re competing against stronger players. It’s a good reminder as a startup founder - and for so many things in life (including parenting) - that while you strive for the next level, it’s also important to appreciate the one you’re currently in. It’s easy to feel like “things would be so much easier if only I could get here or there” - but each new level brings new challenges too. Today I’m feeling grateful for my amazing team, the close relationship I’m able to have with our customers, how confident I feel about our product and the problems we’re solving and the “luck or fate or destiny” as Larry put it, that brought us all together. Curious to hear from other founders - what’s surprised you about moving to a new “level” and how did you manage it? 

"There will always be cohorts of users shouting for a new product feature, but most often this totally derails product-market fit." 👀 For episode 4 of Now We Build by Forward Pursuit, I sat down with Matthew Ford, exited founder of Pariti and now the founder of Sidekick, who shared his insights on everything product and the future of fintech. In this episode we covered: 👉🏽 How to align product and marketing teams to accelerate user growth. 👉🏽 Product-market fit is a combination of intuition and feeling the pull from customers. Losing product-market fit requires adjusting product and growth strategies, and understanding the difference between what customers think they want and what they actually need. 👉🏽 The tools and strategies Matt has used to validate the opportunity for Sidekick and what he's prioritising now that he's building his second start-up. The episode is now live and you’ll find the links in the comments below 👇🏽 Proudly supported by Carta, Google Cloud, Fuelled and Seven Legal. #founders #investment #fintech #startup

Building companies is HARD. Nothing ever goes according to plan. It's always two steps forward and one step back... but over time, you can build something huge and beautiful. I loved this insight from my interview with PayJoy CEO/Co-founder, Doug Ricket. It took them 5 years to get to $10 million in annual revenue, and 4 years to get to $300 million in annual revenue. Where will they be in a few years?? This example shows the absolute amazing power of compounding. "When we were starting, we built financial models that showed everything up into the right. I'm sure every startup does that in year one. None of them came true the way we modeled them. But somehow, year by year, two steps forward, one step back; 10 steps forward, two steps back up. It's not a smooth curve, but we got so much farther than we had any right to believe that we could get to." Links to full Fintech Leaders episode ⤵⤵⤵ Substack: https://bit.ly/3yaVdWp   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3QyrdKi Apple: https://apple.co/3JRliMI Youtube: https://lnkd.in/dUg_dFHb

E136 of the Boardroom Governance Podcast is out featuring Greg Gretsch, Managing Director of Jackson Square Ventures, an early-stage VC firm based in San Francisco.   We discuss his entrepreneurial journey in Silicon Valley, both as a founder and an investor. We also explore power dynamics in founder-investor relationships, shifting governance norms (including distinctions between VC, PE, and public companies), and how equity comp in tech companies has evolved in the last 25 years.   We talk about the evolution of private markets including liquidity alternatives from secondary markets, plus the rise of AI as a new technology platform shift.   In addition, we address his investment in Cornershop by Uber, a leading online grocery provider focused originally on Latin America. Check out the full episode in any of the following links: • Website (including show notes): https://lnkd.in/g_yYXsPB • Apple: https://lnkd.in/gJjHZVtH  • Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gXHjqjDt • Google: https://lnkd.in/dj77i-NU • Amazon: https://lnkd.in/g6TP4vVa If you like this show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing this podcast on social media. You can also contribute as a Patron at the link https://lnkd.in/gawDQf4A or you can subscribe to the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at evanepstein.substack.com #startups #VC #IPOs #SiliconValley #corpgov #boards

Was out having a coffee this morning, discussing the state of the industry and other factors driving disruption right now and I had a few thoughts, I also remembered and re-read the article below I'm going to share for others who missed it. My thoughts that aren't covered by the article, is in regards to the distruption in risk-to-reward ratios that publishers are seeking now. When you see tiny teams, single digit teams making games like 'Leathal Company', 'Content Warning' and 'Manor Lords' etc. you wonder why invest in larger teams with higher production values at considerable cost? These brilliant, I'll say it genius games, scrappy and low-fi games are disrupting expectations. They're doing wonderful things, bringing innovation and freshness but there is a cost, and its being felt across the industry with more established teams who employ devs with families and mortgages who struggle to sustain them ongoing. I'm all for disruption and shake-ups, corrections are normal and should be expected too. But unrealistic expectations can be dangerous when they start to compound with survivor bias stories, fed by the few very successful breakouts and self fullfilling consequences. When investors pull back and sit on the side lines, plenty of great games and strong teams who would otherwise have found some middiling success or a chance at strong success are doomed to fail before they start. Keen to hear more thoughts from others. Another coffee I had with a tv producer, mentioned a similar phenonmenon going on over there right now. Games aren't unique in the current "creative crisis". https://lnkd.in/gaxnzU9Z

"Wecrashed" is a fascinating exploration into the meteoric rise and dramatic fall of WeWork, one of the most buzzworthy startups of the past decade. This story is not just a tale of a company's financial ebbs and flows; it's a riveting narrative about ambition, innovation, and the pitfalls of unchecked growth. As such, it serves as an invaluable case study for anyone involved in the startup ecosystem. https://lnkd.in/d5PE9Z2N

Take a trip down memory lane and revisit the rise and fall of #Blockbuster, the once-iconic #video rental chain! Our latest article explores what entrepreneurs can learn from its mistakes and how to stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing market. Read now and discover the importance of innovation and adaptation in business #Netflix #Streaming #BusinessModel #Entrepreneurship #AI #AIArt #AIExplains https://zurl.co/TLqQ