Gregg Brockway

At Forum we look at thousands of deals each year across our Accelerator and Pre-Seed funds but only end up investing in a little over 1% of those startups.  As an early stage VC, I am in the business of saying no to nearly every startup I meet, and while there is nuanced rationale for many of the startups I pass on, a vast majority of businesses that don’t meet the qualification to get funded typically fall into one of two buckets. ▪ First time founders have a tendency to go out to market too early to raise pre-seed capital ▪   I’m sure most founders have heard some iteration of this from VCs that ultimately pass on their business.  In some cases it's a blanket excuse covering up for other pass reasons- perhaps a VC doesn’t believe in a team or isn’t bullish on the market opportunity - but in many cases founders simply haven't proven enough to the market to warrant an investment. I meet many teams with an articulate vision for the product that they want to build, but they either haven't performed enough customer discovery to prove demand for their initial wedge product, or need to raise pre-seed capital to build out an MVP.  In those cases, pre-seed investors are unwilling to underwrite those risks.  To be default fundable, teams need to be able to keep costs low, perform extensive customer discovery, and ship some version of an early product - pilots and early paid customers are key. A huge piece of this is having founding engineering talent on the team. ▪Not every startup is a venture opportunity ▪ By definition, a venture backed business is solving a problem within a market opportunity so massive and so desperately needed, that its growth rate is off the charts.   It spreads like a weed, absorbing almost unlimited amounts of capital to fulfill demand within its customer base.   Each year there are maybe 20 companies launched that ultimately have venture scale outcomes. The bar to reach this rarified air is unfathomably high and the reality is the vast majority of founders simply aren’t building for opportunities that have the potential to be one of these generational companies. Many startup founders view VC as the only viable option for capitalizing their business, but not every great business is a venture business, and most successful founders never take VC dollars.  In order to reach an IPO/acquisition large enough to generate venture returns, a startup needs a credible path to $100s of millions in revenue. This is the standard by which early stage opportunities are evaluated. The flip side to this, and I share this feedback often with founders I meet that are building interesting business in non venture markets, if you are able to scale to $10- $20M in revenue that can be a massively successful outcome for a founder.  There are investors who focus on these type outcomes, namely lower middle market PE shops, and the typical path to those deals is a bootstrapped business or a friends/family capital raise.

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Today, GTMfund’s is excited to announce to launch of Operator, its first incubated company. Max Altschuler (founder of GTMfund) teamed up with co-founder Adam M. (design engineer and 0-1 builder) and co-founder Mark Kosoglow (Outreach employee #1 and former SVP of Global Sales) to create Operator.ai alongside an insanely talented team Pleasant Middelhof, Jeremy Jonas, Carl Gunderson. We've entered a period called “The Great Ignore”. Spam and irrelevant, poorly-automated outbound campaigns are running rampant.   Operator gives you an easy-to-use Growth Engineer that allows you to build and enrich lists with accurate data, and run experiments and queries using AI to generate highly targeted outreach.    Check out their website to get updates, early access, and see how they are taking the world back to 2 touches meant to attract buyers into conversations that convert, instead of 20 touches meant to make sure you hit your activity number: https://www.operator.ai/

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Big announcement below! 👇 Let's talk about the current state of GP-LP affairs: 🤯Emerging VC managers have absolutely exploded over the past 5 years. 📈 At the same time, more and more data has surfaced that shows that emerging VC firms tend to outperform larger, established firms. 🤔 All of this has made it intriguing but tough for LPs to know where to direct their attention. 🛍 GPs frequently meet LPs at conferences who are window shopping but not committed to the asset class or emerging managers. 🧾 And both crews get overwhelmed by transactional convos. So Sydney Paige Thomas and I created Abundance. Abundance is a private, nomination-based retreat for active LPs and top emerging GPs to form new experiences together and build lasting relationships. Why Abundance? Abundance is knowing that there is more than enough for more than one to succeed. And a single win within a community is a win for the community itself. The journey of an emerging VC manager from 1st close to final close or Fund 1 to Fund 2 is (1) communal and (2) requires an abundant mindset. LPs look for structure and confidence to feel comfortable investing in early VC firms. Yet many of the feeds we scroll and conferences we attend reinforce inherent power dynamics and transactional thinking, which allows scarcity mindset to creep in for emerging GPs. Some of the best events I’ve attended have been intentionally non-transactional, e.g. Camp Hustle, Recast Summit, and other GPs’ AGMs. The fundraising success stories we see usually involve a community (usually of other GPs & LPs) coming together to support and open doors for the emerging GP. We designed Abundance to be an immersive gathering that fosters these connections. Starting tonight, ~100 GPs and LPs are descending upon Seattle for the inaugural Abundance retreat. This has been under wraps for months and I can’t wait to see it come to life! Thanks in advance to our awesome sponsors who were the earliest believers in this vision: Sydecar, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Gunderson Dettmer, & Zelda Ventures. And shoutout to my dad Ed Illig for logo design & Halle Kaplan-Allen being the first sponsor to say yes 🤩 Presented by The Council Capital & Symphonic Capital.

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Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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🎙️ Exciting insights from SaaS Academy's CEO Johnny Page on the Expertise Economy podcast! Johnny breaks down their two-step approach to helping SaaS founders: 1️⃣ The Discovery Call: Uncovering the founder's "why" and long-term vision 2️⃣ The Strategic Game Plan Session: Creating a 90-day action plan to achieve 12-month goals 🔑 Key focus: Identifying and solving business constraints Want to dive deeper on the secrets of building a successful SaaS business? Check out the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/dju-Be2u #SaaS #BusinessStrategy #SaasAcademy #ExpertiseEconomy #Podcast

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Loved getting the chance to sit down and catch up with Katherine D'Zmura Friedman, CEO of Thumbprint Furniture. They’re creating a design tool for the commercial furniture industry that engages interior design teams and furniture manufacturers. Time to augment some more clunky processes with technology (and by default, yes, AI). 🕰️🛋️🪑🏭🏢 Watch the video and learn more below!

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

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I’m so excited to announce the new name of the vetted community for startup founders I'm building: Village Lane Village Lane connects ambitious early-stage startup founders, both in-person and online, who have at least $100k in ARR or $250k in funding. The name Village Lane is deeply personal to me... It's the street I lived on after business school, in an apartment with my friend Andrew - the kindest, most welcoming, supportive person I’ve ever met, who sadly passed away suddenly a few weeks ago at only 31 years old. It’s also the place where I went full-time on Just Go Grind for the first time when it was a daily podcast and then joined VITALIZE Venture Capital. It was a special time and place and where I took a giant leap in my career. I envision Village Lane (the community) being similar - a special place filled with kind, supportive members looking to take a giant step forward with their businesses. Several experiences have led to the creation of Village Lane: - A transformative MBA experience at USC - Working at VITALIZE Venture Capital for 2.5 years - Growing my social media audience to 40,000+ followers - Building this newsletter to 21,000+ subscribers - Hosting 400+ podcast interviews with founders & investors - Creating an angel investing community with hundreds of members Now I'm focused on helping founders connect, build their personal brand, and create more successful businesses. Village Lane's in-person events will include things like: - Co-working - Social activities - AMAs - Retreats The online component of Village Lane will include: - A member directory - Slack group - Vendor suggestions - Tech stacks - An investor database - Media exposure and amplification - Personal branding assistance We'll also phase in monthly digital peer groups as membership grows. This will all be built around our members and their needs. I’ll share more details as this evolves. Interested in joining? Learn more and apply below.

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Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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Triangle startup ecosystem - first thanks for the incredible generosity that you showed over the last 2wks to help folks impacted by Helene. Here's a last update on our Hurricane Helene relief efforts with a final 'how can you help' ask. The TL;DR - our nascent effort has matured and morphed into the WCEN. The most urgent need has moved from supplies to funding the teams out on the ground that need specialty items like gas, oxygen tanks, starlinks, etc. There's a gofundme, this is a certified 501(c)(3) here-> https://lnkd.in/e4NdxuW8 What is the WCEN you ask?!.... o There were several operating groups that were able to grassroots consolidate efforts under the Western Carolina Emergency Network (WCEN) umbrella and they have a website up that is improving every day: https://lnkd.in/ePYP6_JJ o WCEN's goal is to provide services to survivors until temporary infrastructure can be re-built. There are over 1m people in Western NC without shelter and basic necessities. o WCEN is providing: -> Reconnaissance -> Search + Rescue ( + Recovery) -> Rapid Supply Response / Air Support -> Medical Care o WCEN has these network partners: -> Operation Airdrop Inc- Air support including planes and helicopters -> Carolina Calvary - Coordinator for Operation Airdrop -> Razor Nation - ATV support -> Restoration Church @restoration church - Josh Brown and Ryan Honeycutt- supply collection sites and delivery -> Apex Defense - Search and Rescue, Security -> Lincoln County Airport - Pilot coordinator -> AJ - Heavy Lift Drone support -> GSDF team - C&C logistics, Special Forces team coordinator -> Reagan Madison Inc. team- Back office, infrastructure, and fundraising,FOB coordination (Crystal Suazo, CPA - who looped this together and we connected with here on LI!) -> WRTE, Inc - Legal, tax, fiduciary support -> Christina Marie Noel - Christina Noel + volunteers - Strategic marketing & communications -> United National Weather Team - Medical support with ATV abilities if anyone, especially corps would like to donate $, volunteers, trucks, etc. please contact William McGuire (on the ground items), Rebecca Ross / Jess Porta (Triangle-based corp donations/logistics). We're getting the last truck of items at Raleigh Founded out and future donations should be made at: Electric Supply Co 207 Bickett Blvd Raleigh NC, 27608 Want more ideas on how to have an impact? https://lnkd.in/euNxS8kd Thanks again everyone!

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I recently chatted with CJ Sun from Finding Signal about CoffeeSpace, our platform designed to help people exploring ideas and looking for a cofounder to get their ideas off the ground. In the interview, I shared the story behind our inception, the challenges we faced, and valuable lessons I’ve learned along the way—from startup essentials to career growth insights. We also covered key topics like: - Persevering through curveballs - Tips for finding the right co-founder - Emerging trends in entrepreneurship Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or simply looking to grow in your career, there’s something here for everyone! Check out the full interview for more insights. 👇 #CoffeeSpace #FindingSignal #startups #cofounder #careergrowth

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Starting a new fun project with Victor Lee - an AMA series with early stage founders. There are many podcast shows featuring successful, famous entrepreneurs. But what about those who are still relatively early in their journey, perhaps just one step ahead? The zero-to-one founders who have recently cracked the product-market fit and raised Seed or Series A capital. They may not have figured out everything yet, but they have fresh, relatable tips and advice to share. We’ll invite early-stage founders for a one-hour AMA session. Afterwards, we’ll create a public webpage featuring each Q&A session with media clips and transcriptions. This will be 100% free and open to the public. Our first AMA (June 11 1pm PST) will feature Will Drewery, whose company (Diagon) recently raised $5.1 million in Seed funding. We’ll get to know Will better and cover topics such as tips on raising funding in this tough environment. It will be a fun AMA, and you can register for free using the link below. RSVP now!

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118 VCs (one hundred eighteen!) are gathering in San Diego next week - to meet with 30 SD startups. But it's so MUCH bigger than just those 30 co's. It brings VCs back - when they see quality companies. It helps those who are next-in-line and adjacent. It enables us to send deal flow all year 'round. It attracts talent and other companies. It inspires entrepreneurship. Connect is working for SD. Together, we're building the best damn innovation ecosystem on the planet. Year over year. Five.Ten.Thirty.

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I recently saw this metric from Carta’s 1Q24 VC Fund Report, which is very concerning. DPI... is nowhere to be found in earlier vintages that probably should start showing DPI. Funding early-stage projects is great, but ultimately, these venture dollars need to exit their investments and pay back their limited partners. That’s where the metric Distributed to Paid-In Capital (DPI) comes in. While managing a fund, we get interim measures during the life of the fund (e.g. IRR, MOIC), but ultimately, “you can’t eat IRR.” If you want to build a lasting venture capital organization, you need to start showing DPI for your fund. Keep in mind that this is traditional VC data from Carta, and is not strictly crypto venture. Crypto venture tends to get liquidity earlier (tokens) and things tend to go parabolic sooner (faster, more unicorns) - but I’d wager that the data here is somewhat similar for Crypto VCs… Not as much DPI as there should be from these earlier vintages. Read the full article, as well as a recap of all the crypto fundraising rounds for August, here: https://lnkd.in/g3eVJ-iF

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Founder Fellowship applications are open at South Park Commons and due Feb 2nd. We support founders in -1 to 0. How early is that? Just look at the numbers. Fellowship companies so far were: >99% pre-revenue (there was 1) 85% pre-product (nothing built) 59% pre-idea (not sure what to build) We mean it about -1 to 0. The Founder Fellowship is the only program that invests this early with the kind of terms we offer: $400k for 7% and $600k in the next round. For overwhelmingly pre-revenue/product/idea founders. This is possible when you specialize in -1 to 0. Or in SPC's case, define it. We've spent nearly 10 years developing the -1 to 0 philosophy because we firmly believe it's when your company actually starts. Not with an idea, but when ambition takes hold. -1 to 0 requires patient capital. The Fellowship isn't a sprint to demo day. The right idea can take time. We spend a median of >7 months with teams before they raise their Seed and continue to partner long after. We're on your timeline, not ours. First idea doesn't work? No problem. We're used to it. You still have access to the SPC community, offices, programming, and staff. So on to the next, bigger, better idea. Our whole structure gives you the time and support to discard good for GREAT. The size of each fellowship is also key. We average 2 companies per member of the investing team. Every partner will work with every company. I will work with every company. We love O(N^2) connectivity. Why do we want people to take more time? So they can take more risk and build the kinds of companies that excite us. More technical risk, more market risk. It’s the only path that makes sense at venture scale. Sector is irrelevant. Scale of ambition is what matters. Recent fellowships had novel foundation model architectures, automated manufacturing, AI gaming, humanoid robotics, agentic drones, and software for everything from law enforcement to construction to AI advertising. We built the SPC Founder Fellowship to support you at the earliest stage, when it matters most. 💰 $1M in funding 🤝 Bespoke support, small cohort, open timeline  🚀 SPC community membership, offices & programming Don't miss the deadline!

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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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Having a Cars and Capital event tomorrow in Southern California with Oren Klaff. If you want to join message me. https://lnkd.in/gDQ4D39u Oren Klaff Bridger Pennington #InvestorEvent #FamilyOffice #InvestmentOpportunity #CarlsbadEvent #PrivateEquity #WealthManagement #InvestmentConference #CapitalRaising #NetworkingEvent #IndustryLeaders #FinancialGrowth #InvestorsMeetup #WealthBuilding #BusinessGrowth #InvestmentForum

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In a recent episode of The Expertise Economy podcast, I sat down with Johnny Page, CEO, and Matt Verlaque, COO, of SaaS Academy. Johnny shared a crucial insight for SaaS founders that challenges conventional wisdom 👇 "Many founders aim to delegate sales once they reach $15-20K MRR. This is often a critical mistake. We advocate for founders to remain deeply involved in sales for as long as possible." Why? According to Johnny, "No one can articulate the problem and solution more compellingly than the founder." Key takeaways from our discussion: > Founder-led sales drive stronger growth > Focus on consistent wins rather than quick handoffs > Clarify your customer acquisition strategy > Define your ideal customer profile precisely > Optimize your sales channel and offer > Maintain this focused approach for at least 12 months This strategy is the catalyst for transforming steady growth into exponential scale. For a deep dive into scaling strategies for your SaaS business, watch the full interview now: https://lnkd.in/dju-Be2u SaaS founders, what has been your experience with sales leadership? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. #sales #SaaS #SaaSAcademy #Scale #Startups #Podcast #Leadership

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Worth reading: The Cost of Anticompetitive Pricing Algorithms in Rental Housing What is interesting here is the shift toward coordination at scale, which Teddy Roosevelt (Republican) referenced in his new nationalism speech in Osawatomie, Kansas - on August 31, 1910. The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. . . . We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary. No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered—not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective—a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate. Link: https://lnkd.in/gPrYK_ni --- "Pricing algorithms may help landlords and building managers set prices that are more responsive to market conditions, which could increase market efficiency in a competitive market. But the algorithms can also facilitate price coordination, which decreases market efficiency by harming competition. Small yet coordinated landlords can act as if they are a single dominant landlord, and use their collective market power to increase profits by setting higher prices." https://lnkd.in/gVzcZbzW

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