👋 Hello! I’m Ivan. I write monthly about startups, venture capital and GTM + a monthly dealflow brief. Join +8.8K startup riders:
Summary
🌊 Fundraising: idea maze, liquidity quality and death by design partner.
🌊 Leadership: Netscape CEO’s guide to world-class communication.
🌊 R2 Podcast: I launched a YouTube channel.
💵 Iberian Deals: 18 startup deals in Spain (>€150M).
🍫 Meme of the month: Wolf of LLM-street.
I’m pretty stoked to announce a new Sponsor, Notion for Startups!
They’re offering 6 months for free (worth $6K) on their Teams Plan for startups.
👉 Here’s the link to get it and select Startup Riders on the partner list.
Then type in your discount code: StartupRidersXNotion.
P.s. If you want to sponsor this newsletter, reply to this email.
🌊 3 hacks to improve your pitch deck
My team and I review thousands of pitch decks.
There’s a few things that I consistently see the best founders do.
Here are 3 simple (but powerful) things you can do to likely improve your odds:
1. Navigate the Idea Maze: Swap your market sizing slide for your market expertise slide (in simple terms).
99% of vc skip the market size slide.
Demote it. Instead, use it to explain the market you are operating in.
Balaji - Coinbase’s ex-CTO - calls this Navigating the Idea Maze:
Use it as an opportunity to display your insights about its past, present and future.
Show that you have thought deeply about the potential pitfalls you will likely encounter, the twists and turns you are likely to face.
Proactively share the answers to the questions you will likely get about overcoming hurdles.
Avoid buzz words, and don’t assume your audience knows what you are talking about.
Personalize: Many founders walk into rooms without tailoring the message to the people around the table. You’d rarely think of doing this during a B2B sales cycle.
And then, talk about why your (contrarian) approach is a potentially very big opportunity.
Should you have a back-of-the-envelope market sizing slide?
Sure, but spend your time wisely.
2. Liquidity Quality: Go deep on your traction quality > quantity
There’s a concept I keep going back to coined by Benchmark around something they call “Liquidity Quality”.
It refers to how impressive are the early product engagement numbers, independently of our likely flawed assumptions about the initial market size and the world.
Here’s Bill Gurley explaining the concept using Yelp as an example:
What’s the main take-away? Work on proving liquidity quality > quantity.
Tell a story that clearly and powerfully displays the quality of your traction.
3. Death by design partner: don’t fake traction, it smells
Most VCs have a decently well developed BS traction detector.
Don’t use the term “design partners” when trying to build an argument around product-market fit or validation. Same goes for covering slides in buzzwords.
You either have an early client who’s hopefully paying you (even if its a very, very small amount), or a full-on client. If you have a “design partner” who’s not paying you after a few months, ask yourself if 1. They are taking advantage of you, especially if you are solving a real problem for them, there’s no reason not to pay you even if its a small amount or 2. if you are solving a problem that is not important enough.
The bottom line is to not build yourself a trap. Because if things go well, people will ask to look under the hood - talk to customers, pipeline review and so on.
My 2 cents? Just stick to the classics: friend helping me out, temporary non-paying customer until I prove value, or paying customer.
🌊 How to communicate like a world-class CEO
Great leaders are masters at capturing complex ideas in simple ways.
Jim Barksdale, CEO of Netscape in the 90's, was a master at this.
I’m a big fan of this, and find that it is consistently underrated.
Here are 6 of his best business lessons, ranked:
"In a bacon and egg breakfast, the hen is supportive, but the pig is committed." Compared to Microsoft, Netscape was all in.
"Your job is to run as fast as you can towards the cliff. My job is to move the cliff." Leaders clear the way so teams can go full speed ahead.
"Three rules: if you see a snake, shoot it; don't play with dead snakes; everything looks like a snake at first." - Fix problems fast and don't revisit them. Everything might seem like a problem initially
"The infantry is always ahead of headquarters." - People working directly with data know best.
"In a fight between a bear and an alligator, it is the terrain which determines who wins." - Use your strengths to gain the upper hand.
"Never mistake a clear view for a short distance." - Just because you see the goal clearly doesn’t mean it’s easy or close.
🌊 Revenue Squared YouTube/Podcast
Your boy launched a pod. Its in Spanish, so you can practice your Español.
Also, considering the speed at which instant translation / lip-sinc is moving, it’ll show up in English in no time. Hope you like it!
💵 Iberian Deals
You love startups and want to enjoy a Spanish lifestyle? Come join the Spanish startup ecosystem. Here’s a list of recently funded startups:
Factorial (hr saas) raised 80M.
Onum (data) raised 28M
Revenue Cat (in-app subs) raised 12M.
Aistech (geospatial) raised 5M.
Taxdown (fintech) raised 5M.
Facephi (identity) raised 5M.
Nymiz (cybersecurity) raised 2.8M.
KokoroKids (edtech) raised 2.2M.
Vidext (AI generated videos) raised 2M.
MediBioFarma (biotech) raised 1M
Intelia (sales tech) raised 1M.
Ealyx (payment/ecommerce) raised 1M.
Emily AI (medtech) raised 480K.
Sol de Ibiza (ecommerce) raised 370K.
G2-Zero (quantum) raised 315K.
Nuela (shift management) raised 300K.
Yuit (food) rasied 300K.
Hamelyn (marketplace) raised an undisclosed round.
🍫 Meme of the month
If you enjoy Startup Riders, I’d really appreciate a share on Linkedin or Twitter
See you next month 🤙!
P.s. I run a private tech sales club for spanish-speaking GTM teams called Revenue Squared. Apply here.
Super helpful! Thanks!
Love the Netscape metaphors!