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FINTECH RAMP ANNOUNCES $300M IN NEW FUNDING

WHY DO INVESTORS CARE SO MUCH ABOUT LTV:CAC?

Your CAC is a reflection of your sales and marketing spend to acquire a new user. The higher your LTV:CAC ratio, the more efficient that spending is. The more efficient it is, the more capital you’ll have to fund research and development to improve your product and continuously increase the LTV of your users. It’s a flywheel, and investors use this to directly value your company’s future potential.

AUTOMATING CREATIVITY

Wharton staged an idea-generation contest, pitting AI against a group of students. Human judges assessed idea quality. Of the 40 best ideas, 35 were created by ChatGPT. Oh boy. Thankfully, two other papers covered in this article mention that humans using AI tools can create even more powerful outcomes.

SECURING AI

The rush to AI is palpable and the inherent security challenges are of a complexity never seen before. As with every new technology, we need to think about how it's going to be weaponized WHILE it is hockey-sticking.

THE PERILS OF CUSTOMER SELECTION

Finding your first customers is a combination between intuition and strategy. Your customers dictate your trajectory. Great logos influence how others perceive you and they also dictate how you build your product and price it. If you choose the right customers early on (and they choose you!), it’ll act as a force multiplier to your success.

STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS AS A CEO

There’s no clear formal education that prepares you to be a CEO. Embrace a mindset of constant learning, seek support from fellow founders, assemble a strong team, prioritize self-care, and appreciate the unique opportunity to build something from scratch.

THE B2B SAAS GOLDEN QUADRANT

High-velocity sales motions aim for efficiency and quick returns, with shorter sales cycles and lower average deal sizes. On the other hand, enterprise field sales motions involve longer lead times and costly sales reps, resulting in higher net dollar retention rates. The ideal approach would combine the best of both strategies.

12 RESPONSE TEMPLATES FOR TRICKY CUSTOMER SERVICE EMAILS

Something something Pareto principle. How you efficiently handle tricky customers will enable you to spend more time on your best customers. Here’s a series of templates to tackle common customer escalations.

HOW GAMES TYPICALLY GET BUILT

As gaming gets increasingly more mainstream, and venture capital dollars flood to the space, should we think about building or joining a gaming startup? This article explores how building games stacks up against traditional software development. Hint: they’re pretty different.

LAYOFF LESSONS: FOUR THINGS I WISH I KNEW

Layoffs involve making decisions between different versions of bad. There’s no scenario where someone isn’t unhappy. Ask hard questions to ensure you only make one round of layoffs and focus your energy on supporting and motivating the employees who will remain with the company.

HOW TO AVOID KPI PSYCHOSIS

A practical guide to a good measurement culture in today’s data-obsessed world.

INTELLIGENT VS. SMART

There is a difference between intelligence and smarts: while intelligence involves technical abilities and logic, smarts require empathy, communication, and understanding emotional nuances.

1998

China is looking to attract foreign investment after its recovery from Covid times has been slower than hoped.

OPENAI’S CONTENT MODERATION

OpenAI proposes using GPT-4 for content policy development and content moderation decisions across digital platforms, taking the burden away from humans and allowing more consistent labeling of content and faster feedback loops. This begs the question, should AI be the authority on who can say what?

DECADE

Since 2018, over 250 unicorns have been made each year with the exception of 2021, when this number spiked to 787. 2023 may be the second exception to this average, we only saw 21 unicorns minted in Q1 2023.

PLG RESOURCES AND INSIGHTS

A variety of resources on product-led growth and pithy insights on the art of scaled acquisition.

WHAT THE FREEMIUM

Insights and guidance from Elena Verna, former CMO at Miro, on how and when to deploy freemium strategies at your tech company.

HOW TO GET YOUR STARTUP'S FIRST 100 USERS

It never hurts to get a refresher course on the latest proven ways to get to those first 100 users of your solution. Manually reaching out (aka the hard way) is what always works best.

MODERN MEDITATIONS: CLAIRE HUGHES JOHNSON

This interview with Claire Hughes Johnson, the former COO and now advisor of Stripe, unpacks her views on leadership, literature, and future technology.

MOBILE POINT OF SALES SYSTEMS AND THEIR IMPACT ON COMMERCE

Mobile point of sales systems (mPOS) mark a significant turning point in payment processing. Traditional point of sale systems are tethered to a location and oftentimes a little clunky. mPOS is distinctly more convenient, cheaper to set up and operate, and significantly more interoperable with your existing business operating systems. If you use in-person payments for your business, this is worth a read.

THREE MARKETING LESSONS FROM THE POLITICAL REALM

A deep dive into key marketing lessons presented with specific examples from the political realm. It’s a heavy but solid read.

INVESTMENT

Turns out FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried had their fingers in more crypto pies. Holders of Bored Apes are looking to sue the creators over their dealings with Sotheby's and FTX.

ECONOMY

Startups that effectively managed their costs over the last 18 months and are sitting on a bit of cash are in a great position to acquire other companies who might be struggling or double down on their go-to-market efforts and accelerate out of this slump.

CARTA: THE ACTUAL, REAL DILUTION FROM SERIES A, B, C, AND D ROUNDS

A breakdown of actual dilution numbers based on the latest Carta data. Always good to have these numbers in your back pocket if you’re looking at raising soon.

UK LAUNCHES £1BILLION FINTECH FUND TO COMPETE WITH SILICON VALLEY

The UK has historically had a funding gap at the late stage. Large companies often shoot to the US to breach $500m values and IPO. The UK’s new fund, which is backed by Mastercard, Barclays, and the London Stock Exchange Group, aims to address the issue of fintech companies struggling to reach scale and pursue public listings.

NETWORK EFFECTS: THE EVOLUTION OF ONLINE COMMUNITIES

This article explores how online communities are going to amplify social network effects and how content, creators, and community all come together to build unique interactions and defensible companies.

IN A TURNING ECONOMY

Things are starting to thaw so it means startups that navigated cost-cutting over the last 3+ quarters are well-positioned to thrive.

PLAYBOOK TO WRITE BETTER B2B CONTENT

Writing gives unclear thoughts nowhere to hide. It’s a simple tool to bring clarity of thought to the challenges you’re facing. Inertia and perfection are the enemy - just get started.

FINTECH IN AI: FIVE LESSONS FOR FOUNDERS

Quick-hitting post about a few things to consider around AI and Fintech. Always love Lightspeed’s take on things.

11 TIME MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS THAT WILL SKYROCKET YOUR PRODUCTIVITY

As founders, you often get “productivity” thrown in your face, a lot. However, this list of frameworks, mental models, and rules keeps things simple and provides a nice reminder to constantly be working smart.

HOW TO COMMUNICATE WHEN TRUST IS LOW

Whether it’s your partner, friend, colleague, or employee, it can be hard to communicate effectively when there’s low trust or you’re worried about conflict. Here’s a handful of tactics to start you in the right direction.

VENTURE CHRONICLES - JULY 2023

This is an exhaustive list of all-things-venture related for July in case you were out of the country, vacationing, or generally under a rock. If you have some plane time, this is a gem of a read.

REIGNITING THE FIRE

A wonderfully open and honest post about being able to reignite that fire in your belly whether personally or professionally as you potentially face that “sophomore slump”.

REVOLUT SAYS LATIN AMERICA IS A KEY REGION FOR GROWTH

The FinTech market in Latin America is growing rapidly, driven by increasing demand for online banking solutions, favorable demographics, and an underserved population. Revolut launched their operations in Brazil in May and they’re looking to Latam for their next stage of growth.

SCI-FI IDEA BANK

Looking for your next startup? Ideas for new technologies almost always appear in sci-fi before they show up in real life.

ELON’S NEURALINK RAISES $280 MILLION

Elon Musk-backed biotechnology company Neuralink announced a $280 million Series D funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

HESITATION CAN KILL GREAT COMPANIES

Delegating authority and fostering open communication allows organizations to tap into the collective wisdom of their workforce and overcome indecision.

SCALING TALENT THROUGH HYPERGROWTH WITH PIERRE BERLIN

Pierre Berlin, VP Sales at Figma, shares his insights on building and scaling GTM teams. It includes strategies for sequencing expansion, sourcing talent, hiring, and retaining top performers.

MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Commitment, coverage, and stamina: the three required variables of effective brand building. You’ve gotta give your creative ideas time in the market to connect with an audience and understand the impact.

FROM ATTENTION TO INTENTION, HOW CONTENT IS CHANGING

Generative AI is significantly ramping up the volume of content being produced and put out to the world. This article explores how we attempt to keep humanity at the forefront by integrating in-person events and leaning into the individual over the institution.

DISNEY’S TAYLOR SWIFT ERA

It’s the relationship between low supply and high demand that creates valuable scarcity, and you simply can’t have that with a lot of digital goods where the supply is infinite. In-person events provide an opportunity to cultivate scarcity and deliver outsized money making.

TEACH A COMPUTER TO GHOTI

Quick read on why AI is on track to disrupt. A little cheeky too.

WHEN IN DOUBT, LOOK FOR THE FEAR

We can begin to understand why someone acts in a surprising way by wondering what they might be afraid of.

HOW A STARTUP LOSES ITS SPARK

A look at what makes working at a startup so much more fun than working at a large company.

AI.COM FLIPS FROM CHATGPT TO ELON MUSK’S X.AI

AI.com now redirects to x.AI, a company that aims to understand the true nature of the universe. OpenAI had seemingly purchased this domain back in February, but it looks like Musk has swooped in.

THE RIGHT TO PAY ANONYMOUSLY HAS BECOME PART OF AN EU CULTURE WAR

There’s a growing movement across the EU to save cash as governments, banks, and merchants encourage consumers to go digital.

Serve Robotics, an autonomous sidewalk delivery robot startup that spun out of Uber’s acquisition of Postmates, is going public via a reverse merger with a blank-check company.