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Founder vs. Fund: The Answers Venture Capitalists Need to Invest in Your Startup
“Only 2% of startups that pitch to venture capital funds get funding.” This statistic is true across most venture capital funds—with the number of entrepreneurs and small businesses on the rise, venture capitalists have no problem attracting deal flow. But how do you ensure that...
What Will Happen to Venture Capital When the Recession Hits?
“The four most dangerous words in investing are "This time it’s different." The wise words of legendary investor John Templeton ring true today; with an inverted yield curve appearing after a decade in a bullish market, many economists in the United States are predicting an economic...
Keeping Product and Sales Aligned: Define Your Processes
Two of the core pillars of all B2B SaaS startups are their product and sales teams. It is critical, therefore, that these teams must be well-aligned and cohesive. Product teams tend to be largely inward-looking while sales teams are, by nature, customer-focused. This disconnect can...
BC Startup Sales Podcast – Building Your Post-Seed Sales Machine with Brandon Gracey (GasLight Solutions)
This week we were joined on the podcast by our friend Brandon Gracey, seasoned B2B salesman and Principal at GasLight Solutions, to talk Building Your Early, Post-Seed Sales Machine. For this conversation, we dug into the process of building your sales team after a seed...
Effects of the Trade War on Early Venture
The amount of capital pouring into venture as a whole has increased substantially. Early stage venture, in particular, has seen a lot more focus in the last few years, as highlighted in this previous Bowery Capital blog post. A sizable portion of venture investment capital...
Week 6 of VC School: Fund Level Portfolio Management
“Week 6 of VC School: Fund Level Portfolio Mangement” is part of a ten-week series from the interns at Bowery Capital. The series will cover lessons learned and concepts covered during the weekly “VC School” meeting, a program taught by the Bowery Capital team designed...
Keeping Product and Sales Aligned: Know Your Customer
Two of the core pillars of all B2B SaaS startups are their product and sales teams. It is critical, therefore, that these teams must be well-aligned and cohesive. Product teams tend to be largely inward-looking while sales teams are, by nature, customer-focused. This disconnect can...
Why M&A Over IPO in Digital Health
2018 was a record year for startup exits. Whether M&A or IPO, exits in 2018 exceeded $120B, for the first time since 2012. For the top unicorns, the count of IPOs more than doubled the count of M&As. In digital health, however, one hundred and...
Investor Perspective: Josh Kopelman (First Round)
It's been a while since we last discussed lessons learned from top venture investors. Today, we'll dive into First Round Partner Josh Kopelman's investor perspective on all things early-stage startups, discussed on the Dorm Room Tycoon Podcast with William Channer. Kopelman started off as a...
Week 5 of VC School: Deal Execution and Term Sheets
“Week 5 of VC School: Deal Execution and Term Sheets” is part of a ten-week series from the interns at Bowery Capital. The series will cover lessons learned and concepts covered during the weekly “VC School” meeting, a program taught by the Bowery Capital team...
Keeping Product and Sales Aligned: Customer Engagement
Two of the core pillars of all B2B SaaS startups are their product and sales teams. Therefore, these teams must be well-aligned and cohesive. Product teams tend to be largely inward-looking while sales teams are, by nature, customer-focused. This disconnect may be exacerbated, in part,...
Week 4 of VC School: Quantitative Due Diligence
“Week 4 of VC School: Quantitative Due Diligence” is part of a ten-week series from the interns at Bowery Capital. The series will cover lessons learned and concepts covered during the weekly “VC School” meeting, a program taught by the Bowery Capital team designed to...
Breaking into Healthcare SaaS: Top Considerations
Adoption of technology in healthcare has historically been slow. Appetite for SaaS uptake in healthcare, however, has started to accelerate in the last 2-3 years. Healthcare processes have become archaic and outdated, with physicians and healthcare professionals still recording patient data on physically, on paper....
Week 3 of VC School: Qualitative Due Diligence
"Week 3 of VC School: Qualitative Due Diligence" is part of a ten-week series from the interns at Bowery Capital. The series will cover lessons learned and concepts covered during the weekly "VC School" meeting, a program taught by the Bowery Capital team designed to...
Week 2 of VC School: Venture Capital Deal Sourcing
"Week 2 of VC School: Venture Capital Deal Sourcing" is part of a ten-week series from the interns at Bowery Capital. The series will cover lessons learned and concepts covered during the weekly "VC School" meeting, a program taught by the Bowery Capital team designed...
Keeping Product and Sales Aligned: Bridging the Gap
Two of the core pillars of all B2B SaaS startups are their product and sales teams. Intuitively, this makes sense. You build a great service, and then you sell it. What is less intuitive but equally critical, however, is team messaging and bridging the gap...
SaaS Opportunities in the Cannabis Vertical
We first made note of the opportunity for software to bring structure and efficiency to the cannabis vertical in our Opportunities in Vertical Software v2.0. In our third edition, we focused on cannabis as a high growth market with many opportunities. While the US market...
BC Startup Sales Podcast – Increasing Leads Through Customer Segmentation with David Appel (Sage Intacct)
This week we were joined on the podcast by our friend David Appel to talk Increasing Leads Through Customer Segmentation. David is a regular on our show and came on in 2018 to talk through SaaS dashboards and how to build correct metrics for success. This...
Week 1 of VC School: Introduction to Venture Capital
"Week 1 of VC School: Introduction to Venture Capital" is part of a ten-week series from the interns at Bowery Capital. The series will cover lessons learned and concepts covered during the weekly "VC School" meeting, a program taught by the Bowery Capital team designed...
Take a Look at Electron for Your Next Application
Electron is an open-sourced framework that utilizes Chromium, the rendering engine behind Google Chrome, to allow developers to create desktop applications with web development tools/construct such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In contrast to a standard framework such as .NET, which is limited primarily to...
Integrating AI with Remote Working Software
Supported by increased software capabilities, rising costs in major tech hubs such as NYC and SF and a re-thinking of what a work-life balance should look like, "the office" as we know it is shifting quickly. Whether it be established companies integrating remote working options...
Software Innovations for Restaurant Delivery
Food delivery has gone from being a luxury for affluent diners to being a ubiquitous part of the restaurant industry. The influx in venture capital investments in the food delivery space has shown the industry is large and growing. To succeed restaurants will need to...
BC Startup Sales Podcast – From Good To Great: Transforming Your QBR Process with Karen Rhorer (Atrium)
This week, we shifted gears on the Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast and discussed transforming your QBR process with our friend Karen Rhorer. Karen is the Customer Success & Sales Strategy Lead at Atrium, a software business building smart analytics to help teams make better-informed...
BC Startup Sales Podcast – The Why, Try, Buy Method For Open Source Sales with James Weitzman (Cockroach Labs)
This week, we hosted James Weitzman, Director of Commercial Sales at Cockroach Labs, and discussed a new concept he has been working on called “The Why, Try, Buy Method For Open Source Sales.” Building early sales motion in the open source community is hard enough...
The Top 3 LinkedIn Sales Lessons
We returned this week to Columbia Business School where Mike Romoff, Head of Global Agency and Channel Sales offered his Top 3 LinkedIn Sales Lessons. Before we jump in, a little more about Mike. Prior to leading the Global Agency and Channel Sales Team, he...
The 10 Best Software Books For Aspiring VCs
We frequently get asked throughout our due diligence process as well as our interview process for fall, spring, and summer interns what are the great books to read to understand the technology ecosystem, the B2B world, and the foundations of business software. Understanding where the...
Sunday B2B Book Review: The Intel Trinity by Michael Malone
This Sunday we take a right turn with our book reviews and bring you a book review of The Intel Trinity by Michael Malone. While a lot of the story is lost on the millennial generation, Intel helped pioneer the silicon-based memory chips from which...
Vertical Software Maturing Within The B2B Landscape
Since 2016, we at Bowery Capital have spent a fair amount of time focused on the impact of business software on a variety of verticals. We chose 10 verticals for our inaugural piece, titled Opportunities In Vertical Software and went deep into understanding what it...
Vinod Khosla’s Lessons For Entrepreneurs
As the new class of Bowery Capital interns began, we took time to listen to Vinod Khosla give his top lessons for entrepreneurs on Y Combinator’s podcast. Before we dive in, a little more about Vinod. He is the founder of Khosla Ventures, a firm...
Enterprise AI: Why It Matters & What Will Drive Adoption
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not a novel concept, instead, gaining prominent attention over several decades across the likes of academia, literature, and television. Famously, in his book 1984 (published in 1949), George Orwell vividly predicted a not-so-distant future that featured advanced machine learning phenomena such...
Keith Rabois’ Three Key Questions for Investors to Consider
This week the Bowery Capital team spent time discussing some key venture capital themes captured in Keith Rabois' podcast with Invest Like The Best [Ep. 115], covering topics from his investment criterion to critiques of business strategies that have been popularized like the Lean Startup. Like...
3 Lessons From Mike Maples For Aspiring VCs
After taking a look at Vinod Khosla's Lessons for Entrepreneurs, we pivoted this week to another giant in the industry with the top 3 VC lessons from Mike Maples. Mike had a great interview with the Origins podcast last year, centered around his transition from...
What the 4 P’s Mean for SaaS and How They Can Help You
Three years ago, we invited our longtime friend of Bowery and the CEO of Zuora, Tien Tzuo, to discuss his "Three Rooms" concept on the Bowery Capital Podcast. This past October we featured a review of his new book, Subscribed, which we highly recommend to any founder. One...
Vinod Khosla’s Lessons For Entrepreneurs
As the new class of Bowery Capital interns began, we took time to listen to Vinod Khosla give his top lessons for entrepreneurs on Y Combinator’s podcast. Before we dive in, a little more about Vinod. He is the founder of Khosla Ventures, a firm...
Common Red Herrings In Early Stage Companies
Red herrings. Not the prospectus and not the fish. For the uninformed, we're talking about something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. You find red herrings in early stage companies all the time and they can sometimes kill your company. What...
Marketing Technology Predictions For 2019
At Bowery Capital, we spend a lot of time thinking about the marketing technology ecosystem and what the future holds for the space. With investments like MOAT, mParticle, and ActionIQ we are continuing to invest in and around this market. As we start 2019, we...
The Top 3 Yext Sales Lessons From The Company’s President
After a brief Thanksgiving break, we returned this week to Columbia Business School where Brian Distelburger, President and Co-Founder of Yext, offered his Top 3 Yext Sales Lessons. Before we jump in, a little more about Brian. Prior to co-founding Yext in 2006, he founded...
BC Startup Sales Podcast – The Key Pillars of Social Selling with Jill Rowley (Marketo)
This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Jill Rowley, Chief Growth Officer at Marketo, to discuss "The Key Pillars of Social Selling." Marketo offers automation software that helps marketers build brand value, grow revenue, and prove impact. The Adobe company focuses on scalability, reliability, and openness for...
Sunday B2B Book Review: The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge
This Sunday we bring you a book review of The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge. Written by employee #3 of Hubspot, Mark is currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. As the VP of Worldwide Sales and Services from 2007 to 2013, Mark grew the...
Two Customer Success Metrics That Matter From Zero To One
Something that we care a lot about here at Bowery Capital is preparing and supporting our companies that have achieved product / market fit in their next round of financing. We find, in particular, that many of these companies have achieved outsized growth on the...
Being Cautious About Independent Board Members
Supporting our entrepreneurs in the choosing of independent board members is something that has been front of mind for us recently as many of our companies have had the capability to add new blood to their Board of Directors. Fred Wilson had a great post...
BC Startup Sales Podcast – Elements of Successful Product Marketing with Grant Halloran (OmniSci)
This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Grant Halloran, Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President at OmniSci (formerly Map D), to discuss "Elements of Successful Product Marketing." OmniSci offers an advanced data analytics platform by combining the capabilities of software with GPU hardware. By bridging the...
The Top 3 Marriott Sales Lessons
After Bill Lennie gave his Top 3 Home Depot Sales Lessons last week, we returned to Columbia Business school where Brian King, the Senior Vice President of Sales at Marriott, gave his Top 3 Marriott Sales Lessons. Brian has been in the hospitality business for over twenty-five years....
Investment Opportunities Surrounding The Aging Population
We spend a lot of time at Bowery Capital thinking about the future of the business software landscape. To date, we have written a bit about some of the swapping cycles we think remain. We have also spent a fair amount of time thinking through...
Sunday B2B Book Review: Under The Radar by Robert Young
This Sunday we bring you a book review of Under The Radar by Robert Young. Written by the Founder & CEO of Red Hat, Robert Young chronicles the dramatic rise of the open-source movement and the emergence of Linux. If you don't know anything about Red Hat or the...
The Top 3 Home Depot Sales Lessons
After listening in last week on American Airlines' Top Two Sales Lessons, we returned again to Columbia Business School where Bill Lennie, Executive Vice President of Outside Sales & Service at The Home Depot gave his top three Home Depot sales lessons. Before we dive in, a little...
The Four Waves Of AI
As many folks who read our blog are well aware, we have been interested and invested in companies focused on AI for some time now. We write about the topic a fair amount and earlier this year covered some thinking about policy implications as AI...
Sunday B2B Book Review: Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella
Another Sunday here at Bowery Capital means another book review. This week we feature a book review of Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella. Nadella is a household name to everyone who reads our blog and likely needs no introduction. He became the third CEO of Microsoft...
The Top Two Airline Sales Lessons
In keeping with tradition, we returned last night to Columbia Business School to hear Johna Johnson, the Vice President of East Sales at American Airlines, offer her top two airline sales lessons. Johna has been active in the travel industry for over twenty-nine years and prior...
BC Startup Sales Podcast – Scaling Your Customer Success Org Through Hyper Growth With Alex Hesterberg (Turbonomic)
This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Alex Hesterberg, SVP and Chief Customer Officer of Turbonomic, to discuss “Scaling Your Customer Success Organization Through Hyper Growth.” Turbonomic is a software company that delivers workload automation for hybrid cloud environments. The software understands the demands of...
Sunday B2B Book Review: Subscribed by Tien Tzuo
This Sunday we feature a book review of Subscribed. Author Tien Tzuo is widely recognized as one of the thought leaders in the SaaS, founding Zuora in 2007. He built the business into a public company with 1,000+ customers, 1,000+ employees, and $100MM+ in revenue. Before Zuora,...
Maximizing Potential: Verizon Sales Lessons
Keeping in line with one of last week's posts, Startup Sales Lessons From The Beer Industry, we headed back to Columbia Business School where Ken Dixon, President of Consumer Sales & Service at Verizon, gave us his Verizon sales lessons. Before we get going, a little more...
The Sales Learning Curve For Start-Up Companies
The sales learning curve is an important concept introduced by Stanford professors Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway roughly 12 years ago. It is a concept that we have borrowed from a lot here at Bowery Capital and believe it remains one of the more underrated...
Cool SaaS Revenue Tools We Are Noticing Lately
Our Acceleration Team spends a ton of time helping seed stage companies set up the right systems, infrastructure, and processes, to help them achieve product/market fit and hopefully outsized revenue growth. A big part of this effort is the recommendation of tooling that saves companies...
Thinking About Non-Competes For Companies
For those that have been in the trenches of the talent wars going on in the technology ecosystem here in NYC we were encouraged to hear recently about the fact that WeWork had settled with the AG on their recent non-compete issues. As a result...
Sunday B2B Book Review: How To Castrate A Bull by Dave Hitz
We are back again this Sunday with our book reviews from great business software leaders. This week, we give you a book review of How To Castrate A Bull by Dave Hitz. Written by NetApp co-founder Dave Hitz, the book summarizes the nearly 20 year lifespan...
Quick Thoughts on Twilio Acquiring SendGrid
Twilio announced that it will be acquiring SendGrid, the world's first cloud-based email delivery platform, for $2B in an all-stock transaction. SendGrid has around 75,000 customers who use the platform to send roughly 45B emails per month, even handling APIs for companies like Uber and...
Sunday B2B Book Review: Behind The Cloud by Marc Benioff
We continue this Sunday with our book reviews from great business software leaders. This week, we give you a book review of Behind The Cloud by Marc Benioff. The book, published in 2009, is a compilation of Benioff's personal account on how he started Salesforce, the...
Revenue Meetings For Early Stage Founders
One of the critical paths to success for any early stage business software company is revenue generation. If you don't achieve product/market fit you are either dead or in limbo. Most business software companies begin with "founder selling" where the founder does all of the...
Why Sales Cycle Remains The Most Important Lever Of Early Stage Revenue
Early stage founders spend a lot of time on the revenue line and revenue organization once they have achieved product/market fit. We recommend focusing on the Sales Velocity Equation for a correct framework and metrics and have talked a ton on our blog about it....