Cohen Circle的动态

A founder's ability to hone in on their ICP and build value and solve a problem for a very specific customer segment is crucial. ?? One insight I took away from Parker Gilbert's journey building his company Numeric is not only their ability to do this effectively, but to elect to work with a focused customer segment where the value of the partnership compounds over time (i.e go-to-market, integration). ?? For Numeric that's incredible finance customers and partners like Mercury, Plaid, Wealthfront, Betterment. ?? Not to mention the traction that led to raising their $10M round from top firms like Founders Fund, Menlo Ventures, and 8VC. ?? ?? ?? ?? Check out the entire interview with Parker here: https://bit.ly/numeric-br

DEAL OF THE WEEK:?Reddit, Inc. Expected To IPO This Year at $5bn Valuation ? So what's the deal? Reddit, the world’s discussion board and darling of the meme stock generation is likely to IPO as soon as March, with bankers advising that the company should consider a valuation of over $5bn. This figure is well below Reddit’s $10bn 2021 valuation, which it achieved raising its $410m Series F venture round of funding. This is a common story, with major technology companies taking significant valuation haircuts as they approach an exit event. Instacart, which IPO’d at a $10bn valuation last year was, in 2021, valued at $39bn. Post-IPO Instacart’s valuation has dropped further still, to $7.1bn. Whether Reddit can achieve more than a $5bn valuation is dependent on the continued recovery of the IPO market. If the market continues to be buoyant, with smaller tech stocks seeing equivalent gains to the Magnificent Seven, Reddit could end up with a higher IPO valuation. ?? What do Redditers think? The Reddit community was sceptical of the company’s valuation, pointing out that the company has not yet made a profit in its almost 20-year history. Redditers were also concerned that the quality of the platform would decrease, as management seek profitability and share price bumps. Would it be possible, therefore, that Reddit’s army of retail investors could contribute to the company’s failed IPO? ?? Additional comment? When looking at IPO valuation ranges, it pays to take a look at the secondary market for private trades. Rainmaker is a leading platform which helps investors buy and sell late stage startup shares. Recent transactions on the platform place Reddit’s valuation between $4.5bn and $4.8bn. Although a decent estimate of Reddit’s IPO valuation, it is probably slightly low, as private market valuations are discounted based on their lack of liquidity, relative to public markets. #reddit #ipo #investments?#finance

Many founders are frustrated with MVPs because They have wrong expectations Here are the right expectations for each stage of the product life cycle 1. V1 (the MVP) - Innovators & Early Adopters → Basic simple prototype → Burning cash and not profitable → Working from your home basement 2. V2 - Early Majority → Fixing V1 and adding more features → Becoming gross margin or EBITDA profitable → Growing the team and moving into a proper office 3. V3 - Late Majority → Polishing V2 to turn into a perfect product → Profitable business generating sustainable revenue → Mature organization with clear structure and processes MVP cannot help you get profit from the first month But it is a tool to help you → Test the market response → Raise funds Don’t set a wrong expectation P.S. Image from Crossing the Chasm book by Geoffrey Moore

This is great news for the market. More IPO’s in the pipeline bring more liquidity and create potential job growth for others. Reddit’s IPO should be a shining star for the Sports Ecosystem. #IPOPipeline #SportsDrivesTheMarket #Reddit #FlutterEntertainment #MediaDrivesValuations #DataAndAnalytics #FirstInningVentures

Just opened our Pre-Seed angel round at Quanted — cheers to that! We’ve had a brilliant early response from the market to our new product during our first 2 months, now its finally time to share the news and share your chance to join in the upside. If you've worked with financial data, you know the pain of spending months evaluating new datasets (I've been there way too many times...). We're fixing that. Quick update if interested: → ?????????????? ???? ???????????? ??????????: We're offering an early-bird for Angels who share our vision, offering a compelling chance for value appreciation when we progress to our VC-led round early next year. To learn more, sign-up for our Demo Day and follow-up Q&A here: https://lnkd.in/dXW2Zush → ????????? ?????? ??????????????????: We’re pending for SEIS/EIS approval, which means a substantial tax advantage for you. With SEIS you effectively risk 27.5p per ￡1 invested, whilst EIS is 38.5p per ￡1. That turns ￡50K into ￡13.8K whilst maintaining all of the upside. →?????????: If you’re excited at the thought of deploying some capital into a market shaping startup, the round will open to you in January. In the meantime, we’d love to introduce ourselves and what we’re building so feel free to schedule some time here for a 1:1. Here’s a few more reasons to be interested in this opportunity: - We’re tapping into a $40B+ market here, and it's only growing. - We have over 20 data vendors ready to integrate with our platform - Our technology can shrink a 100-hour, 6-month data processing marathon down to a mere 30 minutes for vast datasets. - Plus, our advisory board is made up of industry heavyweights from hedge funds and data firms who’ve been pivotal in guiding our strategy. Charlie Simionescu-Marin and I are extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished these last few months and even more excited about where we’re headed — it would be amazing to have your support. If you’re interested, or just want to chat more about the opportunity, don’t hesitate to reach out. Happy to talk anytime. Cheers, David

Best training ground for Founders? The military. ?? You are trained to come up with a plan and actually DELIVER on it. ?You know that, without doubt, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. So you are nimble. ??You are used to and comfortable with constant change. ??♀? You have to work collaboratively, under pressure. ? You are able to make good decisions quickly. ?? You are used to accountability and real life or death risk (just for your business this time!). ?? You can multi-task and switch between different tasks quickly. ??♀? You are used to working with different teams/nationalities/mindsets and juggling different needs. ?? You are used to working whilst exhausted and brain fried. Thrilled to be Collective Leader for the Founders Collective with Redeployable and Ben Read. If you are a veteran founder with a “VC” growth trajectory – whether you are interested in institutional investment or not – at any stage, join us. #veteran #founder #startup MyArk

18 months ago I stepped onto the Relay rocketship ??that’s on an accelerated trajectory to be the financial command center for 33M U.S. small businesses. Today, I’m proud to share our Series B fundraise of USD$32.2M — it brings our total funding to USD$51.6M. I’ve done the startup growth thing before. But at Relay, it’s different. We’re obsessed with building experiences for our small business customers that solve their real money management problems. Here’s an example of what I mean. Late last year we rolled out a new way for our customers to get access to their funds faster. The Risk team built this from a customer experience perspective first. Each choice we made—and continue to make—was about prioritizing how this process could be better for a small business owner trying to pay bills, make payroll and grow their business. In a lot of organizations, that’s not the perspective a Risk team would lead with. At Relay, I’ve watched my team not only rally around our small business owner’s needs, but get excited by them. Thanks to this kind of focus, we’ve connected thousands of customers to their money faster and that number grows every day. This customer-obsessed problem solving inspires me and the Series B funding is about fueling this kind of thinking in Risk and across all of Relay. I’m excited to keep building with this incredible team and driving better outcomes for small business owners.

Jed Tan is going global. I'm excited for more stories like this. Keep the fire alive, we need more young dreamers to rally around your story! Jed literally just proved the spectators wrong that "there's no tech talent and entrepreneurs in Manila" ?? ?? ?? I havent' been in the local scene for years because we were busy grinding but I'm shocked at this change in language from investors. "VC's" now love to call entrepreneurs, dreamers, and visionaries with the derogatory term of "operators". ?????? "Operators" vs "Spectators" is harmful language and reflective of subconcious #crabmentality . To even debate this dichotomy is a farce. I will pick a fight with anyone who uses the word "operator" to puff themselves up because of their inability to execute & deliver results themselves. My younger brother, Jeremy Young, helped me realize that the real language should be: "Kings" and "Kingmakers" - allies who shape the future together. Both are capital & time allocators, both are operators that drive ROI, both are visionaries, both are dreamers. We have different roles and emphasis but a shared mission. Cheering your story on, Jed! I'm confident your SaaS first approach will surpass ours earlier and much faster! #carryingcrabs

Choosing a financial partner is one of the first decisions founders make. Choosing Brex is one of the smartest decisions they will make. ?? #startups #growth

Here's a very quick update for our future potential investors! KreiosLabs just surpassed $8.5k in ARR this month! While April's growth was slower than anticipated, we saw a strong rebound in May and hopefully it continues from here. I recently attended the Raid the Fridge event hosted by Kickstarter Ventures that featured Expedock Cofounders Jig Y. and Jeff Tan. My two main takeaways from the talk are: 1. I'm simply not working hard enough 2. Go global And guess what? That's exactly what we will do for the next few months - work harder and go global. Stay tuned for our next update!