Crew Capital's Community Newsletter #19
Crew Capital
Crew Capital is a venture capital firm investing in entrepreneurs building category-defining technology companies.
Spring has sprung! Welcome to the March edition of Crew Capital’s Community Newsletter!
March was an exciting month for us. We had the opportunity to gather with our friends at Boldstart Ventures together with over 60 founders from around the world, at a portfolio offsite that we hosted in Miami. The theme was “Back to Basics”, and was structured as a “Founder’s Day” that featured founders from each of our portfolios hosting interactive sessions with other founders, in groups of 20-30.
The sessions were moderated by amazing founders including Guy Podjarny (Snyk), Jake Stein (Common Paper), Rob Bailey (BackBone AI), Ryan Denehy (Electric AI), and many more. We covered topics including finding product-market-fit, pricing, zero to one sales, scaling technical teams, and efficient marketing strategies. Over the last few years, founders and investors alike have experienced an unusual level of volatility from the ZIRP bubble, tech downturn, subsequent recovery, and more recently AI excitement. It was helpful to tune out the noise and focus in on sharing perspectives, lessons, and tactics on the fundamentals of company-building.
As Boldstart’s Ed Sim said , “it’s magic when you get founders from the same domain at different stages together to share key learnings and feedback.”
Over the next few weeks we’ll share more content for early stage founders on key lessons from the event. In the meantime, onto the March newsletter!
Content from the Crew Collective
Founder Insights: We recently sat down with Durga Pandey , co-founder and CEO of Subskribe , to discuss his entrepreneurial journey, having a long-term vision in business, balancing product development and product-market-fit, and managing investor relations in startups. Durga has built a rapidly growing SaaS startup that is revolutionizing the way modern businesses handle CPQ, billing, and revenue recognition. Durga is a tremendous founder, who leads with a strong blend of humility, optimism, ambition, and customer focus - all of which complement his extensive product background.
A short preview:
Durga believes that founders need to focus on the bigger picture to thrive in the tumultuous startup landscape. “There’s the day-to-day motivation, and then there’s the long-term,” he said. “Financial outcomes by themselves are not motivating enough over a long period of time. You have to really like the problem space and you have to enjoy building a startup.” He went on to explain that running a startup requires a different mindset that embraces acceptance of uncertainty, and sometimes, in his words, “pain.” “You must be firmly convinced there’s a problem out there and that you’re capable of solving it,” he said.?This conviction, coupled with the excitement from a passionate team and enthusiastic customers, creates a “virtuous cycle of dopamine happiness.” Durga advises founders to get comfortable with uncertainty, explaining that fear of the unknown can lead to debilitating stress. Building a startup “isn’t just about riding the highs, but also about finding a rhythm in the lows and thriving amid uncertainty.”?
?? Check out the whole article !
Startup Experiences: The Accounts Receivable Management (ARM) industry is one of the most important yet overlooked sectors of the economy. Aktos is building the modern operating system to digitize processes, automate workflows, and streamline operations for the industry.?
To talk more about Aktos and its industry-defining vision, we sat down with Alvaro Atienza , a Staff Site Reliability Engineer at Aktos. In our conversation, we cover the building culture in early stage startups, scaling through rapid growth, and what it takes to thrive in a rapidly changing environment through the eyes of a senior software engineer.
A short preview:
领英推荐
My journey in engineering began at a startup where the founders were hungry, and motivated, which convinced me that this was the right career path for me. Startups offer the versatility to explore various aspects of technology and are often the base grounds for learning and experimentation, allowing me to dabble in diverse aspects of technology
?? Read the entire article here !
Want more Crew content? Follow us on TikTok , LinkedIn or YouTube for insights on company building from some of the best founders and operators across the software industry!
Recent Events
Check out some pics below from our recent Founder's Day, cohosted with Boldstart Ventures!
What have our start-ups been up to this month?
Job Openings
We're always on the lookout to connect exceptional candidates with our portfolio companies. To learn more about the opportunities, reach out to our Head of Platform, Sonia Damian at [email protected]. If you want to explore all available job opportunities within our portfolio companies, please visit our career page.
Quote of the Month
"Keep employer values consistent with the company – even when the company changes. Employer branding is often confined to a list of values and principles on a “careers page”. While deciding and articulating values as an employer is crucial in the early stages, startups need to ensure consistency between what people hear and what they experience when working for the company. Review this alignment constantly. Startups evolve, pivot, and change direction; they are like natural organisms."
Marius Istrate , Startup Investor & Advisor, in Building an Employer Brand at Early Stage Companies
Founder @NY Tech Future | Empowering NYC's Tech Ecosystem | AI Community & Career Development | Ex-LinkedIn | Author
7 个月Thanls for sharing - I am currently tryibg to figure out how to best do product-market fit or alternatively me-job fit testing - doing all these experiments and reaching out to people, exploring. But I wonder, does anyone of you has a method, structure, framework or else you use that effectively work for you? And would you be willing to share it?