Crew Capital's Community Newsletter #19

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:

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?

• MaintainX has launched five new support & help features to accelerate customer success and facilitate a quicker return to work. These enhancements include 24/7 Support, Academy Certification, a Revamped Help Center, a Customer Ticket Portal, and the MaintainX Community!
• Otterize has expanded its workload IAM support to now include Google Cloud IAM and Microsoft Azure IAM. This expansion builds on the existing support for AWS IAM and cross-cloud AWS IAM, enabling seamless access specification for workloads on Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud to both local cloud resources and AWS within Kubernetes clusters. Additionally, workloads can request just-in-time access through Kubernetes network policies, Istio authorization policies, Kafka Access Control Lists, and PostgreSQL.
• Spring Health announced the acquisition of Bloom's suite of self-guided therapy tools and digital content to enhance the user experience across their mental health solution. The integration of Bloom’s content will offer members access to over 700 interactive video sessions on topics like managing stress and anxiety, building strong habits, and fostering meaningful relationships.
• Common Paper is now SOC2 Type II compliant. This is crucial, as contract data represents some of the most sensitive information within any company, and Common Paper is committed to its security. Additionally, they have introduced support for metered/usage-based billing within their Stripe integration. This enhancement enables clients to get paid faster by automatically generating the appropriate subscriptions, invoices, etc., in their Stripe account based on the terms of their contracts. Immediately after signing, it presents a custom payment page to their customers.
• Productiv has launched Productiv Sidekick, an AI-powered assistant designed to revolutionize the way IT leaders and finance teams manage their software licenses, usage data, and budgets. With Sidekick, users can now access critical insights and recommendations through natural language queries, streamlining workflows and saving valuable time.

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.

• Quarter20, the collaborative platform for hardware design & documentation is looking for a Front-End Engineer based in the US.
• Seal Security, the first generative AI solution for automated, scalable open source vulnerability remediation is looking for their first Account Executive based in US or Israel.
• Rillavoice, the leading conversation intelligence software for outside sales is looking for a Partnership Manager, Software Engineers, Client Growth Associates, AI/ML Engineers and Talent Acquisition Partners based in New York.
• Aktos, the operating system that powers the $18B Credit Collections industry is looking for a Senior Staff Engineer (ideally backend leaning). The team is split across LA, NYC, and Canada, and is open to different geographies for this role, though time zones in ET or PT are preferred.

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