Crew Capital's Community Newsletter #25

Welcome to the September edition of the Crew Capital Community Newsletter!

This month, we're coming at you with an exclusive interview with Couchbase CFO Greg Henry, and a spotlight on Rilla—one of the fastest-growing startups in NYC!

We also recap the first NYC developer meetup hosted by SurrealDB, and sit down with one of their engineers to give you a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most exciting next-gen players in the database category.

Last but certainly not least, we’ve got fresh career opportunities at our portfolio companies!

Read on for more!

Content from the Crew Collective

Operator Expertise: With more than 30 years of experience at some of the largest companies in the world, Couchbase CFO Greg Henry has successfully led expansive finance teams across the enterprise software and healthcare industries. Greg has helped Couchbase navigate the hyper-competitive cloud database market for over 7 years, and played an instrumental role in taking the company public in 2021.

We recently sat down with Greg to discuss his transition from working at large companies like GE to Couchbase, which was then a startup with 200 employees when he joined. They also touched on Couchbase's latest artificial intelligence (AI) integrations, the public markets, and advice for CFOs and finance leaders.

?? Check out the whole interview here!

A short preview:

“A lot of these companies are ready scale-wise, metric-wise, but if you get there and you’re not really public-company ready in how you operate day to day, it’s not going to ultimately be successful. If you can’t forecast your business, if you don’t have predictability, if you don’t have the roadmap and the pipeline to keep going, it’s not going to be worthwhile,” Greg said. “I also believe that it’s individualistic for companies on when they should or if they should go public. Yes, there are metrics, but at least for us, we had a feeling of what was right for us and the right time. I would trust your gut around that and not automatically be swayed by, ‘Well, you’ve hit the metrics. Let’s go.’ If you don’t feel you’re ready, then it’s not the right time to go. And again, if you have to wait an extra 6 months, a year, or whatever, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”

Startup Experiences: SurrealDB is revolutionizing the database industry with its multi-model platform that combines graph, relational, and document database functionality into a single, unified system. We recently caught up with Micha de Vries, a software engineer at SurrealDB, to explore his journey from tinkering with old computers to working at the forefront of database technology.

?? Read the entire article!

A short preview:

Just get going. There’s so much to learn and to do in a startup environment. Candidates may be hired for a specific role, but they will often find themselves wearing multiple hats and diving into areas outside of their main areas of expertise. I was hired as a JavaScript engineer. One day I might be working on the JavaScript SDK, and another day I might be working on SurrealDB, which is written entirely in Rust. There’s so much to do and learn, and moving fast is the best way to embrace it all.

Want more Crew content? Follow us on TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube for insights on company building from some of the best founders and operators across the software industry!

Recent Events

This month, we teamed up with SurrealDB and FirstMark to host the first-ever SurrealDB NYC Developer Meetup, bringing together 100+ brilliant minds from NYC’s software engineer community.

We’ll be hosting more events later this year, stay tuned!

Startup Monthly Spotlight

The Leading Virtual Ridealong Software for the Trades

?? Mission: Rilla is transforming sales intelligence for outside sales teams by providing them with real-time insights from in-person customer conversations. Their platform enables sales managers to analyze conversations, identify best practices, and improve overall team performance.

??????Meet the CEO: Sebastian Jimenez, co-founder and CEO of Rilla, transitioned from stand-up comedian to startup founder, co-founding the company alongside Michael Castellanos, Chris Martin, and Lukasz Niepolski.

??What Sets Them Apart: Rilla revolutionizes outside sales by replacing the traditional, time-consuming "ride-along" with its AI-powered virtual alternative. Their mobile app allows sales reps to record in-person customer interactions, which are automatically transcribed and analyzed by AI. This provides actionable feedback that helps sales managers save hours of manual observation while boosting sales conversion rates by 40% on average. By focusing on outside sales (an area often overlooked by existing sales tools), Rilla delivers game-changing insights to the home services and trades industries.

?? Discover More: Check out Crew’s investment thesis, and more on Rilla here.

Need an intro? Reach out to us at [email protected] or [email protected]

What have our start-ups been up to this month?

• Common Paper launched the Common Paper Software License Agreement. Built by 45+ commercial attorneys, the agreement is made for buying and selling on-prem or self-hosted software, and free under a Creative Commons license. As part of Common Paper's mission to simplify contract negotiation and signing, it’s pre-loaded in every account with seamless Stripe-powered invoicing.
• SurrealDB announced SurrealDB 2.0, which includes powerful new features around enhanced memory management, better support for recursive queries, and a more robust transaction layer with advanced caching capabilities. These all ensure smoother query performance and improved efficiency for all database operations.
• Melio has introduced the next phase of its product, featuring new and innovative capabilities designed to help users more easily pay and get paid, gain a clearer picture of their finances, and better manage their cash flow.
• MaintainX launched MaintainX Asset Connect, their new cloud platform designed to enhance communication between OEMs and their customers. This platform aims to increase equipment uptime, improve knowledge sharing, enhance customer experience, and boost financial outcomes.

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.

• Rilla, the leading conversation intelligence software for outside sales, is looking for Software Engineers, Account Managers, AI/ML Engineers, and Talent Acquisition Partners based in New York.
• Integration.App, the AI-powered integration stack, is looking for a Sales Engineer in Latin America.
• SurrealDB, the ultimate multi-model database for tomorrow's serverless, jamstack, single-page, and traditional applications, is looking for a Senior Platform Engineer to grow their Cloud team, as well as a Solution Engineer, all based in Europe.
• Aktos, the operating system that powers the $18B Credit Collections industry, is looking for Senior Full-Stack Engineers (ideally backend leaning with Python). 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

"Grab a couple of design partners and understand with deep empathy what’s going on in their business, understand the outcomes they’re working toward, and understand what they expect out of a free tool, versus what they would pay a lot of money for. That can help entrepreneurs hone in on the areas that matter. Then, just build. Build right next to that future customer, do regular check-ins, keep a tight feedback loop, and eventually, there’s going to be some breakthrough that takes place. There’s going to be an ‘aha!’ moment that will provide more clarity.” - Sam Kassoumeh, COO of SecurityScorecard in Sam Kassoumeh’s Journey From Hacker to Entrepreneur.

Follow us on TikTok, LinkedIn, or YouTube for more company-building insights!

If you're a founder or know any exceptional early-stage B2B SaaS founders who are interested in connecting with us, feel free to reach out to us here.