Mercato

🛫 This week we hit the ground running as Ryan Sanders jetted off over the weekend to Vail for KeyBanc Capital Markets' Technology Leadership Forum, and Josh Christensen made his way to Southern California, where you can find him all week connecting with founders and ecosystem friends (reach out to him while he's in town and say 'hi' 👋). Meanwhile, Joe Kaiser heads east to Chicago tomorrow for a filming session with Cylinder CEO Bill Snyder ahead of our Annual Meeting in September. As always, we'd love to hear from you if we find ourselves in your neighborhood!

The growth model is one of 6 different scientific models that govern recurring revenue, and is, specifically, used to develop an understanding of what stage a business is in, and at what point it should move to the next stage to accelerate growth and scale. As the first step to better revenue forecasting using this growth model, you’ll need to understand 5 key inputs about a company: 1. Growth Pattern ▶ Linear ▶ Exponential or J-curve ▶ Logarithmic ▶ S-curve (Logistic) ▶ Bell Curve 2. Growth Rate (CAGR) ▶ Normal (0-10%) ▶ Rapid (10-20%) ▶ Hyper (20-40%) ▶ Double (100%) ▶ Triple (200%) ▶ Blitzscaling (>1000%) 3. Growth Stages ▶ Startup – Find out what works ▶ Scaleup – Do what works effectively, and do it efficiently ▶ Growup – Win the right customers ▶ Enterprise – Expand the market or increase profitability 4. Growth Funding In addition to understand how funding aligns to the stages of Product Market Fit, Go To Market Fit, and ScaleUp Fit, it’s important to also understand the probability of funding at each stage. Of the companies who successfully secure seed funding* only: ▶ 45% raise an A round ▶ 27% raise a B round ▶ 14% raise a C round ▶ 6% raise a D round ▶ 1% IPO *based on seed funding of $3MM 5. Growth Trend By using historical CAGR data and the understanding the denominator effect (aka the natural decay of growth over time), you leverage a company’s current growth trend to better predict future growth. #mercatocompass

Featuring CEOs from four of our growth investments—Lori Coulter, Brian Whorley, Angie Franks and Alex X Frommeyer—and the one and only Joe Kaiser, the Venture & Startup Track at Main Street Summit is shaping up to a must-do for anyone building in the Heartland.

How do businesses and lenders feel about the state of the lending market, and how is that influencing industry trends? Lendio analyzed business profiles of over 18,000 business owners who received funding offers and interviewed 25 lenders and over 2000 small business owners to compile the SMB Lending Index, which provides a holistic view of the state of small business lending. Download the entire Lending Report using the link below 👇

As we kick off the week, the team is already in St. Paul to attend the 20th Anniversary of the Federated Challenge. As sponsors of the 2024 #federatedchallenge, we are proud to support the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central MN, Southern MN, and the Twin Cities, and their work to create and support mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth. 🤔 Interested in learning more? Visit https://lnkd.in/eDNywRH

Tuesday, we welcomed 🐶 Jacco van der Kooij, a SaaS growth extraordinaire and the Founder of Winning by Design, a global B2B revenue consultancy, to the (virtual) Compass stage to speak about the benefits of and strategy behind growth-rate based forecasting. Join us over the next three weeks as we recap our conversation, and dive into the “how to’s” of strategically planning for growth while remaining adaptable to market changes and Black Swan events. Stay tuned!

Spent a few days in The Windy City for TechChicago Week and continue to be impressed by the caliber of the tech ecosystem and the vibrant energy in the city! ☀ A few highlights: - Hosted a Founders and Funders breakfast with our friends at SVB (thank you TechNexus Venture Collaborative for allowing us to use your beautiful space!!) - Brushed up on my poker skills with Poker Power before hosting a table at the Capital Summit - Discussed securing growth-stage capital with Angie Franks, Patrick Harmon Lopez, Shawn Hoyer, and Aisling O'Laoire Thank you for having me, P33 Chicago! #CapitalSummit #TechChicagoWeek #TCW24 Mercato

Lendio is partnering with FIS to bring our technology to financial institutions across the country, enabling them to cost-effectively assess risk and widen lending opportunities with small business customers. Read the full press release to learn more. https://hubs.li/Q02GKmmN0

🛫 Assuming all flights stay on track, we're off to ORD for Tech Week Chicago where we're hosting a table at the Capital Summit poker night and a founder and funder breakfast as part of our Sunrise Startup Series! The team will also be heading to the PNW to meet with ecosystem founders and friends (and hopefully escape the heat) ☀ If you're planning to attend #TWC, we'd love to meet up! Drop us a comment below.

Effective communication and collaboration are essential for designers, who must articulate the value of design beyond aesthetics. This includes managing feedback effectively and aligning design decisions with business metrics and objectives. This alignment includes understanding how feedback should differ at each of the five different stages of design: ▶ Strategy ▶ Scope ▶ Structure ▶ Skeleton ▶ Surface Not sure where your feedback should be focused? Any easy way to ease into this is to ask what kind of input would be most useful based on where you are in the process, and focus on intent when giving feedback. Better yet, attend a design review meeting and try using only questions, no statements. #mercatocompass