Junior Gaspard’s Post

PitchBook last year released a tool called VC Exit Predictor that analyzes the chances of a successful exit for a given startup, based on their financing rounds, investors, and other information. We asked PitchBook for a list of Seattle-area tech companies most likely to go public. Read on to see the top 10 companies, ranked in order of IPO probability, with additional background info on each firm. - GeekWire https://lnkd.in/gmQCU5eD More about the VC Exit Predictor: https://lnkd.in/gq9wWxpn

“It has died not through intention but through inaction.” Jake Chapman wrote this in the article below. The "It" was Shift, a venture-backed program that embedded DoD personnel with startups, accelerators, and investors through an 8-week fellowship to bring the latest commercial tech back to the Department of Defense. Shift abruptly shuttered when the Air Force didn’t renew their contract and Shift couldn’t raise VC funds on short notice. I hope that what happened to Shift was an anomaly wrought by the budget holdup with Congress and not the canary in the coal mine for defense tech firms. While I am thrilled that defense tech caught the attention of VCs and received a financial injection the pairing has never seemed like a good match. 💰 VCs expect a startup to exit within 5 years (maybe 10 depending on the firm/partners) with a 10x-100x return to be considered a success. An acquisition is a more common exit option than an IPO but for gov, an acquisition of your contractor is effectively a failure, especially if the product ceases to exist. 🔁 VCs like to back companies with super stable revenue models, like monthly subscription SaaS. Government contracting for a single contract can take a year, and there’s a decent chance your contract will die on the vine. 💡Venture-backed companies are making decisions that inform proactive moves, like creating a market that doesn’t exist today. Gov decisions concerning partnering with small businesses tend to be reactive (at least in my limited experience), although I understand people are working hard to change that. And here’s the insider scoop about VC focus: it shifts and wanes. Defense tech is hot right now, but in 12-18 months something else will have the VC limelight. The death of programs like Shift only shortens that attention span. If the DoD wants the best technology at their disposal to “strengthen our economic and national security” per the 2024 DoD Investment Strategy, then something will have to give because the current setup doesn’t seem to be working. My two cents: Stop funding dev shops and SBIR-mills and instead identify true defense tech companies and fund them sufficiently so they don’t have to chase venture capital OR figure out how to get the primes that the DoD already likes contracting with to acquire the technology you need. Option 2 sucks, but here we are. Thoughts? #defensetech #venturecapital #departmentofdefense

PitchBook last year released a tool called VC Exit Predictor that analyzes the chances of a successful exit for a given startup, based on their financing rounds, investors, and other information. We asked PitchBook for a list of Seattle-area tech companies most likely to go public. Read on to see the top 10 companies, ranked in order of IPO probability, with additional background info on each firm. - GeekWire https://lnkd.in/gmQCU5eD More about the VC Exit Predictor: https://lnkd.in/gq9wWxpn

PitchBook last year released a tool called VC Exit Predictor that analyzes the chances of a successful exit for a given startup, based on their financing rounds, investors, and other information. We asked PitchBook for a list of Seattle-area tech companies most likely to go public. Read on to see the top 10 companies, ranked in order of IPO probability, with additional background info on each firm. - GeekWire https://lnkd.in/gmQCU5eD More about the VC Exit Predictor: https://lnkd.in/gq9wWxpn

PitchBook last year released a tool called VC Exit Predictor that analyzes the chances of a successful exit for a given startup, based on their financing rounds, investors, and other information. We asked PitchBook for a list of Seattle-area tech companies most likely to go public. Read on to see the top 10 companies, ranked in order of IPO probability, with additional background info on each firm. - GeekWire https://lnkd.in/gmQCU5eD More about the VC Exit Predictor: https://lnkd.in/gq9wWxpn

I’m very excited today to share my next chapter…Alt Capital, a new $150M fund to back early stage founders! Truly pinching myself that I’m going to get to spend all my time doing this. Fired up and ready to go. If you’re working on a startup I’d love to hear from you! --- Working with startups has never felt like work to me. I love the blank canvas, the rush of initial customers, and the satisfaction of product breakthroughs. I love convincing people to join fledgling teams through passion and conviction. I love that fleeting period of time when a team knows they have something big, but the rest of the world doesn’t know it yet. I understand how hard it is to go from zero to one. Building Lattice for the past eight and a half years was an incredible experience. I’ve learned and grown more than I would have believed possible in that time. Now it’s time for what I hope will be an infinite game: finding, supporting, and studying great startups. I believe that investors can be helpful in two ways. One, providing quality advice to companies, rooted in context on the company and valuable personal experience. Two, using their network to help those companies more quickly acquire customers, capital, and talent. I’m building Alt Capital with this in mind. When you ask us for help, we’ll be there immediately; when you don’t want help, we’ll respect your space. We won’t leave important things unsaid, we’ll do what we can to help you avoid wasted cycles, and we will be long term kind over short term nice. We’ll encourage you to dream bigger. We will always operate with deep respect for the role of the founder, and work hard in your service. We’re so excited and ready to go. We’ll be looking to grow the team soon, so if you or someone you know is interested in joining the investing team please reach out!

One of the TRICKIEST parts of VC investing is the feedback loop: Investing in a currently-hot area results in positive peer feedback and headlines today. But deeper down we know that the path to the best returns is to be non-consensus and right (because of lower entry prices, fewer well-funded competitors, etc). That means investing in an area that doesn’t make sense to most VCs and doesn’t yield great peer feedback in the moment… I wrote a Ubiquity Ventures blog post about this idea — here’s a snippet: == “The VC industry can often devolve into the model of little kids playing soccer where investors abandon their field positions to chase the ball wherever it goes. It is these hotter investment sectors that “make a lot of sense” that draw in the majority of venture capital investment and broader attention — as measured by Gartner reports, TechCrunch conferences or viral tweets. However, by the time a sector has garnered so much buzz, the attractive investment opportunities are gone. It was Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer who wrote, “You can’t do normal things and expect abnormal returns.” It is precisely because these investment areas feel so lucrative that they are not. Hot sectors attract massive amounts of venture capital which bid up startup valuations. At best, this compresses investment returns and at worst it creates a hyper-competitive industry of startups with “capital cannons” (to use Masa at Softbank’s mafia-style phrasing) aimed at one another. The lesson here, as one of my favorite Ubiquity LPs Chris Douvos likes to say, is to “optimize one’s discomfort” as opposed to chasing the comfortable. == https://lnkd.in/gv9vy8_2 #deeptech #venturecapital #startups

I believe that this is the best time to start a company and the time when the best companies emerge. When there are too many startups, artificially propped up by VC investment it enables non-sustainable ideas and business to float. I spoke with a founder, who I very much respect, a few weeks back. He told me how right after they raised $45M, they started to "dream big" without any constraints. They hired all sorts of aspirational roles, and high-level people - but they were not accountable to profitability. 6 months later he had to let go 75% of those hires. Now he is back to scaling, but with an eye towards sustainable growth and profitability. If the answer was capital, legacy solutions would always win. The answer is scrappiness, resilience, creativity. Smooth seas do not make great sailors. Failure rate of new ideas is a good thing, it leads to better ideas and new innovations. Also, if VC dollars get harder --- Corporate Deals and Partnerships become more valuable. The point of business is to do business. https://lnkd.in/eXBWmZpA

A major trend we are seeing and building around... VC was developed to finance the semi-conductor industry, where startups with extremely high upfront costs showed potential for proportionately high upside. The VC needs 100x potential with a 7-10 year exit timeline, and attempting to force this criteria onto all business models doesn't make sense. But despite the the narrow use case, VC has become the sought-after funding method for most startups. VC certainly has its place, but it can not be relied on to finance the entire startup ecosystem. Founders need new ways to build a diverse range of business models and private investors are increasing demand for direct investments. The future is direct partnerships between founders and family offices. This allows for relationship-based partnerships, mission-driven decision making, business model diversity, and positive impact. SVRN is facilitating this by building the community layer for the venture ecosystem, where authentic connection fuels innovation and investment. We've seen many instances of investments made and partnerships established within our community, all because we start with friendship and fun.

Founders Friday continues tomorrow morning as we sit down with Evan Walden of Getro! Getro is a talent platform fueling venture capital firms, accelerators, and communities in their pursuit to connect great candidates to their portfolio companies. We'll cover what it's like to sell into venture capital, Evan's founder journey, how to adapt in an industry with dramatic headwinds, and so much more. Haven't heard of Founders Friday? Every Friday, we have an honest, transparent conversation with a venture-backed founder -- about their startup, market insight, founding + funding story, initial path to traction, approach to hiring, and so much more. We avoid the obvious platitudes and look for the interesting anecdotes. If you're a startup junkie, an early stage founder, a future founder, or just a curious person about tech, we'd love to have you come by. RSVP here! https://lu.ma/imuvu8yo