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Co-hosting “Founder Secondaries” with Corient is already a highlight of our NYC TechWeek! 🥳 Here is what we covered - ✨ Secondary markets are here to stay. Companies are staying private longer than ever (avg is 12 yrs!!), and the IPO market is slow. Early stakeholders are turning more to secondaries than ever as a means of liquidity, whether they need it to pay for a house, return DPI to their own investors, etc. We see secondaries start to appear most often around Series B. ✨ Secondaries are a strategic lever for startups. They’re not just about $$ today! In providing liquidity to early stakeholders (and employees), startups can drive employee satisfaction and retention. Startups can also thoughtfully choose their secondary partners. We see savvy founders start to build secondary relationships with long-term capital providers and future primary round strategics. … and we hope you consider Altra Venture Partners in that process! ✨ The best time to secondary is during/after primary rounds. (Yes I made it a verb) The further you get away from a primary round, the more challenging secondaries can be. When price and terms aren’t pre-set, there’s more negotiation to be done. … plus, what information (if any) are you allowed to share off cycle? ✨ Taking some chips off the table as a founder can be a good move. Now we’re not telling you to sell everything, and every situation is different! Talk to Corient about this!! …but taking some chips off to take care of your family, have liquidity in an emergency, etc. is increasingly normal for founders. - I’ll leave you with the same question we left the audience with: How can you make secondaries strategic, for yourself, your employees, and your company? Tell us in the comments! - I'm Katie Nowak, an investor, innovation leader, and new venture designer sharing examples & lessons weekly. Follow me + hit 🔔 to stay tuned.
Companies often kill their best ideas without realizing it. 🤯 Here’s why - Processes optimize quickly for what already works - not what COULD work. (You’d be surprised, this happens in startups and Fortune 500’s alike) This is a problem, because the world is changing faster than ever ... aka, what already works will be disrupted faster than any other time in history. Continuous innovation = the only moat. If you want to break the cycle, ask yourself: ✨ How are we promoting an experimentation culture? (no failure, only learning!) ✨ How are we nurturing and vetting new ideas? ✨ …is our vetting process structured, fast and low-risk? ✨ How do we reward bold thinking, even when it doesn’t pay off right away? ✨ If a competitor tried this idea - would it disrupt us? …and those questions are just the start! - What’s one question you’ll ask your team this week to keep your best ideas alive? Share below and I’ll come ideate with you! - I'm Katie Nowak, an investor, innovation leader, and new venture designer sharing examples & lessons weekly. Follow me + hit 🔔 to stay tuned.
"How do I make my biz strategy successful?!" 🤯 Here are 3 tips - ✨ Prioritize ruthlessly. Ask yourself... ... What’s the one thing that will move the needle? ... What can you stop doing today to free up bandwidth for what matters? ... What should be reprioritized for a later strategic phase - and why? Many think prioritization means saying ‘no’ to ideas, but that’s not always the case. You can prioritize (do the thing), reprioritize (delay the thing for later, strategically), or deprioritize (likely never do the thing). That’s why having a multi-phase strategy is so important!!!! It often feels much better to reprioritize an great-but-not-now idea to another phase, where everyone can see it, vs. put it on the invisible back burner. ✨ Make it a habit. Strategy isn’t static. It’s lived, tested, and adjusted - every single day. (Even if you aren’t thinking about it) Some tips... ... Keep your strategy visible ... Make it a team conversation, not a solo exercise ... Celebrate small wins that align with your direction ... Consciously check-in as you make decisions ✨ Keep it clear. Clarity empowers everyone to move in the same direction. Challenge - try boiling your overall strategy (and its phases) into a single punch line. What does it sound like? Is it clear what value you're delivering? Involving your team for brainstorming on this is key. - Which of these resonate with you?! Drop ‘em in the comments and let’s chat more. 👇 - I'm Katie Nowak, an innovation leader, new venture designer and investor sharing examples & lessons weekly. Follow me + hit 🔔 to stay tuned.
The game is changing in venture 🤯 Early investors are rethinking their liquidity playbook. Here's why - ✨ The LP pressure is real. Startups are staying private longer than ever (10-15 yr) - and some may never IPO. That creates a pickle for LPs and their fund managers. …but there is a bright side! ✨ Selling early * could * generate meaningful returns. Selling early is not necessarily a slouchy outcome. Charles Hudson (Precursor Ventures) ran the math in his recent StrictlyVC interview... …and selling some positions at Series B could have returned 3x+ on his fund! This math suggests that selling early, at least in part (~25%), could be viable for some early investors, while holding onto some exposure for the long run. ✨ Secondary markets are now a core liquidity source. The secondary market (selling existing shares) is maturing. These secondary transactions allow seed funds to sell stakes, often to late-stage investors, and generate DPI. Charles predicted that, for pre-seed funds like his, +75% of dollars returned to LPs in the next 5 years will be done through secondaries. 🤯 ✨ But not all venture funds can buy secondaries. Simply put - venture funds need to register as a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) in order to purchase a significant volume of secondaries. (RIA = higher compliance, reporting, + oversight requirements) As a late-stage fund, it's not quite thaaaaat easy to get involved in this growing space! - All in all - early stage venture is absolutely about picking winners... ...but it may also be becoming about knowing when to sell secondaries (vs. waiting for an IPO). 🤔 At Altra Venture Partners, we’re excited to be a trusted option for early stage investors in the secondary space, for decades to come. If you’re interested in learning more about venture secondaries, drop us a DM or comment below. We’d love to talk, share insights, and explore opps to collab! — I’m Katie Nowak, investor, innovation leader, and new venture designer, sharing weekly insights. Follow + hit 🔔 to keep up.
Launching a new product, service, or venture? Be sure to ask yourself these questions - ✨ How far of a leap is my solution for customers? What are your customers using today (aka “traditional products”) and how different is your new solution from those products? Understanding the leap you're asking customers to make can help you be more thoughtful re: adoption potential over time. As an example: + In 2 years, TikTok had over 50M global users. + In 15 years, Waymo hit 10M paid autonomous rides. ...very different adoption rates for very different products! Where does your solution fall on this spectrum? How does that influence your biz model, capital required, etc? ✨ How will you overcome switching costs? It’s not just about being a better product - it’s about being worth the hassle (and $$$) to switch. There is a reason why some products are far stickier than others… and it's not always just because of their value. B2B business lines tend to have higher retention rates. Some examples: + Enterprise Software - on average, 83% retention rate (replacing custom integrations/workflows and migrating data is hard work!) + Commercial insurance - on average, 86% retention rate ✨ Who are the first 100 people who will care? Yes, it is important to know your market segments, but who are the first 100 people who will love your solution? Why? …and have you talked to them? Shown them a prototype? Careful to avoid building on assumptions alone. ✨ How will you grow? Are you showing up in the right places, at the right time, for your audience? What are you doing to make these channels sustainable? (aka low CAC) For bonus points - how are you uniquely positioned to WIN in these channels? ✨ Will the pricing strategy create real ROI? What is the value actually worth to your customer? When you put a price on that value… is it profitable? For bonus points - how do your profit margins outperform competitors'? — These questions are just the start! Which resonated most with you? Drop your “dealbreaker” questions in the comments—I’m always looking to add a few to my list. 🤓 — I’m Katie Nowak, investor, innovation leader, and new venture designer, sharing weekly insights and lessons. Follow + hit 🔔 to keep up.
What if your next BIG breakthrough is just one pivot away?! 🤯 ...here's what I mean: ✨ Pivoting = acting on feedback. The best founders and innovators know when to double down... ...and when to change course. Why? They listen to their customers!! (via interviews, product data, growth #'s, etc. - the easier stuff) ...and then they act on new hypotheses!! (via risk-adjusted pilots, new capabilities, etc. - the harder stuff) Examples: + Slack started as a gaming company called Tiny Speck. Their first game didn't succeed... but that game's real-time player communication technology laid the foundation for Slack. + Twitter started as a hackathon side project at Odeo, a podcasting platform. Once it was clear Twitter had potential, its founders purchased Odeo (and thus Twitter) from its investors to build the social media giant. ✨ Resetting doesn’t mean starting from zero. How did Slack and Twitter pivot so quickly?! They repurposed what was already built for a more viable outcome. A true strategic pivot doesn't usually involve tearing down a house completely. The technology tends to remain (e.g. foundation, walls), but the business model around it usually changes (e.g. paint, windows). Another example: + Fuse stared offering auto loans to customers (B2C)... but their internal loan origination system was so good, that clients encouraged them to pivot and offer their technology as a lending solution (B2B). ✨ Your next big idea is likely already in your data. If you're not getting the rosy growth numbers you seek, the next opportunity may be hidden in your product (or life) data. ...you just have to find it! Easier said than done. One final example that I love on this note: + Instagram started as Burbn, a location-based check-in app... but users predominantly uploading photos. The founders noticed, pivoted, re-launched as photo-sharing platform Instagram, and sold to Facebook for $1B in 2012 - just two years after Burbn was launched. 🤯 - All in all - pivoting seems to get a bad rap... ..but isn't pivoting the action that follows listening and learning? 🤔 You likely already conduct small, risk-adjusted "pivots" every day! (The multi-million dollar ones should be a bit more sporadic ;) Let's chat in the comments - Have you ever hit "reset" in your business/life? What did you learn—and how did it change your trajectory? - I'm Katie Nowak, an investor, innovation leader, and new venture designer sharing examples & lessons weekly. Follow me + hit 🔔 to stay tuned.
We have a couple of seats left at our Secondaries TechWeek event! 🤯 Here's why you should apply to attend - We will be demystifying... ... how founders can leverage secondaries in business planning ... putting policies in place for employee liquidity ... how to think about tax planning and optimizing QSBS early on We'd love to see you there! Tag a Series B+ founder you know in the comments. And apply here: https://lnkd.in/e_P4fiFu?
Katie Nowak
We’re co-hosting our first Official NYC Tech Week event!! 🥳 At “Founder Secondaries: The Why’s, When’s, and How’s,” We will help founders explore when they should ‘take chips off the table’ regarding shares on their path to IPO or Exit. Our discussion will cover: ✨ different kinds of venture secondary transactions, ✨ who founders could partner with in those transactions (pros/cons of each), ✨ how much is ‘too much to sell’, …and more. There is a lot of conversation around secondaries... but very few talk about both the investor AND the founding team, like we will. We cannot wait to co-host with the wonderful team at Corient! Big thank you to TECH WEEK by a16z for accepting us as an official event. Please note - this is an invite-only event. If you’re a Series B+ founder and you’d like to apply to attend, please check out the Partiful link in the comments. ✨ - I'm Katie Nowak, an innovation leader, new venture designer and investor sharing examples & lessons weekly. Follow me + hit 🔔 to stay tuned.
Here’s my favorite question to ask (As a pitch competition judge) - “How do you plan to grow?” The founder’s answer tells me so many things. Including - ✨ How well do they know their customers? ✨ How well do they translate that customer awareness into strategy? ✨ How open are they to their strategy evolving, over time? ✨ How financially savvy are they? ✨ What kind of distribution moat do they have that their competitors don’t? ✨ …how aware are they of competitors? ✨ How well can they articulate some, most, or all of these things, concisely? The answer that gives me pause - “Easy! We will grow by ad spend. All we have to do is train the algo.” 🫣 Now, there may be something behind that. Maybe the founder has an exceptional idea of what is working for them, who to target and in what moments - but I’m still not convinced. A better answer - “Given what we know about our X customers, they are most likely to purchase our product Y when they are Z-ing, and we will meet them where they are by ABC. Our competitors easily cannot do this because they don’t have our [insert advantage here], which will keep our CAC competitive - especially in our early phase of growth, where we want to prove out product-market fit.” So… … how are you thinking about growth in your business? … and what’s your favorite pitch question to ask? I’d love to learn from you in the comments! - I'm Katie Nowak, an innovation leader, new venture designer and investor sharing examples & lessons weekly. Follow me + hit 🔔 to stay tuned.
The world’s changing faster than ever. 🤯 Here’s what that means for you and your biz - ✨ People are adopting new innovation at record speeds. It used to take decades for people to adopt a major new innovation… …now it only takes a matter of years. In most markets, to hold your audience’s attention, you need to constantly evolve. ✨ Traditional competitive moats are harder to maintain. The way we build and innovate is accelerating, too, making the word more competitive. Large companies face higher competition from smaller players, who are inherently more agile in this changing world. Smaller players also enjoy the tailwinds of AI tools, agility in new distribution channels (e.g. TikTok), changing workforce patterns, and more. Plus, competitors can more easily duplicate advantages today than they could decades ago. In that case, if competitors all start to look like each other, commoditization happens... …and that’s when growth usually stalls and cost-cutting begins for industry leaders, opening the door for a new market entrant to shake things up. ✨ Ongoing innovation is THE moat today. This is the big punch line. A culture of ongoing innovation is table stakes in today’s world. For the leaders of today to remain the leaders of tomorrow, their strategy needs to evolve - and quickly. (I'd argue its also why startups need to have a multi-phase strategy, or at least hypothesis of one, from the get-go) That means - ongoing product improvements of course, but also several larger bets based on your best guess of where the world is headed. Companies of all sizes struggle with this… creating an opportunity for you! (Whether you are a large incumbent or an emerging player) - How have you thought about ongoing innovation in your business today? What challenges are you facing? Share in the comments and I’ll come ideate with you. - I'm Katie Nowak, an investor, innovation leader, and new venture designer sharing examples & lessons weekly. Follow me + hit 🔔 to stay tuned.
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