Shane Sabine’s Post

What compelled us to write a check in JustPaid.io? I got to know the founding team, two of whom exited their businesses - one (Daniel Kivatinos) having earned a spot on Y Combinator’s Top 100 Exits list via selling DrChrono for $200M! They possess domain expertise, have chemistry as former colleagues, and were hungry to find JustPaid to address pain points they had personally encountered. JustPaid operates in the massive market of AI revenue ops. Their noble mission is to empower businesses with insight and oversight that simply hasn’t yet existed! Check out founder Anelya Grant in AI Business here: https://lnkd.in/dNkzpTjg. We were fortunate to invest alongside Y Combinator, Kleiner Perkins partner Mamoon Hamid, Josh Buckley, ex-SAP global head of digital marketing Matt McGill, and Dropbox founder Arash Ferdowsi. Watch them continue to release integrations and increase functionality to support a wider swath of customers. They just launched a finance AP and AI agent, too!

🚀 Unleashing the Power of Users: Crafting Marketplace Success! 🌐💼 Ever wondered why Power Users are the cornerstone of a growing marketplace? Let's break it down: 1️⃣ They drive transactional volume. 2️⃣ They contribute to the vibrance and sustainability of the marketplace. 3️⃣ They amplify marketplace reach. #MarketplaceSuccess #BusinessStrategy #UserEngagement #NetRevenue 💡Join over 10,000 investors, finance professionals, founders, and fund managers. Gain unique investing insights and access exclusive data, financial models, and startup growth strategies. https://lnkd.in/gCfZ_txj

🚀 Unleashing the Power of Users: Crafting Marketplace Success! 🌐💼 Ever wondered why Power Users are the cornerstone of a growing marketplace? Let's break it down: 1️⃣ They drive transactional volume. 2️⃣ They contribute to the vibrance and sustainability of the marketplace. 3️⃣ They amplify marketplace reach. #MarketplaceSuccess #BusinessStrategy #UserEngagement #NetRevenue 💡Join over 10,000 investors, finance professionals, founders, and fund managers. Gain unique investing insights and access exclusive data, financial models, and startup growth strategies. https://lnkd.in/gCfZ_txj

🚀 𝟰𝟬+ 𝗣𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗸𝘀 𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗕𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗗𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀   There are 1,200+ unicorns worldwide (CBInsights), and they all have one thing in common—they started with a pitch deck.   If you want to make your own deck stand out, look at how these unicorns did theirs.   This collection includes decks from companies like: 🔷 Airbnb 🔷 Buzzfeed 🔷 Dropbox 🔷 Snapchat 🔷 Uber 🔷 LinkedIn 🔷 YouTube   These companies come from diverse industries and have diverse business models, meaning there’s something you can learn no matter what kind of company you’re running.   Most also created new, industry-defining business models.   Interested in taking a look?   Comment below and I’ll send you the resource ASAP.👇 Please send a connection request if we are not connected already to get the resource📥 Shoutout to Nathan Beckord (CEO at Foundersuite and Fundingstack) for building this great resource!

I had big plans to write up an initial post about Headstart's strategy and why we're excited about the AI-enabled service industry. Emergence Capital beat me to the punch. I love it! My favorite quote: "Service businesses that leverage both AI and humans to deliver holistic solutions to clients are poised to outgun and outpace the services behemoths that’ve dominated for the last 50 years. Legacy providers are ripe for disruption: their business models rely on human labor and hourly billing which can be turned on its head by AI-enabled vendors." Flat fee > hourly billing. Align incentives. Pay someone based on results (time and quality) and they'll ship code faster and better. Thank you to Jake Saper and Jessica Cohen for their thoughtful analysis. https://lnkd.in/eSqggeE7

VCs to founders: We want full time #Founders, $1M ARR and 90% customer retention before we can give you $500K. VCs to Bhavish Aggarwal: Here’s another $50M for your new AI hobby. Don’t bother about the $500M you’ve burnt so far in all your ventures. Come back when you need more. We got plenty. #startups #venturecapital

OpenAI 's case study is not about “corporate governance”. At early-stage ventures, the "largest vote" isn't with the board or the investors -- it's with the founders, the operators, the builders. Where the team goes, the investors and money go, especially in the early days of a "business". Sam Altman's co-founder and team collectively "voted with their feet" against the board. While corporate governance, the board and investors are a very important part of the tech ecosystem, at early stage, it's much more about the team and those creating the future "value". At later stages (e.g. Wal-Mart, Apple, Google) it becomes more about the franchise and less about any one individual. I’ve sat in all 3 sides/seats of the “tech start-up table” - Board, Investor and Operator/Founder.  Here are some 'Brilliant Basics' that I use to make decisions and frame up the world. 🔑 A “start-up” is not some magical legal entity — it’s a group of individuals who wake up every day and make a conscious decision to commit to each other, to building a product or service to be sold (hopefully) for more than it costs to build.  👉 Without the founder(s), there is no investment (VCs invest in people, not companies.) 👉 Without the investment, there is no pay to afford the operators to join the founders = team. 👉 Without the team, there is no product. 👉 Without the product, there are no customers. 👉 Without the customers, there is no “business” to support the existing team and attract new talent/investment. It begins and ends with the builders.  Is there some truth that “we’re all replaceable?" Yes, especially as a company matures. However, OpenAI goes to show that for new horizon technology, ~$90Bn of “value” relies a whole lot on the people who build in the trenches day in and day out. To all the operators (especially the elite builders in the Operators Guild family) thank you for the daily hustle and the oftentimes "thankless" work of helping to move the world forward. #build #operators #founders #governance #Investors #earlystage #tech #ai #openai

We have been building Blance, for the past 1 year and have given it our all day in and day out. Alas, it's now time to pull the plug! At Blance, we've always been committed to unlocking financial literacy and wellness for everyone. However, slower-than-expected revenue growth and evolving market dynamics have led us to an important realization - we need to adapt to make a true impact. Taking inspiration from successful pivots like Slack and Instagram, we're excited to announce our shift towards a B2B model. We're now pivoting towards a new business model focused on the B2B landscape. The future of business lies in selling outcomes rather than services, and we're positioning ourselves at the forefront of this revolution. Stay tuned for updates on our new direction and how we're preparing to lead in this space. If you're building in B2B SaaS and want to increase your conversions 10X, check out Revrag.ai (Previously Blance), and sign up for the waiting list! The link is in the comments! 👇 Neeraj Gupta | Pankaj Gupta #startup #pivot #businesspivot #fintech #newbeginnings #B2B #Innovation #ai

Working with Jin W. Chang , Chris Szymansky and the rest of the Fieldguide team over the last few years has genuinely been one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in my professional career. They work insanely hard, care deeply about their customers, and I couldn’t be happier that they are getting the recognition they deserve. It’s been clear for a while now that the company has a set of characteristics that when combined make it a truly outlier business. To name a few: 1. FG is operating in a “pull” market, where every customer is actively looking for a product to help address persistent headwinds across talent shortages and quickly evolving end-customer expectations around digitally native experiences. 2. By building a product that assists the customer base with the workflow end-to-end, FG has been able to generate clear-cut, quantifiable ROI for the practitioners by saving time on a per-engagement basis and enabling them to win new business. 3. FG is a canonical example of why owning the core customer workflow sets you up perfectly to layer on AI functionality over time -- turns out risk audits are one big AI problem! 4. The company is led by a team that consistently does exactly what they say they’re going to do and doesn't stop until that’s the case. We’re proud to partner with FG and are stoked to see what’s to come!

One of the biggest mistakes I made during my startup journey was that I underestimated the market size 😅 . And this is a similar mistake other successful founders made (even #Google), and they later surprise with the market size and the pain strength. During my trip in #LA, I met key customers in media, tech industry and academics. And a significant part of them immediately brought up their credit card and registered. Founders understand how hard this behavior is. And they introduced others, even their competitors 😎 If people love a product, they propose other use cases and make an intro. Right, I underestimated the market, it is a good news 🚀 #ModelEvaluation #Market #Founders