Venture Daily Digest

15+ VC Job Opportunities We shared over 15 venture capital job opportunities in our Tuesday edition of the Venture Curator newsletter. 💫 You can find these listings here: https://lnkd.in/dzerER3e Want daily VC Job updates/want to learn about VC from basics... Join our VC Crafters (Break Into VC)' Slack community to learn, network and craft your path to venture capital... 👉 Join Slack Community Now: https://lnkd.in/gby478Up . #startups #vc #venturecapital #jobs #internships #funding #analyst #associate #fund #startup #founders #founder

Y-Combinator Guide: How to Pitch Your Startup... Many founders have trouble understanding the main things investors want to hear during startup pitches. Because of this, they frequently talk about less important parts, missing what truly interests potential investors. So, Y-Combinator partners have made it simpler by breaking down the pitch process into seven key questions. If you can give clear and straightforward answers to all seven questions, you'll be way ahead of most other pitches. The Seven Questions are: 1. What do you do? 2. How big is the market? 3. What’s your progress? 4. What’s your unique insight? 5. What’s your business model? 6. Who’s on your team? 7. What do you want? Check out the attached pdf for more info 👇 If you find this helpful - please like, comment & share so that it reaches founders who are currently looking to raise funding. Check out my free newsletter for more insights: https://lnkd.in/dyW299Mk . #startup #fundraising #venturecapital #funding #founders #founderjourney #entrepreneurship #entrepreneur #founderstories #startuptips #sharktankindia #siliconvalley #startups #vc #vcfund #vcfunding #pitch #pitchdeck

How do Investors Evaluate AI Startups' Tech Stacks? Many founders want to understand the framework that VCs use to evaluate the AI startup tech stack. In this post, I am sharing a framework that a General Partner shared with me. Remember the true value proposition of AI companies now lies not just within the models, but also predominantly in the underpinning datasets. It's the quality, breadth, and depth of these datasets that enable models to outshine their competitors. To assess the data quality, VC generally look for four aspects in data - → Relevance → Accuracy → Coverage → Bias To dive deeper, the following two frameworks can give you an idea on evaluating AI tech stack... → Framework 1: Tech stack pyramid for data generation → Framework 2: The five V’s of data quality Want the full breakdown? I've prepared a comprehensive PDF guide that walks you through evaluating an AI startup's tech stack step-by-step. If you found this helpful, please like, comment, and share to help other founders in our network! . #startups #ai #founders #investors #genai #venturecapital #vc #angelinvestors #startup #founder #money #investment #analysis

How Do VCs Decide to Take a First Meeting? As an early-stage founder, getting into a VC meeting is a big hurdle. Out of 1,000 companies a VC might hear about in a year, they'll only meet with 200 and invest in 4. Here's what VCs look for to decide if you're worth a first meeting: → Team: Highlight what makes your group stand out, like big wins or unique skills. Mention how long you’ve worked together, as VCs love teams that already click. → Quick pitch: Can you describe what your company does in one exciting sentence? Make it catchy and memorable to capture the essence of your vision. → Big picture: Show the massive opportunity you’re chasing and why it matters now. Explain how market or tech changes make your solution necessary today. → Money: Be clear about how your business makes money and who's paying. Share any early numbers, as VCs want to know you’ve thought through the economics. → Location: Where is your team based, and is it local or remote? Being upfront helps VCs decide if your setup fits their investment preferences. → Team size: Mention how many people are full-time versus part-time. This gives VCs an idea of your stage and current spending on salaries. → Timing: Why is now the perfect time for your startup to exist? Mention any shifts in technology, regulations, or consumer behavior that make your idea viable. → Traction: Share progress like user numbers or revenue to show momentum. Even small wins can be exciting if they point to rapid growth. → Fundraising target: Be specific about how much you're raising and why. VCs often have sweet spots, so knowing your target helps them assess the fit. → Past funding: Have you raised money before? Mention who invested and when, as it provides social proof that others believe in you. → Investor fit: Explain why you're interested in this VC, showing you’ve done your homework. Highlight any relevant industry expertise or track record. → Referral source: Who introduced you to the VC? A strong referral from someone the investor trusts can make a big difference. That's it. So, if you're reaching out to investors, make sure you're checking these boxes. Check out my free newsletter for more insights: https://lnkd.in/dSj7XSvW . #startups #fundraising #founders #vc #venturecaptial #fund #founder #angelinvestors #investors #money #entrepreneurship #entrepreneur

How does pricing evolve? Pricing is tricky - even big players mess up sometimes. Take Netflix's 2011 blunder - In 2011, Netflix got it spectacularly wrong when it revised the pricing of its DVD-by-mail and online streaming service. Adding in a series of complicated options, Netflix essentially hiked the price from $10 a month for the combined offering to $16 a month. The result? 1M more customers walked out the door than Netflix had anticipated. Setting pricing is an important strategic decision that can: → Signal value → Impact revenue → Influence growth rate Choosing an appropriate pricing model for your business is crucial. To get things started, I've shared 5 of the most common pricing strategies, along with their pros and cons (swipe to learn more). But understanding the models is only part of the solution. As you develop your pricing strategy, you need to bear these questions in mind: 1️⃣ Does your pricing structure reflect your value proposition? Marketing and pricing should work in harmony so that your product's value justifies its price point. Customers need to understand your product's benefits and any differentiating factors. Netflix's 60% price increase reminded customers how little they used the service, leading to mass cancellations. 2️⃣ How does your pricing compare to your competition? Your competitors' pricing is not the upper limit of your pricing, but it is a useful benchmark. It can tell you if you're underpriced (deliberately so, or otherwise) or overpriced, which suggests you have more work to do to clarify your value proposition. Netflix was the market leader in the online movie market, but competition was starting to emerge. For example, Amazon Prime Video gave paying Prime members access to 5,000+ movies and TV shows via their existing subscriptions. 3️⃣ What does your customer value? At the crux of your decisions should be an understanding of your customers' pain points, across all your targeted personas. Understand the features that each persona values and adjust your price and messaging to signify value and attract the right customer. Netflix's pricing adjustment backfired in a big way because the company failed to understand that customers were willing to pay for the flexibility of the combined service. It didn't matter that many people didn't use the DVD rental service often or at all. Businesses and their objectives mature, so your pricing structure must evolve, too. Early start-ups looking to achieve critical mass and product feedback may prioritise new users over value capture. By contrast more mature businesses may be more focused on value capture and so, they price for repeatability. Whatever pricing model you adopt, the fundamental principle is to keep it simple. How do you determine pricing? 👇 Credit: Andreessen Horowitz . #startups #vc #founders #venturecapital #pricing #price #businessmodel #investors #investor #angelinvestors #founder #saas #strategy #founder

Don't Be Fooled By DAU/MAU - It Hides Your Real User Activity! When founders want to see how engaged their users are, they look at the (Daily Active Users) / (Monthly Active Users) ratio metric. While it only gives a single, blended average. It doesn't show where users fall across the activity spectrum. So instead of relying solely on this ratio, what should founders analyze? Analyze the Power User Curve. It's a 30-day histogram which graph the number of days per month users were active, provides a more detailed breakdown of user engagement to identify and understand power users. 1️⃣ When The Curve Smiles A curve that looks like a smile - with high bars on the left and right - it shows that users are highly engaged and returning to the app daily. As the product can create more power users, the curve will shift further towards the right side of the smile. Facebook has a very right-leaning smile curve, with more than 60% of its MAUs coming back daily. 2️⃣ A Left-weighted Curve When the curve is left-weighted, most users only have activity one day a month. By this activity metric, the product has very few power users. That's okay, not every product is built on daily returning users. An investing product like a professional network like LinkedIn is bound to have a more left-weighted Curve. Low engagement simply means the company must extract more value from each engagement and create revenue with a business model that isn't tied to daily usage. 3️⃣ Trends & Cohorts Seeing how the curve changes over time will show if a product getting more engaging and why. A positive shift towards the right means a cohort of users is finding value in the product. This can illustrate how a new release or feature is bringing users back more often. Likewise, products like Uber or Thumbtack would want to look at cohort trends by geographic location to see how their product is developing in different areas and building network effects. 4️⃣ Customizing Your Curve To get the most from your curve, customize it to your business. It doesn't need to be viewed on the 30-day scale. A SaaS/productivity product focused on the workweek and weekly active users might want to look at their power users on a 7-day histogram, and the activity doesn't need to be app opens or logins. The curve can look beyond visits by using a deeper action that is more likely to show users getting or creating value. A publishing platform might want to look at “posted content” activity to identify its small contingent of power users. This is how YouTube could look at its creators, or eBay at its sellers. There's no silver bullet for how to look at user engagement, However, the Power User Curve visualizes user activity distribution, helping identify power users and understand how to monetize the product around them, rather than relying solely on blended average metrics. Source: Andrew Chen (Partner at a16z) . #startups #vc #analysis #funding #users #fund #money #fundraising

How To Grow Infrequent Products? Customers use your product or service at a certain frequency. While Slack and Facebook are daily products, TurboTax, Zillow, and Airbnb could be yearly products. Growing such products that are infrequently used can be more difficult — it’s much harder to tap into habitual customer behavior and much easier to forget. When the users return for the next usage is often unpredictable. I like this ICED theory framework by Vivek Kumar, which talks about helping products grow even if they are infrequently used. So sharing a quick summary with you: (1) I - Infrequency & impact on customer recall Property-buying (Zillow) has a high degree of infrequency VS. travel (Expedia) has a lower degree of infrequency. Customer’s ability to recall a product decreases over time. (2) C - Control over results & UX TurboTax allows users to file taxes entirely within the product, providing a complete control VS. Indeed has little control over the job interview process and results (the most critical experience for job seekers). The higher the degree of control, the easier to win customer loyalty. (3) E - Engagement: as determined by 3 things: 1. Complexity: the “perceived effort” to use a product Paying a bill is simple VS. setting up a financial investment plan is more complex. 2. Touch: single vs. constant Wearing a shiny pair of shoes from Stitch Fix every time is a constant touch (reminder) of the value of the product VS. Looking up reviews from Tripadvisor is a single touch. 3. Predictability of Retention Filing for taxes is predictable VS. booking hotels and flights are somewhat predicable VS. looking to hire or get hired is less predicable. (4) D - Distinctiveness & impact on recallability Airbnb has a whooping 67% direct traffic, because people remember its distinct value prop VS. apps rely primarily on search engines and paid ads to grow are not distinctive. The goal is to move the ICED dimensions from left to right. (Check out the attached document.) 👉 Read the original article: https://lnkd.in/gbkKrDaf (By Vivek Kumar) Check out my free newsletter for more insights: https://lnkd.in/dKZQKHg2 . #startups #vc #founders #venturecapital #product #analysis #founder #products #growth

Every Founder, “This is a trillion dollar total addressable market (TAM).” “If only we can capture 1% of trillion dollar market, We’re going TO BE RICH!” This is called "1% Market Fallacy" that hold most of the startups back. Why? 👇 Most of the founder follow this thinking flow: 1. Pick a large and established software market e.g. back-up, anti-virus or customer relationship management (CRM) software. 2. Write a new product for that market. 3. Get 1% of the market. 4. Retire to your own island. These markets are massive. The CRM market alone is estimated at around $18 billion per year. 1% of that is $180 million. How hard can it be to get one measly percent of a market? Except of course, it doesn’t work, unless you have massive amounts of funding or a brilliant idea that can completely disrupt the existing the market. Even then, you probably still need a fair amount of luck. Why? 🤐 The CRM software market is tough, with big players having large budgets and strong teams. Getting noticed on Google for a common search term like "CRM software" is almost impossible. Established companies enjoy network effects, including consultants, training, forums, and products, making it challenging for newcomers. 🤕 The exact number of companies selling CRM solutions is unclear, but the market is highly competitive. Even in a niche like seating plan software, there are numerous competitors—over 100 with overlapping functionality. The chances of becoming the 13th biggest CRM solution from scratch are slim, given the vast number of existing products, likely exceeding a thousand. Conversion rates from customer visits to sales typically hover around 1%. This means reaching a 1% market share requires attracting nearly the entire market to your website— a daunting task. Creating and growing a new market is an option, but it comes with high expenses and risks. ☠ For small software companies, focusing on a niche market with a realistic shot at a top-ten Google ranking for key search terms is advisable. Targeting a specific segment within a larger market, such as a CRM solution for companies trading on eBay in the Spanish-speaking market, can be a strategic approach. Whatever you do, don’t stand in front of investors and pitch them the 1% fallacy. It makes you look an idiot. 😵 Recently, I have shared detailed writeup on - "How founder should think about calculating Market size?" in the Venture Curator newsletter. You can check out here: https://lnkd.in/dM4W-nz3 . #startups #vc #founders #investing #investors #tam #marketsize #founder #venturecapital #analysis #angelinvestors

All-in-One Market Sizing Guide for Founders While explaining market size slide, many founders claims “Our global TAM is $X B, but we are going to start in a certain part where our SAM is $Y B. And we project that our SOM is $Z B” However, a survey by Peer VC found that investors generally dislike this approach when explaining market size. Instead of of this, investors prefer to see the founder's methodology for calculating market size numbers. However, most founders make the mistake of not explaining their methodology clearly. To address this, we have covered all the details related to market sizing in attached pdf, which includes: → Why does market size matter? - Founders & Investors Perspective → How to estimate your market size? Top-down and Bottom-up Approaches to estimate market size with an example. → What is the exact definition of market size? → When should market size be estimated? Check out the attached PDF to read more about it 👇 Check out my free newsletter for more insights: https://lnkd.in/d9uiezXa . #startups #founders #funding #vc #venturecapital #marketsize #size #guide #startuptips #startup #founder #entrepreneurship #entrepreneur #market

Pitch Deck Storytelling Template Every founder believes they have an awesome team and technology; the question is, what will investors think? In fundraising, most founders are tempted to jump straight into PowerPoint to get started. Don’t do it! Remember "It’s not about the slides; it’s about the story." So how do you tell a compelling story? - First, figure out which type of story you should be telling. Next, use your problem and solution statements to emotionally and intellectually engage your audience, and be sure to adequately address all the expected areas in the deck. With all that in mind, you’ll be ready to follow simple steps to craft your winning deck. The first and most important thing to decide about your pitch is which story you should be telling. Fiction may have seven plot archetypes, but pitches tend to fall into one of four narratives, listed here in order of strength: Traction. This is the story you want to be telling. Maybe your revenue or user base is growing really fast (> 20% month-over-month), or you’ve closed deals with major customers or partners. If you have traction that will impress investors, then tell a traction story. Team. Maybe you don’t have wow-factor traction yet, but you and your cofounders are successful second-time founders or have a management team with impressive pedigree. In that case, tell a people story. Technology. Or perhaps you don’t have strong traction but have created a technological breakthrough in an important field. Then you could tell a technology story. Vision. This is the story of last resort. If you don’t have impressive traction, a highly regarded team, or a technological breakthrough, then you have to fall back on a vision story of how you want to change the world. Be realistic in your self-analysis of what qualifies as “impressive.” Every founder thinks they have an awesome team and technology; the question is, what will investors think? If you’re not sure which story you should tell, then get some feedback from investors or other founders. Check out the attached pdf to learn more about it 👇 Check out my free newsletter for more insights: https://lnkd.in/eggvJJRE . #startups #vc #fundraising #founders #venturecapital #pitchdeck #founder #funding #fundraising #fund #money #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship