We are excited to announce that Mattermark has re-launched as an independent company! Mattermark’s mission is to maintain the most complete database of private companies and their major financial events. The new management team would like to welcome back the Mattermark’s founders Danielle Morrill, Kevin Morrill, as well as Product Lead Paul Denya and other former team members who will continue to be involved and support our renewed focus on private deal intelligence.

This transition has been in the works for the past few months without disruption to services. You have our assurance that will continue to be the case. We are currently adding new members to our customer service team, engineering, and data teams to redouble our commitment to customer satisfaction and data excellence.

In the coming weeks, stay tuned for the re-launch our highly acclaimed newsletter, feature announcements, and new datasets we’ve busy integrating.

We are excited for the opportunity to work with you and prove Mattermark is the best source for investment intel.

The post Mattermark has re-launched as an independent company! appeared first on Mattermark.

We recently caught up with Diego Ventura, CEO and founder of noHold, to get his take on how their sales approach is unique.

Can you start by explaining noHold and how you came up with the idea?

noHold has created an AI platform that companies like Cisco, Dell, McAfee, etc. use to engage their customers to provide pre/post-Sales support. The end user application is a Virtual Assistant that can understand customers’ queries automatically without human intervention. Gartner named us Cool Vendor twice, this year for AI Platforms and Conversational Interfaces. I started the company in 2000 with an investment of $15M. Before noHold I was running another company that closed a very successfully deal with a large Consumer Electronics manufacturer. The OEM deal was great, but we were responsible for first level support and it was at that point that we decided we needed to automate the process. We thought AI would be the answer, but back then not many commercial options were available, so we built one.

How does your company approach sales? How is it different than other companies?

We currently use a direct sales approach, but the board has decided recently to augment it with channels. This means that it is going to be even more important for product information, processes, procedures and pricing to be well documented and easily accessible to our own sales people and our partners’. To this end we are using our own platform that helps Sales Managers create Virtual Assistants out of existing documents they may already use to train their team. The Virtual Assistant can be available to the team while they are interacting with customers right where they are, maybe in a Salesforce.com session, on a mobile via voice, etc. Best of all we can check the metrics provided by the platform to figure out what’s most important to our and our partners’ sales people.

Let’s dive a little deeper into how your sales team operates. How often are decisions and activities driven by data insights?

Prior to an engagement we like to learn as much as possible about the company and the people we are going to connect with. We use multiple resources for this that range from LinkedIn to market specific research depending on vertical. Our approach to each sales call is very investigative. First, we try to gain trust from a prospect and then learn what’s important to them. We position ourselves as experts in the space and share the best practices we have learned by working with F500 companies for the past 15+ years.

What tools does your team use to gather information and make sure you’re spending time on the right prospects?

Multiple tools, but primarily analysts’ reports from Gartner and Forrester. We also developed a methodology that very quickly allows us to determine the level of interest in our solution within the first call. I think that good intelligence to start with and a quick way to determine interest are a powerful combination in helping us save time.

What does success look like for your sales team?

Aside from the standard Key Performance Indicators (KPI), we measure customer satisfaction in relation to the ROI we have been able to generate for them. We are a SaaS platform, so customer retention is as important as customer acquisition since our revenue is recurrent. Success is not just hitting the KPI, though. To me, success is when a customer stops by the office for no particular reason, just to spend a bit of time with us and have a coffee. That kind of customer loyalty has no price.

What advice would you offer other sales teams that have a product as niche as yours?

It is very important to understand and be aware of the person you are talking to. Everybody is important, but for different reasons. The key is to find the right prospect and understand what is important to them.

The post Sales Success, Operations, and Tools with noHold CEO Diego Ventura appeared first on Mattermark.

Help People Affected By Hurricane Harvey

Houston, Texas and the surrounding areas have been devastated by Hurricane Harvey. We at Mattermark urge you to donate anything you can, whether it’s to the Red Cross or another local or national organization (the New York Times has a good list of organizations, as well as advice on how to avoid scams).

From the Operators

Jason Cohen of WPEngine challenges a common way of describing how to build early products by focusing on simplicity, lovability, and completion in “I hate MVPs. So do your customers. Make it SLC instead”

Hiten Shah (founder of Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics and Quick Sprout), on the Product Habits blog dives into a history of product growth and lessons learned by analyzing “How Grammarly Quietly Grew Its Way to 6.9 Million Daily Users in 9 Years”

Ryan Law, CMO & co-founder at CoBloom, writes about the typical size and traits of startup funding rounds from pre-seed to series C in part two of his nine (!!) part series: “From Pre-Seed to Series C: Startup Funding Rounds Explained”

If you want to research who you should pitch to, Mattermark Standard is now $49 per month

In addition to publishing this newsletter, we crawl the public web to organize information on more than four million of the world’s fastest growing businesses. Job seekers, founders, angel investors, and most importantly YOU can take advantage of Mattermark data starting at $49 per month, with no annual commitment.

From the Investors

Monique Woodard of 500 Startups offers “The Unsolicited Advice I Gave an Aspiring VC“, emphasizing that if you’re a member of an underrepresented group in VC, you should skip early stage and work at a firm that writes later stage checks.

In one of a series of videos, Roger Lee of Battery Ventures sits down with Nick Metha, CEO of Gainsight, to explain how their working relationship evolved as Roger helped place Nick in the CEO role in “Marriage, VC-style: How One VC and One Prominent Software CEO Make it All Work”

Leo Polovets of Susa Ventures breaks down how VCs spend their time each day, citing data he collected on his own habits and observations of others in “Behind the Scenes at a VC Fund, Part 2: Helping Founders and Time Allocation”

Edith Yeung of 500 Startups has assembled the “China Internet Report 2017“, emphasizing that “China no longer needs to “borrow ideas” from America, but created new innovations of her own.”

Samir Kaji of First Republic Bank says that besides being great at sourcing, picking, and winning, you need to be ready to dedicate the next 20 years of your life in “What you need to think about before starting a venture firm”

News!

The SEC has put out a warning around ICOs, which is probably prudent reading if you’re looking to invest in cryptocurrency offerings.

Jobs!

Ron Pragides from AppDirect wrote in to tell us they’re hiring for engineering roles! He even sent a photo of the view from their office.

What they do: cloud subscription management with marketplace, billing, reseller, and distribution solutions.

Hiring for: Staff Frontend Developer, Staff Backend Engineer, Billing

In their own words: We’re a $1B startup that most haven’t heard of, but have been listed on the Forbes Cloud 100 for the past 2 years. Our HQ is perched atop Nob Hill — giving us a 360-degree view of SF when Karl The Fog isn’t around!

The post MVPs out SLC in, Startup Funding Rounds Explained, lots more – Mattermark Daily appeared first on Mattermark.

The Search is Over

It’s been reported that Uber’s board of directors has picked Dara Khosrowshahi to be its new CEO.

Mr. Khosrowshahi has been the CEO of Expedia since 2005, building it into the $23 Billion company it is today. You’ve probably read all about this in the major news outlets, but we really recommend Ben Thompson of Stratechery on “Uber’s New CEO”

From the Operators

Legendary (read: four IPOs) founder Steve Blank (of MIPS, Ardent, SuperMac, Convergent, and more) recounts a discussion with a former student in which he explains “Why Successful Startups Stumble at 40+ Employees” as they go through the motions of becoming a large company.

You have to read this interview with Oni Chukwu, CEO of etouches, (who you’ve probably never heard of) and his three $100M+ exits as an executive at software companies.

If you want to research who you should pitch to, Mattermark Standard is now $49 per month

In addition to publishing this newsletter, we crawl the public web to organize information on more than four million of the world’s fastest growing businesses. Job seekers, founders, angel investors, and most importantly YOU can take advantage of Mattermark data starting at $49 per month, with no annual commitment.

From the Investors

Mike Williams of Thinkbox explains how he is “Getting Started Angel Investing“, his methodology, and inviting discussion in a new online group.

Sari Azout of Level Ventures presents consecutive, contradicting pieces of advice in an effort to remind you that even though there’s a ton of content on how to do everything from invest to raise children, you have to ask yourself the difficult questions because “You Are Not the Last Medium Post You Read”

Brad Feld of Foundry Group (and Mattermark investor, hi Brad!) shares his take on “Effective Networking” after reading Adam Grant’s essay on the subject, emphasizing that rather than focus on networking to grow your career, you can grow your network by getting to work and just doing something.

Harry Alford of Humble Ventures adds his own advice on top of Ryan Boshar’s article about running retail pilots (which we covered last week) in “What Startups Should Consider When Exploring Pilot Opportunities”

Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital on how selling money is no longer a sustainable strategy for VC investing in “Venture capital is headed for a ‘huge, rude awakening’” [Podcast]

Jobs!

Laura Hoang from CredPR reached out to let us know they’re hiring, and that they love Cheez-Its (seriously, Laura said this, so if you’re team Goldfish, maybe stop reading?)

What they do: Speaker & event management

Hiring for: Sr. Associate, Jr. Associate, and Event & Operations Specialist (All in San Francisco)

In their own words: We are a team of creative, cheez-it obsessed, inspiring problem solvers, who believe in our mission and vision, and how we’ll get there.

The post Effective Networking, 40+ Employee Stumble, Start Angel Investing, and more – Mattermark Daily appeared first on Mattermark.

What Makes a Good Pitch?

Sarah Guo at Greylock Partners has put together an in-depth guide to help answer this question, emphasizing that the point of a tight deck is not just to “sell” potential investors, but to ensure a founder understands their own value proposition.

“What Do I Look For in a Pitch?” explains not only how to structure a narrative, but explicitly identifies the aspects of the business that are crucial to being successful in growing a company fueled by venture capital.

If you want to research who you should pitch to, Mattermark Standard is now $49 per month

In addition to publishing this newsletter, we crawl the public web to organize information on more than four million of the world’s fastest growing businesses. Job seekers, founders, angel investors, and most importantly YOU can take advantage of Mattermark data starting at $49 per month, with no annual commitment.

From the Operators

Ryan Law & Emily Smith of Cobloom have put together an extensive set of statistics and analysis around “The State of SaaS Content Marketing 2017“, concluding that while everyone does content marketing, efficacy varies greatly from company to company.

Akash Sharma of Chargebee channels his inner poet, describing the customer lifecycle (and citing a TON of helpful examples, guides, and methodologies) in “Aristotle’s SaaS: A Compendium of Advice for Understanding The Customer Lifecycle”

Matt Allen of Amazon Web Services cites experience operating and mentoring startups when he argues that unless your portfolio companies are buying the best tools to keep their engineers efficient, “Your Whole Tech Portfolio is F#$&ed.”

From the Investors

Arlan Hamilton of Backstage Capital in “https://www.siliconrepublic.com/video/arlan-hamilton-inspirefest-2017” reiterates that there are new faces in venture capital and emphasizes how important investing in underserved entrepreneurs is.

Tomasz Tunguz says that even though the market is incredibly saturated, the opportunity to succeed by finding product/market fit is as abundant as ever in “Has SaaS Become Commodified?”

Ben Virdee-Chapman writes… well… look, if you know who Jason Lemkin is, read this because it’s funny.

Deals!

WeWork has raised $4.4 Billion from SoftBank, $1.4B of which is dedicated to expansion in Asia. We’re pretty sure that Jonathan, our VP of Marketing, broke his “w” key when he typed “wow” in Slack upon hearing this earlier today… from the 20th floor of a WeWork…

Jobs!

Amrita Chandra from CrowdRiff wrote in to share a “clever job blurb from some nice Canadians!”

What they do: Visual marketing automation platform for travel and tourism brands

Hiring for: Sales Development Rep, Account Executive and Product Designer

In their own words: We spend our days immersed in gorgeous photos and videos from our 200+ customers on five continents. Armchair and real life traveling is highly encouraged!

The post Talking SaaS, What Makes a Good Pitch?, WeWork and the Letter B, more – Mattermark Daily appeared first on Mattermark.

Mattermark Standard is now $49 per month

In addition to publishing this newsletter, we crawl the public web to organize information on more than four million of the world’s fastest growing businesses. Job seekers, founders, angel investors, and most importantly YOU can take advantage of Mattermark data starting at $49 per month, with no annual commitment.

From the Operators

Juan Philippe, intern at Instrumental and Duke University student, gives an overview of how he shipped a product during his engineering internship in “Intern-al Affairs: Developing Instrumental Reports Beta”

Ron Pragides of AppDirect reminds founders that hiring a CFO usually signals an inflection point in a company’s history, and cites numerous examples of startups hiring their first CFOs to help you decide “When to Hire a CFO”

Nick Franklin of ChartMogul looks at pros and cons of salaries, talent, immigration, fundraising, lifestyle, travel, operations, and more, explaining what it’s like “Starting a SaaS in Berlin – 3 years in”

From the Investors

Fred Wilson counters the argument that Resource Constraints make it difficult to succeed as a startup, saying that great operators are never limited by a lack of funding or engineers.

Justin Gage of Cornerstone Venture Partners says that even though capital is available and incubators are everywhere, there really aren’t as many startups as you’d think in “Do We Really Live In A Golden Era Of Startups?”

Brian Laung Aoaeh of KEC Ventures is starting a meetup for Supply Chain enthusiasts in NYC

Down Memory Lane

Remember Zork? Elizabeth Woyke talked to the four creators (Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling) about how the game came to be, and has an amazing set of photos of some of the original materials.

Our CTO Kevin says:

“It’s like the beginning of people’s imagination with computer games, which is awesome.”

Legendary founder Garrett Camp of Expa (and co-founder of Uber & Stumbleupon) shares the original Uber pitch deck from 2008, which, if you haven’t seen it, demonstrates incredible foresight into a market and is a great example of how effective it is to be direct and to the point.

Jobs!

Karolis at Zeus reached out to let us know they’re hiring!

What they do: Tech-enabled property manager renting furnished homes and apartments across SF city and South Bay

Hiring for: Senior Software Engineer (Full stack)

In their own words: We’re a small group of 14. We’re scrappy, fun and friendly. We love real estate and invest all our energy in creating unique homes and delightful tenant experiences.

The post Resource Constraints, omg Zork!, Golden Era Of Startups?, and more – Mattermark Daily appeared first on Mattermark.

Mattermark Standard is now $49 per month

In addition to publishing this newsletter, we crawl the public web to organize information on more than four million of the world’s fastest growing businesses. Job seekers, founders, angel investors, and most importantly YOU can take advantage of Mattermark data starting at $49 per month, with no annual commitment.

From the Operators

Vanessa Hope Schneider of One Medical speaks to First Round Review about lessons learned building world-class brands including Eventbrite and Airbnb in “‘Pitch the Immeasurable’ and Other Leadership Tips”

Steven Ray of Dialexa explores the struggle to maintain a familial startup culture during hyper-growth in “Seven Ways to Maintain Team Culture When Scaling a Business”

Tyler Tate of Crema continues his Startup Cheat-Sheet series with the next installment, a detailed rundown of “How to Close Your First Investor”

From the Investors

Natasha Azur of Osage Partners takes a look at trends in venture capital activity (which we’ve also been digging into lately on the Mattermark blog) in “What’s the Pulse on 2017 Midyear VC Investment?”

Ali Rowghani of Y Combinator reveals the challenges of an evolving founder role and downsides of rushed hiring in the “The Two Most Common Mistakes Growth Stage Founders Make”

Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures is back with bright red box plots expressing the volatility of public market multiples for software companies in “The Volatility Of Multiples In The Public SaaS Market”

Claire Fauquier of Corigin Ventures explains the continued stratification of seed funding into three buckets in “Understanding Early-Stage Venture Financing Stages”

Sarah Hodges of Pillar VC has the rundown of what the company is looking for in “Scouting for Pillar’s Platform Associate: Help us build Boston’s next generation of pillar companies”

Jump Capital reached out to share some promotions on their team. How cool! Are folks at your VC firm getting promoted? We’d love to hear about it, drop a note to editor@10.147.21.165

Saurabh Sharma was promoted to Partner at Jump Capital and will continue to lead activities in the Enterprise Software and Infrastructure sectors.

Yelena Shkolnik was promoted to Vice President at Jump Capital.

From the News

Spotify’s plan to directly list on the NYSE is drawing scrutiny from the SEC and Bloomberg reports “SEC Is Studying Spotify’s Plan to Bypass IPO in NYSE Listing“. This move follows in the style of Amazon, Google, and Facebook and was discussed by Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures on his blog back in April in “A Direct Listing”

The Outline tells the story of the rise and decline of Fresco News (the author worked there for 3 weeks), through pep talks from Ashton Kutcher (angel investor), missed payrolls, misleading fundraising announcements, and the struggles of one very young founder in “When the Money Runs Out”

Jobs!

Kasey Byrne at Postman in San Francisco dropped us a note to let the world know they’re hiring!

What they do: API developer tools company

Hiring for: Digital Marketer and Site Reliability Engineer

In their own words: The coolest thing about working at Postman is that our users and customers like us. A lot. Technical audiences spontaneously cheer when one of the team is presenting, and people stop me on the street in SF to ask technical questions if I’m wearing a Postman t-shirt. Believing in the product is most of the reason I like coming to work.

The post Leadership Tips, Team Culture, Choosing First Investor, and more – Mattermark Daily appeared first on Mattermark.

From the Operators

Daniel Debow of Helpful discusses how founders and marketers can win in their product positioning and messaging when they “Piss people off (but only at the right time)”

Margot Mazur of Wistia offers up advice on how to help a diverse set of remote employees be successful in “Tech companies: make remote work part of your diversity and inclusion efforts.”

From the Investors

Ellen Pao writes “This Is How Sexism Works in Silicon Valley“, an excerpt from her book, Reset, which comes out in September.

Jobs!

Sam from Aurora Solar wrote in to tell us about some open positions. Sam says, “If you geeked out over the solar eclipse, are passionate about advancing the growth of renewable energy, or generally want to work on something that really matters, we would love to talk to you!”

Check out their opportunities as a Senior Frontend Engineer, Computer Vision / Machine Learning Engineer, and Inside Sales Representative.

The post Totality, Win Product Positioning and Messaging, and Remote Employees – Mattermark Daily appeared first on Mattermark.

Ben Hernández of Dialexa argues that the next generation of designers will have to be anthropologists; multi-faceted across three core disciplines in “It’s About More than Pixels: Redefining ‘Designer’”

Michael Sacca of Dribbble and Mike Belsito of Product Collective are joined by Everette Taylor of Skurt, Arlan Hamilton of Backstage Capital, Cristina Cordova of Stripe, and others to discuss “Diversity in Tech” [podcast]

Jeff Morris Jr. of Tinder argues that the process is irrelevant when it comes to building great products in The Process vs. The Product

From the Investors

Paul Arnold of Switch analyzed his historical investment patterns over time and found that a flexible investing schedule can help you find the best opportunities in “Knowing When to Bet – It Ain’t When You Think”

Harry O’Sullivan & Paul Bianco of ffVC provide “A Data-Driven Approach to Investing in Salespeople“, with two in-depth examples and a worksheet that can help you determine when to invest in salespeople.

Jobs!

Michael FitzGerald of Submittable wrote in to tell us about why you should work with him as VP of Sales or as a Front-end Developer.

Why? As “the only YCombinator company to ever come out of Montana”, Submittable wants you to be able to read the Mattermark Daily, after work, “on a chairlift or after a day of hiking in a national park with your family”.

The post Redefining ‘Designer’, Process vs Product, Diversity in Tech, and more – Mattermark Daily appeared first on Mattermark.

From the Operators

Gokul Rajaram of Square explains how to keep goals in check across different business models in “The Second Most Important Metric for Every Company”

Anthony Zhang is solving the information asymmetry problem in venture with Know Your VC, sharing how helpful/involved they are after investment and most importantly how they treat or mistreat founders.

Geoffrey Weg, the creator of MostPopular.xyz, notices his skyrocketing usage of Amazon after becoming a Prime member in “Ratings are The New Brand”

Tyler Tate of Crema provides a thorough overview in the first installment of his Startup Cheat Sheet series of “How to Incorporate Your Company”

From the Investors

XFactor Ventures, which is run by full-time female founders investing in other founders (where Mattermark CEO & Cofounder Danielle is also a partner), announced Nicole Sanchez, CEO and Cofounder of Credit Hero, has joined the partnership. She shares her perspective in “Why I Joined XFactor Ventures”

Leo Polovets of Susa Ventures adds new investing team member Natalie Dillon to the team, and offers an in-depth look at the inner workings of the VC job in “Behind the Scenes at a VC Fund, Part 1: Deals, Deals, Deals”

Trace Cohen of New York Venture Partners addresses something many have been pondering in the face of Benchmark’s lawsuit against Uber in “Founder Friendly is Not Dead”

Stephen Millard and his team at Notion Capital wrote… well, basically a book… but we’ll call it a report summarizing some of the top exit stories of European startups in “Lessons learned from conversations with 20+ European tech successes” (download the free report directly here – it’s really impressive!)

Deals!

Andrew Ng, who famously applied deep learning to identify cats, (no joke) is creating a $150 million venture fund.

Jobs!

Camille Acey at Clubhouse in New York City (+distributed) dropped us a note to let the world know they are hiring.

What they do: project management tool that software engineers don’t hate. She even sent me evidence https://twitter.com/ClubhouseLove

Hiring for: Marketing Lead and Frontend Engineer

In their own words: We are a geographically-distributed team headquartered in the Union Square neighborhood of NYC. We offer competitive salaries, a flexible work schedule, unlimited vacation, medical/dental/vision benefits, and the overflowing gratitude of software development teams around the world.

The post When to send Investor Updates, Know your VC, Founder Friendly and more – Mattermark Daily appeared first on Mattermark.