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5 Lessons for Startups from Edison’s Invention of the Phonograph
5 Lessons for Startups from Edison’s Invention of the Phonograph
Real innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum, a lesson that the famed inventor Thomas Edison understood better than most.…
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Erik Rannala shared thisErik Rannala shared this"We commit to you that the same thing that brought us this far, is the same thing that will carry us forward." To commemorate ServiceTitan’s IPO day and first ever #DayOfTheTrades, Ara Mahdessian, Co-Founder and CEO, and Vahe Kuzoyan, Co-Founder and President take the Nasdaq Opening Bell podium to reflect on their journey to build the operating system that powers the trades, and to change the lives of every hardworking contractor in this critical industry. Learn more about how ServiceTitan is helping to #PowerTheNation here: http://spr.ly/6045QeJmf?
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Erik Rannala reposted thisErik Rannala reposted thisYour idea is not just an idea anymore. It's a company and that company is starting to grow and bring on more hands. But what does that early hiring process look like with regard to compensation? Join us Thursday, August 8 at 10am PT / 1 pm ET for our next Mucker Growth session. Peter Walker, Carta's Head of Insights, will dig into how founders are compensating early startup employees in 2024. Peter will touch on salary, equity, bonuses, and how compensation changes depending on role and employee location. Registration link in the comments. #founders #startups #Entrepreneurship #hiring #compensation #employee #foundingteam
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Erik Rannala reposted thisCompensation is an interesting component of any hiring process, but it can be even more complicated when you're an early stage startup just beginning to bring on early employees. Peter Walker will help break down some of that complexity with data and insights in our next Mucker Growth series. Join us! Rego link in comments.Erik Rannala reposted thisYour idea is not just an idea anymore. It's a company and that company is starting to grow and bring on more hands. But what does that early hiring process look like with regard to compensation? Join us Thursday, August 8 at 10am PT / 1 pm ET for our next Mucker Growth session. Peter Walker, Carta's Head of Insights, will dig into how founders are compensating early startup employees in 2024. Peter will touch on salary, equity, bonuses, and how compensation changes depending on role and employee location. Registration link in the comments. #founders #startups #Entrepreneurship #hiring #compensation #employee #foundingteam
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Erik Rannala reposted thisErik Rannala reposted thisCongratulations to Daniel Kim, Jay Lee, CPA, and the whole team at AuditBoard! https://lnkd.in/e-ytSn_C #founders #startups #entrepreneurs #entrepreneurship #acquisitionAuditBoard Agrees to be Acquired by Hg for Over $3 BillionAuditBoard Agrees to be Acquired by Hg for Over $3 Billion
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Erik Rannala reposted thisErik Rannala reposted thisNovel just had its first $5,000,000 month. For context, Novel launched January of this year, 2023. Since launch, our goal has remained the same: To help brands sell more product. It took 6 months to reach $1M in total influenced sales. It took another 2 months to hit $1M in a single month. This month (Nov.), Novel touched well over $1M in sales, every week. 🍻 Congrats to all brands for kicking ass during the November chaos. Influenced Sale Definition: A visitor on a brand website interacting with a Novel video and purchasing a product within that session.
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Erik Rannala shared thisErik Rannala shared thisIn the beginning, #founders are the best (and only) salespersons for their products. Eventually, however, a growing #startup has to transition to a different #sales model. But which one? And who should you hire? How should you structure that fledgling sales team? When (and how) will you know if it's working? Join us for the next Mucker Growth Series #webinar on Wednesday, August 30 to hear renowned sales expert Sally Duby with The Bridge Group discuss how to build a #sales development rep (#SDR) function for early-stage startups. Registration link in the comments. #startups #entrepreneurship #entrepreneur #growth #startupsales
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Erik Rannala shared thisErik Rannala shared thisCongrats to ScribeUp on a $3M seed raise. ScribeUp helps users find and cancel unwanted subscription bills. Great job, team! https://lnkd.in/grKpXV8X #entrepreneurs #startups #technology #producthunt #fintechMucker Capital backs ScribeUp’s ‘fully-automated’ approach to managing subscriptions | TechCrunchMucker Capital backs ScribeUp’s ‘fully-automated’ approach to managing subscriptions | TechCrunch
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Erik Rannala shared thisErik Rannala shared thisToday we announced the launch of RevenueEngine, the monetization engine for the AI economy. This is a big and exciting step for Wildfire! In thousands of offices, basements and dorm rooms around the world, people are using generative AI to innovate and dream up all kinds of services and tools for consumers and businesses. We can’t possibly predict what those will all be, but what we can certainly predict that when those services recommend products and purchases, RevenueEngine will help those innovators earn revenue. RevenueEngine is a generative AI infrastructure layer that is a natural extension of Wildfire's enterprise platform, enabling peple to earn a share of the purchases they drive from over 58,000 merchant offers in 50+ countries. Whenever generated content recommends a product or purchase, RevenueEngine turns that into a monetizable link that enables innovators to earn a share of those purchases. https://hubs.la/Q01YR8sY0 Learn more at https://hubs.la/Q01YQ_Tw0 #ai #aicontent #artificialintelligence #chatgpt #gpt4 #watsonx #bard #contentmarketing #monetization #howtomonetizeAI #monetizeAI #ecommerce #fintech #MonetizeArtificialIntelligence #ecommerce #startup #generativeAIWildfire Systems Launches RevenueEngine to Drive Monetization of Generative AI-Powered OfferingsWildfire Systems Launches RevenueEngine to Drive Monetization of Generative AI-Powered Offerings
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Erik Rannala shared thisWe are hiring! Please share with anyone who might be interested! https://lnkd.in/dBWyVrCC
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Erik Rannala liked thisErik Rannala liked thisCanadian drone manufacturer, Sentinel R&D, is not only designing UAVs but creating the systems required to mass manufacture them. Its joint venture with Ukrainian defence company Airlogix is the first of its kind for a Canadian company, giving it valuable opportunities to learn from deployment in an active combat zone. Sentinel R&D CEO Kath Intson joins us at Source Canada October 22 in Toronto. Canadian Commercial Corporation | Corporation commerciale canadienne The Icebreaker Matthew Lombardi
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Erik Rannala liked thisAs the largest LP in Freestyle 1, we at Cendana Capital thank you💥 and agree with your thoughts on partial secondaries along the way. It’s being a Investor with a capital I 💪🏼Erik Rannala liked thisTwo Seeds. Two Exits. Freestyle Capital Fund I. And the Playbook Underneath. TL;DR — I was fortunate to have led the seed rounds in Airtable and Intercom in 2013. Both announced $2B+ exits weeks apart. Our average exit valuation across all Airtable sales: north of $6B. Happy GP (oh, I mean LPs) I am! But the exits aren't the story. The playbook underneath is. Diversification isn't optional. Paper gains don't pay LPs. DPI is the report card. — A pretty remarkable milestone at Freestyle. In 2013, I led seed rounds in both Airtable and Intercom at $700K each on $7M post-money for 10% ownership. Both from our $26M Fund I. Just weeks apart: → Intercom → Salesforce, $3.6B → Airtable → Bending Spoons, $2.25B Grateful. Also — the exits aren't the interesting part. What happened between 2018 and 2021 is. Freestyle has a house rule. When a portfolio company hits $1B, we sell a portion — typically 10-20%. Every subsequent round, we look at whether to sell more. We rarely sell into the market. We sell into the round itself, alongside new investors. That rule started paying DPI on both Intercom and Airtable in 2018 — years before the exits. For Airtable specifically, we sold a large secondary at the 2021 peak (~$10B). Our average exit valuation across all Airtable sales: north of $6B. Call it luck. Call it discipline. Both are true. — Three reasons seed investors, angels, and founders should sell on the way up: - Diversification isn't optional. Nobody's outcome should be one company. Yet most treat their winners like they're supposed to hold to zero or hero. That's not investing. That's gambling with momentum you've built. - Small-fund investors and founders can sell. Large funds usually can't. When you own 10% at seed, no one questions you taking a portion off the table at a later round. It's expected. It signals discipline, not doubt. Large funds — the ones who need the whole outcome to justify their fund size — don't have this luxury. Use your structural advantage. Founders too, in secondaries. - DPI is the report card. Not TVPI. TVPI is a promise. DPI is a receipt. A promise can be marked down. A receipt in the LP's account cannot. — A note from someone who's seen this before: I lived through the .com crash of 2000 and the 2009 financial upheaval. Some of you have only seen the gravy train — it never lasts without a reset. Historically, roughly every decade. COVID was an anomaly. Our economy is due another downturn — accelerated by AI. That's another post. — When your winners hit $1B, take a portion off the table. Then again at $2B. Then $5B. Definitely again at $10B. Thanks to Howie Liu, Eoghan McCabe (The Founder Returned!), and every founder and co-investor who's been part of these Freestyle journeys. PS — Appreciate Eric Newcomer for covering the deal thoughtfully. Full piece: https://lnkd.in/ghi5Ckbm #seed #venture #DPISaaS Shudders After Airtable's Humbling Sale to Italian Grim Reaper Bending SpoonsSaaS Shudders After Airtable's Humbling Sale to Italian Grim Reaper Bending Spoons
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Erik Rannala liked thisErik Rannala liked thisTwo Seeds. Two Exits. Freestyle Capital Fund I. And the Playbook Underneath. TL;DR — I was fortunate to have led the seed rounds in Airtable and Intercom in 2013. Both announced $2B+ exits weeks apart. Our average exit valuation across all Airtable sales: north of $6B. Happy GP (oh, I mean LPs) I am! But the exits aren't the story. The playbook underneath is. Diversification isn't optional. Paper gains don't pay LPs. DPI is the report card. — A pretty remarkable milestone at Freestyle. In 2013, I led seed rounds in both Airtable and Intercom at $700K each on $7M post-money for 10% ownership. Both from our $26M Fund I. Just weeks apart: → Intercom → Salesforce, $3.6B → Airtable → Bending Spoons, $2.25B Grateful. Also — the exits aren't the interesting part. What happened between 2018 and 2021 is. Freestyle has a house rule. When a portfolio company hits $1B, we sell a portion — typically 10-20%. Every subsequent round, we look at whether to sell more. We rarely sell into the market. We sell into the round itself, alongside new investors. That rule started paying DPI on both Intercom and Airtable in 2018 — years before the exits. For Airtable specifically, we sold a large secondary at the 2021 peak (~$10B). Our average exit valuation across all Airtable sales: north of $6B. Call it luck. Call it discipline. Both are true. — Three reasons seed investors, angels, and founders should sell on the way up: - Diversification isn't optional. Nobody's outcome should be one company. Yet most treat their winners like they're supposed to hold to zero or hero. That's not investing. That's gambling with momentum you've built. - Small-fund investors and founders can sell. Large funds usually can't. When you own 10% at seed, no one questions you taking a portion off the table at a later round. It's expected. It signals discipline, not doubt. Large funds — the ones who need the whole outcome to justify their fund size — don't have this luxury. Use your structural advantage. Founders too, in secondaries. - DPI is the report card. Not TVPI. TVPI is a promise. DPI is a receipt. A promise can be marked down. A receipt in the LP's account cannot. — A note from someone who's seen this before: I lived through the .com crash of 2000 and the 2009 financial upheaval. Some of you have only seen the gravy train — it never lasts without a reset. Historically, roughly every decade. COVID was an anomaly. Our economy is due another downturn — accelerated by AI. That's another post. — When your winners hit $1B, take a portion off the table. Then again at $2B. Then $5B. Definitely again at $10B. Thanks to Howie Liu, Eoghan McCabe (The Founder Returned!), and every founder and co-investor who's been part of these Freestyle journeys. PS — Appreciate Eric Newcomer for covering the deal thoughtfully. Full piece: https://lnkd.in/ghi5Ckbm #seed #venture #DPISaaS Shudders After Airtable's Humbling Sale to Italian Grim Reaper Bending SpoonsSaaS Shudders After Airtable's Humbling Sale to Italian Grim Reaper Bending Spoons
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Erik Rannala liked thisErik Rannala liked thisCHANGE THE DEFAULTS, VIOLENTLY Kaz Nejatian, CEO of Opendoor (ex-COO, Shopify), with Shane Parrish (The Knowledge Project) Video: https://lnkd.in/gAASHTpW Transcript: https://lnkd.in/gaz9zZ7r Nejatian took over Opendoor months from bankruptcy and found a company run by consultants and process. It now buys 6 to 7 times more homes per week than a year ago, at less than half the OpEx of the last comparable quarter. 1. All Failures Rhyme. Good people leave, control of innovation slips, G&A climbs, and the company picks fights with its customers. Successes are unique. Failures repeat. 2. The Professional Leech. Opendoor's biggest external vendor bill went to a consulting firm, ahead of its cloud provider. That firm had advised offshoring every job and cutting engineering. When founders are gone and no large shareholder cares, a company becomes a host for people who drain it while making management look good. 3. Violent Defaults. Opendoor ran many 7-step, 8-month plans to return to the office. None worked. At 9am on his first Monday, Nejatian told everyone they were in the office the following Monday or no longer employed. You want the change to feel jarring. 4. Competent But Unaligned. The most dangerous people are competent and not mission-aligned. They tilt the org toward themselves and keep getting promoted because the boss cannot see it. Widen that rift so they leave fast. 5. Room Size And Truth. The larger the room, the less space for truth. That is why big companies are average. Find the speakers of truth and get them in a room alone. 6. Say The Thing. Say it now, say it about the thing and not the person, say it until you have been heard. Staying quiet is the rude act. Meetings are a bug: they exist because people could not get the information they needed to decide. 7. The Map Is Not The Train. Dashboards are a first derivative of the facts. Build models on models and you drift from reality until you go bankrupt. Nejatian talks to customers weekly and reads the raw database. 8. Friction Is Underestimated. 11 people sat between a customer typing their address and getting an offer. Removing them raised demand. 9. Do Things, Tell People. When a home had no power, the fix took a Salesforce form and 3 or 4 managers. Now everyone has a corporate card and a Slack lookup. Reduce the number of people who can say no. 10. Excellence Is The Capacity To Take Pain. Whoever holds their hand over the fire longest wins. The gap between excellent and poor is small. People give up too soon.
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Erik Rannala liked thisErik Rannala liked thisMe: Claude, help me move faster. Claude: Absolutely. Here is a 47-point plan, three strategic frameworks, and a sentence that sounds impressive but means nothing. Me: Okay, so we’re going to need some rules. That has basically been the journey. Claude can be an incredible partner. It can help sharpen thinking, pressure-test ideas, accelerate work, and make small teams feel a lot less small. But only if you build the structure in and around it. At Octagos, we’ve been using Claude across product, marketing, engineering, finance, and operations. And the biggest lesson has been that AI-native is not about giving everyone access to a tool. It is about changing how work actually gets done. Where does Claude create leverage? Where does it create slop? Which workflows are worth rebuilding? How do you keep quality high? Where does human judgment need to stay firmly in the loop? That is what we’ll be talking about on July 30. I’ll be joining Harpreet Marwaha, COO & CFO at Octagos, and Tony Yang, Head of Growth at Mucker Capital, for a webinar on what it actually looks like to build with Claude inside a fast-moving company. We’ll share the wins, the friction, the practical tips, and the places where you should never, ever pass the baton. For anyone trying to move beyond individual AI productivity and into real team advantage, this conversation is for you. Join us next Thursday, July 30 at 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET for: “Lessons From Building An AI-Native Startup with Octagos Health” Hope to see you there. Anthropic #AI #Claude #Startups #DigitalHealth #EPeeps
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Erik Rannala liked thisErik Rannala liked thisThe deadline to apply for MuckerLab this fall is August 14. MuckerLab works closely with early-stage founders to help them reach the milestones that matter most for building an enduring company. There is no fixed program length. No bootcamps. No demo days. Just hands-on support focused on helping founders build, test, learn, and grow. Building an ambitious company? We would love to hear from you. Apply by August 14: https://lnkd.in/e-GHx8Y7 #Startups #Founders #StartupAccelerator
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Erik Rannala liked thisErik Rannala liked thisA pleasure having CBC/Radio-Canada out to a demo. Thanks Jennifer Yoon for the coverage. Let’s get these drones to Ukraine Sentinel R&D Airlogix Dmytro Piatrin https://lnkd.in/gN5ZChHp
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Erik Rannala liked thisErik Rannala liked thisVenture math has gone YOLO. Let me show you the data. We just published a list of the 500 most valuable startup exits of the past 25 years, pulled from roughly 100,000 venture backed companies founded since 2000. Three of those exits, three out of 100,000 starts, are worth more than a trillion dollars. About a dozen have cleared $100 billion. Fewer than a hundred, one tenth of one percent of the entire pool, have cleared $10 billion (based on yesterday’s values). The two numbers that stuck out to me more than anything are that the median value of those 500 exits is $2.7B and that the top 5 combined are larger than the next 495. Now let's do the fund math. A $100M fund owning 10% at exit returns the fund from a single $1 billion outcome. A fund our size only needs five of them, or one $5B exit, to 5X. Something like 450 companies out of 100,000 have crossed the $1B line in 25 years. That's 0.45%, long odds, but it gets crazier. A $1B fund at the same 10% needs a $10 billion exit just to return itself from one position. Fewer than 100 companies have done that over the last 25 years. Push to a $10B fund and you need a $100 billion outcome to get back to even off one name. About a dozen companies in a quarter century have managed it. Roughly 0.012%. Every step up in fund size roughly divides your odds by five to ten. And funds keep getting bigger despite this reality. Funds over $1 billion have taken nearly three quarters of all US venture dollars raised this year (per PitchBook and the NVCA), essentially chasing the handful of companies you can count on two hands. Do the world's best VCs really know which of these companies are going to be the top 3 of 100,000? If they do, give them all your money ;) I would submit there's a lot of circumstance, luck and randomness when we're talking about companies at this level. Moreover, I'd rather not be forced to return capital ONLY if we invest in one of those few. I get the pull too. Bigger = more shots on goal... and more fees. Thus we've kept Founder Collective small for 16 years on purpose, not for lack of ambition, but because the math only holds at a small size. I'm hunting for the top 500 (or even 5000!) out of 100,000. Still quite hard ;) -- Venturing in Public, July 10 2026
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Jeffrey Seah
🥾 #bootstrapping as a mindset should be ephemeral, one that requires a deliberate transition away from as a business enters sustained growth Appointing an established auditor is often regarded as a luxury and not part of bootstrapping Audits discipline a business - to be methodical, thorough and deliberate - traits that acquirers often seek in due diligence After all, "What gets inspected, gets respected," Anon We will share the traits of venture businesses sought and respected by MNC acquirers, join us if your business is out of the #bootstrapping mindset #fulfillingpotential #hepmil #oobmil
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Matt Logan
I’m thrilled to share Earthshot Ventures most recent investment, Unlimited Industries! Unlimited is an AI-native construction company that both designs and builds. Its platform can generate and evaluate hundreds of thousands of design configurations in parallel, automatically identifying optimal layouts for cost, safety, and performance before construction begins. Why did we invest? Solving a real need we know well: Over the last decade, we have worked with hundreds of companies that are ready to deploy their technology, but struggle with slow construction timelines and cost overruns. Unlimited makes it feasible for emerging infrastructure companies to bring projects to life reliably and efficiently. Massive market potential: The EPC market is ~$800B. While this entire market is not addressable from day one, early adopters will pave the way for the mass market, enabling massive possible scale over time. Exceptional team: The company is led by Alex Modon, a repeat founder and multidisciplinary engineer. To accelerate the company, Alex teamed up with Tara Viswanathan and Jordan Stern, who previously built and scaled Rupa Health as the founder/CEO and first teammate respectively, from zero to millions in revenue before its successful nine figure acquisition in 2024. Software is eating the world, and AI will eat engineering: Software engineering is increasingly being augmented and automated by AI, aided by large repositories of coding data like Github. Other engineering disciplines will be transformed over time as analogous data sets are compiled and software encodes the operating principles of the real world. Companies that can create proprietary datasets, like Unlimited’s burgeoning catalogue of projects, will gain defensibility through data moats. Lastly, since a good portion of my network here consists of founders who could be customers of Unlimited and their investors, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say - hit me up if you’d like to connect with Unlimited to deliver your next project on time, on budget! Welcome to the Earthshot portfolio, Unlimited!
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