Kyle Clements

Exciting News: Schematic is publicly available and we’ve raised $4.8M in seed funding! 🚀 I’m pumped to share that Schematic is now publicly available! We've also raised $4.8M in seed funding, led by MHS Capital with participation from NextView Ventures, Active Capital, Atlanta Ventures, and Ritual Capital—along with support from incredible founders of companies like CrowdStrike, LaunchDarkly, and Salesloft. A big thank you to our investors for believing in us, to our customers for guiding us, and to Benjamin Papillon, Jasdeep Garcha, Giovanni Hobbins, Vladyslav Len, Youssef Salah, Christopher Brady, Joseph Chrzan, Mohammed Almusaddar, and Markiian Simkiv for the opportunity to build this together. ➡️ Solving the last mile of pricing & packaging At every startup, one thing is certain: pricing and packaging will always change. Product and engineering teams shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time this happens. Most companies hard-code pricing and packaging into their applications, making it slow and painful to evolve as market demands shift. ➡️ What We’re Building We're building Schematic to transform pricing and packaging for B2B SaaS companies by getting product and engineering teams out of billing projects. With Schematic, B2B SaaS companies can change pricing & packaging without code changes or billing refactors. ➡️ How It Works With just a few lines of code, businesses can implement pricing and packaging into any application—end-to-end—from feature delivery through billing and customer experience. Quickly roll out new features and tie them to your pricing plans. Target specific plans to customers and adjust them without engineering support. Experiment, scale, and manage pricing & packaging operations: trials, plans, limits, entitlements, metering usage, handling exceptions, provisioning customers, & embedding front-end purchasing components —all without code changes. ➡️ Who we’re building for We’re building Schematic for B2B SaaS companies who want their pricing & packaging roadmaps to move in sync with their product roadmaps, without slowing down their engineering teams. Some key use cases our customers are already benefiting from: 🔹Outsourcing homegrown & hard-coded entitlement services. 🔹Programmatically managing feature access based on subscription plans. 🔹Metering usage and actually enforcing limits. 🔹Updating and managing plans, add-ons, bundling, and customer exceptions 🔹Delivering embeddable purchasing experiences (pricing tables, customer portals, upgrade/downgrade flows, etc). We’re still in the early innings, but the foundation is strong—we're already handling 500K entitlement flag evaluations every month. If you’re a founder or a product leader looking to avoid building what should be out-of-the-box (feature flags, entitlements, admin dashboards, customer portals), check out Schematic and let us know what you think.

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One month left to apply!!!! Apply to NETI's Climate Tech Bootcamp Cohort 3.0, a pre-accelerator program powered by Riffle Ventures, Climate Tech Bootcamp, OHUB and Greater New Orleans, Inc. – GNO, Inc. part of H2TheFuture, a Build Back Better Regional Challenge of The Economic Development Administration. This bootcamp is a 10-week pre-accelerator program for climate tech and new energy entrepreneurs in the United States that have an interest in building in or expanding to South Louisiana. ‍ Five (5) founders from the program will pitch for a $100,000 (US) investment on the terms of their current round. Application is in the comments and here's a quick overview as well: - 📆 When: September 3 - October 31, 2024 - ⏰ Deadline to Apply: August 27, 2024 - 💻 Location: Virtual - 🆓 Cost: Free. The $5,000 per person fee is waived thanks to GNO, Inc. and The Economic Development Administration's Build Back Better Regional Challenge. - 💰 Funding: Up to $100,000 US (equity investment) in current round to the top startup selected at the end of the cohort. - 🈺 Cohort Size: 25-30 entrepreneurs - 🌍 Cohort Geography: United States - 📈 Stage: We welcome applicants from multiple stages, though having a minimum viable product is ideal.

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The VC/DNVB honeymoon is over. 🥀 Here's why: both sides have realized that DTC brands aren’t really tech companies. Recently, the "DTC darlings" have taken a hit: Bonobos was resold for $75M after Walmart bought it for $300M 📉 Unilever parted ways with Dollar Shave Club seven years after buying it for $1 billion 💸 And that's just the start—other brands like Casper, Outdoor Voices, and Smile Direct Club have faced similar fates. These brands thrived during the early 2010s VC boom. 🚀 Since 2006, venture capital investments skyrocketed from $30 billion to over $340 billion in 2021. With limited SaaS options to invest in, VCs turned to startups with similar growth potential. DTC brands fit the bill perfectly, wooing investors with three key points: 1️⃣ Tech-savvy teams: In the early 2010s, selling online required a strong dev team, and competition for talent was fierce. 2️⃣ Cutting out the middlemen: Facebook and Google allowed these brands to reach customers directly at a low cost, bypassing traditional distribution channels. 3️⃣ Attractive business models: Gross margins were high, similar to software, and recurring revenue from subscriptions offered an impressive LTV/CAC ratio thanks to low distribution costs via Facebook. But several changes exposed flaws in this model: 1️⃣ E-commerce tech became accessible to everyone through platforms like Shopify and Klaviyo, removing the unique advantage of in-house tech. 2️⃣ Facebook and Google increased ad costs, replacing one middleman with another. Then, iOS 14 made targeted advertising even harder. 3️⃣ Post-COVID, e-commerce growth slowed, and to sustain their growth, vertical SaaS platforms raised their prices. 4️⃣ Rising raw material costs squeezed margins further. 📈 5️⃣ VCs realized that big companies like Unilever and P&G (potential buyers) didn’t care about LTV/CAC ratios since multiple sales channels (including retail) complicated these metrics. This undermined the growth acceleration strategy VCs had envisioned. In the end, e-commerce is more about logistics, product, and marketing than pure tech. 📦🛍️📢 All this makes it a less appealing investment for venture capitalists.

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At Outlander VC, we’re committed to backing the bold. As one of the key funding partners of LvlUp Ventures, Outlander VC focuses on visionary game-changers and industry disruptors who aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo. - Led by former founders: Our team has built and scaled companies to thousands of people and hundreds of millions in revenue. We understand the journey and are ready to get hands-on. - $150M Fund III: Outlander VC is deploying $150M over the next three years to fuel early-stage startups. Focus: - Industries: Agnostic (we back disruptors across all sectors). - Stage: Pre-Seed and Seed. - Geography: United States-based startups. If you're ready to disrupt your industry and scale, let's connect. We're here to help build something truly transformational. #VentureCapital #OutlanderVC #LvlUpVentures #Startups #PreSeed #Seed #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #Disruption #Scaling

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#ObsessivelyEnthusiasticInvestor #UnreasonablyEnthusiasticInvestor #IrrationallyEnthusiasticInvestor at REFASHIOND Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund. We look for the people we believe are doing the best work in Industrial Transformation & Supply Chain Technology; Attempting the impossible. Then we go all-in on them. With obsessive, unreasonable, and irrational enthusiasm. We back them with evangelical zeal. Join us. #IndustrialTransformation #SupplyChain #Innovation #Technology #Startups #VentureCapital #DemandTheImpossible #UnreasonableEnthusiasm #ObsessiveEnthusiasm #IrrationalEnthusiasm  

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Let's finally get rid off the "VC alphabet song" and redo the system to become more founder friendly. "The benchmarks set by funding stages are often arbitrary and not necessarily aligned with the actual development needs of individual startups." #vc #venturecapital #founder #fundraising #startups #fundingstages #funding #fundingrounds #pitchbook

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🚀Super excited to announce Day Zero Ventures Investment in Zeno🚀 We're thrilled to back Zeno, a company set to revolutionize two-wheel transportation in emerging markets with their innovative electric motorcycle ecosystem. Why we're excited: Massive Untapped Market: • 600M petrol motorcycles globally, growing to 2B by 2040 • 60-80% are 100-200cc commuter motorcycles • No good electric options exist for this segment yet Perfect Product-Market Fit: • African bike taxi (boda boda) drivers cover enough miles annually to circle the globe • Switching to electric can reduce fuel costs by 50-75% Comprehensive Ecosystem Approach: • 100-200cc equivalent electric motorbike • Flexible multimodal charging: swapping, fast charging, home charging • Innovative battery-as-a-service subscription model Exceptional Team: • Michael Spencer (CEO): Ex-Tesla leadership, 15 years in East Africa • Rob Newberry (VP Software): Former Apple & Nest senior engineer • Swaroop Bhushan (VP Engineering): Powertrain expert from Lucid and Harley's LiveWire • Plus ex-engineers from Gogoro, Ola Electric, and Ather Zeno's vision goes beyond transportation. They aim to transform customers' relationship with energy, potentially powering homes, businesses, and supporting the grid in emerging markets. We're excited to partner with Zeno on this journey to electrify the world's fastest-growing vehicle segment. As emerging markets continue to develop and urbanize, Zeno is well-positioned to become a cornerstone of sustainable transportation infrastructure. Read why we invested in Zeno in the 1st comment! Alok Bishoyi Rahul Rajvanshi #CleanTech #ImpactInvesting #ElectricVehicles #EmergingMarkets

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Are you a CPG #startup? Catch my interview with Dayton Miller of BFG Partners, a VC fund that invests in "better for you" consumer products. We cover a lot of ground in this podcast, including: +how founders can build relationships with investors +what does your startup's metrics need to look like to attract VC +typical expansion paths for CPG companies (e.g. D2C --> specialty retail --> mass retail --> club etc) as well as: +tips for emerging VC managers on raising their first fund (as well as how things change for funds #2 and #3) +how to be thoughtful and differentiated with your fund's thesis +what you need in your pitch materials package and more. BFG most recently raised $125 million for fund number 3 to back healthy food and beverage startups such as prebiotic soda OLIPOP PBC and cauliflower pizza crust maker CAULIPOWER. The firm invests from seed to series B with check sizes varying between $3 million and $5 million. Its previous two funds were $54 million and $108 million, respectively. Check it out, like and share :) Danke, Nathan

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Dilution can be confusing, especially if you have multiples SAFEs/Convertible Notes stacked on top of each other. In my Atlanta Ventures blog, I write about how to understand dilution, as well as provide a simple tool to forecast the impact of a fundraising round: https://lnkd.in/eVFBS2At

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The Activity level of #VentureCapital in the Southeast Find it EVERY Friday here on Hypepotamus #Entrepreneur #Startup #Investor

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Hey everyone! Andrew Lambrecht & I have just started a podcast together where we chat about EVs & what's happening in the world of charging as we've experienced it. Please check it out on Spotify (https://lnkd.in/etgegd83) or Youtube (https://lnkd.in/eVauGsgf) and let us know your thoughts as well!

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Another HUGE opportunity to meet a new set of #investors https://lnkd.in/esJYQW4J I hope you are reading Hypepotamus to find what is happening in the South's innovation ecosystem

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From near-death experiences to becoming a Fintech powerhouse. Abdon Nacif Co-Founded NEXU, the leading auto financing and dealership software platform in Mexico and one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in Latin America. Nexu is growing fast, approaching $50 million in net annual revenue, and has been profitable for nearly two years. They have raised just over $30 million in equity and over $150 million in debt from Altos Ventures, Valor Capital Group, Wollef, HSBC, Y Combinator, FinTech Collective, Clocktower Ventures, FJ Labs, and Gilgamesh Ventures. I’m a big fan of Fernando & Abdon and I love getting a shot of inspiration after every conversation with them. Not only have I known Abdon for over a decade, but at Gilgamesh Ventures we have been investors in NEXU for the past three years, with a front-row seat to their incredible story. In this episode, we discuss:   - Developing mental toughness as an entrepreneur   - Near-death experiences and a pivotal decision that resulted in a shift of the business model - Principles and discipline that led them to build a profitable business at a very early stage   - Abdon's leadership philosophy and focus on authentic, selfless leadership… and a lot more!

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Are you an early-stage business service provider or startup founder? (Yes? Read on.) I'll be at the Venture Atlanta Conference this week and looking for new guests for the BIP Ventures Extraordinary Pursuits Podcast. If the following criteria look relevant, let's meet up. The deets: 🎙️ Each episode is 'commute length' – around 30 minutes 🎙️ Two formats: Masterclasses and founder stories 🎙️ Topics: Anything that impacts startup teams (recent topics have included taxes, sales teams, hiring, GTM, and KPIs) If you'd like to join me for a conversation, please say hi if you see me! You're also welcome to DM me here or on the Venture Atlanta app. Get a sense of the podcast here: https://lnkd.in/egcy7kEh If you know of someone I should meet, please tag them below or forward this to them!

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Can’t lie, folks — I am super excited for tomorrow’s #dualuse panel for DC Startup & Tech Week (Formerly DC Startup Week). We have an amazing and experienced panel (Joshua Weed, Emily McMahan, Zach Beecher, David Miller) that’s going to hit on all the topics: - Why is dual use so popular right now? - Current trends within “dual use” - What are investors/government looking for? - Future of Dual Use Hope to see you there!

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Google's $10M carbon removal deal with Holocene is turning heads. At $100/ton, it's setting a new benchmark for direct air capture technology. But can this Tennessee startup deliver 100,000 tons of CO2 removal by 2030? #CarbonRemoval #CleanTech #ClimateAction #Sustainability #Innovation What's your take on the future of carbon capture technology?

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💥 Big News! We've secured $1.5M in growth capital from CreativeCo, fueling our plans for 2024 and beyond! 🚀 What This Investment Means: Product Development: We'll be adding new features, analytics, machine learning enhancements, and much more to make our software even more effective. Team Expansion: We're doubling our staff to better support our customers and enhance our services. Smart Growth: We'll continue to grow thoughtfully, making decisions that keep our operations focused and capital efficient. Why Fundraise? We operate on a 'default alive' principle, meaning we strive to be self-sufficient and not dependent on continual funding to operate. Since founding Churnkey, we've prioritized profitability, and we only seek additional capital when essential to capitalize on new opportunities—and always just the amount necessary. Why CreativeCo? Their philosophy perfectly aligns with ours: support for capital-efficient, rapidly growing B2B software companies. This partnership marks a pivotal moment for us, aligning with current market opportunities and our ambitious company vision. 👏 A big thank you to our team and supporters. We're eager to push the boundaries of retention automation in the years ahead, driving healthier relationships between subscription businesses and their customers.

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Appreciative of Tim De Chant's article on Crosscut Ventures' evolution. We've (Rick Smith and Brett Brewer) been building #SoCalTech for 16+ years and have naturally been drawn to the techno-manufacturing revolution of #ElSegundo driving innovation in #FrontierTech. Portfolio companies like Umbra, Aalo Atomics, Proteus Space, Carbon Ridge, Airloom Energy and many others yet to be announced have the potential to transform energy, advanced manufacturing, space and defense to push global decarbonization, secure America's borders and drive the continued commercialization of space. https://lnkd.in/gmy-Srgn #longLA #DeepTech #ClimateTech #SocalTech #Hawthorne #ElSegundo #Torrance #venturecapital #nuclearenergy #aerospace #defense #advancedmanufacturing

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