Wade Foster

I wrote two term sheets this week into startups backed by amazing founding teams, and in both cases I recommended a pivot to the team’s initial GTM strategy.   Sometimes being well networked, or building in a white hot problem space can be a gift and a curse when it catches the attention of enterprise customers.   On paper, it is the exact type of validation a funding team is seeking as they work through an initial version of their product, but more often than not it has the potential to derail a startup’s potential for success.   The startups in question were both experiencing this exact dynamic.  In one case, the team had caught the eye of one of the largest robotics companies in the world and begun conversations around a potential partnership.   The second company is backed by a 20 year industry veteran with a deep rolodex of enterprise customers within his ICP.  Some of the largest retailers in the world were engaging in conversations around piloting his product.  As I explained to both of these founders, this was amazing validation, but should also not be the focal point of their initial GTM.   The reality is, in order to successfully deploy within either of these customers, they were looking at a long and arduous path, filled with security reviews and product feature sets that realistically an early stage pre-seed company with 2 founders could not deliver upon.   My advice to them, continue those conversations, with the realization that they could take 1 year+ before realistic deployments, but focus the lion’s share of their GTM energies toward customers with lower deployment hurdles, in this case Series A/B backed robotics companies and $50M-$250M retailers.    To be clear, the  genuine interest from these enterprises is a massively positive indicator on the problem/solution set they are building for, and it is part of the reason we are bullish on the market opportunity of each startup.  I’ve just seen so many startups fail to deploy an initial product and ultimately never raise a seed round because they get stuck in a seemingly never ending enterprise sales cycle.

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Perfecting your product and GTM strategy are surely important. But Box CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie argues there's one factor that outweighs all others in startup success: recognizing and capitalizing on tech and macro tailwinds. Fighting against them? You're setting yourself up for failure. Our full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gEAPFR-A

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Bold prediction for 2025: Investors will pay founders to access their venture data. Founders own their data and grant access to investors for a fee. This shift promotes transparency, trust, and efficiency in fundraising, while giving startups a new revenue stream.

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Call it confirmation bias, but....this is so on the money Extract and full blog link below The opportunity we are seeing in B2B SaaS right now has four prongs: 1. The basic infrastructure level for most ERPs is commoditized. 2. The UX of horizontal solutions is generally bad or underwhelming. And customers really care about UX. 3. Vertical AI tends to outperform generalist AI with sufficient, high quality training data and vertical specific features. 4. Increasing interoperability and ease of integration between enterprise systems. Customers are demanding that data flows between their applications enabling new applications and products.

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"The best offsites create space for serendipity." ✨ That was our guiding principle for Clarify‎'s recent team gathering in Seattle. The result? A transformative experience that's already paying dividends in team cohesion and product innovation. 🙌 Our key ingredients for offsite success: 🤝 Prioritize unstructured bonding time  💼 Mix work (hello, hackathon!) with 🤿 play (who's up for a lake plunge?)  ❤️Create opportunities for vulnerability and deep connection   💸 Keep it budget-friendly without sacrificing impact But the real magic? Watching our team of 11 take all their energy and use it to ship 6 awesome customer projects in the week following our return. Austin Hay‎ packed all our insights, learnings, highlights, and even a few missteps into the latest Clarify blog. Whether you're planning your first offsite, looking to level up your team gatherings, or just want some recommendations for things to do in Seattle, we've got you covered. 🌆 Bonus: We're turned the Notion and Google Sheets project docs we used to plan everything into templates you can steal for your next offsite.  You can find the link to the full write up w/ our templates in the comments. 👇

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As an early stage founder, you want two things from any solution (tool/person): 1. Peace of Mind that the problem is getting handled -- often in an ambiguous & broad problem space where the requirements are ill defined & subject to evolve 2. Cost-effectiveness given tight runway #1 is *far* more important than #2 -- most of the time you optimize for cost-effectiveness over peace of mind, you end up paying more and getting worse results.

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Three lessons from building and launching a P2P payments app without doing the proper customer validation first (despite knowing better): 1) Building something you need is a great starting point - but not enough to validate an idea. As someone drawn to building solutions, I’m an early tech adopter. This led me to overestimate consumers’ willingness to onboard, especially with a P2P payments app that requires KYC/KYB compliance and relies on a network effect to be useful. 2) Manual solutions are often best to start with It’s good business to be in business - transitioning from ideating to operating as early as possible is the BEST way to learn effectively. While the move fast and break things mindset has attracted well-deserved skepticism, getting stuck in a multi-year build trap distracted me from critical real-world validation. 3) Consumer appetite shifts quickly In my case, the proliferation of free and instant P2P payment options like Zelle added additional pricing pressure that I couldn’t compete with. This disincentivized the consumer event/payment collection market, turning my bottom-up go-to-market strategy upside down. Pitch (https://www.pitch.fun) is currently on the back burner as I’ve begun building custom solutions in various industries to sharpen my skills, solve specific problems, gain a hands-on understanding of operations, pain points, and workflows, and build a network of experts to lean on as I keep my eyes peeled for high-impact opportunities.

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“Organizations buying your software are asking for a VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) and you can tie business metrics to that.” Andrew Chung Chief Product Officer at Level Access explains that two strong ways of advocating for product resources for accessibility are to bring product customers who are asking for VPATs, and quantifying the business risk of not being accessible. He goes on to share a great reminder that “don’t wait, just start” is a compelling way to create evidence of the benefits of allocating a small amount of resources, which can then be used to build a business case for unlocking more resources to build accessible products. Use free tools to help you get started and if you can show early success you can build a much stronger case for incorporating accessibility early in the product process. We all purchase software, next time ask for a VPAT during the process.  Every request adds up, and it will make a meaningful difference in how Product teams prioritize limited resources. Full interview is in the comments. This is now conversation #5 in our series for National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and we have a few more that we’re editing and will share soon. My mission with these conversations is to help build awareness of the importance and business opportunity for building accessible, and give advocates the tactics and strategies they need to make forward progress in their organizations. Stay tuned for more and in the meantime let me know what more you’d like to hear from our guests.  Upcoming conversations include conversations with startup founders, senior accessibility leaders who have worked at major tech and consumer companies, venture capitalists who invest in the ability space, and more. Drop your questions in a comment, and I'll get as many asked as I can. #NDEAM #GoodJobsForAll #inclusionworks #DisabilityRights #InclusiveWorkplace #InclusionMatters

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Hiring a Founding AE with 2-3 years of experience? Without clarity, face a great honeymoon but miserable marriage.  In a recent discussion with a coach of B2B sellers, she shared that the boom of 2020-2023 saw many sellers become order takers and lose their skills. The need to prospect went down and sellers working with eager buyers forgot how to create the momentum early in the sales process. Another trend is job openings for Founding AEs looking for 2-3 years of experience. This seems to be motivated by investor instructions to “keep things lean.” I’m all for lean, but make sure to look for some key AE traits to make sure you’re getting full value out of your precious cash. Simple things to look for: -Startup experience. Be extremely cautious of hiring sales reps who have only worked in enterprise companies. I hired a rep once who fit this profile who was talented at getting people on the phone but couldn’t build his own prospecting lists in salesforce given he was use to having someone do it for him. Not a good match. Ask for details around how they would setup their day to prospect, have they created their own decks, how would they run a POC, etc. Listen for the details and ask for examples. -Domain knowledge. Look for AEs who have sold to the ICPs you are targeting. If you have a product for developers, find someone who’s sold into that persona. If you have a RevOps tool, Marketing, etc. Ask for them to explain what’s unique about the persona they have experience with. -Company size experience. Early stage startups buy from each other. That’s part of the fun of a startup - the community and supporting each other. It’s a fast-paced transactional selling environment easily managed through PLG or an SMB sales motion. If you want to sell to enterprise, you need someone with that experience. It’s totally different momentum and skillset of navigating enterprise. Examples are powerful here. Ask them to describe a deal from start to finish and highlight what actions they took and who on their team was involved. Founders are busy. This list is simple and obvious but it will help you quickly screen for the skillset you need before you interview. I’d suggest even including questions on your job application. Looking at LinkedIn it seems each open role is getting hundreds of applicants within days so to save your sanity take an extra 10 min and include some open ended questions about this stuff on the submission form. Too many founders hire inexperienced sellers who are the wrong fit in terms of skillset -  prioritizing budget over effectiveness. As a result they hire someone who is cheap but does not perform. Think about other creative ways to hire an experienced sales executive or GTM leader and compensate more on commission percentage and equity than base salary. Al Rey and I are talking about this topic and other GTM challenges faced by Seed Founders at our event in June. Check it out here:

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As a founder and CEO, I’ve learned that true founder-market fit isn’t just about understanding your industry, it’s about the tenacity to push through when the inevitable challenges hit. Budget freezes, talent moves, customer churn, investor pullback, lost sales, and product or service quality issues are all part of the journey. Startups aren’t linear; the road is bumpy, and you need to be ready to navigate the unexpected. Building startup businesses in any sector is difficult but surviving and thriving in the technology arena is not for the faint of heart. You can have the best product-market fit in the world, but without the grit to keep going when constant change is afoot, key talent departs, or when you lose a big deal you thought was in the bag, it won’t matter. Your deep understanding, experience, expertise and comfort of the market gives you an edge, but it’s the ability to adapt, stay committed and push forward every day that ultimately drives success. Tenacity isn’t just a trait... it’s the backbone of every successful founder. It’s waking up every day, hungry to improve, iterate, and win. A results and outcomes disposition is key. Founders who embrace the uncertainty and keep the faith are the ones who move industries forward.

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B2B Seed Stage Founders are meeting tomorrow night in SF to discuss a variety of topics around GTM. One topic Al Rey and I are most interested to learn about is what folks are spending on customer acquisition and what channels are working. Tight funding markets require creative approaches. Come learn from your peers and place smarter bets with your limited resources. We're at capacity but as the time approaches we're likely to get a few folks drop out so please jump on the waiting list and I'll communicate with you regularly leading up to tomorrow night. https://lu.ma/9e9ccv6e

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I loved Hannah Clark and Daniel Danker 's recent podcast episode. The best piece of advice was on scaling product organizations. Daniel mentioned that when scaling, he avoids the trap of more of the same and instead figures out what they should be doing as he scales. To paraphrase, what are the 10X ideas that they should incorporate? Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/guYMfMm3

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We were torn between two messaging principles when we created the copy for the new UserEvidence website that launched this week -- Understandability vs Elevation of our Value Prop. On the Understandability side - everyone understands what "testimonials" and "case studies". High Understandability. However, our platform creates customer evidence content that goes way beyond testimonials and case studies (eg statistical evidence around value/ROI, competitive proof, account or industry-specific reports) -- and there's several very low cost tools that do simple testimonial collection/creation. We were worried dumbing the UE value prop down to testimonials and case studies would undersell the value, and undercut our price point which is tens of thousands to sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. On the Elevated side - we could have talked more about evidence-based marketing, and customer evidence platform, or maybe a compromise w/social proof - but these don't inherently mean anything to most people - and require explanation. We figured we had about 12-15 seconds of initial readtime on average when someone lands on the site (our analytics supported this), so we ultimately decided to lead with Understandability, to hopefully earn the attention span to then go Elevate the Value Prop around how customer evidence is more than testimonials and case studies. We also leaned into using a ton of enterprise-level customer proof w/testimonials and logos from Gong, HPE, Broadcom, Splunk, Coupa, SentinelOne, Pendo, etc - to clearly indicate we're a enterprise-level B2B-only solution. We decided our goal/metric to optimize is getting people interested enough in taking the meeting (even if they may think we're a lower cost solution), and we're confident our sales team will do a good job of elevating our story once the prospect is on the call. Great work Alex Eaton and Mark Huber, and thank to the FletchPMM team for the guidance! How did we do? #productmarketing #customermarketing

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Founder <> founder convos are the biggest unlock for company building. I spent the last 2+ weeks in SF. Besides meeting with customers, I spent a ton of time with founders / early stage builders that I deeply respect (shoutout to Abhinav Asthana, Christina Cacioppo, Kevin Van Gundy, Akshay Kothari, Yuhki Yamashita, Tara Viswanathan, Celine Halioua, & Michelle Valentine). I’m extremely grateful to have the chance to spend time with these folks. Some reflections from these brilliant people. 1/ People > everything. A company is a collection of people. Company success comes down to hiring the best people. 2/ Startup problems aren’t *that* unique. Startups are HARD and even if you think your challenges are specific to your company, they’re likely not. Someone else has faced the same thing, and you likely don’t need to reinvent the wheel. 3/ Let some fires burn. Focus > trying to do everything. As a startup, you can’t fix everything at once with limited resources (even if you want to). You need to focus on the stuff that will move the needle the most. Pick the top 1 or 2 problems, fix them, then move onto the next. It’s okay if some fires need to burn for a little in the meantime. 4/ Company operating cadences are key. We’re redoing our cadences now, so it was super interesting to learn how others run their board meetings, leadership meetings, all hands, etc. A consistent theme for board & leadership meetings is to have everyone complete a prompt in written doc, share with each other, then use the time to have meatier discussions. 5/ Be competitor aware, customer obsessed. Competitors cause unnecessary noise. Build products and make decisions based on customer / market need and founder intuition, never based on competition. Are these learnings helpful? If so, can share more founder learning posts in the future!

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Recently I came across Molly Graham's philosophy called ‘Give Away Your Legos’ and wow I can't recommend it enough. In Facebook's early days Molly was responsible for empowering Facebook as they scaled, staffed and developed their culture from 50 to 1k+ employees. I found it super helpful for navigating the challenges of scaling a team, company and organization. Here are the highlights Simple checklist for founders eyeing rapid growth 1. Make a list of the qualities you want your company to embody. Who do you want to be? How do you want it to feel to work there? 2. Write down what you’re doing in the world. What’s your vision for the change you want to make? 3. Communicate these things again and again and again. Through all the channels. All the time. You can’t over communicate these ideas. 4. Focus on hiring quality people rather than speed. Don’t lower your bar because you need to grow faster. It will come back to bite you. 5. Fire people. Just do it! 6. Hire amazing leaders as early as you can and help them grow their capabilities as the company grows. 7. Prioritize principles over process. 8. Keep giving away your Legos! And tell everyone around you to do the same. It’s going to be okay. https://lnkd.in/gpzEKrqJ https://lnkd.in/gw38G_B8

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Lately, I've been referring out business without taking a referral fee. Yes, I know this goes against late-stage capitalism’s mandate of monetizing every interaction. But hear me out. Always charging for referrals comes with its own price: 1. Short-term thinking: You get so focused on immediate gains that you miss bigger, long-term opportunities. 2. Limited network growth: People hesitate to approach someone always looking for a cut. Your network stagnates. 3. Partnership barriers: True strategic partnerships often start with goodwill gestures. If you’re always charging, good luck building those relationships. 4. Constant pressure: Trying to monetize every interaction turns networking into a stress-filled sales pitch. Exhausting. 5. Loss of spontaneity: Remember when you genuinely enjoyed helping others? That natural inclination dies when everything has a price tag. Here’s why I’ve been doing more no-referral-fees intros: 1. Long-term thinking beats short-term gains. Sure, immediate cash is nice. But building trust and goodwill is priceless. 2. It creates win-wins. Solving someone's problem without strings attached feels good AND often leads to unforeseen opportunities. 3. Karma is real in business. I can't count how many times a "free" favor has come back around, sometimes years later. Case in point: Years ago, I consistently helped an ex-Experian colleague without expectation. Fast forward a few years, he was at a new company and connected me with their Chief Digital Officer. It led to a long-term partnership worth over $700k. Now, I'm not saying never take referral fees. But sometimes, it just feels right to pay it forward. P.S. What's your experience? Have you ever made a referral without expecting anything in return? How did it pan out? Share your stories below—I'm genuinely curious to hear your perspectives on this.

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When you're not in the board room, you're always wondering, "What's going on in there?". I have now worked with seven companies where I'd regularly present to a board, a mixture of PE and VC-led, and it's almost always centered around a few key topics. If you're meeting your numbers: - what's your future forecast  - how are you going to continue to grow - how will you grow faster and more efficient  - update on money in the bank and spend If you're not meeting your numbers (along with the things I mentioned above): - what is your plan to turn things around and meet your numbers (this includes new logo, back-to-base sales, and churn reduction) - what resources can they offer to help - do you have the right players in the right seat This is an oversimplification because many nuances are at play, but this is generally it. While board meetings can be stressful, almost every board I've worked with wants to be helpful. Of course, their interest is, first and foremost, that the business is healthy and growing, so there's always that undertone, but overall, they want to help. After all, they are guardians of the investments they make on behalf of others and have to report back on their performance. Think of them like they are CSMs for their investors (the folks that give them money). They need to get a great return on the investment they made on their behalf.

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How does a shift in remote work policies impact your nexus? We see teams misinterpret this all the time  🏠🔍 Companies like Amazon are rolling back their work-from-home flexibility, and it's raising an important question: "If we reduce employee headcount in a state to zero, do we still have nexus there?" The short answer? It's complicated. Here's why: 1. Trailing nexus can extend your tax obligations for years 2. Many tax experts view nexus as a one-way street 3. Each state has its own rules and interpretations Learn what you need to know about reducing your remote footprint as it relates to nexus: https://bit.ly/3WR6FiE

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The other day I met with a founder & CTO who advises and scales early stage companies - with several successful exits under their belts. We talked about “what exactly is Rev Ops” and how if done right - we are a lean / mean strategic investment to drive GTM operations at scale. Many founders are doing exactly this type of work. But when a founder has to focus on sales, or marketing, or pmf, or, or, or….who is taking this lens. So we talked about the purposeful investments in ops and the strategic need for Rev Ops. Driving cross business alignment of gtm operations, tooling, data, and business strategy that fuels the revenue creation engine. Knowing what levers to pull by when, how, and to what outcome. Don’t grow at all costs. Don’t grow inefficiently. Grow sustainably using the levers you already have in your business. #revops #growtherightway

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