TechCrunch Disrupt 2022

H-1B worker layoffs, cyber risk quantification, SaaS whiplash • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 8, 2022Posted in cybersecurity, EC roundup, immigration law, Layoffs, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

Dear Sophie, I was laid off and I’m on an H-1B. I have enough savings to survive for a while. What should I do if I have been let go from my job? I am on an H-1B, have an approved I-140 and an I-797 that expires in March 2024. If I have to leave the U.S., can my current I-797 be transferred to my next employer? Are there any issues I should be aware of? — Upended & Unemployed The seasons won’t change for another 43 days, but in San Francisco, it already feels like winter. As an offshore weather system brings gusts and downpours, local employers like Twitter, Lyft, Stripe, Brex, Opendoor and Chime are laying off thousands of employees. This week, Meta will reportedly announce the first large-scale staff cuts in its history. Full ZebethMedia+ articles are only available to membersUse discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription For tech workers who are immigrants, this is an especially fraught time, as their ability to remain in the U.S. is conditional on their employment. Most visa holders have a 60-day grace period after an unexpected layoff, but with thousands of skilled workers hitting the market at once, the clock is ticking. We usually run Silicon Valley-based immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn’s column on Wednesday, but in light of current events, we ran it yesterday (without a paywall). First order of business: if you’ve been impacted, don’t delay. Start looking now for a new position, and tell everyone in your network that you’re open to work. “At a job interview, be direct about your need to transfer your H-1B to a new employer. If the company is not willing to sponsor you, move on,” advises Sophie. “Ideally, you should accept a job offer no more than 45 days into your 60-day grace period unless you have applied for another fallback status because it can take several weeks to prepare and file the H-1B transfer.” Brace yourself: more layoffs are coming. Update your resume, save as much money as you can, and most importantly — don’t panic. Thanks for reading, Walter ThompsonEditorial Manager, ZebethMedia+@yourprotagonist 2023 will be the year of cyber risk quantification Image Credits: Olemedia (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Myriad factors determine a company’s valuation, and cybersecurity is one of them. Public companies that experience a breach tend to see a -3.5% drop in stock value after the news goes public. That’s why cyber-risk quantification (CRQ) “has slowly grown from a nice-to-have to become the foundation for addressing the most critical concerns about a business’ cybersecurity posture,” writes John Chambers, founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures. How ButcherBox bootstrapped to $600M in revenue Mike Salguero at ButcherBox’s dry ice factory Grocery delivery service ButcherBox ran a Kickstarter campaign in 2015 to identify customers who wanted to receive 100% grass-fed beef. Since then, the company “has seen $600 million worth of revenue without taking a penny of external investment,” reports Haje Jan Kamps, who spoke to CEO and co-founder Mike Salguero about how the founding team bootstrapped their D2C startup. “I was meeting meat farmers in parking lots, buying a couple of trash bags full of meat — I’m sure that didn’t seem sketchy at all,” he said. “But it was too much meat for my freezer, so I ended up selling the excess meat to friends or people I was working for.” New data show how SaaS founders have been dealing with whiplash from public markets Image Credits: puruan / Getty Images According to OpenView Venture Partners’ 2022 SaaS benchmarks report, “an overwhelming majority of respondents are slashing spending regardless of cash runway.” In this year’s survey, which covered 660 companies, OpenView operating partner Kyle Poyar and senior director of growth Curt Townshend found that “the rule of 40 is back,” as the need to generate profits has overtaken investors’ obsession with growth. “Achieving 40 each quarter is not required,” they concluded. “But it is required to have a grasp on what caused a drop or spike, and what can be done to get to 40 long term.” How to land investors who fund game-changing companies Image Credits: Kelly Sullivan / Getty Images A SaaS startup can conceivably find product-market fit within a few months of launching, but companies that work with hardware and robotics may wander in the pre-revenue wilderness for years. To learn more about how investors approach risk when it comes to emerging technology, Tim De Chant moderated a panel at ZebethMedia Disrupt with Milo Werner (general partner, The Engine), Gene Berdichevsky (co-founder and CEO, Sila) and Erin Price-Wright (partner, Index Ventures). “Hire people to do the technical stuff,” said Berdichevsky. “Keep an eye on it, but then go learn the other pieces.”

How to land investors who fund game-changing companies • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in Climate, climate tech, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, EC Hardware, EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, Sila, startup fundraising, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

A lot of problems worth solving aren’t ones that you can solve in a year or two or even 10. For founders and investors alike, such long timelines can seem daunting. But for Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO of battery tech startup Sila, hard tech problems are also some of the most tantalizing. “It’s always a good time to be a hard tech startup,” Berdichevsky said at ZebethMedia Disrupt. “One of the reasons is that the world doesn’t change just because it should. It changes because someone goes after something insanely hard and actually succeeds at it.” Such hard.tech startups run the gamut from advanced batteries like those made by Sila to nuclear fusion, quantum computing, automation and robotics. Any tech that has the potential for such broad impact also has a massive potential market, and that means a certain class of investors are willing to be in it for the long haul. “Hire people to do the technical stuff. Keep an eye on it, but then go learn the other pieces.” Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO, Sila “We look for real step-change, game-changing technologies that are going to benefit everyone and we think that will drive a huge [total addressable market],” said Milo Werner, a general partner at The Engine. When Berdichevsky founded Sila, he believed his company’s technology, a silicon-based anode that promises to improve lithium-ion battery energy density by 20%–40%, would be a significant enough advance that it would have no problem finding a market. What he didn’t expect was how long it would take. When Sila’s first product debuted inside the Whoop 4.0 wearable last year, the path to market had been twice as long as Berdichevsky had expected.

TAM tough love, ‘building in public,’ 6 key SaaS metrics • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in Commerce, e-commerce, EC roundup, immigration law, proptech, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

Are you ready to launch a bajillion-dollar startup? Before you start: Are you planning to build a centaur, a unicorn or perhaps a decacorn? Startup pitching has become an existential drama, in part because so many founders exaggerate the size of the total addressable market (TAM) in which they hope to compete. At ZebethMedia Disrupt, I spoke to three investors about how they use TAM to guide their decision-making. Everyone agreed that the number itself is far less important than the process that produced it. “The way it’s calculated and the way the founder is thinking about it tells us not necessarily about the business or its future, but about how the founder thinks about company creation,” said Deena Shakir, a partner at Lux Capital. Full ZebethMedia+ articles are only available to members.Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription. “It is almost guaranteed you’re going to be wrong,” said Aydin Senkut, the founder and managing partner of Felicis Ventures. “It’s either going to be too large or too small.” Kara Nortman, a managing partner at Upfront Ventures, said the TAM numbers given in a pitch do not control whether she’s likely to invest. “I would say [it is] more important to be able to articulate how big something can become and to show that you have a thought process around TAM, if it’s early,” she said. Choosing a mythical TAM won’t put dollar signs in investors’ eyes, as unrealistic numbers reflect unrealistic expectations, a red flag for any VC. As Senkut said, “the plan doesn’t have to be accurate — the plan has to be directionally correct.” Thanks very much for reading TC+ this week! Walter ThompsonEditorial Manager, ZebethMedia+@yourprotagonist 3 investors explain how finance-focused proptech startups can survive the downturn Image Credits: Kuzma (opens in a new window) / Getty Images How are finance-oriented property tech investors reacting to the ongoing downturn in public markets? Senior reporter Mary Ann Azevedo interviewed three VCs to learn more about how they’re counseling the companies in their portfolios, which types of startups are best positioned to weather the downturn and how they’re managing risk: Pete Flint, general partner, NFX Zach Aarons, co-founder and general partner, MetaProp Nima Wedlake, principal, Thomvest Ventures How Metafy founder Josh Fabian caught the attention of 776 by building in public Image Credits: Kelly Sullivan / Getty Images At ZebethMedia Disrupt, Josh Fabian, CEO of video game coaching platform Metafy, explained why he’s committed to “building in public,” or sharing aspects of his founder’s journey with an audience. “Consumers don’t trust corporations; I don’t trust corporations,” he said. “I don’t think any of you do, even if you’re running your own.” Katelin Holloway, a founding partner at 776 (an investor in Metafy), said Fabian’s approach was a breath of fresh air. “We were able to just engage and talk like humans, and Josh told us his story in a very different way,” she said. “Not only was it incredibly compelling from a business perspective, it was incredibly compelling from a human perspective,” she said. Is the modern data stack just old wine in a new bottle? Image Credits: Mikhail Dmitriev (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Before Ashish Kakran became a principal at Thomvest Ventures, he was a data engineer who transformed disparate consumer data points into optimized offers for consumer telecoms. “Part of my job involved unpacking encrypted data feeds, removing rows or columns that had missing data and mapping the fields to our internal data models,” he writes in a TC+ guest post. “Our statistics team then used the clean, updated data to model the best offer for each household.” Because today’s datasets contain exponentially more information, “the rules are being rewritten on how data will be used for competitive advantage, and it won’t be long before the winners emerge,” he asserts. In a deep dive, he compares modern and legacy data stacks to identify key trends for enterprises and opportunities for founders and investors. “Practitioners are spoilt for choices when building enterprise data pipelines,” says Kakran. Investor’s advice during a downturn: Don’t panic Image Credits: Kelly Sullivan / Getty Images Fewer investors are writing checks these days, but what kind of advice have they been giving their portfolio companies in recent months? Mary Ann Azevedo spoke to three executives at ZebethMedia Disrupt to learn more about the strategies they’re promoting to preserve runway and their peace of mind. Eric Glyman, CEO, Ramp Thejo Kote, CEO, Airbase Ruth Foxe Blader, partner, Anthemis “It behooves everybody to be really lucid about the macro environment that we’re entering,” said Blader. “It’s likely to be long-lived, and it’s very important to be judicious but not lose sight of your goals and the reason you founded the business in the first place.” 6 key metrics that can help SaaS startups outlast this downturn Image Credits: Andy Ryan (opens in a new window) / Getty Images The most successful companies I’ve worked at fostered parasocial relationships with customers in much the same way many of us invest emotional energy while following the lives of celebrities. During a downturn, “the goal is to pick up on warning signs early and course-correct as you go, and those signs are often hidden in the breadcrumbs,” writes Sudheesh Nair, CEO of ThoughtSpot. “Not all industries are affected equally, so don’t assume your customers will cut spending this year just because the headlines are bleak.” Tips for e-commerce brands that want to win more market share this holiday season Image Credits: Justin Sullivan (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Santa Claus makes a list and checks it twice before each holiday season. Can your e-commerce startup make the same claim? “Consumers are now living with inflation and an unofficial recession, and we can expect more selective and price-conscious shopping behavior,” writes Guru Hariharan, CEO and founder of CommerceIQ. Now that people “are feeling the squeeze on their everyday essential purchases” and the holiday shopping season is

What investors really think about the TAM slide in your pitch deck • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in EC How To, EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, startup fundraising, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, Total Addressable Market, VentureNo Comments

We’re encouraged to think of pitch meetings as a trial by fire: If an entrepreneur can negotiate deadly traps and slay the doubt monsters that bedevil tech investors, they’ll be rewarded with a golden SAFE note at the end of their quest. Particularly for first-timers, the pitch has become an existential drama, which can lead to poor decisions like overlong slide decks, failing to prepare investors before a meeting, and fatally, exaggerating the size of the total addressable market (TAM) in which they hope to compete. “With TAM, it is almost guaranteed you’re going to be wrong,” Aydin Senkut, the founder and managing partner of Felicis Ventures, said at ZebethMedia Disrupt. “It’s either going to be too large or too small.” Kara Nortman, a managing partner at Upfront Ventures, said the TAM numbers given in a pitch do not control whether she’s likely to invest. “I would say [it is] more important to be able to articulate how big something can become and to show that you have a thought process around TAM, if it’s early.” According to Deena Shakir, a partner at Lux Capital, TAM, along with the associated metrics serviceable addressable market (SAM) and serviceable obtainable market (SOM), aren’t meant to be carved in stone. They’re simple planning tools that help founders show investors their company’s upside potential, while SOM and SAM help them offset risk. “If we’re taking the meeting, we all sensibly think there’s something there that’s interesting enough to be potentially venture-bankable,” she said. “The way it’s calculated and the way the founder is thinking about it tells us not necessarily about the business or its future, but about how the founder thinks about company creation. And that’s much more important at the earliest stage.” All three panelists said TAM, SAM and SOM numbers offer a window into a founder’s mindset, but they’re not determinative factors, since they already have a general understanding of the sectors in which founders hope to compete.

Investor’s advice during a downturn: Don’t panic • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Airbase, Ramp, Ruth Foxe Blader, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

How to compete without losing your mind — and your runway Competing in an increasingly crowded space can be nerve-wracking. Competing in an increasingly crowded space amid a challenging fundraising environment is even more nerve-wracking. We all know that cash is not nearly as readily available in 2022 as it was in 2021. This puts startups in the position of having to compete without losing their minds — or runway. At ZebethMedia Disrupt 2022, I interviewed Ramp CEO Eric Glyman, Airbase CEO Thejo Kote and Anthemis partner Ruth Foxe Blader on the topic. Glyman and Kote shared how they’re working to preserve capital, while Blader offered up some of the advice she’s giving to her portfolio companies. And she didn’t hold back. For the unacquainted, Glyman and Kote both run startups in the spend management space. As friendly competitors, they acknowledged that while the category is not a winner-takes-all one, it’s still important to differentiate and continuously innovate. Said Glyman: “One of the things that we’ve done in our business has been to look at the cost of acquisition — to fully earn back the cost deployed — and we’ve reduced that threshold,” he said. “And so our view is that we want to grow as fast as possible, but at a much faster tolerance — in that same way where you can earn higher yield elsewhere, applying that rigorous framework to where you choose to deploy capital. We think this is the right approach for this environment.” For Kote, it’s mostly about focus. Airbase, he noted, has historically targeted the mid-market and early enterprise space. He referenced “the crazy 2021 period where there was all the insanity around investment in this space,” with investors “willing to pay 100x, 200x multiples.” Rather than frantically try to change Airbase’s model to meet expectations, Kote said the startup kept operating the way it always had. “So a silver lining from a focus perspective coming into this year for us has been, ‘You know what? None of that matters,’” Kote said. “We were very focused on subscription revenue and high-margin subscription revenue and net ARR — not gross ARR. So we have really stuck to what we have always done, which is focused on the mid-market. And that meant that we freed up resources in a bunch of ways, giving us additional runway.” Meanwhile, Blader — whose firm invests at all stages of the life cycle — shared her belief that “this is a sentiment-driven industry, and when the music’s playing, everybody dances.” “The people who danced in 2021 and raised a bunch of capital – enough capital to hit breakeven with maybe a little bit of burn cutting, are probably feeling pretty good,” she said. “And the folks who really either under-raised or didn’t raise or raised capital at a valuation where they’re really not going to be able to close the gap between where multiples were and where they are now, are slightly panicked.”

2022 R&D tax prep, social media for founders, managing remote teams • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in EC roundup, Enterprise, Startup Accelerator, Startups, Tax law, tech layoffs, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

As director of Techstars’ startup pipeline, Saba Karim spends much of his time touting the ways entrepreneurs can benefit by joining an accelerator. But is it the right choice for every founder? After he posted a thread on Twitter offering several rationales explaining why some should definitely avoid them, I invited him to adapt it for a TC+ guest post we published yesterday. “Keep in mind that funding will solve your money problems, but it won’t solve everything else,” he writes. Full ZebethMedia+ articles are only available to membersUse discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription “You’ll still need to figure out how to acquire customers, find the best talent, build an incredible product, assemble a great advisory board and get to product-market fit.” His article confirms a suspicion I’ve long harbored: many entrepreneurs pursue accelerators so they can gain access to investors, score free publicity, or receive positive reinforcement for their idea. But none of those are determining factors for success. “If you’re not living and breathing your startup, you’re going to struggle anyway,” says Karim. If you have information, knowledge or experience to share that could help early-stage startup founders, investors and workers make better decisions, please review our submission guidelines and drop us a line. Thanks very much for reading, Walter ThompsonEditorial Manager, ZebethMedia+@yourprotagonist These founders landed early checks by being savvy about social media (L-R) Connie Loizos, Silicon Valley Editor, ZebethMedia, Nik Milanović, Founder, This Week in Fintech; General Partner, The Fintech Fund, Joshua Ogundu, CEO, Campfire and Gefen Skolnick, Founder, Couplet Coffee. Image Credits: Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for ZebethMedia Is there a correlation between being extremely online and a founder’s ability to fundraise? According to three entrepreneurs Connie Loizos spoke with at ZebethMedia Disrupt, a social media presence that blends aspects of your business and personal lives can “make it easier to connect with investors and customers.” Nik Milanović (founder, This Week in Fintech), Gefen Skolnick (founder, Couplet Coffee) and Josh Ogundu (CEO, Campfire) talked about the benefits and downsides of using TikTok, Twitter and other platforms to build authentic personal and business brands. “I even tweeted yesterday that it was kind of not a good day as a founder, and it was really nice and people engaged with that,” said Skolnick. “I don’t believe in constantly showing that things are good. Some days things are just not good.” How to effectively manage a remote team during wartime Image Credits: Anna Fedorenko / Getty Images “There are a lot of studies about crisis management on the web, but none of them tell us how to manage a company during times of war,” according to Alex Fedorov, CEO and founder of Ukrainian startup OBRIO. Prior to Russia’s invasion, “our company had never seen a real crisis,” he writes in a post that presents the six methods his company used to maintain continuity while protecting workers. “Training to manage stress, anxiety and personal finances will help your employees build the needed knowledge and respond to tough situations.” 3 founders discuss how to navigate the nuances of early-stage fundraising Image Credits: Kelly Sullivan / Getty Images Founders who have raised funds for early-stage startups in the last year have generally had an easier time than people seeking Series A money (or later). Then again, “easy” is such a relative term. At ZebethMedia Disrupt, Rebecca Szkutak spoke to three entrepreneurs to learn more about how they adjusted their expectations and tactics as they approach investors during a downturn: Amanda DoAmaral, co-founder and CEO, Fiveable Arman Hezarkhani, founder, Parthean Sarah Du, co-founder, Alloy Automation Prepare to amortize: Inflation may spell doom for R&D tax expensing Image Credits: Fancy/Veer/Corbis (opens in a new window) / Getty Images The U.S. federal government has made R&D tax credits available for decades, but a major change set to take place this year will impact startups across the board. Previously, R&D expenditures could be expensed upfront, but now, “those expenses will need to be amortized over 5 years in the case of domestic research, and 15 years for foreign research,” according to tax attorney Andrew Leahey. Because so many startups “incur the bulk of their R&D costs in their first year of operation,” many could wait “the equivalent of a lifetime” to recover those expenses. High inflation has stalled efforts to repeal the amortization requirement, so Leahey shares several tactics companies can use “to prepare for the possibility of the rule coming into effect.” Remote work is here to stay. Here’s how to manage your staff from afar Image Credits: Kelly Sullivan / Getty Images Before the pandemic, most startup workers had the same experience on their first day: set up a new laptop, fill out some onboarding paperwork, then start gathering intel on the best places to grab lunch near the office. Now that so many teams are hybrid or fully remote, companies are learning the importance of fostering company culture and community from day one, a topic Rebecca Bellan delved into at ZebethMedia Disrupt with three experienced managers: Adriana Roche, chief people officer, Mural Deidre Paknad, CEO and co-founder, WorkBoard Allison Barr Allen, angel investor, Trail Run Capital “The biggest learning for us over the last three years was that it’s very difficult to really build expertise in a domain or a subject through Zoom,” said Paknad. How our startup made it through 2 recessions without relying on layoffs Image Credits: Aaron Black (opens in a new window) / Getty Images So far this year, about 45,000 tech workers have been laid off. If that’s hard to visualize, imagine a sold-out Mets game at Citi Field in New York City. Cutting staff is standard operating procedure during a downturn, but Sachin Gupta, who leads sales, marketing and general operations for HackerEarth, says his company has weathered two recessions without resorting to mass firings. “At any given time, our staff portfolio operates at about 90% of what we consider ideal,” he says. “Think of this like the distance

How Metafy founder Josh Fabian caught the attention of 776 by building in public • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in ec gaming, EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, Gaming, Katelin Holloway, metafy, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

In over a decade of investing in startups, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has only once offered to fund a founder on the spot. That founder was Josh Fabian, CEO of Metafy, a video game coaching platform. “We were able to just engage and talk like humans, and Josh told us his story in a very different way,” said Katelin Holloway, a founding partner at 776, where Ohanian is general partner. “Not only was it incredibly compelling from a business perspective, it was incredibly compelling from a human perspective.” As Fabian explained at ZebethMedia Disrupt, Metafy has a pretty fun founding story. Once a competitive Yu-Gi-Oh player in his childhood, Fabian was working as a lead designer at Groupon when he became obsessed with mobile gaming. “I would spend my bathroom breaks very productively playing a game called Clash Royale,” Fabian said. He eventually became one of the top 20 players in the world and streamed for up to 4,000 viewers on a daily basis, but he wasn’t making much money — that is, until fans started asking him to pay him for private coaching. In just six months, he made $40,000. When Fabian’s children wanted to get better at the Pokémon Trading Card game, he hired one of the best players in the world. “He offered to teach them for $20-an-hour, which is less than what we pay our babysitter,” Fabian remembered. He said he asked the player if he did Pokémon full-time, but the player said he worked a minimum wage job at a warehouse. That got Fabian thinking about building a business to let people in similar situations make a living off their gaming expertise. This past February, Metafy raised a $25 million Series A round, co-led by 776 and Tiger Global. Building in public

These founders landed early checks by being savvy about social media • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in Campfire, couplet coffee, EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, Social, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

On first blush, founders building a coffee brand, a social networking app, and a fintech-focused venture fund wouldn’t appear to have much in common. But at ZebethMedia Disrupt, the founders, together on stage, credited their early success in raising venture capital to their use of social media platforms. It’s an interesting and increasingly necessary ingredient. While one founder, Nik Milanović, who launched a small fintech-focused media company and an associated venture fund, happens to enjoy the kind of profile that VCs tend to notice (Stanford grad, biz dev experience at Google, white), the checks the other two founders raised are something of a statistical anomaly. Gefen Skolnick, the founder of coffee brand Couplet Coffee, is a woman; just 2.4% of venture dollars flowed toward women-led companies in 2021. For a Black founder like Josh Ogundu, whose app Campfire invites users to create and share 30-second audio stories associated with pictures on their phones, the odds of getting a check were an even more abysmal 1.3% in 2021. (For Latin and Black women founders, the chances of receiving venture funding in 2021 were closer to zero.) Though Ogundu and Skolnick made the point that going to esteemed schools and logging time at brand-name companies helped even the playing field (he attended both Michigan State and the University of Southern California and had a stint at TikTok; she attended UCLA and worked at Tesla, among other internships), all three suggested that savvy use of social media can do more than make it easier to connect with investors and customers — it can keep a founder and their brand relevant and accessible, too.

Remote work is here to stay. Here’s how to manage your staff from afar • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 30, 2022Posted in EC Future of Work, EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, Enterprise, mural, remote work, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, workboardNo Comments

Over the last two and a half years, remote and hybrid working has become the norm — a majority of employed Americans have the option of working from home for all or part of the week, and 87% of workers who were offered remote work embraced the opportunity heartily. While some companies are pushing for a return to the office, today’s strapped labor market is giving employees more power to push back for remote, or at least flexible, jobs. This isn’t just a pandemic response anymore — it’s a way of life, and it has the potential to make some businesses better. People who work from home have been reporting an uptick in their productivity levels without the distractions that come with an office — Oh, it’s Beth’s birthday. Cupcakes in the kitchen! But both employers and employees have reported some downsides to remote work. Isolation can make people feel lonely and disconnected, leading to mental health issues. Learning and collaboration have taken a hit without the human element of being in the same room. And it can be difficult to create and maintain a company culture remotely. Luckily, some seriously smart people have thought hard about how to address these challenges and make it work. We put a few of them onstage last week at ZebethMedia Disrupt, and while you can watch the whole video, here are some of their best insights. Be hyper-intentional when coming together IRL Two and a half years into the pandemic, people are “actually clamoring to spend more time together,” said Adriana Roche, chief people officer at Mural, during a panel discussion at Disrupt. Ironically, one of the main solutions to the woes of remote work is finding ways to bring staff together IRL. That might mean a couple of times per week in the office if everyone lives in the same city, but if the team is fully remote, companies have to be more intentional with how they plan monthly or quarterly off-sites.

3 founders discuss how to navigate the nuances of early-stage fundraising • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 30, 2022Posted in Alloy Automation, EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, EC venture capital, fiveable, fundraising, Parthean, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

Fundraising isn’t a monolithic event but rather a series of meetings and pleasantries, each with their own vibe and nuance. Yet many pieces of fundraising advice to founders paint the process with a broad brush. We heard from three founders at ZebethMedia Disrupt last week: Amanda DoAmaral, co-founder and CEO of Fiveable; Arman Hezarkhani, founder of Parthean; and Sarah Du, co-founder of Alloy Automation, each of whom has raised in the extreme highs and lows of last 18 months. They spoke about navigating the process, what worked (and what didn’t) and how to customize your pitch to navigate the many subtleties of fundraising. For DoAmaral, it was important to spend time researching which investors may actually back her company. She said she’s had investors take meetings with her due to a warm intro despite having no actual intention to invest. “My co-founder and I got in a car and drove down to Tennessee thinking we’re gonna get this check. And this guy didn’t even trust me to like, be an attendee at this event. They’re not writing the check,” DoAmaral recalled. “People are not going to take me seriously if they’re not going to see me as someone that is their equal at all.” Du added that performing due diligence on potential backers beforehand is helpful, not only to find out whether they might actually invest in the company, but also if they will be good to work with. This is especially true for founders raising at the early stages who are looking at a long relationship ahead.