Enterprise Founders Playbook: Seed to Series A
Trying to figure out what’s next in your enterprise startup’s journey? In this series, we explore the common questions enterprise founders have at the early stage and what can make the difference between success and failure as you move from Seed to Series A.
To Plan or Not to Plan-What Every Founder Needs to Know
You’re starting to make hires and spend some of the seed money you raised. At this point, you start wondering: Should I create an operating plan?
Making Your First Sales Hire? Avoid Some Common Mistakes
As a startup scales, it will reach a point where the founders need to bring in a sales hire — they just can’t continue to do it all, nor should they.
Your First Board (Part 1): Building a Foundation for Success
As you grow your startup, you’re going to reach the point where you need to put together your first board. When working on your Series A, it’s going to be a key element of your term sheet.
Your First Board (Part 2): A Practical Guide to Getting Started
In this second of two parts, we consider the details of preparing for and running that first board meeting—and the ones that follow.
Making Your First Finance Hire
At some point in your entrepreneurial journey as a founder, you’re going to need help when it comes to keeping track of your company’s finances.
Navigating the New Investment Landscape: A Founder’s Guide to Prepping for Series A Success
Investor relationships are partnerships that take time to cultivate. You can build trust, align your visions, and make sure that you’re not pitching to strangers.
Breaking Bad News: A Founder’s Guide
Most founders know how to convey the good news to their team and investors—that’s easy. But when it comes to delivering bad news, that’s where things can become much more of a challenge.
Strategies for Founders Facing A Down Round
A problem many companies are facing today is last-round valuation, and more specifically, the case where their last-round valuation was way ahead of where the market is today. Understandably, this is the kind of problem that gets founders worried as they face the prospect of a down round.
Mastering the Series A: Essential Strategies for Founders
A successful Series A process has a lot of moving parts, and getting the attention of investors in the current fundraising landscape requires doing each part well.
Build Optionality: Navigating an Acquisition
The best founders don’t just have a Plan A for financing their growth—they have a Plan B, Plan C, and so on whenever possible. They create optionality for themselves and their organizations, ready to step onto a different path if the one they’re on isn’t taking them where they want to go, as quickly as they want to get there.
Lak Ananth
Global Managing PartnerLak has spent his career in service to the entrepreneurial pursuit, identifying industry changing disruptions and acting on them as an investor or acquirer. His investment focus is on applications of AI/ML, vertical SaaS, robotics, mobility, and other emerging areas of deep tech.
William Smith
Venture PartnerAs an investor and former founder, Will has deep empathy for founders and derives tremendous fulfillment in supporting them. At Next47, he focuses on AI/ML, dev tools, and SaaS. He also serves as General Partner at Octave, a seed-stage fund with a focus on enterprise data startups.