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Use Variance Reports to Determine How You’re Tracking to Your Projections How are we doing? Are things going to plan? Are we overspending? Underspending? Where should we double-down? Cutback? These are all questions that you’ve likely encountered in a management meeting or recent board meeting. Today we are excited to announce new Variance Report module that will be part of our insights layer. Variance reporting will let our customers quickly assign any of their KPIs to a forecasted or budgeted value and with one-click get back a full Variance Report. We’ll calculate the following in your Variance Report: MTD Variance MTD Variance % YTD Actual YTD Variance YTD Variance % YTD Actual prior yr YTD Actual prior yr YTD Variance prior yr YTD Variance % Our budget vs actual and variance reporting will give you instant insights and reporting capabilities for any of your metrics in Visible. Being able to make timely decisions based on your forecasts and budget will help accelerate growth, manage your bottom line and hit goals across your organization. Utilizing the variance report in Visible is great for: Weekly team updates showing progess towards your Monthly and Annual Goals Crafting monthly management reports to your leadership teams providing feedback on where you under/over performed Creating pre-board meeting reports that give a health check on where you are compared to board approved budgets. We hope you enjoy! Sign in to Visible to get started to or sign up! Feel free to email support@visible.vc with any questions, comments and feedback. Up & to the right, The Visible Team

Financial projections are essential for any business, even if it’s not yet generating revenue. A variety of specific methods exist for performing this task, but they can generally be classified into top-down and bottom-up approaches. Financial analysts often use both methods as checks upon each other. Top Down Projections A top-down method of estimating future financial performance uses general parameters to develop specific projection numbers. You’ll often use a top-down approach to determine the market share that your new business can expect to receive. You might start with the market value of your product, narrowing it down to a particular location as much as possible. You would then assume that your business will receive a specific portion of that market and use that estimate to generate a sales forecast. A top-down approach is comparatively easy since the only parameters it really requires is the total market value for your area and the market share you expect to receive. This method is most useful for checking the reasonableness of the projections resulting from a bottom-up approach. However, top down projections aren’t recommended for preparing detailed forecasts. Example Assume for this example you plan to open a business in an area where the total annual sale value of your product is $2 billion. You believe that your business might get 0.01 percent of that market, resulting in annual sales of $200,000. Note that your financial projection is entirely dependent upon the accuracy of your estimate on the product’s market value and your market share. Furthermore, the top-down approach doesn’t you to ask “what if” type questions. Bottoms Up Projections The bottom-up approach uses specific parameters to develop a general forecast of a business’s performance. This method might start the number people you expect to pass by your business each day, also known as footfall. You would then estimate the percentage of footfall that will enter your store and make a purchase. The next step is to estimate the average value of each purchase to project your annual sales. Bottoms up projections are based on a set of individual assumptions, allowing you to determine the impact of changing a particular parameter with relative ease. You may use a bottom-up approach to select a location for a new business. You can obtain an accurate estimate of the footfall by direct observation. You can also observe similar stores in that area to estimate the percentage of footfall that are likely to enter your store. The prices that your competitors charge will give you a good idea of the price you can expect to charge. Example Assume for this example that an average of 10,000 people pass by a particular location each day. About one percent of this traffic in this area enters a store and makes a purchase, and the average total of each sale is about $5. The expected annual sales revenue in this example is therefore 10,000 x 0.01 x 5 x 365 = $182,500. You can then refine this estimate by considering additional factors such as price changes, closing on weekends and seasonal fluctuations.

How to Avoid a Bad Sales Hire It’s a dilemma for any company: your growing startup begins to face increasingly aggressive quarterly goals and the pressure is on to scale your sales team to meet the growing needs. Why is growth a challenge? It increases your chances of making the wrong hire. According to Mindflash, 38 percent of all bad hires come from companies looking to fill a position quickly. Another 21 percent blamed an inability to test or research the employee’s skills well enough while another 11 percent pinned the bad hire on the company’s failure to check out references. Each scenario screams out a company pulling the trigger too quickly to fill a spot. This can be an especially deadly concern when it comes to your sales team. There’s no doubting that filling sales positions is hard. When surveying companies from 2006 to 2012 on the hardest jobs to fill, the ManpowerGroup consistently named sales as the annual winner for the toughest department. For every company, it’s a large opportunity cost to miss out on the next great closer and land a dud instead. But for a cash-conscious growing business, a bad sales hire can be especially devastating. Many businesses have considered the costs of a bad hire to equal the amount it takes to recruit, onboard and train a salesperson. But a bad sales hire isn’t simply limited to the hiring costs. Your business will incur more than a fixed set of initial costs. Chris Young believes you can expect to calculate the total costs by adding up these two categories: The cost to recruit, onboard, and train a salesperson. The average sales of your Top 20%, Average, and Bottom 20% salespeople. You can expect a bad sales hire to cost your business well into a six-figure sum. A 2012 report by the DePaul University Centre for Sales Leadership estimated an $114,957 price tag on the cost to hire, train, and replace a salesperson alone. The same report claimed a 28 percent turnover rate for salespeople. Then there’s the toll it takes on your team. The amount of administration and management time that will be sucked from your staff when you make the wrong hire can be staggering. Bad sales hires require special attention and additional training when employed. Studies have shown that an average sales manager wastes 13 percent of their time focused on poor performers. Then, when the inevitable need to terminate arrives, administrators will need to spend valuable time following the proper protocols to justify and oversee the employee’s dismissal. Finally, your HR department will spend additional time with exit interviews and you might be on the hook for severance costs. In their 2006 book Never Hire A Bad Salesperson Again, Dr. Christopher Croner and Richard Abraham also argued a business will face soft costs with any sales hire like losing value from the customers your rep is handling through neglect or poor behavior. Croner and Abraham estimated the cost at 10 percent of a rep’s quota. Despite whatever short-term needs your business may face, it’s essential to the long-term health of your organization to avoid bad hires at all costs. If that means slowing down headcount and even missing a quarterly goal as a result, it’s likely worth it. Make sure to communicate with your investors when you are facing a lack of qualified candidates. Lean on their expertise and network to better your chances at making good hires if you’re truly in need. Talk honestly about your hesitation to hire if you show up at monthly or quarterly meetings having failed to scale headcount according to plan. Keep your position consistent: you’d rather lose little now than pay a lot more later for a bad sales rep. Related resource: 9 Signs It’s Time To Hire in a Startup

No founder has ever created a financial plan and cash flow projections they didn’t like. But what happens when the countless hours spent sifting through data, building models, and pitching your projections don’t go as planned? There is endless content on putting together accurate financial projections and cash flow analysis but the reality is companies are still going to have down quarters, overly optimistic forecasts, and miss your projections one way or another. However, it is something that can be handled immediately with a few quick readjustments. When to Readjust your Cash Flow Projections As we mentioned above, no founder has created a forecast they did not like. There is a fine line between an optimistic and delusional projection. If you’re continuing to miss your forecast, have limited resources, etc. it is probably time to readjust your forecasts. For earlier stage companies, start with your life-blood; cash flow. “Cash flow forecasting is important because if a business runs out of cash and is not able to obtain new finance, it will become insolvent. Cash flow is the life-blood of all businesses—particularly start-ups and small enterprises.” Cash flow can be extremely delicate in the early stages of a company’s life. Being off by just a few weeks or months can make or break moral, investor interest, and the life of the business. As Jason Lemkin puts it after a missed quarter, “If your cash is now going to stretch 12 months instead of 15, you may need to take action now. If you wait — it will be too late to make a difference. Do not wait a quarter here. Do this now.” If revenue is down, chances are you are closer to your zero cash date and need to make sure this is accounted for. You will likely need to re-forecast your cash and financial projections for the year as well. How to Readjust – A Dynamic Forecast A quick and easy way to keep your projection in check? A last three to six month rolling projection simply using your growth rate and burn rate. What exactly is a “Last Three Month” model? You’ll just need to take the average of your last three (to six) month growth rate and roll it forward 12 months. While it may not be as appealing as a forecast you put together on your own it is generally a great indicator of where your business is heading. Example from SaaStr.com As you can see in the example above from SaaStr, the average growth rate over the last 4 months is 14.7% so they use that as their growth rate moving forward. As your new revenue and growth rates continue to change so will your rolling average and forecasts. Chances are this will be the most realistic forward looking growth rates as well. However, you can still pair a “Last Three Month” model with your original forecasts so you have a more realistic and a “stretch” forecast to keep an eye on. Start automating your cash flow projections using our business intelligence layer by signing up for a trial at Visible.vc

What is debt financing? Startups are in a constant competition for 2 resources; capital and talent. When it comes to raising capital for your startup there are quite a few options. Outside of bootstrapping, debt and equity financing are 2 of the most popular options. According to Investopedia, “Debt financing occurs when a firm raises money for working capital or capital expenditures by selling debt instruments to individuals and/or institutional investors. In return for lending the money, the individuals or institutions become creditors and receive a promise that the principal and interest on the debt will be repaid.” On the other hand, there is equity financing. How does debt financing work? A lender is generally evaluating if and when a business can be repaid. A team of lenders will generally evaluate a few things, this generally starts with past performance and future projections. A few keys to understand when approaching a lender or bank for debt financing: Complete financial statements and documents. Poor or incomplete financial statements can put doubt in the mind of a debt-provider. Most debt-providers will look as far back as 2-3 years. For example, Lighter Capital will occasionally make investments with ~6 months of solid financials. Understand your business. Have a deep understanding of where your customers, how you’re acquiring them, and why they are churning. Revenue Growth. You don’t have to be a profitable company to receive funding from Lighter Capital but should have a clear plan and pathway to profitability. Downside Scenarios. As mentioned above, debt-providers are focused on repayment as opposed to extreme upside. Make sure you lay out downside scenarios to show you can navigate down periods. High Gross Margins. Going hand in hand with “downside scenarios” show debt-providers you have high gross margins and can limit the downside as much as possible. Story matches the numbers. If you’re telling a great narrative and the data/financials are not matching up with the story chances are that will cause doubt in the mind of the providers. Plan for New Capital. Show you have a plan in place for how you will allocate your new capital. Allen of Lighter Capital has seen a clear connection between a company coming to them with a solid plan and their future growth. Pros of debt financing Every financing option will come with its own set of pros and cons. Check out a few of the key pros of debt financing below: Maintain ownership — debt financing does not require founders to give up equity or ownership in their business Efficient growth — taking on debt can allow companies to buy the resources and hire the talent they need to fuel growth Tax benefits — As the team at Lightspeed put it, “A strong advantage of debt financing is the tax deductions. Classified as a business expense, the principal and interest payment on that debt may be deducted from your business income taxes.” Cons of debt financing On the flip side, there are cons to debt financing. Check out a few examples below: Repayment — of course, you’ll need to repay the debt. This requires a predictable business model. Collateral — debt also requires collateral. This can be limited to early-stage companies. Types of debt financing There are different types of debt financing that startups can leverage. Check out a few types of debt financing below: Bank Lending — The most traditional form of debt financing requires taking a loan from a traditional bank or institution. Recurring Revenue — There are specific lenders dedicated to recurring revenue business models (SaaS). Family or Friend Lending — Startup founders can also take on debt or loans from family members or friends. What is equity financing? According to Investopedia, “Equity financing is the process of raising capital through the sale of shares. Companies raise money because they might have a short-term need to pay bills or they might have a long-term goal and require funds to invest in their growth. By selling shares, they sell ownership in their company in return for cash, like stock financing.” When thinking of equity financing in terms of startups we generally think of venture capital and angel investors. When a startup goes out to raise a funding round, they are selling shares (AKA equity in the company) for a set amount of capital. How does equity financing work When raising equity financing or venture capital it often follows a process. This involves the founder focusing on the fundraise. Finding the Right Investors To start a fundraise, you first need to understand what investors you should be talking to. A venture fundraise is time intensive so it is important to make sure you’re spending your time with the right people. Check out our investor database to find the right investors for your business here. Related Resource: An Essential Guide on Capital Raising Software Pitching Your Company Once you land a meeting with a potential investor you will need to pitch your business and make it a point for them to invest. As we wrote in our Fundraising Guide, “If you’ve done your research and asked the right questions, you’ll be armed with the information you need to effectively pitch your company. At the end of the day, pitching is storytelling and it is your job to figure out how each potential investor fits into the narrative. If done correctly, you’ll be able to control the conversation and better your chances of setting future meetings.” Due Diligence If you are fortunate enough to gain interest from a venture capitalist they will perform due diligence to confirm what you’ve been pitching is true. This means they will be calling on customers, other investors, and combing through historical data to confirm they’d like to make the investment. Pros of equity financing Like debt financing, equity financing comes with its own set of pros and cons. Check out a few of the pros of equity financing below: No Loan Repayment — With equity financing, the burden of repayment does not fall on the shoulders of a founder. In turn for giving up ownership, they are giving up the burden of repaying debt. Resources — Many equity financers, like venture capitalists, come with resources to help startups grow and scale their operations. Cons of equity financing On the flip side, there are also cons that come with equity financing. Check out a couple of examples of the cons of raising equity financing below: Loss of ownership — Giving up equity means that founders are giving up ownership and potentially decision-making powers. Expectations — When adding on new shareholders, chances are they will have requirements and expectations that may not align with your own. Types of equity financing Equity financing, and the individuals/firms that support it, come in different shapes and sizes. Check out a few examples of equity financing below: Venture Capital — dedicated firms built to invest in high-growth startups Angel Investors — high net worth individuals that use startup investing as a way to diversify their investment portfolio Private Equity — Professional investment firms dedicated to helping operate and scale large startups. Related Resources: How to Find Investors How to Effectively Find + Secure Angel Investors for Your Startup Private Equity vs Venture Capital: Critical Differences Debt vs equity financing for startups When evaluating debt and equity financing there are a few key major differences that a startup and founder have to evaluate. The Cost The major difference when evaluating debt and equity financing is the cost to your business. On one hand, you can take debt financing and will need to pay back the interest rate and principle at a later date. This generally assumes that your business is bringing in some type of predictable revenue. There is a clear cost associated with paying this back. On the flip side, is the cost of equity financing. While there is not a set amount of capital you will need to pay back you will eventually need to pay the cost of the shares at a later date. This can be expensive if the business turns out to be worth a large amount. The Business Model When understanding debt vs. equity financing you need to understand the impact your business model will have on each as well. When raising debt financing, the lender will want your business to have predictable revenue and clear projections so they know that they will be repaid. On the other hand, equity financing allows small businesses to pursue a new market where they may have little to no data. This is because someone buying equity, especially a venture capitalists, are investing in the future value of the company and the ability for the team to execute on the vision. When to seek out debt vs equity financing As we’ve discussed earlier in this post you need to understand the costs associated with both equity and debt financing. Securing Debt Financing For those who aren’t growing at 300% but rather 150% or 200% a good option would be to look into debt financing. While there are countless types of debt financing, Lighter Capital focuses on “revenue-based financing”. There are several factors that Lighter Capital looks into when evaluating a potential investment but as Allen Johnson of Lighter Capital puts it, “At the end of the day they’re assessing the risk to get repaid”. Securing Equity Financing To kick off the webinar, Mike discussed experiences from Visible’s own fundraising efforts and what we’ve seen from our partners and countless companies using Visible for investor relations. The biggest takeaway from raising equity financing? It is very much a process and can be very time consuming. Raising equity financing is essentially a full time job for the CEO or founding team. It is not something that can be done lightly and viewed as a “side project”. You need to build relationships and a pipeline of investors, show momentum, generate inbound interests, etc. Equity financing allows pre-revenue companies with a strong vision and adjustable market an opportunity to secure capital and pursue their vision. Investors are expecting a return and are often in pursuit of an “extreme upside”. As you can see below, Christoph Janz of Point Nine Capital breaks down what it takes to raise a Series A in SaaS below: Basic Info and Docs You’ll Need While Raising Venture Capital: As part of the process of raising venture capital, VCs will need to understand your past business performance. Venture capitalists are generally investing in a highly experienced team, intriguing and emerging market, and/or a world class product. Related Reading: Building A Startup Financial Model That Works With that being said, they will generally need a few of the info and docs below to evaluate their investment decision: Legal Docs, Cap Table, Financials, etc. A venture capitalist will want to see who owns the business and how it is structured. They will want to see the cap table to understand this. They will also want to get a look into historical financials to understand how the business is burning cash and handling their finances. In the wake of recent VC failures, it is especially important to have cash burn and financing under control. Trends over time VCs are largely investing in the founder and the team if there is little to no revenue or historical data. It is important that the founder and team takes the relationship and transparency seriously. A regular cadence and rapport leading up to the investment. Investors won’t make an investment in a single point of time. Customer Acquisition Model VCs will also want to understand your customer acquisition model and the sustainability of it moving forward. If it costs more to acquire a customer than they are paying, it is likely not a feasible business. To learn more about customer acquisition models, check out this post. Total Addressable Market and Sensitivity analysis If a business has little to no historical data, a VC may want to better understand the market they are investing. If a market has the opportunity to be large and the investment has the opportunity to penetrate a large percentage of the market, it may be an interesting investment. You can learn more about modeling this and sharing TAM with investors here. Both debt financing and equity financing are solid options depending on your stage, metrics, and financials. Each has its pros and cons for each company. It is ultimately up to the founder to have a deep understanding of their business to make sure they are making the right decision for their business. The Visible newsletter brings you weekly, curated fundraising news, articles, and events Every Thursday we deliver curated insights to help founders raise capital, update investors, and track their key metrics in our newsletter, the Visible Weekly. Subscribe to the Visible Weekly and stay in the loop with fundraising data and insights here.

The Visible team recently pushed changes to the data section to provide more insights, context and usability. We’ve broken down the data section into a couple of key components. Experience Improvements With just a single click you can automatically generate a chart for any metric. You’ll have the option to return to the data section to create additional metrics or you can go to the respective dashboard and continue to edit the chart. Insights With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to see the following metrics that we automatically calculate for you: Growth % – the change from the previous year Previous Year – the value for the same metric one year prior Previous Year Change – The % change for the same metric from the previous year Total – The cumulative total for all the values of a given metric 3 Period Rolling Avg. – The rolling average for the previous 3 periods. 6 Period Rolling Avg. – The rolling average for the previous 6 periods. 12 Period Rolling Avg – The rolling average for the previous 12 periods. Frequencies We will automatically roll data up to different frequencies. E.g. if you are bringing in daily data, you’ll be able to view it as: Daily Weekly Quarterly Annually Metric Settings This is where you can set the type of metric, the default color for your charting needs, description and any other pertinent settings for the metric. We’ll be updating data connections and the chart builder in the near future to provide an ever more seamless workflow. As always ping hi@visible.vc should you have any questions or feedback. Up & to the right, -Ciarán & The Visible Team

Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days. Fundraising is difficult. On top of building a fundable business, founders need to find the right investors, build relationships, successfully pitch their companies, and more to close a round. In order to better help founders find the right investors, we’ve built a totally free, community-sourced investor database, Visible Connect. SaaS startups and SaaS companies are commonly funded by different VC funds and angel investors. The list below is an active list of 60+ SaaS investors that are investing in seed rounds (some invest in later stages as well). The list uses our data from Visible Connect – we focus on key information like check size, investment location, fund size, and more. The link to “View their profile” will display firm information like their thesis, check sizes, focus, recent fund size, etc. In order to better help you track your raise, you can also add investors directly from Visible Connect to your dedicated fundraising pipeline in Visible (Learn more about tracking a raise in Visible here). Recommended Reading: The Understandable Guide to Startup Funding Stages North America SaaS Seed VC Firms Lightspeed Venture Partners About: Lightspeed Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that is engaged in the consumer, enterprise, technology, and cleantech markets. Location: Menlo Park, CA Check size: $1-$100M Recent investments: Flink, Netskope, AnyVision To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Struck Capital About: Founder-First Capital for Innovative Entrepreneurs who want to Change the World. Location: Lose Angeles, CA Check size: $500k – $5M Recent Investments: Sendoso, BlackCart, Brainbase, Mojo Vision To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Runway Venture Partners About: New York City-based early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in post-product-market fit software-enabled businesses. Location: New York, NY Check size: $500k – $1M To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Cowboy Ventures About: Cowboy Ventures is a seed-stage focused fund investing in digital startups. Location: Palo Alto, CA Check size: $500k – $750k Recent Investments: Drata, Hone, Contra To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Redpoint Ventures About: Redpoint Ventures partners with visionary founders to create new markets or redefine existing ones at the seed, early and growth stages. Location: Menlo Park, CA Check size: $4M – $5M Recent Investments: Hex Technologies, Orca Security, R2C To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Moment Ventures About: Early-stage venture capital firm investing entrepreneurs reimagining how we work. Location: Palo Alto, CA Recent Investments: Rune Labs, Flowspace, Rafay To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Elizabeth Street Ventures About: We are an early-stage investment firm focused on the digital consumer and next-generation brands that improve daily life. Location: New York, NY To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> SV Angel About: SV Angel is a San Francisco-based angel firm that helps startups with business development, financing, M&A, and other strategic advice. Location: San Francisco, CA Check size: $250k – $3M Recent Investments: Valora, Outschool, Census To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Matrix Partners About: Matrix Partners is a venture capital firm focused on seed- and early-stage investments. Location: San Francisco, CA Check size: $5M – $20M Recent Investments: LightForce Orthodontics, Sequin, Kolide To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Contour Venture Partners About: invests in companies focused on information technology, and the application of innovative software solutions into the financial services, enterprise SaaS and vertical B2B SaaS sectors. Location: New York, NY Check size: $500k – $1.5M Recent Investments: Cutover, HowGood, Movable Ink To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Harlem Capital Partners About: Harlem Capital is an early-stage venture firm that invests in post-revenue tech-enabled startups, focused on minority and women founders. Location: New York, NY Check size: $500k – $1M Recent Investments: Repeat, PreShow Interactive, Stuf To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> TechNexus About: We build ecosystems by finding, funding, and accelerating technology ventures in collaboration with entrepreneurs and enterprises. Location: Chicago, IL Check size: $50k – $5M Recent Investments: Catch Co., Rollick, Krisp To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Moai Capital About: Seed Capital for Impassioned Entrepreneurs. Location: San Mateo, CA Check size: $25k – $100k To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Quake Capital About: Investing in big ideas, killer startups, and extraordinary people. Location: New York, NY Check size: $150k – $250k To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Battery Ventures About: Battery Ventures finances technology sector companies with venture capital, private equity, and debt financing investments. Location: Boston, MA Check size: $10M – $75M Recent Investments: Postman, Amplitude, ServiceTitan To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Fuel Capital About: Fuel Capital is a California-based early-stage venture fund focused on consumer, SaaS, and cloud infrastructure companies. Location: Burlingame, CA Check size: $500k – $1M Recent Investments: Specto, ConductorOne, Goodcover To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Illuminate Ventures About: Illuminate Ventures invests in early-stage high-tech companies delivering enterprise cloud and mobile solutions. Location: Oakland, CA Check size: $250k – $1.5M Recent Investments: Bedrock Analytics, Copper, Pex To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Luma Launch About: Luma Launch is a multi-million dollar early-stage fund with a Launch Program aimed at surfacing the most notable startups and entrepreneurs. Location: Santa Monica, CA Recent Investments: Trust & Will, Boulevard To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Susa Ventures About: Susa Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm, investing in a growing family of dreamers and builders. Location: San Francisco, CA Check size: $1M – $1.5M Recent Investments: Nelo, Ascend, Centaur Labs To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> NextWorld Capital About: NextWorld Capital focuses on the enterprise technology sectors that are transforming existing markets and defining new ones. Location: San Fracisco, CA Check size: $1M – $10M Recent Investments: Honeycomb, Aircall, Stampli To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Primary Venture Partners About: Primary Venture Partners (previously High Peaks) is a seed-stage VC firm based in NY, focused on eCommerce and enterprise SaaS. Location: New York, NY Check size: $1M – $7.5M Recent Investments: Stellar Health, FlyMachine, Orum To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Blumberg Capital About: Blumberg Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in a range of technology companies. Location: San Fracisco, CA Check size: $1M – $10M Recent Investments: Hunters, Zone7, Trulioo To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Boldstart Ventures About: Boldstart Ventures is a first check investor for technical enterprise founders. Location: New York, NY Check size: $250k – $2.5M Recent Investments: Synk, Replicated, Cape Privacy To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Founder Collective About: Founder Collective is a Massachusetts-based seed-stage venture capital fund that helps entrepreneurs build their businesses. Location: Cambridge, MA Check size: $400k – $1.5M Recent Investments: Verve Motion, ULesson, Smalls To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Costanoa Ventures About: Costanoa Ventures backs tenacious and thoughtful founders who change how business gets done. Location: Palo Alto, CA Check size: $1M – $15M Recent Investments: Lively, Cresicor, Aserto To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Engage Ventures About: Engage Ventures is venture fund and platform established by 11 of the most influential corporations in the world. Location: Atlanta, GA Check size: $650k – $25M Recent Investments: Chain,io, Verusen, Voxie To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> I2BF Global Ventures About: I2BF invests in startups at the convergence of hardware&software technologies erasing the boundaries between the physical and digital world. Location: New York, NY Recent Investments: Shopmonkey, Portside, Inbox Health To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Uncork Capital About: Uncork Capital is a seed-stage venture firm that commits early, helps with the hard stuff, and sticks around. Location: Palo Alto, CA Check size: $750k – $2M Recent Investments: Crossbeam, Groove, MakersPlace To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Founders Fund About: Founders Fund is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm investing in companies building revolutionary technologies. Location: San Francisco, CA Check size: $500k – $150M Recent Investments: Cover, SUPLERLASTIC, Chronosphere To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Freestyle VC About: Freestyle Capital is a seed-stage investor and mentor for Internet software startups. We’re the ones you come to when you want more than just a check. Location: Mill Valley, CA Check size: $1M – $7.5M Recent Investments: HiveWatch, Creator+, Ease To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Chloe Capital About: Chloe Capital is a seed stage VC firm investing in women-led innovation companies across North America. Location: Ithaca, NY Check size: $100k – $250k To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Moonshots Capital About: Seed stage venture capital firm that invests in extraordinary leadership. Location: Austin, TX Check size: $500k – $1.5M Recent Investments: Gretel AI, Wildfire Systems, Cart.com To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Romulus Capital About: Romulus Capital is an American seed- and early-stage venture capital fund that invests in technology companies. Location: Boston, MA Check size: $500k – $5M Recent Investments: Ceres Imaging To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Upfront Ventures About: We invest primary in the US but have a 20-year history of funding companies in Europe. Our managing partners (Yves Sisteron & Mark Suster) are both dual citizens of France & UK respectively. Location: Santa Monica, CA Check size: $1M – $20M Recent Investments: Bevy, Ynsect, Rally To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> SignalFire About: We use humans and technology for the hardest parts of building a company at every stage — recruiting, expert advice, and a corporate network. Location: San Francisco, CA Check size: $500k – $4M Recent Investments: PlanetScale, Stampli, Ro To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> CRV About: CRV has been a leading investor in early-stage technology companies for almost half a century, backing nearly 400 startups in its history. Location: Palo Alto, CA Check size: $1M – $25M Recent Investments: Cord, Postman, Tribe To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Acceleprise About: Acceleprise invests in early-stage B2B SaaS and enterprise technology companies and unifies the global technology community through mentors. Location: San Francisco, CA Check size: $50k – $1M To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Floodgate Ventures About: Floodgate backs the top .1% Founders before the rest of the world believes in their movements. Location: Palo Alto, CA Check size: $1M – $10M Recent Investments: Almanac, Around, IRL To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Obvious Ventures About: Obvious Ventures brings experience, capital, and focus to startups combining profit and purpose for a better world. Location: San Francisco, CA Check size: $250k – $6M Recent Investments: Dexterity, One, SINAI Technologies To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Switch Ventures About: A community of talented founders who switched from the common path. Location: San Francisco, CA Check size: $50k – $5M Recent Investments: Mode Analytics, Luxury Presence To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Wing About: Wing is a purpose-built venture capital firm founded by two industry veterans with a different perspective on what it takes to create enduring companies. Location: Menlo Park, CA Recent Investments: Lumigo, Drop Capital, Around To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Arthur Ventures About: Arthur Ventures invests in early-stage B2B software companies located outside Silicon Valley. Location: Minneapolis, MN Check size: $1M – $10M Recent Investments: Athennian, Stream, Cybrary To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Homebrew About: Homebrew provides seed-stage fund and operational expertise for entrepreneurs building the bottom-up economy. Location: San Francisco, CA Check size: $750k – $2M Recent Investments: Canopy Servicing, Z1, Orum To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Connetic Ventures About: Connetic is reinventing the VC industry by turning tables on intuition and biases to a more data-driven approach. Location: Covington, KY Check size: $100k – $800k Recent Investments: TCare To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> High Alpha About: High Alpha creates and funds companies through a new model for entrepreneurship that unites company building and venture capital. Location: Indianapolis, IN Check size: $1M – $3M Recent Investments: SINAI Technologies, Encamp, Rheaply To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> M25 About: Early-stage VC investing in startups headquartered in the Midwest across a wide variety of industries. Location: Chicago, IL Check size: $250k – $500k Recent Investments: Blumira, Breeze, Cashdrop To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Europe SaaS Seed VC Firms Startup Wise Guys About: Startup Wise Guys is the leading B2B startup accelerator in Europe. Location: Tallinn, Harjumaaa, Estonia Check size: $20k – $270k Recent Investments: Vochi To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> NDRC About: NDRC is a business that transforms entrepreneurial teams and ideas into startups with early investment and research help. Location: Dublin, Ireland Check size: $135k – $500k To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Newfund Capital About: Newfund is an entrepreneurial VC firm focused on early-stage investments in France and the United States. Location: Paris, France Check size: $300k – $1.5M Recent Investments: FairMoney To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Peak Capital About: Peak Capital is an Amsterdam-based venture capital firm. Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands Recent Investments: Route To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Notion Capital About: Notion is a London-based venture fund focused on the SaaS-based and cloud computing markets. Location: London, UK Check size: $1M – $7.5M Recent Investments: Admix, Fiberplane, Dixa To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Act Venture Capital About: Act is a VC firm focused on the most promising technology companies. Location: Dublin, Ireland Recent Investments: Umba, Provizio, Buymie To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Portugal Ventures About: Portugal Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in seed rounds of Portuguese startups in tech, life sciences, and tourism. Location: Porto, Portugal Check size: $57k – $1.7M Recent Investments: Jscrambler, DefinedCrowd To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Main Incubator About: Main Incubator is an accelerator that in fintech startups and provides seed and Series A investments. Location: Frankfurt, Germany To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Frontline About: Frontline Seed is a fund for early-stage businesses with global ambitions. Location: London, UK Recent Investments: Koyo, Localyze, Qualio To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Asia & Australia SaaS Seed VC Firms Jungle Ventures About: Jungle Ventures is a Singapore-based Venture Capital Firm that invests in and helps build tech category leaders from Asia. Location: Singapore Check size: $1M – $50M Recent Investments: Evermos, KiotViet, Dat Bike To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Right Click Capital About: Right Click Capital is a venture capital firm backing ambitious tech startups in Australia, New Zealand, and South East Asia. Location: Sydney, Australia Check size: $100k – $20M Recent Investments: Beam, Qwilr, Myriota To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Qualgro VC About: Qualgro Venture Capital invests in B2B technology startups in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, at Series A and Series B. Location: Singapore Check size: $1M – $20M Recent Investments: ErudiFi To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Speciale Invest About: Speciale Invest is an early-stage investor focusing on Tech-driven/Deep-tech ventures. Location: Bengaluru, India Check size: $100k – $1M To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Strive VC About: We will help each ambition come true through aggressive hands-on accumulation that embraces the entrepreneurial desires. Location: Tokyo, Japan Recent Investments: Raena, Hasura, BeaTrust To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> South America SaaS Seed VC Firms NXTP Ventures About: NXTP Ventures backs early-stage technology companies led by extraordinary entrepreneurs throughout Latin America. Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina Recent Investments: VU To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Monashees About: A Brazilian venture capital firm active globally that invests in entrepreneurs committed to creating innovative solutions for a new world. Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil Recent Investments: Flieber, Yaydoo, Pipo Saude To learn more, view their Visible Connect Profile >>> Related Resource: 7 Prominent Venture Capital Firms in Brazil How to Find More Active Seed Stage Investors As the venture landscape continues to shift, seed and pre-seed rounds are starting to become standard. This means that there are more funding options for more startups. The investors above are all venture capital firms but funding options go beyond VC for startups: Angel Investors — Like venture capitalists, angel investors buy equity in startups. An angel investor is generally a wealthy individual who is looking to invest spare cash in an alternative investment. As we wrote in our post, How to Effectively Find + Secure Angel Investors for Your Startup, “This means that an angel investor may have alternative motives (personal interest in the problem, product, founders, etc.) whereas a venture capital firm is focusing on maximizing their returns.” Friends & Family — When raising capital from friends and family, it is incredibly important to be transparent during the process. Early stage companies are generally a very risky investment and can lead to a loss of capital. Consider who has expendable income in your immediate network when reaching out. Crowdfunding — Over the last few years, crowdfunding has become a more popular way to raise equity financing. As the team at Republic defines it, ‘Crowdfunding is a way to raise money from a large number of people. Large groups of people pool together small individual investments to provide the capital needed to get a company or project off the ground. Individuals, charities or companies can create a campaign for specific causes and anyone can contribute.” Related Reading: 6 Types of Investors Startup Founders Need to Know About You can use Visible Connect to filter and discover new investors for your SaaS business. Check out all of the seed stage investors in Visible Connect here. Perfect Your Seed Round Pitch With This Slide Deck Once you find your target investors and kickoff your raise, you will likely need a well-prepared pitch deck to share with investors. As we wrote in Our Favorite Seed Round Pitch Deck Template, “there are certain expectations for an early-stage/seed-stage startup to present in their pitch deck. Founders should tailor and adjust their pitch based on who they’re reaching out to, but great seed round pitches come down to a few core things: a succinct but exciting story, an exceptional team, product potential or traction, and a growth plan.” Learn more about building a great seed round pitch deck here. Streamline Your Seed-Stage Fundraising Process With Visible Finding investors for the top of your fundraising funnel is only half the battle. Use Visible to find investors, share your pitch deck, and track the progress of your raise. Give Visible a free try for 14 days here.

Great metrics share the same traits. Two of the most important traits are making sure your metrics are comparative & a ratio/rate. The Visible team just pushed a great update to make it even easier to compare your key metrics to a previous year along side the % change from the previous year. Want to jump right in? Check out our Year-over-Year Knowledge base article. A year may seem like a lifetime in a high-paced environment but it’s important benchmark yourself to where you were the prior year. It’s especially useful to take a breath and give your leadership team a chance to make informed, strategic decisions. We love inspiration (aka copying great work) on the Visible team so wanted to share some great ideas you are welcome to use for yourself. Revenue vs Prior Year This is a great way to quickly see where your KPI is currently, where you were the previous year and what is the delta from the previous year. Charting the % Change on the opposing axis lets you quickly see the good (or bad). In the example above you can see 2018 is off to a great start with major gains from the previous year. Revenue & Forecast The first example is a good but what were the expectations for a particular KPI? Did we over-perform? Under-perform? Just squeak by? This example lets you quickly understand the business is over-performing (yes!) and what we expect for the next quarter. Want to know more about what makes a good metric? Check out this post by Plan Brothers and this one by OnStartups. Want some help getting these setup in your Visible Account? Just email our data team at hi@visible.vc. Up & to the right, -Mike & The Visible Team

It’s no secret that startups are hard. Over the course of building a company it is inevitable that some quarters/months/years will not go as planned. The period of doubt that follows a down month can be a major setback for a startup. Paul Graham calls it “the trough of sorrow“. Ben Horowitz calls it “the struggle“. The good news; just about every founder has been in the same position and there are steps that can be taken to recover from a down period and carry on. Take a Step Back While it is easy to panic and make drastic changes after a down period it is vital that you take a step back and evaluate the issue. Jason Lemkin suggests starting by asking if it was a “hard miss” or a “soft miss”. A soft miss can still grow the business but you may have missed a stretch goal (e.g. Revenue grew by 25%, goal was 35%). A hard miss “is a sign something is amiss” (e.g. adding $500k in Q1 but only adding $200k in Q2). Lemkin suggests making small changes after a soft miss; rally the team, make small improvements, etc. Acknowledge you’ve missed your goal but ultimately you are still growing the business. When sharing the miss with your investors, be sure to be delicate when sharing the info. While it may have felt like a miss internally growing the business X% is still impressive. Get In Front of The Issue A “hard miss” sucks but it is not the end of the world. Get analytical, get into the weeds, identify the issue and come up with a plan to move forward. You have employees, customers, investors, etc. leaning on you so it is important to keep an even keel and create a plan everyone can rally behind to keep the company moving in the right direction. Most importantly, reach out for help if there are issues you can’t handle yourself. Don’t be afraid to share the details with your investors. The worst thing you can do is hide and fail to keep your key stakeholders in the mix. From your investors perspective, it is expected that you will have down periods and are there to help you through “the struggle”. Focus and Execute You’ve discovered the issue, you’ve got a game plan, everyone is aware and ready to move forward. Now what? The past quarter is in the books and it is time to focus on what lies ahead. As Ben Horowitz puts it you need to “focus on the road ahead“; “When they teach you how to drive a racecar, they tell you to focus on the road when you go around a turn. They tell you that because if you focus on the wall, then you will drive straight into the wall. If you focus on how you might fail, then you will fail. Even if you only have one bullet left in the gun and you have to hit the target, focus on the target. You might not hit it, but you definitely won’t hit if you focus on other things.” Stayed focused on bouncing back and make it a point for your key stakeholders. If revenue is down, chances are you are closer to your zero cash date and need to make sure this is accounted for. It is likely that you will need to re-forecast your cash and financial projections for the year as well. Share the new projections and make everyone aware of where the business stands after your miss. Over communicate if you have to. Make sure you do everything in your power to avoid back-to-back misses.

In the “world of startups” there is endless amounts of content being published every day. It can be a daunting task determining what sources can be trusted. While curating a list of of our favorite content on a weekly basis for our newsletter, we have come across tons of content and wanted to share 6 blogs we have found to be incredibly valuable and reliable. We hope our list can help cancel out the noise and surface resources to help you fundraise, scale, and hire for your startup. Related resource: 12 Online Startup Communities for Founders Point Nine Land Point Nine Capital is an early stage venture capital firm focused on SaaS and online marketplaces based in Berlin. Point Nine writers offer a unique perspective from the “VC” side of things and share many of their thought processes and benchmarks for evaluating investments. Our favorite posts from Point Nine Land: Deconstructing VC’s Decision Making Frameworks The Top 3 Things Investors are Looking for in SaaS Startups An Early Stage Founders Guide to Working with VCs — 5 Part Series SaaStr Led by Jason Lemkin, Co-founder & CEO of EchoSign, SaaStr features daily blog posts from Jason’s (and other SaaStr writers) journey scaling and selling EchoSign. Posts cover everything from leadership lessons to breaking down Customer Lifetime Value. Our favorite posts from SaaStr: How to Gracefully Miss a Quarter. And Take the Right Steps Afterwards. You Need to Know Where You Stand with Your Investors. Your Investor NPS. Why Lead Velocity Rate (LVR) is the Most Important Metric in SaaS High Alpha High Alpha is a Venture Studio based in Indianapolis. The team (and writers) at High Alpha is made up of experienced entrepreneurs, operators, and investors. The High Alpha blog is a great tool box for finding resources to scaling your enterprise software business from $10M to $100M and beyond. Our favorite posts from High Alpha: The Art of Storytelling What Every Startup Employee Should Know About Finance The (Second) Greatest Sales Deck and Pitch I’ve Ever Seen Tomasz Tunguz Tomasz Tunguz is a Partner at Redpoint Ventures. On his personal blog, Tomasz publishes a daily blog post. Often data-driven and more technical the posts are a great way to get the bottom of key questions most startups face on a daily basis. Our favorite posts from Tomasz Tunguz: Clarity of Purpose – The Competitive Advantage of Focus The 10 Most Important Metrics in a Startup’s Financial Statements Premoney vs. Postmoney – Which is a Better Technique for Negotiating? Feld Thoughts Brad Feld, Co-founder of Foundry Group, has been in entrepreneurship and venture capital for 30+ years. In his personal blog, Feld Thoughts, Brad writes a daily post with current happenings in venture capital and shares experiences from his time in the industry. Our favorite posts from Feld Thoughts: Hotshot Advice on Raising Venture Capital The Ideal Financial Reporting Tempo for a VC-Backed Company Founders – Use Your Down Round to Clean Up Your Cap Table Both Sides of the Table Both Sides of the Table is the personal blog of Upfront Venture’s, Mark Suster. The blog focuses on “both sides of the table” as Mark is a 2x founder and investor himself. Our favorite posts from Both Sides of the Table: 11 Quick Tips to Get More Value Out of Your Board Getting Your Head in the Game for Fundraising Why Raising Too Much Money Can Harm Your Startup

Send Investor and Team Updates in Slack Today we are launching our Slack integration into beta! You’ll be able to publish Visible Updates to any of your Slack channels in addition to other current publishing methods (email, PDF, shareable link). We’ll show a preview of the Update text and the first chart or image in your Slack channel with a link to view the rest! Instantly collaborate with your team member and other stakeholders in your Slack channel around any of your Updates. Looking for some inspiration? Send your True North Metric to your company wide channel to show progress towards goal with commentary. Show your #sales channel how you are pacing for the current period. Visualize your ARR movements to keep the entire company on the same page. Stay tuned as this is just the beginning for our Slack integration! Up & to the right, Mike & The Visible Team

“As the success of business ventures become more and more dependent on attracting and retaining talented people, competition for high quality “knowledge workers” increases. Companies who focus on measuring what actually matters and empowering team members through ownership, transparency, growth, and collaboration have a competitive advantage.” – Peter Drucker Cross-Functional Collaboration Building cross-functional teams can be a daunting task. According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of cross-functional teams are dysfunctional. HBR points to one of 5 reasons for cross-functional teams failing, “1.) meeting a planned budget; 2.) staying on schedule; 3.) adhering to specifications; 4.) meeting customer expectations; and/or 5.) maintaining alignment with the company’s goals.” Forming cross-functional collaboration can be as simple as embracing run-ins at the water cooler, 1-on-1s, weekly all-hands, etc. Your first inclination may be to look at this as a meddlesome distraction full of meetings that start 10 minutes late and end with no actionable next steps. In fact, it can be just the opposite if executed properly. When done right, they can elevate your business, product, and attracting talent. Free Flow of Information Building a strong team starts with trust. Building trust starts with open and honest communication. A lack of communication can be detrimental to any team. Peter Drucker, “the founder of modern management” goes as far to say, “Balancing change and continuity requires continuous work on information… Nothing disrupts continuity and corrupts relationships more than poor or unreliable information”. When discussing best practices for creating cross-functional teams and alignment the CBS Moneywatch team says, “The best way to get these vectors aligned is to create a working climate in which mistakes and failures are viewed as learning experiences, not occasions for blame, and where every member feels included “in the loop”. Alignment with Company Objectives While it is important to have KPIs and goals for each individual team, it is equally important that these goals are aligned with the company objectives as a whole (see #5 above for why cross-functional teams fail). Employees can easily forget the role their work plays in the company’s overall vision. When teams come together from different units working towards the same goal it quickly builds a sense of clarity and purpose for each role. Aligning company goals goes back to the “Free Flow of Information”. Managers and executives should be offering consistent feedback to their teams on their impact towards the company objectives. Additionally this can help “act as a reminder” to each employee and their overall impact to the business. In fact, WorkBoard has found that “72% of employees find their performance improves with more feedback”. Whether it be in-person discussions, a weekly KPI review, or a quick email Update, make sure to keep feedback consistent and regular to keep everyone moving in the same direction. An Example from Intercom As I’m sure a lot of you would agree, Intercom has built an incredibly strong product. After much trial and error the product team at Intercom recently published a post, “Make Sales & Product Meetings a Win-Win”, breaking down their winning recipe for aligning sales and product, “has elevated the bond between Sales and Product to new heights”. When running a meeting, their sales team will present any feedback backed by data to the product team. From here, they open up discussion around the data and continue to build out their plans until their next meeting. In fact, Intercom has leveraged collaboration (image above) as one of their main recruiting tools for attracting talent. Ready to Collaborate? Attract talent and rally teams around company objectives using Visible. You just need a business email account to get started.

A psychology professor and director of Resilience Research at the Appalachian Center, Dr. Sherry Hamby says that sharing stories of personal struggles can make you more resilient and other people more empathetic. Business leaders have also learned that sharing company growth stories can build an emotional connection that helps attract and retain customers, talent, and investors. There is endless content for telling a compelling story to your customers and team. However, we’ve found investors are often left out of the storytelling framework. We set our sites on two business greats that have become synonymous with using investor letters as a powerful storytelling platform; Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos. Stay Focused on Your North Star Apart from the desks made of doors, trendy sunglasses, and HQ2, Jeff Bezos has become identified with his original 1997 shareholder letter. To this day, Amazon still includes a copy of the 1997 shareholder letter with each annual letter. So what sets it apart and makes it arguably the most famous shareholder letter to date? According to Tomasz Tunguz, Amazon’s competitive advantage started the day their first shareholder letter was published. Jeff has since remained focused on their “North Star”; customer obsession. Bezos has been able to center every annual letter around their “customer obsession” and simply changes the narrative and storyline. In 1997, it started with e-commerce and saving customers time & money, “Today, online commerce saves customers money and precious time. Tomorrow, through personalization, online commerce will accelerate the very process of discovery. Amazon.com uses the Internet to create real value for its customers and, by doing so, hopes to create an enduring franchise, even in established and large markets.” Almost 20 years later, when announcing Amazon Web Services had reached $10B in Revenue. Bezos found a way to align the differing brands and bring back to focus their customer obsession: “They (Amazon.com and AWS) share a distinctive organizational culture that cares deeply about and acts with conviction on a small number of principles. I’m talking about customer obsession rather than competitor obsession, eagerness to invent and pioneer, willingness to fail, the patience to think long-term, and the taking of professional pride in operational excellence. Through that lens, AWS and Amazon retail are very similar indeed.” As Bezos has said himself, “You can have the best technology, you can have the best business model, but if the storytelling isn’t amazing, it won’t matter. Nobody will watch”. Whether sending investor Updates on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis find your “clarity of purpose” and use that to build a theme to your company’s story. Bring Out Humanity and Trust Not only is he one of the greatest business minds, the Oracle of Omaha is often regarded as one of the greatest storytellers in business. Just like Bezos, Warren Buffett has turned his annual shareholder letters into a platform for fueling investment and interest in their business. While Buffett most certainly covers all financial housekeeping he has turned Berkshire’s letters into a platform that builds trust and lets investors (and potential investors) into Berkshire’s decision making and culture. Often filled with everyday language, unique stories, and a sense of humor, Buffett has been able to humanize Berkshire and create a sense of trust with investors. The $87B man has even gone as far to call himself “dumb” in his letters, just as one of your friends or co-workers might. Sure, it might be easier to step outside the norm when your company is valued near $500B but it is never too early to start bringing out the “human side” and building a relationship of trust with potential investors. What’s Your Story? Engage prospects, customers, investors, employees, and other stakeholders with Visible. You just need a business email account to get started.

As we’ve explored the essential role of sales enablement, one of the consistent themes that has run through each topic is the vital role marketing efforts must play in enabling your sales team to succeed. And since these two departments are responsible for generating interest in your product and earning revenue, the need for seamless alignment is equally important. So how do you ensure every employee stays in the loop? These simple strategies are a great way to start: Keep your departments close and your leadership closer If your sales and marketing teams are both onsite, keep them in close proximity. This allows marketing to sit in on calls or help craft customer communication emails without having to move around the office much. The shared space will create greater collaboration and make organizing cross-department meetings easier. As for your VP of marketing and VP of sales, they should sit close enough together to each other’s deodorant preference. Jason Lemkin notes that strong sales and marketing executives should meet at least twice a week, even if there isn’t a specific agenda or action items that need to be discussed. Face-to-face time for this dynamic duo is too crucial to avoid. And your marketing leadership will be much better equipped to develop strategies to drive demand generation if they are living in a sales environment and witnessing what it takes in the day-to-day hustle to close deals. Make objectives and results available to each department It’s impossible to expect marketing and sales to align on goals if each department initiative isn’t clearly stated and easily available for any employee to access. Use collaborative tools and make a habit to review objectives and results regularly in department meetings. Determine specific ways the two departments can work together to assist in each other’s goals. For advanced companies that keep marketing accountable to a revenue commitment, it’ll be even easier to create a process to mobilize everyone toward achieving the bottom line goals. Create cross-functional objectives The C-suite needs to shout out the importance of marketing and sales alignment from the rooftops. But paying lip service to its importance won’t be effective if it’s not followed by incentives. Beyond the quarterly goals centered on qualified leads and revenue obtainment, create initiatives that require sales and marketing to coordinate in order to get the job done. This delivers additional motivation and builds stronger communication among the two teams. Content creation lends itself to cross-department collaboration. Sales and marketing can work together to write articles, develop language for pitching and brainstorm on general copy ideas. Let sales sit it on marketing Even if marketing serves to enable sales, alignment isn’t a one-way street. Recommending that marketing employees sit in on sales calls is wonderful and important, but carve out time for sales rep to return the favor. Account executives can benefit from attending pitch meetings or marketing planning to see how specific language can be used as a valuable tool to generate interest in the product. Let your reps spend time being creative and they will better understand the job of marketers and use these skills on sales calls. Don’t just rely on marketing to do all the work to make the two departments understand each other. Beyond these three strategies, an overall effort to create a culture of collaboration in your organization is paramount. Leaders are required to be honest, direct and use the right tools to keep everyone focused on the top goals you need to achieve.

This post is Part II or II of our storytelling series. You can find our first post, “Connecting Dots to Tell Your Story” here. The same principles that Pixar uses to craft their hit movies like Finding Nemo and Ratatouille can be applied to your own investor updates and pitch. Awesome right? I recently attended SaaStr and had the chance to see Jason Katz the Chief Storyteller at Pixar and Peter Arai the CEO & founder of Prezi talk about the 3 Parts of Visual Storytelling. Part 1 – Takeaway Message What is the message you want to leave with your audience? For finding Nemo it is faith vs fear, but the same concept can be applied for business. At Visible we encourage you to lead with your true north KPI followed by a big ask. Afterall, Investor Updates are most valuable for the company. Leverage your stakeholders to help make introduce to ideal customers, provide guidance on your go-to-market strategy or source new candidates. With each update you have the chance to leave your stakeholders with a takeaway message, don’t squander it! Part 2 – Structure and Visuals How do you structure the visual elements to enhance your story? This could be through framing, data visualizations and more. In addition, your story should follow a structure of beginning, middle and end. Combing structure & visuals can have a profound impact on delivery your key takeaway. Bonus points if you use the same comparable metrics for each update. One of my favorite posts around data visualization is, “Remove the legend to become one”. This chart: Is actually the same chart as this one with the same underlying data. (Make sure to check out the post to see how to get here!) Proper visuals can make all of the difference right? Part 3 – Delivery The final part of visual storytelling comes down to delivery. With your stakeholder updates you want to get your message across as efficiently and effectively as possible. You shouldn’t create more work for your stakeholders to get your key takeaway message. This is why we make it so our customers can control the delivery of their updates through being rendered in email, to PDF, web and Slack. Great so now we know the 3 parts of visual storytelling but what value can that have on my business? Well it turns out…a pretty big one. I recently saw Stephen Day from Navidar present at an offsite around M&A, specifically around how to get the best price for you company. He broke it down into this brilliant and simple equation: Price = Value + (Compelling Story + Competitive Process)^Evoking Emotion To break this down. Value is the fundamental value of your business. This could be a discounted cash flow analysis to find your valuation. Related resource: Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Analysis: The Purpose, Formula, and How it Works However, you can clearly see how your story and ability to evoke emotion can generate a much higher price than your fundamental one. This doesn’t just apply to valuation. This can be the pricing of your own product or service as well. The best brands are the best storytellers and they typically elicit the highest price. Craft your own framework and tell your story. Sign up to Visible today to get started. Up & to the right, Mike & The Visible Team