Carson R. Hunt

Ideas are cheap. Building the right team and executing is everything.

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Great post Santosh Sharan 1. If I am reading this correctly, you were in line with what Peter Drucker repeatedly said in classes I was blessed to have taken "Focus on market share and revenue (margins) will follow". 2. I always encourage Startup Clients from Concept through Seed phases: 1. Solid Data Supported Market Analysis (Total Market, SWOT Analysis) 2. Methodical, Low Cost, Essential Features and Fast MVP 3. Traction & Market Share Naturally, I encourage building the business plan immediately and continuously strengthening it. Thanks again for this great launch testimonial!

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NEW MONEYWISE POD: My friend Josh sold his bootstrapped startup. Took 10+ years to grow+sell. He made around $60m after taxes. In the episode we: - break down his portfolio, spending, income - why he still thinks he doesn't have enough $ to fly private - his net worth each year leading up to the sale + why sell vs. cash flow the business CHECK IT. https://lnkd.in/g3n5y_7Y

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Founders: your investor pitch is not your hiring pitch. And conflating the two hurts the hiring funnel. Here's why: Top engineers, marketers, and sales people aren't gravitating towards the outward facing metrics that investors salivate over. You raised your last round from Sequoia? That's a great signal to investors. To candidates weaned off ZIRP era hype, that's a signal that stack ranks quite low for them. Instead, they care about things such as: ➡️ Actual leadership skills of the founding team (not just how many Stanford and MIT degrees there are). This is where repeat founders get a bit boost. ➡️ Whether the work is interesting. This matters a ton of engineers, but also for other roles. Great candidates want to know that the day-to-day is going to be challenging, intellectualy rewarding, and fosters their own curiosity and growth. ➡️ Sustainability of the business model. This is where the smart candidates want to know the investor pitch, but also want the candid take on challenges. Companies who spend too much time explaining "here's why we'll be worth billions in five years" but show little thought on navigating the medium term have lost candidates. This is why we coach so many founders to speak during the hiring process to the role itself, and less about the company. Paint a picture of the purpose of the role. The impact. The learnings. Go beyond the surface level selling points and seek to connect in a 1:1 manner!

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Simplify and Execute!

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I met a YC founder who raised $6M, but kept the team to 5 people. He took a year to launch— then grew 100x to $5M ARR in 2 years: Josh R. built Gusto into a $9.5B company— by selling payroll software to SMBs. He hit $500K ARR a year after he launched— then 10x’d to $5M ARR the year after. Last year, he hit $500M in revenue. He didn’t blitzscale. He didn’t serve a massive market. He didn’t obsess over growth. He served a super niche market— newly formed Californian companies that had <5 full-time employees. He raised a $6M seed round— but didn’t spend it. He didn’t move upmarket like everyone else—he stuck with SMB‘s. He just “built a product people loved”. By the time they raised their $20M Series A, they were only 10-15 people. With $5M in revenue and 10K+ SMB customers— they were in full control. Finding product-market fit is WAY easier said than done, but here’s what’s clear to me: You don’t need more bodies. You don’t need more features. You don’t need more budget. You just need to find a product that customers pull from your hands. /// Listen to the full episode on The Product Market Fit Show #startups #founders #venturecapital

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Startup can now get 40% as sweat equity, though it is good, it shouldn’t be limited. The government has amended the Companies Act through an ordinance, allowing startup companies to issue up to 40% "sweat equity" to individuals contributing in various capacities. Previously, due to existing legal restrictions, startups were unable to offer sweat equity. This new provision aims to create a favorable environment for startups in the country. This amendment is a significant step forward in fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in Nepal. While this is a positive step, the 40% limit shouldn't be imposed, as the distribution of shares between startups and investors should be based on mutual understanding rather than legal restrictions. The shareholding arrangement, including how much equity founders retain, should be determined through an agreement between founders and investors.

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I've invested in over 300 startups over the last 5 years, and there is one common trait that nearly all failed early stage startups share - they don't run a proper customer discovery process. You can read about the importance of customer discovery all over the internet, but that practical application of it among first time founders is still extremely low. We look at over 10,000 deals each year Forum Ventures and I see firsthand just how few founders actually excel in this process. One subset of founders simply doesn't do it at all. It's a classic archetype - build product in a vacuum without running any validation cycles. Typically the founder profile here skews more technical/product where founder-led sales feels out of character and not an area they enjoy spending time. Often founders think they can "product their way" to initial customers, but more often than not that new feature set they are excited about fails to generate user demand, simply because they never asked anybody if they care about what they were building. There is a classic startup'ism - first time founders focus on product, second time founders focus on distribution - and it rings very true within this subset. The second group of founders actually understands the importance of running discovery and leans into it early in their build process. While they have the best intentions, ultimately they come up short because in practice they don't actually know how to run an unbiased process. Discovery that focuses around a feature/solution set will skew toward lukewarm positive responses from potential customers, "sounds interesting, let me know when the beta is ready". The reality is no one is going to tell you that your baby, in this case your product, is ugly when it's far easier to just smile and nod. Founders often take this false signal as validation and race to ship a product that ultimately falls flat on its face. There is an art to soliciting feedback from a potential customer. The process emphasizes questions on their existing workflows, bottlenecks they experience in their day to day, understanding what motivates them and how they measure success in their role. This is a critical area we emphasize when evaluating investment opportunities, and a process we are very hands on in assisting our portfolio companies. Having a strong network is a massive advantage when launching a startup but close network relationships have the potential to give false signals across a customer discovery process. There are ways to combat this by being very deliberate when once solicits feedback from their network, but there are definitely bonus points for net-new out of network customer validation.

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Target Earnings: Management Team Has Overstayed Their Welcome Target is truly missing that “easy money” consumer. You knew when Target dropped the price on 1,500 items 2 days before earnings that bad news was coming.  Now bad news has arrived.  You know how bad when Target is still comparing its comp sales to 2019.  Most retailers stopped doing that two years ago.  Here is the story from Walmart and Target: * On price cuts: - Walmart: rollbacks all the time, and everyday low prices. - Target: 1,500 price cuts now, thousands more this summer. Why so slow? This is a five alarm fire 👩‍🚒 🔥 🚒 * On eCommerce: - Walmart: Up 22% y/y - Target: Up 1.4% Houston, we have a problem. Our digital formula is broken. * Overall sales trends: - Walmart: Up 3.8% - Target: Down 3.8% Can you say, share losses?  If this pace continues, Target becomes a specialty retailer. * On discretionary items: - Walmart: Home and general merchandise items are growing 20% y/y in our marketplace. - Target: Discretionary is soft. * On grocery: - Walmart: Consumers are eating out less, even at McDonald’s and we are seeing more consumers buying groceries. - Target: Consumers are buying fewer groceries. What they mean is "fewer of our groceries". In summary, why is Walmart winning right now?  Greater assortment, lower prices.  In short, you cannot private label brand your way out of this, i.e. Target’s “dealworthy”. In the past, Target could get away with carrying national brands, and introduce a number of unique and interesting own brands which were innovative and atypical.  It’s not clear the consumer is supporting this. What’s worse, what does this say about Target’s cost structure?  When you walk into the average grocery store, the house brand is simply a knockoff made in the same factory.  Target goes beyond, but that costs. To the extent the consumer does not support this extra cost, this means that Target is carrying an unsustainable cost structure relative to its peers.  Layoffs would not be surprising to see in its brand organizations get consolidated and streamlined. Target is not easily distracted, but the other side of this coin is that it takes a while to move. High cost structure, and slow changes is a formula for decline. Bright spots: * 1M Target Circle members added in the quarter. * Beauty is a “standout” with low single digits growth.  Yeah, it’s fucking bad. * Roundel is the fastest growing business.  It’s about time. Dark spots: * Have you been reading? * Continued rise of drive-up sales actually hurts their stores.  This is really digital sales and I’d love to hear the basket size of these orders vs stores, and typical digital orders. In summary, it’s not good.  My view is that management has vastly overstayed their welcome and is ill-equipped to adapt quickly enough to the new world .  When Jeff Bezos went out, it’s possible Brian Cornell should have done the same. This company is simply too damn slow.

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42% of all SAFE rounds last quarter were under $250K. (nearly a 2x jump from six quarters ago) What’s going on in early-stage venture? The latest State of Pre-Seed data from Carta highlights a dramatic shift: Six quarters ago, 59% of SAFE rounds were $1M+ → Last quarter, just 43% Six quarters ago, 24% of SAFE rounds were <$250K → Last quarter, a whopping 42% What does this mean for founders? It’s harder than ever to raise off just a deck or early traction. Many founders are now opting for sub-$250K rounds, keeping spending lean, and focusing on onboarding customers and driving revenue. The goal? Build momentum and head back to VCs for a stronger seed round pitch. This market is undoubtedly tough—but the founders who adapt and build during this cycle will likely emerge stronger than ever. Kudos to Peter Walker and the team at Carta for shedding light on these trends [[edit: one nuance in the data that Peter pointed out, is that for the most recent quarters, the % of rounds at lower $ amounts may be somewhat understated, becuase SAFE rounds are rollings and so it's difficult to know when they're complete.]] ____ For more startup fundraising insights, follow me @Jorian Hoover + subscribe to my newsletter "Into the Ring"

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Retention.com ended May up 1.1% at $21.7m ARR, but still below our Dec ‘23 high of $22.1m ARR. RB2B closed the month at $622k ARR (+300% m-o-m). Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of May 2024: If you’ve been following along from home... We had four down months in a row (Jan - Apr). April was the biggest down month: - 2.3%. The hardest LinkedIn post I ever wrote was that April monthly update: - We were down for the 4th month. - We were down more than prior months. - The market dynamics had changed completely. - We had competition coming from everywhere, big pricing pressure. - Our churn problem seemed to be getting worse, no matter what we did. The hardest part of that entire post was admitting that I had no idea when it would end. It was even harder listening to our execs tell me that the post read horribly from our employees perspective. But here’s what I knew when I posted that post... We were (arguably, still are) just stuck again. My entire journey has been getting stuck, then getting un-stuck again. I knew we would figure out how to move forward again. If we just kept going, we would figure out: - Exactly how to navigate the new competitive environment - How and what we could do that others couldn’t do  - How to improve efficiency and get in front of churn I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet, but we are on the right track. Retention(.)com team - I’m proud of you. Keep it up! We’re going to emerge on the other side much stronger. Retention(.)com Highlights: - We continued the roll-out of EOS - We are ahead of our Q2 sales target - We’re seeing an increase in our expansion revenue - Average deal size is up around 7% this Q - Canceled revenue is down 18% this Q - 375 people are signed up for our 2nd Retox event - We launched a new Reclaim flow - “active onsite”  - We made significant progress on our SFMC Reclaim integration We generated around $600k of free cash, which offsets some of the free cash miss last month (which was around $300k). RB2B Highlights: - $622k ARR 12 weeks post launch, team of 5 (welcome Jeff Hall) - Still only have a 1.3% conversion rate - We’re going to push out a credit system (lower prices) next week - We are experimenting with a two-touch sales motion next week - We have our first full-time salesperson starting July 1 - Human support down from 8.4% to 3.2% of total interactions - We’ve started to see an uptick in UGC - 3 last week, 7 this week All things considered, May was a pretty good month. There aren’t too many negative things to dwell on. Pretty soon we’re going to start including RB2B ARR in the top line ARR number. That, to me, is the life we have chosen. Get stuck. Figure something else out. Grow again. Doing what we do is not easy. But when you find a new growth lever, it’s sooooooooo satisfying. The good news is I’ll keep reporting everything so you can be a part of the journey. Keep building.

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This interview I did is going viral about cash-flowing startup ideas is going viral. It's with Cody Schneider and he dropped 7 business ideas and the exact way grow them 1) "quickbooks integration for xyz" thousands of keywords, grow with SEO and sem 2) "google ads for for xyz" grow by youtube videos for target keyword rank on google BONUS "digital A&R for musicians" buy percentage of back catalog or musician who just starting and grow their social, take percent of stream revenue, sell to label when they get signed He gave more 4. If you're looking for cash-flowing businesses to start, it's worth the listen. I think that's why it's going viral. People love these ideas. Enjoy on your streaming platform of choice: Apple https://lnkd.in/ePP7_7TV YouTube https://lnkd.in/ewSCMmXn Spotify https://lnkd.in/ep_7MvEa Please subscribe to get future episodes.

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My goal is to be the most transparent founder of a $100M start up. We’ve just had TWO huge wins & I want to share them: WIN #1: We’ve just signed a massive Amazon re-seller doing over $1B/year on Amazon alone. DETAILS: …They’re a full service Amazon partner and they actually buy and sell the brands products. …And they’re using our warehouses to prep, label and ship to FBA for their 8 figure brands. Think of “Pattern” or “Spreetail”... but not them. But still top 10 seller on Amazon so it’s a BIG deal. WHERE WE COME IN: They’ll be doing 4 million items per month out of our Ohio warehouses. Transparency labels, FNSKU labels, poly bagging…etc. …Safe to say that they’ll be one of our biggest customers by next year. But billables aside, I’m a BIG proponent of getting quick wins for clients. Before us, this client relied on FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) to prep / label the product for FBA. And by doing so they incurred a ton of fees ie. label fee, prep fee, inbound placement fees …Which are just the fees Amazon charges to handle & label packages. So when we came in we instantly cut the labeling & placement fees by 50%. And for these guys? That’d be millions of dollars saved just through using us. Speaking of savings - we also got them set up with TrueOps to handle their reimbursements. When you're moving millions of items, every dollar counts. WIN #2: We’ve signed the second biggest Amazon aggregator in the US. Amazon aggregator = Acquires successful Amazon brands and grows them to increase profits. Yes, they are alive and thriving vs what everyone online is saying. …They operate across 120 brands. …They’ll be using our US warehouses along side our Canadian facilities.  …They’ll integrate into our logistics systems for their brand partners WHAT WE’LL BE DOING FOR THEM: …We’ll be their brand partners to expand to DTC …We’ll be helping them with Shopify set up. …We’ll be helping them with Walmart set up. Sales channels outside of Amazon-enabled channels. Which is where 80% of their sales come from now. Because what brand in the history of commerce has only ever sold on one channel? Not ones that last. We’ll also be helping the aggregator get set up with Amazon SFP (seller fulfilled prime) …Meaning that we’ll be taking fulfillment outside of Amazon warehouses and into our US ones - with the prime badge. Which’ll save them like 15-20%+ compared to rising FB fees & long-shipping route freight costs. We’re doing ALL of this set up / extra work for $0. …Because it’s in our best interests as we ship out more orders. We’re incentivised as a partner to move more products through our warehouses …It’s how we make our money. So the more we can enable that? Even if that means a lot of upfront work for free? We’ll do it on the premise that our client will smash it & continue to use our warehouses. It’s still a long road to $100M. So to me, every win counts on the road up there. More to come.

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Dave Clark Raises $100M for Auger After Going to School of Flexport Hard Knocks Dave Clark has come out of the shadows after his ... err crash course in the educational school of Flexport (still on his linkedin btw). And it's with a new startup called Auger. From reports it sounds like: * Integrates all the supply chain and forecast data * Forecasts using AI (duh) * A "single pane of glass" * Chatbot you speak with (duh) * Dave comments that he is trying to reproduce the "end to end" planning tools he had at Amazon. * Dave comments he wants to replace Excel processes. * The VC firm Oak HC/FT says it invests in healthcare and fintech (curious). I have a few thoughts on this mission: * This is a real problem. There is a wide canyon in large companies between data lakes/BI tools, supply chain software, OMS, and financial planning software. He is 100% right this often gets done in Excel. * ... but it's hard to replace Excel. This sounds like FP&A software to me. But the AI version, you know... * To justify a no software, no revenue, no customers, barely any employees $100M seed investment on who knows what valuation, this has to be sold into Enterprises. No SMBs, please and thank you. Maybe not even mid-market, although that's what the article mentions (I don't buy that explanation). * This is going to be more difficult then thought. Enterprise software is hard, on its own. But keep reading. * Also, Enterprises are notorioiusly slow to change their supply chain software. Harder than martech or even eCommerce platforms which are difficult to supplant. * Data integration and unification is also hard on its own. And it actually does not involve skills that Dave Clark had to learn particularly much at Amazon (they built their own software) or Flexport (primarily small to mid-sized businesses with simpler systems). Other ecosystem neighbor participants may not take so kindly to having their data sucked into Auger's AI. * It seems designed to compete with the Oracle and Blue Yonder-type of supply chain solution. But Dave is smart. He knows all this already. So this means to me: * He's not actually looking to replace existing software. He's going to need to create a new category of software. Also very hard. And finally >> Dave Clark will have to create a Marc Lore Jet-style exit to make this work. I say this explicitly because Marc Lore was famous for valuing his companies far far ahead of revenue, traction or anything, finding a mark (in Jet's case, Walmart) and then pursuing them relentlessly in the hopes of outrunning their outsized valuation. Not impossible, but hard. Dave is a relentless, take no prisoners style of operator, and sounds energized to be on this journey again... which -- sounds like a big challenge that could go horribly wrong. But, that's the kind of asymmetric bet startups need to make to attain an outsized valuation. Those who are about to go into battle, we salute you.

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This x10000 I recently bought new bedsheets from a brand I won’t mention. 3 days after I made the purchase, feeling good with my 25% discount on my purchase, I got a text message offer for 50% off. I came away from that experience feeling duped, because had I known that I would have gotten an offer for 50% off, I would have just waited. Will I buy from them again? I don’t know, depends on how good the sheets are. But I definitely won’t be making another purchase from them for at least another 90 days. It’s so important to be thoughtful in how you talk to your customers right after they purchase. If they purchased, they’re probably really excited about that purchase and are happy to engage and learn more (particularly if it’s high AoV like high end apparel, bedding, or a wellness product) It does NOT mean that the 5-7 day period post purchase is a great time to hit them with another discount - they will feel similar to how I did.

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PSA: If you run a startup or growth-oriented SMB, I want to build you a 13 week cash forecast for f͟r͟e͟e͟. Seriously, no obligation to engage Margin whatsoever. I talk all the time about how insanely valuable a 13 week cash forecast is for startups and fast-growing SMBs. Now I’m going to put my money where my month is... If you’re the least bit intrigued, DM me or comment below, and we’ll jump on a call to discuss next steps. I can only do this for a handful of people, so reach out ASAP if you’re interested.

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You won't get to $10M ARR unless you establish a careful balance between delegation and hands-on involvement. Yes, you need to empower your team to do what they’re hired for. At the same time, no function can be devoid of your active involvement. (You have to do more than just read summary reports.) As fantastic as your team is in running their respective areas, their incentives differ from yours. When challenges and setbacks rear their heads, your marketing, finance, and other teams will work at them, but teammates won’t see it as life or death (like you do). Your teams bring valuable function-related expertise—still, you can’t distance yourself from their daily operations: Join customer calls. Be on every interview panel, regardless of the seniority level being hired for. Understand every function’s KPI—how else will you evaluate their performance? If you don’t immerse yourself in your business, you’ll lose sight of small malignant problems that may become terminal by the time you notice. Every challenge within your company is your responsibility. If things go south, your team (as sympathetic as they may be) will move on. By being informed at all levels, you give your company the best chance at $10M ARR.

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Well said, Jen Abel. And even beyond these ARR guardrails, startups often instinctively throw in enterprise and SMB as dual strategies. Or direct and PLG. Outbound and channel. And more! #startup #sales #GTM #SMB #channel #enterprise #PLG #directsales

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“Shopify said revenue was $100k this month but Quickbooks said $80k…which one is right?” There’s a problem with running a growing e-commerce business with Shopify & QuickBooks… Put plainly, these tools don’t speak the same language. Every month, you export data from Shopify, run some pivot tables, and manually enter it all into QuickBooks. Sounds fine, right? Except it’s not. Here’s the typical scenario: You pull a massive order export report from Shopify with all your sales data. But it doesn’t match up with your shipping dates from the 3PL. Some products ship this month, others next month, And now you have to figure out which orders to count as revenue. It’s even worse when one order has multiple products, and only part of it ships now. Splitting that up and matching it with the right COGS? A headache. This process eats up time and often leads to errors. One of our clients was struggling with this exact issue. Their manual entries led to inconsistent revenue reports that were almost impossible to reconcile. How we fixed it? We integrated their systems with Blue Onion. It connects your Shopify store directly to QuickBooks, syncing orders, revenue, and even fulfillment dates. This means: - No more manual entries. - Revenue is recognized correctly. - Financials actually reflect reality. It may not be fully automated, but it’s a massive upgrade from the manual grind. Is your team struggling with similar issues? We make taxes and finances easier for startups. 👉 Learn how: https://lnkd.in/eesM2S5G or DM me. p.s. Want to tackle it yourself? Grab these free tools: 💸 Cash Flow Forecast Template: https://lnkd.in/ekqxPSeX ✅ Month-End Close Checklist: https://lnkd.in/eGNHbMdW 📊 Open-Source Financial Model: https://lnkd.in/evyZs_Nv

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