Christian Hobbs

💡Benchmarks in the investment industry serve as a standard for measuring the performance of securities, mutual funds, or investment managers. They provide a reference point for analyzing allocation, risk, and return of a portfolio, enabling investors to make informed decisions. Thanks Peter Walker for keeping us all informed!! Can’t wait for this!! Follow and get on the waitlist for this one! #benchmarks #fundraising #Capitalraise #founders #womenshealth #femhealth #medtech #wellness

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Great post by Josh Wagner on the importance of urgency. If you don't want to build a company characterized by urgency and extreme intensity over a long period of time - at least a decade - you would be better off not raising venture capital.

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VC platform teams rarely add meaningful value to portfolio companies. They’re mostly a tool for GPs to justify raising larger funds and collecting higher management fees.

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VC Market Update: Riding Out the Post-Boom Bumps. 2021's high-flying valuations and growth have given way to a more complex reality. With longer private timelines, tough exit markets, and capital tightness, startups face unique challenges—but also fresh opportunities. For those navigating today’s VC landscape, strategic planning is key. Whether it's balancing growth with capital efficiency or exploring secondaries smartly, there’s a path forward. And with boosts from AI and future rate cuts, brighter days could be ahead!

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Businesses can be focused on cash flow, backed by private equity, growth (VC), or aimed at long-term holding. But they will all have a different "feel" Cash Flow Focused: These businesses prioritize low overhead and quick returns on investment (ROI), showing little patience for building capacity. Scaling is difficult when cash isn't reinvested. Growth-Oriented: Companies driven by growth capital invest heavily to create the future company today, with less concern for immediate profitability. All about top-line revenue. Private Equity Backed: In PE-backed firms, the emphasis is on achieving a lucrative exit. The business is managed aggressively on a quarterly basis to maximize strategic value and EBITDA for the eventual exit. The quicker the sale, the higher the IRR. Long-Term Hold: These organizations prioritize minimizing risks over pursuing high returns, favoring a conservative approach. They view business as a marathon rather than a sprint. There is no single correct approach but the capital backing a business ultimately shapes the business.

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Crucial differences between Private Equity investment vs Venture Capital investment. This will help entrepreneurs at growth stage make the right choices when approaching financiers!

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For LPs, it’s returns. For founders, it’s scaling. For VCs, it should be relationships. Why? The best investments come from trust—not pitch decks. Founders want partners, not just checks. And LPs back VCs who nurture relationships that yield consistent returns. “Capital is replaceable. Relationships compound.” #VentureCapital #FoundersJourney #LPs #InvestingInTrust

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I recently saw this metric from Carta’s 1Q24 VC Fund Report, which is very concerning. DPI... is nowhere to be found in earlier vintages that probably should start showing DPI. Funding early-stage projects is great, but ultimately, these venture dollars need to exit their investments and pay back their limited partners. That’s where the metric Distributed to Paid-In Capital (DPI) comes in. While managing a fund, we get interim measures during the life of the fund (e.g. IRR, MOIC), but ultimately, “you can’t eat IRR.” If you want to build a lasting venture capital organization, you need to start showing DPI for your fund. Keep in mind that this is traditional VC data from Carta, and is not strictly crypto venture. Crypto venture tends to get liquidity earlier (tokens) and things tend to go parabolic sooner (faster, more unicorns) - but I’d wager that the data here is somewhat similar for Crypto VCs… Not as much DPI as there should be from these earlier vintages. Read the full article, as well as a recap of all the crypto fundraising rounds for August, here: https://lnkd.in/g3eVJ-iF

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🌱 For founders taking on venture debt, covenants are the fine print you cannot afford to ignore. 📃 They set the boundaries for how you can operate and manage your company’s finances. If you don’t play by these rules, the consequences can be pretty dire. It’s all about negotiating terms that align with your startup’s financial health. Be sure to read the original post by Kruze Consulting to get the full breakdown. Link in the 1st comment. 👇 #StartupFinance

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The state of venture capital is wild right now. We are witnessing a surge of innovation across the spectrum: - Funds merging - VC doing PE - PE doing VC - Secondary funds - Buyout funds - Spin-out funds - Debt funds - Continuation funds - Infrastructure funds - GP turnover - Hard Tech surging - Family Office uptick

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I've been a bit surprised recently with the number of decent-sized software businesses (i.e. $15M+) that don't have a legitimate VP of Finance or CFO on their leadership team. I think some product and/or industry-expert founders and CEOs view finance as simply "accounting" vs. a strategic partner to help them properly scale the business. This seems to particularly be the case with first-time CEOs. They likely haven't seen "what good looks like" when it comes to a finance leader and the positive impact they can have, so they hire an outside firm or individual to manage their finances...treating it like a "necessary evil." The role is far more critical than that. I've found that the right CFO is a fact-based, unemotional partner and sounding-board for the CEO, and an invaluable resource to other members of the leadership team as they determine strategy, budgets, etc. Plus, referring back to another recent post of mine (https://lnkd.in/eTjvqdnv), having the right CFO allows your company to better represent itself and speak the language of your investor / buyer. P.S. I was fortunate to have two strong partners as CFO at Daxko. Jonathan Sides and Winston Gillum both made a world of difference!

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Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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Is T2D3 dead? Is it time for the VC playbook to switch to Q2T1? For years, the benchmark track to unicorn status for VC-backed SaaS businesses has relied on T2D3 growth: triple, triple, double, double, double. Meaning: reach $2M ARR, then grow along a path like this p.a.: $2M -> $6M -> $18M -> $36M -> $72M -> $144M With a 7x ARR multiple, that $144M ARR translates into the coveted $1B valuation. But AI is reshaping the rules. AI startups are now scaling revenue at record speeds—5x faster than traditional SaaS, according to Stripes’ recent data. The appetite for AI solutions across enterprises and SMEs is tremendous. So Q2T1 - quadruple, quadruple, triple. Takes you to $100m ($96m) ARR: $2M -> $8M -> $32M -> $96M Such growth pace motivates a higher multiple (10x) and a hence you end up at a $1bn valuation. This implies a shorter track to unicorn. The bar keeps rising. Will this be the new gold standard?

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Often taken for granted, this subject carries so much weight. especially in times when startup culture world over is on the run. if the fund seeker knows the requirement and chemistry of the fund provider, they may chose the right time and path. so simply explained below.

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Earlier this year I had an interesting conversation with Peter Walker from Carta. We mused about venture capital data for a while. In the end, he helped me conclude that there are certain pieces of the puzzle that are still out of reach. He also added that when these gaps are put into the context of what we are trying to build at Circle+, it could make or break our business. A week after this meeting, matched with a handful of conversations with some of our users, we began building the “-1” version of what we are now calling Co.Founder; an agent for startup metrics. Since then, we have managed to move the needle to the “0” & more recently, the “1” version of Co.Founder which is showcased in the video below. In the demo, it relies on data pulled from Stripe & Intuit QuickBooks for the brainstorming session before turning to Asana, Google Calendar & Gmail for the actionable items. It is not perfect, but it gives our current crop of beta users & us, much reason for excitement on what version “2” to "n" of Co.Founder will be able to do. We imagine that it will work around the clock, learn your business inside out & handle everything from problem-solving to delegation & execution. All for less than what it costs you for your monthly coffee budget. As agentic systems become the new apps, we think that there is an opportunity to rebuild the operating system of the industry. We are also betting that the models will get even better & that this window to introduce new behaviors will undoubtedly cause an economic dislocation. What will this look like at scale? 1. Perhaps more solo founders will emerge because there will be a reduced need to spend almost $40K yearly on support staff? 2. Or the Capital-as-a-Service model becomes more popular where you simply connect your metrics & investors can immediately deploy capital if you meet certain benchmarks & their investment criteria? For us, as we set out to make your business metrics more human & less arbitrary - the possibilities are endless. We are inviting startups & small businesses in the US to join our waitlist. For those who are already on it, we are committing to start getting you off the list in January next year. For more about us, visit - www.circleplus.io Happy Holidays. ©+

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