Joshua Herzig-Marx

The only podcast you might not have to listen to at 1.5X speed 😂 . Thanks for having me, EXPLORE84! I appreciate you sharing the latest and greatest of what we have been up to!

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We have a new addition to the VentureFizz weekly email (signup here: https://lnkd.in/eMWsg9U). Announcing Boston Tech Time Warp!!! It's crazy to think that I've been publishing this email for something like 15 years (how is that possible???). I started archiving the emails 10 years ago, so I thought it would be fun to look back at the archives each week. I'll pull pieces of info through the years. So... what was happening in the Boston tech scene 10 years ago on January 5th, 2015??? * Who raised capital?  Swoop, Qualtre, Appcues * Event: the next WebInno event was coming up featuring Flyp, RocketBoard, & Upware Labs. * Some of the companies who were hiring: Swipely, Codeship, Backupify, Digital Lumens, CloudHealth, & Kiva Systems. * Blog post: Matt Fates (a VC at Innospark Ventures but was at Ascent Venture Partners at the time) published a blog post titled: The New Normal: Cloud, It’s Not Just Early Adopters Anymore - READ Part 1: https://lnkd.in/dDcNJbFr Part 2: https://lnkd.in/deBzUrNp

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It’s NY Tech week and my new favorite thing is teaching underrepresented founders how to talk back to investors. So many of them ask me for help fundraising, and I get it. I may not always think of myself as an expert, since I’m lucky enough to surround myself with people who are much more experienced at it than I am. But we did do it successfully once, raising more than $3M along the way with little more than a deck, a dream, and an incredible founding team. Of course, we’re all aware that this success puts us in the teeny tiny cohort of startups who raise without a traditional-looking founding team. So what’s the common theme in my advice to non-traditional founders at the early stage? Push back. It’s easy to get intimidated by investors. They’re smart, aggressive, and ask really hard questions. It can be hard to remember that YOU are the expert on your market. They are generalists. Even if they have strong opinions on your market, it’s OK to tell them when you think they’re wrong. In fact, if you have the conviction and confidence (plus evidence to back it up), disagreeing with your prospective investors can even be seen as an advantage. When a VC asks you a question at the pre-seed stage about your path to $100M in ARR, it’s OK to say “dude, we’re a pre-seed company. I know what our path is to get to a million, and we will have a lot to figure out after that.” Now, this only works if you have a track record that can support your confidence. Or if you don’t know the answer, but you DO know HOW you’re going to figure it out, talk about the path from experimentation to scalability. It’s better than making up a bunch of stuff that you’ll probably throw out eventually, and VCs will respect your focus and defense of your precious little time. Plus, they can usually tell if your confidence is lacking in your answer, anyway. This investor market is a tricky one, but never forget that they (investors) need you (founders) just as much as you need them. And hey, if you’re an up and coming female or underrepresented founder, and you need some help (or just a pep talk) I’d love to help. Happy Tech Week everyone!!

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It turns out, the Long Island Sound IS water. For these and other insights, check out this post about our seed funding round. 😬 #startups #fundraising #newyork

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What Really Happens To A Founder After They Fail -- I'll walk you through each stage and how to get past all of them in my new article for Inc. Magazine https://lnkd.in/e-ngs9PT #startup #entrepreneur #failure #work 

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In my conversation with Lauren Treasure she had one piece of advice really stuck with me. Lauren's been in the trenches as a product leader working with founders before becoming one herself at Higa, and she shared something crucial—Empathy. When you're working with a co-founder, it's not about battling for control. It's about building trust. Show them that they can rely on you to steer the product in the right direction. That’s where real collaboration happens. Empathy first, everything else follows. Watch the video to hear more details from Lauren. #ProductManagement #Leadership #StartupLife #FounderTips #TrustBuilding #ProductLeadership #Entrepreneurship

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Now that I’m a pre-seed founder with no income, I’ve downgraded my commute from Uber to the MTA Bus. It’s humbling but also taught me a lot so I decided to share the biggest lessons I’ve learned from eating this humble pie. 🌟**What Taking the Bus in NYC Taught Me About Enterprise Sales**🌟 Ah, the New York City bus. A beacon of efficiency and comfort. No delays, always on time, and the perfect place to learn about enterprise sales! 🚌💼 1. **Patience is a Virtue:** Just like waiting for that elusive client decision, waiting for the bus teaches you that time is just a construct. Why rush when you can enjoy the scenic view of the same block for 20 minutes? ⏳ 2. **Building Relationships:** Every bus ride is a networking opportunity. Whether it’s the person sharing their life story with you or the one falling asleep on your shoulder, these encounters are invaluable for honing your people skills. 🤝 3. **Handling Rejection:** When the bus doors close right in your face, it’s just like losing a deal you were certain you’d win. Brush it off, wait for the next one, and hope for a better outcome. 🚪❌ 4. **Strategic Planning:** Navigating the bus system requires a level of strategic thinking akin to planning a multi-million dollar sales pitch. One wrong move and you end up in Staten Island. 🗺️ 5. **Optimism:** The sheer optimism of believing the bus will come on time, despite all evidence to the contrary, mirrors the unwavering belief in closing that impossible deal. 🌈 So next time you're frustrated with your sales pipeline, just hop on a bus. It's basically a masterclass in enterprise sales. 🚍📈 #SalesLessons #EnterpriseSales #NYCBus #LinkedInInfluencer #TotallySeriousPost

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Today I’m incredibly proud to begin taking the wraps off Paydock’s new Checkout feature, launching this quarter. After nearly a decade in the trenches with merchants followed by eight years of expertise in orchestration, Paydock Checkout represents a giant leap for the industry and what we see as the future standard in acceptance. While there’s been plenty of buzz around checkout capabilities (and a fair share of websites and PowerPoints), for those of us who’ve been in the game long enough, we know that combining complex flows, high security and reliable, performance across the many actors in the payments value chain is not easy. Achieving such a complex set of requirements and flows in a way that sets merchants, institutions, and vendors up for swift success and future-proofed strategy is even tougher! Over the next period, we'll be diving deeper into the technical magic behind Paydock Checkout, covering everything from dynamic, personalised checkouts to omnichannel, in-store, authentication, loyalty, multi-system tokenization and more. But at the heart of it all is this: a relievingly elegant solution that delivers the merchant vision that last hop to the consumer better, faster, smoother and more reliably than ever - oh, and fast. Very fast. Click, update and go. To kick things off, I’m so proud to link a short article written by my long time friend and colleague Viktor Bondarenko, Enterprise Architect at Paydock. This describes some of the nuts and bolts of what Paydock Checkout does under the hood. Today I want to give a huge shout-out to the Paydock team, bringing your vast experience, endless creativity and enthusiasm to the table for the benefit of each of our partners, customers and innovators, themselves sector leaders. We hope you find it insightful - and like us, share our deep excitement about the what you can create with world leading payment experiences for your and your important customers. We can't wait to see what you do with it. Rob Article here: 👉👉 https://lnkd.in/eVZPgQ28

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So can you profitably scale a digital health business via a D2C model? The ball is still up in the air with this question but the just announced capital raise by Flo Health points in the direction that you can grow a consumer focused business with the right product mix / business model. I'll emphasis 'direction' since we have a assessment point from Flo Health on revenue and valuation but not on profitability. Rather than say there is a single right answer to which channel works best the industry seems to be following two divergent paths: (i) Consumer / non-medical channel model: Areas that consumers are willing to either self pay or self treat outside of a hospital setting, like several of the areas Flo Health covers. (ii) Medical channel model: any area where consumers fully or partially rely on clinicians to guide treatment. No one (sensible!) is going to self treat cancer for example. The models and investments required are very different especially when it comes to down to spending on marketing mix, regulatory and quality, clinical evidence and fit-to-treatment pathway design. Of course nothing is simple in digital health, Him and Her for example is a clinical focused company but heavily uses D2C channels to drive its business! Congratulations to the Flo Health team and it helps all players in the sector when good digital health companies are able to attract big investments.

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All of us at The Product Consult are wishing a belated Happy Mother’s Day to the moms out there who work so hard every day (and even harder every minute inside their heads, #mentalload anyone??) Whether it’s outside the home, at home, or both at the same time/all the time… Whether you’re a mom of children, pets, future children you hope to have, or whether you CHOOSE not to have them… 👶 Whether you do or don’t have kids and are fighting for women’s right to live safely across the world… ☮ Moms deserve to be celebrated and valued, (ahem, more than once a year) now more than ever. We celebrate you, support you, and are so grateful for you all. 💜 P.S. We cover parental leave for product managers/leaders. DM if we can alleviate any stress for folks going out on leave on your teams, just one more way to show support for new parents. #productmanagement #productmanagers #startups #consultants #workingparents #workingmoms

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We. Are. Hiring! Hiring is a team sport - this is a super high bar but so worth striving for 💪 If you're based in NY or LA, and cannot wait to do your best Biz Dev work ever growing a native VoiceAI startup, see if you fit the bill ... BD Manager with - Deep expertise in Sales Dev, or Biz Dev - You've read Play Bigger. You understand the opportunity for a vastly different category creation strategy in the Voice Automation space - Do the Hard Work to get Dialed In, Answer the Call, and Don’t Hang Up Major plus point - you get to work with Radz, Alfredo, myself & other mission-driven Flippers ... can there be anything more motivating or game-changing? Miles is taking submissions or referrals - hit him up with something that cannot be ignored 🌟 Plus point 2 - you'll work with & across our Outbound, Partner, Ambassador, and Event channels - a front row seat connecting & working daily with CX decision makers & innovators in the eComm & Retail space. Does this driver's seat have your name on it? 🏎️ #hiring #flippers #talent #flipcx #voiceai #voiceautomation #customerexperience #ecommerce #retail

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💡 What’s the best tech stack for my consumer brand? I get this question a lot, especially as we head into BFCM prep and code freezes. 📅 Whether you’re getting organized or just curious about the tech behind your favorite DTC brands, we’ve got you covered. At HSR, we’ve done the heavy lifting and identified the must-have components for an early-stage tech stack that every founder should know before the most critical quarter of the year. 📈 Ready to power up your business for Q4 and unlock the secret tools? 🚀 👇 Dive in here: https://lnkd.in/ga6BQQXS #DTC #TechStack #BFCM #BusinessGrowth #Scalability #Entrepreneurship #ConsumerBrand

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The best fundraising processes are for startups that  are so "fundable" that it’s easy for investors to say yes. You don't want to fundraise when you are "unfundable" or even borderline "fundable.” Those fundraises take months.  … They’re also demoralizing. Instead: 1. Figure out what is "fundable" for your startup. While this is more of an art than a science, try talking to other similar startups that have recently raised. See what metrics/pitch they had. Talk to 10+ investors in coffee chats to get a sense of what they want to see. 2. Make a plan for how you’ll beat the "fundable" level. Step 1 hopefully gave you an idea of what is necessary. Now make a plan for not just getting there—but overshooting it. This isn't one metric: You need high growth rates, high net revenue, strong team, good pipeline, strong technology, de-risked growth plan, etc. 3. Adjust continuously. What was fundable 1 year ago is not necessarily fundable today. You have to continuously go back to step 1 and readjust your expectations and plans. If that sounds hard, that’s because it is hard. Better to be prepared for that.

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Curious to see a winning 🏆 Insurtech Pitch Night deck?…. Disclaimer. We at Programable AI are not proclaiming to be pitch experts. This isn’t a “how to build a pitch deck” to raise funding! What we are experts at…is identifying and describing risk, in a way that’s actionable for our customers ✅ InsurTech Hartford Pitch Night XII at the HQ of Hartford Steam Boiler was a great night. 🎆 Bringing together a diverse audience from across the Insurance industry, who have to live and deal with the challenges of their work, every single day.💪 Our pitch goes to the heart of one of the single biggest challenges in the Insurance Industry today…and our solution 💡 to help those managing the risk of Claims Fraud in their business. Claims Fraud touches Insurance Carriers, Special Investigation Units, Third Party Administrators, Insurance Litigators and more. 🏢 Over $300bn in Fraud losses impacts these organisations and their customers in the USA, every single year…and growing 💸 at 20% per annum. The insurance industry is struggling to keep costs down, but inevitably, fraud losses have to be passed onto the customer and insurance premiums go up. Against this backdrop, the workforce that has traditionally combatted these crimes, the diligent and skilled specialist detectives 🕵️‍♂️ is decreasing by a 1/3rd as they reach retirement age. Compounding this challenge, is the increasing costs of litigation. 📈 How does an insurer balance the cost of fraud against the potential costs of litigation…and how do they measure the likelihood of succcesfully prosecuting the fraud? Helping people with complex risks make better decisions, is what Programable AI is all about. If you’d like to know more about how we provide AI Decision Support for Insurance Claims Fraud, please read our pitch and drop us a line at www.fraudgraph.ai or DM me. 👍 Thanks 🙏 for reading! #claimsfraud #fraud #decisionintelligence #machinelearning #ai #serverless #risk #riskmanagement Susan Winkler Gene Goddard, CEcD, EDFP Paul Fondie Kelly Lampard Art Nazzaro Robin King Danny Waite

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When you spend most of your day head-down in code, you can lose sight of the impact a product is having. Today brought a reminder of the "why" behind StratSimple. Thank you Onyx Strategies Group for the StratSimple shout-out in your latest blog post: https://lnkd.in/eKweRgv9 #aiforbusiness #strategicplanning #okrs #nonprofit

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