Marisa Harary

Everyone, meet Joe - the new owner of a $1,000,000 profit business Some numbers for you… Years in business: 50 Employees: 23 Clients: 60+ ebitda: $1M+ The business: Point B Communications - a full-stack digital agency in Chicago. Here’s Joe’s story... Joe grew up in Provo, Utah and was basically born to hustle. Back in college at BYU, he started his first business—a marketing agency. After graduating, Joe took a detour into corporate life. He spent nearly 10 years in medical device sales and led some big teams. Then he grabbed his MBA at Indiana University and worked at Fortune 500 companies in marketing and pricing. But corporate wasn’t his endgame. Joe's always been obsessed with design and entrepreneurship. In 2019, he made his first move, buying a design agency  SONNY+ASH. That was his first acquisition… and man, he crushed it. Even through COVID, he grew the business year-over-year. Fast forward to this year, Joe decided to go even bigger. He started hunting for another agency and found Point B Communications, a 50-year-old legend in the space with: - An in-house production studio (super rare in this space) - Deep relationships in traditionally old-fashioned industries like senior living, hospitality, and apparel - outstanding customer relationships Joe deal closed with financing via: - SBA 7(a) loan - Investor equity - A seller’s note - And equity from his firm, Oak Tree Group. In July 2024, the deal officially closed. And now Joe’s stepping into the driver’s seat, ready to lead Point B into its next phase with the assistance of the precious ownership. I can’t wait to see what Joe does next with Point B. If you'd like to read the full article, check out the link below. And, if you're a searcher or operator, you should checkout our company Mainshares and see why even experienced acquirers like Joe choose to work with us. link below! Joseph Soelberg's acquisition of Point B Communications was sponsored by Main Street Securities LLC. Brokerage services are offered by Main Street Securities LLC, an affiliate of Mainshares, and is an SEC-registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA/SIPC. For additional information, please contact your licensed securities representative of Main Street Securities LLC or visit FINRA’s BrokerCheck.

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“The funding landscape has changed during the time we have been involved in it, and continues to evolve,” “And we’re evolving with it, to ensure that there is even more flexibility for companies to access the specific capital they need for a given scenario. We’ve funded well over 180 technology companies across multiple industries and verticals, and we’re not slowing down any time soon.” Regarding the total addressable market for Tractor to operate in, Imam explains that the one-funding-product-fits-all approach has required tweaking, simply due to the totally different needs expressed by the financial decision-makers, related to time, total access to the capital itself, and looming milestones that require a more strategic approach to accessing capital. “If you’re a SaaS company, or an ecommerce company, or a hardware company, or operating in a particular niche or vertical like marketing tech for example, you will have a different set of needs for funding based on your revenue,” explains Imam. “We’ve moved to a scenario-based funding model, based on the most common queries we receive at this point in time. B2B Enterprise SaaS we will always be able to fund in an instant. Other scenarios arise when the financials require a bit more flexible and bespoke assessment.” “In particular, our Inventory product points to our capability to fund in some very very specific and founder-focussed ways, and that flexibility really excites us, now and for the future.” Thank you for this write up SmartCompany!

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🚗 Jeremy A. is an engineer and early stage startup operator who fulfilled his childhood goal of living & working in Boston, building his career where the rubber meets the road, friction and all 🚗 It's W1 / Q1 / 2025 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Jeremy,  the Head of Enablement at Seed stage consumer marketplace & shop management platform TireTutor. In this role he owns technical partnerships and is responsible for setting the strategy for how they go to market as a team. He helps set the operating budgets, working closely with Founder & CEO Jason Abrahams and their investors. Jeremy also owns operations & enablement in terms of how their GTM team sells, packages their offerings, and how they deliver their service for customers from strategy to content to better achieve their goals. Heading into 2025, the TireTutor team is highly focused on operations after launching the first true all-in-one POS at the end of 2024, focusing on the key metrics that drive their business. 🗺️ 🧭 Navigating Tough Situations Drives Strategic Success 🧭🗺️ Navigating tough situations is a fundamental part of life in early stage startups. Jeremy’s hard won recipe for success? Get really close to customers, stay close to them, and live in your function. When TireTutor set their early GTM strategy, it was critical for them to be able to “talk the talk” of their customer base. More generally known as “domain expertise”. It was Jeremy’s experience, both by inexperience and logging all of those hours, that having a consistent “ground game” is what drives strategy. Not the other way around. Strategy comes from talking to 100s of customers and properly segmenting your market successfully because not all prospects and customers are created equal. TireTutor found that there were specific tire focused shops that fit their early platform really well. Then, over time, they also grew to serve shops who sold tires in addition to repair work. Each has a unique way of being prospected, closed, and serviced. 3 Career Insights / Learnings 🚪 Leave Ego at the Door - “Leaving your ego at the door and being open to what it means to be good at something and not so good at something is an important first step to succeeding in a startup environment. It took me time to embrace that!” 😤 Having Thick Skin - “Startups aren’t easy. You might get yelled at by your customers some days! Having thick skin is about being able to work through those challenges and around them each day to achieve your long term goals” 😅 All Problems Aren’t Problems - “We all have problems that we deal with. But just because there are challenges, doesn’t mean it's the end of the world. Not all problems need to be or can be solved. But being honest about where things stand is really important to making progress” Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter to see the operator learnings we bring you in the weeks ahead!

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Changes in sustainability-speak at #climateweeknyc worth noting: 1) "Business needs to lead the way on #climate" has lost much of its usual cachet as a 'we got this' phrase. Instead, there is perhaps a recognition that the notion is nice but doesn't quite comport with the reality of policy and enterprise's relationship. 2) The "right policy enabling environment" hasn't been the footnote that it tends to be relegated to at the likes of a Climate Week – it's increasingly been discussed as the key element that the success of sustainable business and investment hinges on, like in the Sustainable Investment Forum's conversation with #sustainableinvesting heavyweights Carine Smith Ihenacho, The Very Rev Kirsten Snow Spalding, Bertrand Millot, Pedro Guazo and Peter Cashion, CFA. 3) All that said, there remains a no-go zone in acknowledging that public and government affairs are often doing hard work down the hall from their sustainability colleagues to thwart the type of #climatepolicy we need to bend the emissions curve. Audience Q&A on the topic has afforded some solid awkward silence, which maybe in future will be filled with some of those folks joining the panels? Footnote -- just blown away by how many brilliant and dedicated people work in #sustainability. #esg #sustainablefinance #corporatesustainability #climate

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Growth-stage DTC brands know that scaling is a financial tug-of-war — every department is pulling for its share of the (budgetary) pie 🥧 In our most recent expert guide, Matt Weiler, founder of Second Star Ventures and interim CEO of Wells Group of New York, shares five tactical tips on strategic cross-functional finance: 1️⃣ Decide between tangible growth and buzz Balance investments in short-term ROI with hard-to-quantify activities. Collaborating across teams to align on needs will help you measure intangible results and focus on net profits per initiative. 2️⃣ Assess your decision risk Evaluate each business decision by mapping out assumptions for probability and measurability. Then consider how easily it can be reversed if it fails, and * only * proceed if the cost of failure is manageable. 3️⃣ Prepare for success just as you plan for failure Whip your ops into shape before you action on strategy. That way, when growth occurs, you can deliver what you promised your customers. For example, a successful product launch can still fail if you don’t have enough stock to meet demand. 4️⃣ Pay back your CAC quickly Tracking your LTV, CAC, and payback periods helps you monitor customer growth at all times. If you can’t pay back your CAC quickly, you can’t drive near-term ROI, making it tougher to increase LTV. 5️⃣ Use Drivepoint for cross-functional strategic finance Drivepoint enables you to easily create and compare financial scenarios, build accurate forecasts in minutes, and sync sales, accounting, and marketing data across all sales channels — for a holistic understanding of your business. Want to learn more? Matt breaks it down here: https://lnkd.in/gXc-f_5x

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new episode alert: Magnite $MGNI CEO Michael Barrett breaks down the future of independent ad tech. we talk competing with Google, why The Trade Desk won, and what actually works in M&A. Plus some great insights on leading turnarounds: https://lnkd.in/eAKc84Qi

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TryNow.com Weekly Update ⚡ • Hosted a great dinner for 20+ brand operators in NYC last night with Eli Weiss. Thanks for coming out Jeff Hansen, Alice Kim, Vanessa Alvarez, Katrina Caraboolad, Ian Laya, Loris Spadaccini, Arjan Singh, Timothy W. Schifter, Laurie Mucciolo, Madeline Placik, Kyle Goldman, Nicole (Nico) ✨ S., John Wong, Michael De Santis, Adrian Aidid and many more. • If you've been following along, you know that we made a big shift towards product-led engineering towards the end of Q1. This means that as a company we spend more time describing problems rather than prescribing solutions (shout out to Steve Davis at TryNow for this sound articulation) and empower engineering to fully own the solution. By defining the problem in detail, solutions can more naturally flow out of that work. Shifts like this are by no means immediate, and this week capped off a month of very strong product-led engineering. Keep an eye out for improvements to self-service onboarding, enhancements to TryNow Insights Dashboard, and some impactful improvements to our automated capture process. A few companies that inspired this cultural shift towards product-led engineering are PostHog and Ramp, two very different companies that share a product development velocity that we admire. • Incredible week in NYC with Ian Schneider, Director of GTM at TryNow. At dinner last night, a prospective customer came up to us and shared praise for our sales process. He mentioned that we don't "sell", we don't apply any pressure, and we're the most customer-centric vendor he knows. Now, I know there's a lot of improvements we can and should make to our GTM motion to ensure we're always putting the customer at the center. But we're on our way. Keep it up, Ian 🤜 #TryBeforeYouBuy #TryNewThings #Shopify

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Following the likes of Robinhood & Salesforce, brands are betting the farm on owned media, but 90% of b2c brands are overestimating their upside. 2 things that differentiate those marquee efforts from most companies: Mass Appeal - Sherwood (Robinhood) and Salesforce+ are going after 2 of the largest audiences, respectively, in consumer investing and sales/marketing. But let's say you operate an insurance marketplace, a telehealth company, or... a mattress company... What are the real odds consumers subscribe to your newsletter? Investment - Sherwood is not messing around. They've hired a cadre of top talent, and then went and bought Chartr to sprinkle on top. You need to be creating a TON of great content to have a chance at creating a real consumer media brand, and too many owned strategies are being built on the back of 2-3 person teams. The truth is... b2c brands need to find audiences offsite, by leveraging their content/data into earned. Tell interesting stories, and create relationships that allow you to syndicate those stories at large.

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New York City startups are addressing the lack of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles (EVs) by installing curbside solutions. These startups, such as It’s Electric, Gravity, and Voltpost, offer different approaches, including tapping into existing power sources, utilizing fast charging technology, and integrating chargers into lampposts. Despite challenges like grid capacity and vandalism, these startups aim to make EV ownership more accessible and appealing to urban residents.

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INTERVIEWS OF 2024 SXSW PITCH WINNERS: Dhavel Patel of Lotus Every March in Austin, 50 of the world's most impactful startups showcase their talents at SXSW Pitch. Today we begin a series of short interviews with some of the category winners from the 2024 event. Founder and CEO Dhaval Patel has been growing Lotus for three years. At this year's SXSW Pitch, his San Jose based startup emerged as the winner of the "Smart Cities, Transportation & Sustainability" category. Patel's short answers to our questions are below. SXSW: What is Lotus?  Patel: A wearable ring that controls objects at home by pointing. See https://www.getlotus.com/ SXSW: What community does Lotus serve? Patel: Folks with limited mobility -- older adults, veteran soldiers, people with disabilities.  SXSW: Who is your all-time favorite entrepreneur? Patel: Warren Buffett. SXSW: Best startup-related advice you have received? Patel: Don't start building first, find the need first. SXSW: Current entrepreneurial trend that excites you the most? Patel: Desire for tech that is intuitive and simple. SXSW: Fail fast or perseverance? Patel: Persevere in failing fast repeatedly. SXSW: Favorite VC? Patel: Andreessen Horowitz. SXSW: Favorite gadget or device? Patel: Apple AirPods. SXSW: Government can best support startups by Patel: Moving faster. SXSW: Most over-hyped technology at present? Patel: AI. SXSW: Most under-hyped technology at present? Patel: Consumer hardware. SXSW: What did you enjoy most about your experience at SXSW? Patel: The people -- each person wanting to make the world a better place. SXSW: What is your best trait as an entrepreneur? Patel: Simplifying complex problems. SXSW: What is your best advice for other startups? Patel: Focus (say "no" to more). Learn more about Dhaval Patel of Lotus plus other 2024 SXSW Pitch winners by listening to the audio of their session at this year's event. See https://lnkd.in/gHtwQB8n Applications for SXSW Pitch 2025 will open in late summer. See https://lnkd.in/gE2hcVPK #sxsw, #sxsw2024, #startups, #founders, Chris Valentine, Dhaval Patel, SXSW, #venturecapital, #entrepreneur, #entrepreneurs, #startup, #founderstories, #sxswpitch, Lotus (Techstars'23), #techstars, #Austin, #ATX, #creativity, #innovation, #hardware, #consumerhardware, #pitch, #accessibility,

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Wonderful article about Emily Knight and the whole The Engine Accelerator team on the amazing work their doing changing the world with #ToughTech!

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Just arrived in Boston for the GenAI meet up hosted by Maven AGI and friends: Microsoft and JPMorganChase! Tomorrow's event is fully booked, so please keep an eye out for the next one. Agenda: 🗯️ 30-Minute Fireside Chat 🎙️ 30-Minute Expert Panel 🚀 30-Minute Startup Pitch Competition Hope to see you there or at the next event 👋 #ai #genai #enterpriseai

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With SHARE technology, we helped empower PYNRS Performance Streetwear to rev share on their innovative physical event during the Boston Marathon, generating $30,000 in sales with 5% of all revenue shared in realtime with their community in exchange for attending and engaging on social. Huge thank you to Sidney Baptista and the PYNRS team for being such phenomenal partners! Learn more in the latest FORMLESS case study linked below. #blockchain #community #revenueshare #decentralized #boston #bostonmarathon #sharingeconomy #digitaleconomy

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We gathered dozens of operators from the MGMT Boston Operators Club and local founders alongside the 186 Ventures team this October to discuss the evolution of our dear software markets, the status of some predictions for 2024 (all looking good!), and what’s on deck for next year. General Partner Giuseppe Stuto led us through the following predictions for 2025 to share with you all.. ↕ We will see more vertical AI applications manifest themselves within the Enterprise in a similar ways that SaaS moved from horizontal to vertical use cases 🔔 We will see services business models more common and software budget purchasing models less common - SaaS may even be given away for cheap/free as a “way in” ⚖ Capital efficiency, on a relative basis, will almost be required to create enduring & compounding defensible enterprise value. Details like procurement cycle lengths and creativity with non-dilutive financing, like leveraging revenue based financing tools for example, will all matter 💡 Specific to AI, premiums will be placed on applications that can actually get “reasoning” right. All purpose LLMs still have a ways to go and there are multiple approaches with the “jury still out” on how to get context and reasoning right. Infrastructure solutions that use general purpose or customizable knowledge graphs to help application developers get to 100% (enterprise acceptable accuracy) will emerge OR savvy application developers will fill the gaps themselves. We will likely see both, depending upon the specific case! Thank you Giuseppe, Julian, and Sophie for a great discussion and evening!

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This San Franciscan has landed in the Big Apple for #NYTechWeek! Here’s why it was important to me to be out here this week and I view NYC as a sister city. ((scroll down for 2 events The Council is hosting today!)) 🏭🏥 Reminder: The Council Fund invests at Pre-seed in Software’s Third Act, the transformation of the essential economy. Our investments span healthcare and industrial sectors like manufacturing, logistics, construction. 🐂 I’m eternally bullish on NY & SF and hate how many pit the two cities against each other. The reality is that a lot of capital and talent flow back and forth between the cities. They need each other to thrive! 🗽🌁 Cities like NY & SF attract young and mid-career talent because of their population density, transient nature, beauty, and reputations as cities where someone new on the scene can make a name for themselves. For the areas we invest in, I’m *specifically* excited about NY because of: 🏗️ Closer proximity to industrial hubs which are scattered across the Midwest / Rust Belt 🏛️ Closer proximity to DC where a lot of regulation around VC, startups, healthcare, onshoring initiatives, and industrial sectors takes place 💰 Many of the large financial institutions that are backing hard tech focused funds and major healthcare initiatives are also headquartered here in NYC 🎯 We’ve got several startups here who are hitting it out of the park, like Dirac and Siena. This has further validated my belief in this ecosystem to support young companies! Today we are kicking off with 2 events on Day 1 of #NYTechWeek 👉 AI Demo Day: The Council, Next Wave NYC, Lynx Collective, Flybridge will host 8 founders and 200+ investors and founders for a pitch competition this evening! Luma: https://lnkd.in/gbdYiJMw 🔜 Can still join the waitlist! Small & Big VCs in Hard Tech: The Council joined General Catalyst, Lux Capital, Iron Prairie Ventures, AlleyCorp, House Of Ventures, Steel Atlas for 2 back to back panels on industrial innovation & collaboration across the capital stack Luma: https://lnkd.in/gj6D4-Au ⏰ Event has passed

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It is no secret that fundraising has been incredibly challenging for founders at all stages. According to Carta’s Q1 2024 State of Private Markets report, Seed stage deal count fell 33% from Q4 2023 and Series A deal count fell 36%. Additionally, total cash raised in the same period was 30% less at each stage suggesting rounds sizes are also getting smaller. In this next edition of Collaborative Fund's Founder Support Series, I get into the details of how to prepare to fundraise in a challenging environment. Have a read and let me know what you think: https://lnkd.in/gJjqhsCd

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Last night, while in town for GAI Insights #GenerativeAIWorld, I co-hosted a dinner with long time friend Dave Balter and True Ventures, gathering top minds in AI, VC, and entrepreneurship in Boston. BrandRank.AI CTO Matt Cox (based in Boston w/our tech team) and investor Bill Hildebolt of gen.video joined us. We dove into how AI is revolutionizing productivity across industries. The consensus? AI literacy is becoming as crucial as digital literacy was a decade ago. Our discussion centered around four key themes: - AI'S IMPACT ON BUSINESS: From automating tasks to enhancing decision-making, AI is transforming how companies operate and compete. - HUMAN-AI COLLABORATION: We explored the potential of AI as a creative partner and decision-making tool, and the implications for various industries. (Perfect timing for CincyAI for Humans (CincyAI) one-year anniversary celebration today.) - THE FUTURE OF WORK: We debated which jobs might be displaced, which new roles will emerge, and how to prepare for an AI-driven workforce. - ETHICAL AI AND BRAND PERCEPTION: Our work at BrandRank.AI is showing how AI can reveal uncomfortable truths about brands, raising questions about transparency and authenticity. (Are LLMs are too smart for BS!) What jumped out in the conversation is that AI isn't just a tool – it's becoming a collaborator, creator, and potential competitor. Are we ready for AI in boardrooms, creative processes, and as the primary interface for brand interactions? The entrepreneurial energy was palpable as we explored opportunities in AI-driven health monitoring and human-AI creative collaboration -- this balanced with ethical considerations and the responsibility we bear as leaders in this space. The future of business is AI-collaborative. Are we prepared to be good partners? This discussion echoed the conference's sentiment, bolstered by outstanding presentation by MIT and HBS faculty: we're in an unprecedented moment of disruption. It's not just a technological shift, but a fundamental reimagining of work, creativity, and interaction. (Amazing conference so far Paul Baier, John Sviokla Liz Vanzura) Great time to be an entrepreneur! And the ultimate test for leadership! Thanks Dave, Gus Coldebella and True team for great and timely conversation. Kelly Cohen Hank Hudepohl Carl Fraik Aftab Pureval Kendra Ramirez Christopher Brock Jon Salisbury Helen Todd (Human) Jon Salisbury Jack Wyant MJ Price 🌱Lauren Morgenstein Schiavone Judy Zitnik Christopher Morse Christy Page Jocile Ehrlich Lee Beech Tracey Cooke Sherrie Kinderdine Adriana Altuve Chetan Parekh Diana Takach Jonathan Carson

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April was a big month for the Everything Marketplaces community! Here's a few highlights from our monthly roundup & recap post that I shared: -We're now 2,300+ marketplace founders & teams in the community -We had really incredible group chats with Casey Winters, Sara Mauskopf from Winnie, & Marco Zappacosta from Thumbtack -We had lots of other online events like our female founders meeting, fundraising meeting, & weekly office hours -We had meetups in New York City (at FJ Labs) & San Francisco (at Craft Ventures) -We had lots of founders share wins like launches, closing funding rounds, & also hitting major growth milestones + lots more Looking forward to another big month in May and also sharing some exciting news for the community soon!

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💡 Interesting takeaways (+ my own commentary) from this #SFClimateWeek session on startups engaging with #utilities - Bits (software) and atoms (hardware) will both be required to power #decarbonization and the #energytransition. Enterprise SaaS is a proven business model that needs to complement innovations in deeptech. Start by targeting the customers most open to moving quickly with new approaches - which might be municipal and coop utilities. Referencing those early customers and successful deployments then helps when you start targeting more risk-averse companies, who have higher expectations and potentially more to lose from new technologies. I've seen the latter play out many times in SaaS markets. Successfully penetrating more mainstream (and conservative) segments of a market requires thoughtfully sequencing and orchestrating product development, partnerships & integrations, go-to-market capabilities, and delivery/service capabilities. Would have loved to be at the session to hear firsthand from Adriana Penuela-Useche Louisa White Page Crahan Andrea Sguazzi Giancarlo Savini.

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