Saad Siddiqui

During yesterday's LibreQoS APNIC webinar, I posed the question: won't more bandwidth solve these problems? As Herbert Wolverson said, yes, more bandwidth is good, but, still these problems remain if queueing is done incorrectly. Here's my take on why bandwidth alone is not as good as bandwidth + good queueing policies: Generally it was believed that 'data is important, so don't throw it away; hang on to it and send it later'. In practice, this has proven to be suboptimal as two issues may emerge: 1) latency increases for some flows due to heavy demand from other flows using the same bottleneck link, 2) even a single flow can have excessive latency due to aspects of typical TCP behavior (referred to bufferbloat) when the buffers grew large enough that the data being buffered was retransmitted anyway. It turns out that not all data is equally important. Active Queue Management is the art of deciding priorities, both in deciding what data to throw away, but also in allowing some later arriving data to be transmitted ahead of data in another connection that arrived before it. These problems have been studied, and good solutions have been found by using certain queueing policies in routers and switches, referred to as “fq_codel’ and “cake”. These track the different flows not by classifying the data, but by watching the behavior. Flows that send relatively little data (DNS lookups), or at a measured pace (video chat) have priority over flows that send a lot of data as quickly as possible (App and System updates, Video and ISO downloads).

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I am always amazed when someone discovers whitespace in B2B SaaS that is eligible for pre-seed funding. It's interesting to see that Chiratae Ventures led Pre-Seed round for Pepsales. Pepsales is trying to help B2B SaaS companies improve their sales by creating personalized product demos using AI and ML. The pain point they are trying to address is that most demos don't impress buyers because they tend to be generic and one-size-fits-all. Congrats Ajay Singh and Abhinandan Sahgal! Source: INC42, Entrackr, VCCircle #VentureCapital #B2BSaas

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🔑 The Power of a Written Exercise in Interviewing Revenue Leaders 📝 Hiring the right revenue leader can make or break an organization. As we search for smart folks to drive our revenue growth at Vanta, one approach has consistently proven to be a game-changer: the written exercise. 🔍 Why a Written Exercise? Clarity of Thought: A well designed exercise reveals a candidate's ability to articulate complex ideas clearly and concisely. This skill is vital for revenue leaders who must communicate strategies across diverse teams and stakeholders. Strategic Insight: Through real-world scenarios, candidates demonstrate their strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities. This helps us gauge their approach to challenges and opportunities unique to our business. Analytical Prowess: Written exercises allow candidates to showcase their analytical skills. By dissecting data and presenting actionable insights, we can see how they drive decisions that lead to growth. Cultural Fit: How a candidate approaches a written task can also give us a glimpse into their work ethic, attention to detail, and alignment with our company values and culture. Elliot Goldwater has really nailed this practice, and it's incredible how much the exercise can swing a process towards or away from a candidate. 👥 Have you implemented written exercises in your hiring process? What has been your experience? #RevenueGrowth #Leadership #HiringTrends #Interviewing #TalentAcquisition #Strategy

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As we explore a seed round of VC funding for Avnir, a mentor has driven into me to "interview them as much as they'll do their due diligence on you!" When I consider professional etiquette important to me (and probably every serious founder), I am reminded of what I've coached hundreds of executives on over the past two decades: "Your culture is a culmination of behaviors you're willing to tolerate!" So, here is a Top 10 List of Professional Etiquette crucial to long-term strategic relationships between VCs and founders: 1️⃣ Respect for Time—Punctuality, Efficient Communication, and Timely Feedforward are demonstrated and genuinely felt. We would both rather me invest time in building the business. 2️⃣ Transparency—Clear Expectations, Honest Feedforward, and Disclosures on conflicts of interest or resource limitations save everyone unnecessarily wasted cycles! 3️⃣ Professionalism—Politeness, Confidentiality, and Objective Evaluation allow courteous interactions, respect for proprietary information, and avoiding bias in evaluating the founder's meritocracy. 4️⃣ Empathy—Understanding the Journey and Constructive Dialogue acknowledge the uphill battle founders face while avoiding unnecessary criticism and providing supportive guidance, demonstrating a genuine interest in their vision. 5️⃣ Integrity—Fair Terms, Follow Through, and Avoiding Overpromising honor commitments during discussions, and create realistic expectations from the relationship. 6️⃣ Co-Creation—Value-adding Mindset and Team Player Attitude accelerate the founder's ability to gain traction and position the VC relationship as transformational vs. simply transactional. 7️⃣ Humility—Avoiding Arrogance, Condescension, and Open-Mindedness acknowledges that both parties have unique expertise to add and enhance the receptivity to unconventional ideas, approaches, and perspectives. 8️⃣ Listening Louder—Present, Engaged, and Clarity of Intent eliminates distractions, brings out what's not being said, and jointly crafts better questions to help uncover the unknown and the undiscovered. 9️⃣ Encouraging—Supportive Communication, Positive Reinforcement, and Inspiration help celebrate small wins and key milestone achievements. It's ideal to light a fire within the relationship rather than under anyone, which seldom lasts! 🔟 Playing the Long Game—Relationship Nurturing and Post-Investment Care establishes the runway for a lasting partnership rather than simply pitching a deck and closing a deal. After the investment decision, sustaining the relationship will determine the partnership's long-term perspective. Jason M. Lemkin, Peter Bell, Cassie Young, and Ed Sim - you exemplify world-class in the relationships you build with your founders. Did I miss anything? #VCFounderRelationship #AlignedExpectations #RelationshipsMatterMoreThanEver

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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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PE - 3 ideas for the next 3 years - just like every traditional company needs to be a SaaS company, every SaaS company needs to ultimately be an AI company - ramp up revenue growth but always protect the profits - today is the time to innovate (i.e. not re-invent) your business model & strategy - importantly, this applies not only to PE portfolio companies but also to PE firms to get the best IRR --- #pe #privateequity #business #strategy #saas

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In vertical SaaS, the very best companies landed with a product solving a specific, burning pain point that horizontal solutions solved badly and then became broad product suites over time (ServiceTitan, Veeva Systems, Doximity, etc). My partner Gordon Ritter calls this “layering the cake”. In vertical AI, the landing wedges are much more brittle. While the painpoints they solve are very real (and often unaddressable by SaaS alone), they’re also much more likely to commodotize in the near term as the tech advances. 👀 Therefore, the need to layer the cake in vertical AI is much more urgent than in vertical SaaS. 👀 The best vertical AI CEOs not only recognize the dynamic, but talk about it openly. Helps those around them keep up the speed of innovation and their eyes on the bigger prize.

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PE - Portfolio / Cost of Revenue is up 68% Key to success in PE: - Optimizing Revenue Growth in a capital-efficient and profitable way - Unique strategies that are profitable and drive disproportionate ROI are critical today in PE - Successful growth is both: ARR and EBITDA Great panel with Seth Brody at Apax Partners, Craig Greenseid at The Carlyle Group Rajveer (Raj) Kushwaha at Warburg Pincus Prerak Vohra at Goldman Sachs and Michael Hoffman at SBI at the Private Equity International NYC conference. --------- #pe #privateequity

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I first met Mike Maples, Jr in 2010, when Founders Network was just an idea. Over the years, Mike and his team at Floodgate (special shoutout to Arjun Chopra) have been great mentors, sharing their insights and guiding our founders. Most recently, their advice played a pivotal role in helping us launch Founders Network Fund. Today, Mike shared the key ideas with FN'ers from his new book Pattern Breakers (https://a.co/d/buKBd5O ), which explores the insights he’s gained from backing companies like Twitter, Twitch, and Okta -- and which put him on the Forbes Midas List 8x. This is the most important book on startups in the last ten years, according to Steve Blank. My notes on the key concepts of his talk: 1) Inflections – "not a trend but a change event that represents a turning point in our ability to provide empowerment." e.g. The GPS chip in iPhone 4s 2) Insights – "a non-consensus and right insight about the future that's powerful and non obvious and leverages inflections." e.g. Lyft = GPS + strangers driving you 3) Founder future fit – "Living in the future before other people live in the future and then try to build what's missing in the future." If you're a founder, check out the book. Grateful for the impact Mike and Arjun continue to have on both me and the Founders Network community!

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The Council's first SPV of 2024 is down in the books and oversubscribed. Running SPVs where we have pro rata or extra allocation in fund deals is a muscle we are building pretty late in the game as a firm. As a solo GP with a tiny team, it's crippling to think of the extra work required and risk of not meeting platform minimums to run an SPV. But 7 of our port co's have recently raised follow on funding where we had pro rata. These are awesome deals for our LPs, angel members, and syndicate community. We simply can't afford to let them slip through the cracks. These allocations are only becoming more valuable as our firm grows, so we must start NOW! Proud to say this one went off without a hitch and our syndicate community is small but THRIVING. Wish us luck as we keep building. Note our SPVs are now on Sydecar. The best way to get access is to know someone on The Council Fund team and be on our SPV email list. **What's an SPV?** An SPV is a Special Purpose Vehicle. It allows multiple angel investors to pool together into one larger investment into a company. This helps the founder keep paperwork and investor relations to a minimum (less names on the cap table = simplicity!). When people say they're investing with a "syndicate" or they are "syndicating a deal," SPV is the entity and process by which they do that. A "syndicate" is like a community of people that invest via SPVs together.

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Q3 is out and Q4 is in!  This is a great read about Base10's strategic switch showcasing how Carta is simplifying fund administration for emerging managers, which is especially important now rolling into the year-end busy season. 

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PE - How to Use AI to Unlock Growth in Portfolio Companies All PE firms and portfolio companies should be thinking about unlocking GTM and growth via AI (i.e. not merely ChatGPT or other LLMs but actually implementing apps that are "AI Agents"). 1. What are "AI Agents"? - AI agents are autonomous systems powered by ML and natural language processing, designed to perform tasks with minimal human intervention - They can interpret data, determine the workflow & direction (i.e. make decisions), and execute actions across various functions, continuously improving through self-learning 2. Examples of using AI Agents in PE portfolio companies: - For Sales: AI agents handle lead qualification, respond to inquiries, book meetings, and provide personalized product recommendations, ensuring no opportunities are missed - For Marketing: Generate campaign briefs, segment audiences, create tailored content, and analyze performance to optimize outreach efforts - For Customer Success & Support: Provide 24/7 support, resolve customer issues autonomously, escalate complex cases to human agents with full context, and ensure consistent, brand-aligned responses 3. How PE portfolio companies benefit: - Efficiency: Automate repetitive tasks, enabling teams to focus on high-value activities - Scalability: Handle growing customer volumes without increasing headcount - Personalization: Deliver tailored experiences using real-time data insights - $ Cost Savings: Reduce operational costs by streamlining workflows 4. Business Impact for PE Portfolio Companies: - Accelerate GTM Execution: Faster lead conversion, better customer retention, and enhanced marketing ROI - Improve Metrics: Boost Customer NPS, CSAT, and efficiency - Enable Growth: Scale operations seamlessly while improving team productivity. 5. How PE Firms Must Think About Adoption - Define clear portfolio objectives to use AI agents (not just LLMs) - Ensure integration with existing CRM and data systems - Prioritize high-quality data and ongoing performance monitoring - Use AI agents to complement existing GTM teams, focusing them on automation ------------------ #pe #privateequity #investing #ai

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Doing a mini-series on some fintech predictions I believe might come true in the space over the next 1-3 years. Starting off with lending tech; What's gonna do great: 1. Seed stage would see a rise in product specialised lending in segments like online retail, education. EV, energy, clean tech, etc. - where underwriting expertise remains limited and where data needs to be studied 2. Expansion into tier 2/3 cities, the next billion will come under lending especially as AA framework and OCEN allows them to be lent easily & high capita income and rising middle class raises ability to pay 3. Medical based lending will rise, so will lending based on different collaterals like leaves, insurance policies 4. Financing geared towards women and other PSL related lending What's gonna see consolidation / reduced interest: Consolidation across personal loans, MSME, micro finance, direct lending - plays that will focus on lending to a “gap” in credit / based on need will move towards growth stage, not seed stage Enablers / what has changed: 1. Offline data being digitised and alternative data being used in underwriting 2. DPI frameworks developing fully - AA + OCEN + ONDC 3. Rising per-capita income and tech-savvy folks entering workforce and earning who have a spending mindset Key Risks of unemployment and sudden shocks to economy leading to higher NPAs & defaults esp in unsecured products and change in regulations still remain the major risks overall, seems like would continue being the leader in deals and funding within fintech, large market. Writing this primarily on twitter (X): https://lnkd.in/dpUDVpHV Disc: personal views #fintech

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What Really Makes a Founder-Investor Relationship Work? 💡 Engaged Participation: The best investors don't just attend meetings; they immerse themselves in the startup journey. I recall working on our GTM strategy and facing three tough choices. One investor suggested, "Why not try all three and see what works?" That advice broke down mental barriers and led us to new opportunities. 🤝 Building Trust: Trust grows through genuine, agenda-free conversations, empathy, and a true interest in personal connections. I genuinely appreciate discovering the person behind the purpose. 🗣️ Authenticity and Transparency: Absolute openness is crucial. Discussing dealbreakers and having tough conversations early on leads to smoother sailing later. 🌐 Extending Networks: Aligned investors broaden a startup's reach, introducing key partners and customers, strengthening the network. At FEBE Ventures, we aim to be the first call founders make when challenges arise. We take pride in being trusted advisors to the entrepreneurs we work with. How do you think investors can make a meaningful difference in your journey? Would love to hear your thoughts.

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💡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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If you enjoyed our first blog on the metrics that matter for Verticalized SaaS then don't miss on the Part II of the series where my colleagues Devraj Hom Roy and Matt Schaar discuss the strategic and operational choices to improve these operational indicators. https://lnkd.in/g5QkCrcH

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At Forum we look at thousands of deals each year across our Accelerator and Pre-Seed funds but only end up investing in a little over 1% of those startups.  As an early stage VC, I am in the business of saying no to nearly every startup I meet, and while there is nuanced rationale for many of the startups I pass on, a vast majority of businesses that don’t meet the qualification to get funded typically fall into one of two buckets. ▪ First time founders have a tendency to go out to market too early to raise pre-seed capital ▪   I’m sure most founders have heard some iteration of this from VCs that ultimately pass on their business.  In some cases it's a blanket excuse covering up for other pass reasons- perhaps a VC doesn’t believe in a team or isn’t bullish on the market opportunity - but in many cases founders simply haven't proven enough to the market to warrant an investment. I meet many teams with an articulate vision for the product that they want to build, but they either haven't performed enough customer discovery to prove demand for their initial wedge product, or need to raise pre-seed capital to build out an MVP.  In those cases, pre-seed investors are unwilling to underwrite those risks.  To be default fundable, teams need to be able to keep costs low, perform extensive customer discovery, and ship some version of an early product - pilots and early paid customers are key. A huge piece of this is having founding engineering talent on the team. ▪Not every startup is a venture opportunity ▪ By definition, a venture backed business is solving a problem within a market opportunity so massive and so desperately needed, that its growth rate is off the charts.   It spreads like a weed, absorbing almost unlimited amounts of capital to fulfill demand within its customer base.   Each year there are maybe 20 companies launched that ultimately have venture scale outcomes. The bar to reach this rarified air is unfathomably high and the reality is the vast majority of founders simply aren’t building for opportunities that have the potential to be one of these generational companies. Many startup founders view VC as the only viable option for capitalizing their business, but not every great business is a venture business, and most successful founders never take VC dollars.  In order to reach an IPO/acquisition large enough to generate venture returns, a startup needs a credible path to $100s of millions in revenue. This is the standard by which early stage opportunities are evaluated. The flip side to this, and I share this feedback often with founders I meet that are building interesting business in non venture markets, if you are able to scale to $10- $20M in revenue that can be a massively successful outcome for a founder.  There are investors who focus on these type outcomes, namely lower middle market PE shops, and the typical path to those deals is a bootstrapped business or a friends/family capital raise.

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The second update that I wanted to share was an investment that we've been working on for quite some time. Excited that the announcement has finally gone out. Citi Ventures has invested in Lakera, to build the next-generation of security tools to protect the next-generation of applications (those powered by LLMs). We got to meet David Haber and his co-founders, Matthias Kraft and Mateo Rojas-Carulla, just as the year started and were blown away by their vision of the future. Humans use LLMs today but in the not too distant future LLM-agents will talk to LLM-agents at rapid speed. Lakera's Guard product protects LLM-based applications from malicious prompts (made by bad actors trying to steal data) by inserting a layer of trust where bad prompts are detected and only valid/safe prompts reach your applications. The term in vogue today is an "LLM Firewall". We conducted an exhaustive search of the category and came away believing Lakera had built the most robust and scalable product in the market. Can't wait to get started with the team and work with them on this journey! Matt Carbonara ✅, Vibhor Rastogi, Arvind Purushotham, Blaze O'Byrne, Avi Arnon, Çağla Kaymaz, Olivia Zhang, Max R. Mailman https://lnkd.in/ewMmennJ

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