Bennett Siegel’s Post

It’s been a big year for Captions, and it’s only July. Building on this momentum, we’re excited to announce our $60M Series C, led by Index Ventures. That brings our total capital raised to $100M, which we’ll be investing in AI video research right here in New York City. We built Captions to make it easy for anyone, anywhere to tell their story with a video — we believe that AI unlocks new possibilities to generate and edit talking videos, and that AI will change the future of video as we know it. Looking at the past year, there’s a lot to be proud of: we hit 10M+ global creators, launched a collection of world-first generative features, and our customers created over 3M videos each month — telling diverse stories, transcending language barriers, and even falling in love, as profiled in the New York Times. Our team also grew from 15 to 60 here in New York City. We’re thrilled to welcome back returning investors Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital, and new investors Adobe Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, and Jared Leto to this round. We’re grateful for your support. Read more about our fundraise in Bloomberg News, covered by Rachel Metz. If you’re interested in joining a fast-moving team that’s defining the future of AI in video, check out our careers page: https://lnkd.in/gYQ-B8mm —we’d love to talk.

We've never shared our fundraising before. But today, I'm thrilled to announce that Clay has raised $62m in total funding, across our pre-seed (led by Box Group), seed (led by First Round), Series A (led by Sequoia) and most recently — our Series B (led by Meritech) at a $500M valuation. I'm proud of what we have built to date, but it’s largely due to our team and community. We've grown revenue 10x each of the past two years, and Clay has quickly become the default growth engine for the world's most innovative teams, including Anthropic, Intercom, Notion and Vanta. An entire ecosystem has emerged as well, with Clay experts starting bootcamps, newsletters and Claygencies (some making more than $2m/yr!) to service the demand. We're building the creative platform to help GTM teams turn any growth idea into reality instantly. But we're also crafting a unique culture.  Our team includes some of the world’s most talented engineers, ex-founders, and operators, but we don’t just write code — we make music, perform DJ sets, write poetry, make pottery (of course), and so much more. This is a special company at an inflection moment. Come join us — we're hiring across every function. Now, a big thank you to our partners who've supported us in this journey. Thank you to David, Gregory and Adam from Box Group for their early support, Josh Kopelman and Brett Berson from First Round Capital for always providing introductions, advice and optimism at a moment's notice, our board member Mike Vernal for his unwavering and consistent advocacy on our behalf, and Alfred Lin + Pat Grady from Sequoia Capital for their help as we scale, and finally Alex Kurland from Meritech Capital for his conviction in us and enthusiasm for the journey ahead. Many thanks as well to the many other angels and investors who've helped us succeed: Notation Capital (Nicholas Chirls), Maple VC (Andre Charoo), HubSpot Ventures (Brandon Greer, Nate Morgan), 20SALES (Maggie Hott, Stevie Case), 20GROWTH (Sri Batchu, Darius Contractor), Oliver J. (fmr CRO, Asana), Ashley Kramer (CMO, GitLab), Scott Belsky (CPO, Adobe), Vinay Hiremath (Co-Founder, Loom), Matt MacInnis (COO, Rippling), Emily Kramer (fmr. Head of Marketing, Asana & Carta), Douglas Hanna (COO, Grafana), Marie Gassée (Head of GTM, Column), Nitin Gupta (VP, Pave), Armand Farrokh (fmr VP Sales, Pave), Adam Nash (fmr CEO, Wealthfront), Jay Simons (fmr President, Atlassian), Idan Koren (CMO, Verkada), John Lilly (fmr CEO, Mozilla), Ryan Wiggins (VP Growth, Mercury), Ben Levy (Co-Founder, The Milk Road), Ekin Oflazer (Head of Product (Core/AI), Notion), Coyne Lloyd (Founding Sales, Snapdocs), ChenLi Wang (fmr Head of BizOps, Dropbox), Jeff Sinclair (Head of GTM Data, Stripe), Noah Adelstein (Growth, Rippling), Dakota McKenzie (Sales, Databricks), Shana Fisher (Third Kind).

ICYMI: We hosted an event for #NYTW with Primary Venture Partners, focusing on the supply chain industry. Key takeaways: 1. Ease of Use: Focus on solving problems, not selling AI technology. 2. Early Stage Teams: Success comes from understanding customers, not just team structure. A credible technologist is essential. 3. Principal vs Agent Problem: Balance operational and financial goals effectively. Thanks to everyone who joined us! If you are attending New York Tech Week and want to talk all things supply chain, please feel free to drop us an email: [email protected] #SupplyChainInnovation #AIinSupplyChain #SupplyChainTechnology #LogisticsTech #SupplyChainStartups

Briefcase, a London-based SaaS startup, has raised $3M in a seed funding round led by Earlybird Venture Capital, with participation from Entrepreneur First, Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company, and notable angel investors including Charlie Songhurst, Mark Ransford, and Greg Marsh. The company, co-founded by Reuben Steenkamp and Ján Stehlík, aims to revolutionize accounting automation using multimodal AI and embeddings, targeting the $627B global accounting industry. The funding will enable Briefcase to expand its team and accelerate product development. Stay ahead in the startup world! 🌟 Get a weekly digest of key happenings and insights delivered to your inbox every Monday morning. Don't miss out—subscribe now: https://lnkd.in/eJXZrmEj 🚀 #Funding #AI #AccountingAutomation #UKStartups

On Monday Dynamo Ventures hosted #NYTW's supply chain event with Primary Venture Partners. We brought together those curious about the intersection of AI x Supply Chain for a conversation between Zach Fredericks, Prince Ghosh of Factored Quality (proud investors here!), and myself. We couldn't have done it without the support of Madelyn O'Farrell and Gaby Lorenzi. Some points made during the conversation: 1. Let your customers hit the easy button. Supply chain stakeholders don't want to worry about buying technology and figuring out the details of AI. Instead, they want problems solved and it makes it easier to substitute an existing budget item vs convincing them to make space. In 90% of instances we've studied thus far, selling the promise of LLMs as purely SaaS limits the value capture of a startup vs just selling the work itself. 2. What does a killer team look like at the early stage? The punchline is that there's no single team structure that wins. What is obvious is the requirement to deeply understand the customer, how they think about value creation, and buying your product. It might be that one has the advantage of industry experience but it could equally be advantaged insights drawn from a hundred-odd deep customer discovery conversations. In subject matter around AI, having a credible technologist as part of the core team (if not as a co-founder) is crucial. 3. The principal vs agent problem is rife in supply chain. Prince raised this point which tends to manifest itself when buyers and users are at a difference. Delivering on operational (user or agent) and financial objectives (buyer or principal) is important. To do this effectively and quickly, see point 2 above.

The Secret to Finding PMF is Focus Many founders I speak with aim to go horizontal, meaning they want to serve a wide range of customer types with various use cases. They often draw inspiration from companies like Airtable and Zapier. The allure is understandable—large markets, diverse customers, and products used daily, leading to multi-billion dollar valuations. However, the hidden truth about horizontal companies is that a small handful of use cases, driven by one or two key personas, account for over 75%+ of their revenue. For instance, Airtable’s core users are marketing teams, while Zapier's primary use cases are sales workflows. I admire Bobby Pinero’s post. Bobby is a talented founder who is building Equals, backed by A16Z and Craft. Equals has ambitious plans to build a next-gen spreadsheet and initially pursued a horizontal strategy. Through learned experience, Bobby is convinced that focus leads to success. He is now sharing his insights with the founder community, urging them to narrow their focus to achieve repeatable and scalable growth. What does it mean to focus? Founders can concentrate on a few areas to find Product-Market Fit (PMF): Focus on a specific company type and size. Focus on a particular persona (e.g., Head of Marketing) within that company. Focus on this persona’s most pressing pain points and problems. Tailor the product positioning to catch the attention of this persona. Design the product experience to highlight features that address the most urgent pain points. For every new feature you add, remove 1.5 old features. Check out this great interview with Figma CEO (12.5B valuation) on the importance of simplifying the product as much as possible. “The more you add, the more complex it gets, the worse it gets.” Align the team around a specific, well-defined go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Be honest with yourself and your team—are you focused enough? For most early-stage startups, the answer is likely no. Check out this week's Notorious to read more. Congrats to PLG + AI companies on your recent financings: Gumloop (YC W24), Noded Ai, Promptfoo, rift, Cypris, DocketAI, Lakera, Momentum.io, TigerBeetle, Uplimit, Pearl, QA Wolf - 80% Test Coverage in 4 Months, Chainguard, Harvey, Level AI and Cohere https://lnkd.in/gct_swMM

101 Guide on GTM operations for #SaaS #founders

A few key findings by the team at Battery Ventures: 1️⃣ EV/NTM multiple have stabilized between 3.8-12.8x 2️⃣ Market still values growth over profitability: Within the Rule of 40 bucket, companies growing >20% trade at a premium compared to their slower-growth but more-profitable peers. 3️⃣ Private companies trade at a premium ARR multiple compared to their public market peers, as private investors bet on scaling ARR by 10x to achieve a 3x return (23x compared to 7.3x) 4️⃣ There is $4T of software disruption opportunity as AI unlocks additional services and human labor spend (everyone's tallying different figures). 5️⃣ As technology moats erode and competition rises, product design and user experience become core differentiators for software companies (these aren't moats though, and are replicable too. This is a broached hole that might not be mended). 6️⃣ Many pages on Agentic AI workflows 🤖 7️⃣ Cloud-native companies have 10x’ed revenue since IPO while maintaining an average growth rate of 40%. Many private startups still in the IPO pipeline. Excellent insights by Dharmesh Thakker, Danel Dayan, Jason Mendel, Payal Modi

Data from Forerunner shows that compared to enterprise companies, venture backed consumer companies are more likely to go public and exceed the “rule of 40” at IPO once they reached series B. In his latest post, Eze Vidra reviews the positive signs for Consumer investing recovery and how AI is likely to affect this space At Remagine Ventures, we invest in how consumers spend their time and money as well as the technologies behind the major consumer trends. Learn more on VC Cafe https://lnkd.in/er-rBSMY

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗩𝗖 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿 📰 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗹𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗽 𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗅 You'll find: 🔹 The 101 Guide on GTM Operations for SaaS Founders 📊 🔹 The way we typically think about SaaS growth is changing🔮 🔹 The Extinction of Venture Capital 💀 🔹 The Future of AI Is Vertical🔧 🔹 August 2024 Monthly Funding Recap 💰 🔹 How to Build More Pipeline in 2024 🚀 🔹 Founder Mode: Valuation Growth 👨💼 🔹 The MVP-ICP Handshake 🤝 ... and more! You can read the full article and subscribe for free to receive Venture Capital and Startup content every week 👇 https://lnkd.in/ejdDeW9c