Crew Capital's Community Newsletter: Dec-23
December 2023
We come to your inbox today with our last newsletter of the year. And what a difference a year makes! We exit 2023 feeling better about the macro environment for enterprise tech than we did a year ago, with an improving demand environment, looser budgetary environment, and optimistic sentiment among founders and investors alike on what’s in store for 2024.
We close out the year with a recap of our investments and a roundup of the content we brought to you in 2023, as well as some fresh insights from our recent roundtable focused on customer success.
Happy holidays to all, and a healthy and prosperous new year!
Content from the Crew Collective
Portfolio Roundtable: We recently hosted a roundtable featuring Dan Farley, a 4x customer success leader who currently serves as VP of Customer Success at Lunio, a digital advertising protection platform. During the discussion, we explored various aspects of establishing an effective Customer Success organization, covering topics such as creating hiring roadmaps, exploring different organizational models, and understanding the optimal timing for building a CS team.
A short preview:
Farley values net revenue retention as his primary KPI when building customer success teams, and that breaks down into two components:
Gross revenue retention, or how much of a startup’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) is retained from a given cohort of customers
Revenue growth, or the incremental dollars that the same cohort of customers purchases
At Crew Capital, we consider net revenue retention to be one of the most important metrics that SaaS founders must track. Depending on the end-market that a startup sells into, there are differences in what good versus great looks like. For a startup selling to SMB, NRR in the 100-105% range might be healthy if the number of customers is expanding each year. For startups selling to mid-market or enterprise customers, 110-120% is good, 120-130% is great, and 130%+ is best-in-class.
🔍 Check out the highlights here!
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2023 Recap
Our New Investments: In 2023, we announced five new investments, spanning a variety of sectors including application software, infrastructure software, and healthcare.
Integration.app - we led a $3.5M Seed round in the company, led by CEO/Founder Daniil Bratchenko. Integration.app is building the first AI-powered integrations stack, facilitating easy creation and management of customer-facing integrations. Read more here.
Aktos - we co-led a $4.4M Seed round alongside our friends at 8VC. Aktos is led by cofounders Peter Wang and Daniel Pao, and is building the modern operating system for the accounts receivable management industry. Read more here.
Angle Health - we invested in the company’s $58M Series A. Angle is led by co-founders Tylon Wang and Anirban Gangopadhyay, who are revolutionizing health insurance with their digital-first, fully-licensed approach to building a modern health insurance platform. Read more here.
Otterize - we invested in the company’s $11.5M seed round, led by Index Ventures. Cofounders Tomer Greenwald, Ori Shoshan, and Uri Sarid are building the new standard in service-to-service authorization with an innovative approach leveraging intent-based access control. Otterize reduces friction for developers while improving security. Read more here.
Dylibso - we invested in the company’s $6.6M pre-seed & seed financings. Dylibso is led by cofounders Steve Manuel, Zach Shipko, and Benjamin Eckel, and is building software tools to help developers take WebAssembly to production. Read more here.
Updates on Existing Investments: Amidst the market's fluctuating fundraising landscape, 3 of our existing portfolio companies have successfully announced new follow-on funding rounds and 1 exited just this week.
Spiff just announced their acquisition by Salesforce. We’re incredibly excited for CEO/Founder Jeron Paul and the entire Spiff team!
MaintainX announced their $50M Series C, led by Bain Capital Ventures. We’re thrilled for CEO Chris Turlica and his team as they continue to build the number one modern CMMS software platform.
Vartana announced their $20m Series B, led by Activant Capital, as cofounders Kush Kella and Ahmed Sharif scale the leading modern B2B financing platform.
Cerby announced their $17M Series A, led by Two Sigma Ventures. Cofounders Belsasar Lepe and Vidal Gonzalez continue to execute on their vision to secure any application across the modern enterprise!
Content from the Crew Collective: This year, we've added 32 new articles to our blog, a collection of insightful conversations we've had with the exceptional founders and operators in our community, focused on the intricacies of startup creation. Check out this year’s highlights below and thank you to everyone in the Crew family for your continued support!
Achieving Product Excellence with Design Partners - on how startups can build a design partner program to gather product feedback and accelerate the process toward product market fit with Belsasar Lepe - CEO of Cerby.
India’s Growing Software-as-a-Service Industry - insights on India’s SaaS boom and advice for Indian SaaS companies looking to break into the US market by Gustaf Ericson - Associate Partner at Bain & Co.
Building a Scalable Sales Engine at Early Stage Startups - lessons on recruiting and managing a top salesforce, establishing and overseeing an efficient sales pipeline, and allocating resources within GTM teams with Kedar Dani - Investor & Advisor.
Building Great Companies in Hard Times - find out what it takes for startups to succeed in challenging macro environments by Brandon Deer - General Partner at Crew Capital.
Fundraising, AI Advancements, and the Quest for Product Market Fit - on topics ranging from the importance of product-market fit, fundraising, and investor relations to language infrastructure and the future of AI and ML with Vasco Pedro - CEO of Unbabel.
A Journey from Venture Capital to IPOs - find out valuable and actionable advice for startup founders aspiring to take a company public one day with Tien Anh Nguyen - CFO at Katalon.
Building an Antifragile Company Culture for Sustainable and Long Term Success - on the main steps that startup founders can consider to build an antifragile culture by Brandon Deer - General Partner at Crew Capital.
The Power of Marketing, Storytelling and Culture - on how startups can leverage brand to establish market leadership, the importance of storytelling, and how to build effective company culture with Bobby Patrick - CMO of UiPath.
Building a Mental Health Unicorn: The Entrepreneurial Journey of April Koh -April’s entrepreneurial path, her unique set of skills and experiences, her sources of inspiration, the challenges of scaling and the particular circumstances of the mental health space, and the ever-growing need for smart solutions to mental health issues with April Koh - CEO of Spring Health.
Accelerating Growth through Strategic Hiring, Product Positioning, and Demand Generation - on best practices for founders, including strategies for building marketing operations and demand generation, hiring the right team, product positioning and how to build the ideal customer profile with Jess Forrester - CMO of Resilia.
Company Building with Daniel Dines & Brandon Deer - the genesis and evolution of UiPath, how Daniel’s founding experience shaped him as a leader, and shared lessons for early stage entrepreneurs with Daniel Dines - Founder of UiPath.
Fostering a Collaborative Mindset, from Product to People - on scaling a multi-billion dollar business, the significance of creating purpose-built products that address real-world needs, the pivotal role of understanding user pain points, how to nurture a strong company culture with Dave Grow - CEO of Lucid Software.
Spenser Skates’ Journey from MIT to Building the Category-Defining Digital Analytics Company - lessons learned ranging from product development to scaling go-to-market strategies with Spenser Skates - CEO of Amplitude.
Building a Successful Sales Organization - on topics like establishing sales organizations, collaborating with different roles within a customer’s company, and adopting best practices for achieving GTM success with Chris Klayko - SVP of Sales at Databricks.
Navigating the Intersection of Technology and Leadership - thoughts from Melanie Kirkwood Ruiz - CIO of ABM Industries on her career trajectory, leadership philosophy, the role of diversity in innovation, the future of AI and technology trends, and working with early-stage founders as a CIO.
Building Strategic Finance Teams - insights on scaling finance teams, effective investor communication, the role of IT in digital transformation, and how to identify the SaaS metrics that truly matter with Mihai Faur - CIO of UiPath.
Sam Kassoumeh’s Journey From Hacker to Entrepreneur - find out more about Sam Kassoumeh, the COO of SecurityScorecard, and his early days of learning about cybersecurity, frameworks for thinking through founding a business, his thoughts on security concepts like Zero Trust and shift-left, and where he sees opportunities for LLMs to play a role in security.
Thank you for being part of the Crew Community. We wish you all the best in the new year!