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VC Head of Platform shares advice on how to plan a founder-focused CEO summit. About Stephanie Rich Stephanie Rich is Head of Platform at Bread and Butter Ventures where she builds scalable networks, resources, tools and knowledge that help their portfolio companies succeed. She spends time working in the Twin Cities startup ecosystem and mentoring founders building in food/ag tech, digital health and enterprise saas. Before working in VC, she gained experience in early-stage marketing and building brands and communities. And she love dogs. You can find Stephanie on LinkedIn and Twitter. Why does your VC firm host CEO Summits and how many have you done? Stephanie: We did our first official Summit in the summer of 2023. We invest all over the country (actually the world!) so we wanted to host a Founders Summit to bring our portfolio together to build connections between founders as well as to meet our network in MN. Our goal for the event was to have everyone leave feeling inspired, motivated and armed with something new -whether a new contact, new resource or new skillset. Is there anything you wish you’d known/realized before your first CEO Summit? Stephanie: I wish I’d thought (and perhaps tested) the space we used a bit more. I’d recommend really thinking about how you’ll utilized Summit locations for big presentations, workshops but also for small moments for founders to connect in small groups. The space was still great, but I think it would have been even better if we’d approached it more thoughtfully. If you had to go back in time and try and convince your investment team to allocate a budget for a CEO summit, what points would you use? Stephanie: I’d focus on the benefits that our founders would get out of summit – connection, inspiration and motivation. Zoom is great but there’s something about getting people together in person that solidifies founder to founder and investor to founder relationships. Check out Visible’s Guide to Portfolio Support Best Practices Download the Guide What costs of a CEO Summit are typically covered by the firm vs founders? Stephanie: Depends primarily on two things – size of the firm and amount of sponsorship dollars raised. At the least, firms should plan to cover all activities and food throughout the event – if you have the budget for it we recommend covering (or at least subsidizing) accommodations and travel. What’s something you’ve tried at a summit that you’d never do again? Stephanie: We did basically all of the planning and prep in-house – it was fun but a ton of lift from our team. Next time I will probably work harder to figure out what different things we could partner on or hire someone to handle – especially when it comes to design and audio-visual skills. What’s something you’ve tried that you’ll make sure to always do in the future? Stephanie: We did a great session where we had one founder briefly interview another in front of the whole group – and we repeated this about 10 times. I was blown away by the amount of research founders did to prep for this – they asked each other insightful, thoughtful questions that really led to all attendees a great window into what each person is building, the journey they’ve taken, and the things they think about every day while running the company. It proved to be super inspirational and led to lots of connections afterward. Any tips to maximize the budget/value add ratio for coordinating a CEO Summit? Stephanie: Spend money on your high-value things – speakers, major dinners/experiences, location – and find ways to deliver on the details in a more budget conscious way. Also be creative when it comes to the city you host in. While there are certainly advantages to hosting in hot spots like San Francisco, New York or Miami, you can save a ton of budget by holding your summit in a city like Minneapolis where buying our restaurants, securing venues and paying for activities requires significantly less investment. Is it worth attempting a virtual summit these days or do you think it needs to be in person? Stephanie: Part of me completely understands the desire for a virtual summit – it’s so much more cost efficient but keep in mind you’re really missing out on the in-person connection and inspiration that make in-person summits so magical. I’d also say a virtual summit is only worth it with extremely stellar and useful content. Make sure you’re giving people a real reason to show up and be very cognizant of the length of event. Visible is founder-friendly portfolio monitoring and reporting for investors. Learn More

For a bonus episode of the Founders Forward Podcast, we are joined by Mike Evans. Mike is the founder of GrubHub and the current CEO of Fixer — Fixer provides skilled experts, solving a variety of home problems in one visit. About Mike Evans Mike shares the ins and outs of his time building GrubHub — from humble beginnings in his Chicago apartment to the IPO 10+ years later. We cover everything from the difference between quitting and giving up, to building a valuable board, to raising capital, and more. Our CEO, Mike Preuss, had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Mike Evans. You can give the full episode a listen below: What you can expect to learn from Mike Evans: The difference between quitting and giving up Why Mike doesn’t like NPS as a metric How a board can be valuable How to build a list of potential investors Why cash doesn’t fix problems How to turn problems into resolutions Related Resources: Hangry: A Startup Journey Mike Evan’s personal website Building Your Ideal Investor Persona

As we invest in rapidly changing technologies that impact people and the planet, it’s of the utmost importance to consider the unintended consequences—even at the early stage. As the world felt the effects of several major crises in recent times, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles have rightfully risen to the spotlight in the venture capital industry and now play a critical role in investment decision-making. Investors hold a responsibility to guide their portfolio companies in ESG practices, not just because the world is watching—but because companies that are as concerned with their impact as they are with building their products are proven to perform better in the long run. Visible recently hosted an ESG for Venture Capital webinar with Tracy Barba, Head of ESG at 500 Startups and Director at ESG4VC, where she answered the common questions about establishing ESG reporting practices at VC firms. We’ve shared answers to some of those questions below as well as guidance on using Visible for ESG portfolio monitoring. What is ESG for Venture Capital? ESG policies and practices help investors and companies manage their environmental, social, and governance risk and identify opportunities for value creation. VCs—including 500 Startups—are widely embracing the shift. In the 2020 ESG Annual Report spearheaded by Tracy Barba, 500 Startups said their policies include: Environmental criteria to examine how a company performs as a steward of nature. Social criteria to consider a company’s relationship with its employees, suppliers, customers, and communities where it operates. Governance criteria to review a company’s leadership, shareholder rights, executive pay, audits, and internal controls. VC firms can and should provide an ESG framework as startup companies grow. It’s never too early to care—as we’ve seen in the news, large tech companies have found themselves in legal and ethical trouble over issues that could have been resolved in the earlier stages. In How Venture Capital Can Join the ESG Revolution, Stanford’s Social Innovation Review pointed out that eventually, ESG should not be understood as an “add-on” but a core value in a VC leading to better investments and companies. Ethical and legal considerations should not be ignored in the service of achieving rapid growth and swift time to market. As a VC firm, there is a risk in your ownership percentage if a portfolio company were to face legal battles, public scrutiny, and other risks that could have been prevented if they were identified earlier. ESG as a term is often used interchangeably with impact investing. As Tracy Barba points out, impact investing is thinking about the end goal and the impact of the companies you’re investing in. Having a strategy around water or climate is an example of an impact strategy, so you’re filtering deals based on that. ESG is a screening for every company, regardless of the type, measuring their environmental, social, and governance criteria. It’s hard for an early-stage company to know their impact, such as environmental waste, if they don’t have a product yet. That’s why it’s important to map ESG to relevant stages of a company’s development. At an early stage, the goal is to start to have a conversation. It’s much easier to think about how a company affects the environment from the beginning and address any issues upfront rather than fix or replace already-established processes in the future. At later stages, more detailed discussions will be appropriate. Founders overwhelmingly do care and want to consider ESG, but many don’t know when or how to get started. As an investor, you can help them start to think through ESG by adding it as an agenda item on your monthly or quarterly check-ins. An example question is: “Are you tracking your carbon footprint?” Their answer might simply be “Yes”, or it might be, “No we aren’t, but we’d like to. How can we get started?” Why is ESG Becoming More Common in Venture Capital? There is a growing understanding that ESG policies help with customer loyalty, retaining talent, and attracting more investors. It’s beneficial if a company directs time and energy towards making sure they’re operating responsibly. In venture capital, some topics are gaining momentum: Diversity – there are demonstrated benefits to having culturally diverse teams and boards. Gender equality – supporting more women and as founders and funders. Data protection & privacy of users – startups are not exempt from laws such as the GDPR and CCPA which protect the personal data privacy of consumers. Environmental impact trends – caring about carbon emissions, ethical sourcing of materials, waste management, etc. It’s important to be mindful of regulations and how they can change over time. The Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) in Europe aims to prevent greenwashing and to increase transparency around sustainability claims (source: Eurosif). While the SEC currently only recommends ESG disclosure, it may also create firm rules in the future. Companies may start measuring and reporting their ESG progress in preparation for new regulations. More than ever, founders care about being backed by VCs they align with. VCs can drive a positive shift by integrating ESG into their own operations. Showing that you care as an investor is integral in instilling ESG policies into your portfolio. How To Monitor ESG Metrics Across your VC Portfolio You can start tracking ESG metrics across your portfolio by sending them an annual questionnaire. 500 Startups, for example, collects their founder diversity info on a quarterly basis, measuring their progress over time and benchmarking to the VC industry. Founders already get asked for a lot of information, so to encourage their participation in your ESG questionnaires, ask fewer questions and use simple yes/no answers whenever possible. With Visible, you can fully customize your ESG reporting questions using Requests. Preview of an ESG Request in Visible below — View Examples of ESG Monitoring Requests in Visible. You can track answers and hold founders accountable for how they are going to implement best practices, how they are going to hire, etc. ESG questionnaires are not meant to penalize startups, but to get a sense of where they currently are—they may only just be starting to think about tracking and monitoring their water usage or diversity, for example. Once they gain customers, the questions you ask them will grow more detailed. If an early-stage company feels they do not have the resources or bandwidth to manage ESG concerns, you can help them get started by simply putting an employee manual or non-discrimination policy on the agenda for your next check-in. Remember, it’s going to be more expensive if they wait longer to implement those practices. Tips for ESG Fund Reporting External consultants can help VC firms evaluate their policies and processes across recruitment, HR, and deal flow, and recommend ways to improve. Since external consultants collect data across venture capital firms, they can educate them about best practices and compare how they are doing relative to the entire industry. Tracy Barba, Head of ESG at 500 Startups, reported that working with external consultants like Diversity VC was helpful in providing them with an external validation point. This type of industry benchmarking is now growing as a field and becoming more common practice. Resource: How to increase Diversity at your VC Fund How to Incorporate ESG Into Your Portfolio Support Now that you’ve gathered ESG data from your portfolio companies and identified opportunities for improvement, what’s next? VC firms can take the initiative to provide education, tools, training, and resources for their companies—whether in-house or through outside service providers and consultants. 500 Startups provides a vast array of ESG resources for their founders and the public, including webinars, which are available on their website: ESG for Early-Stage. Resource: Portfolio Support Best Practices for Venture Capital Investors Tracy Barba’s nonprofit ESG4VC aims to provide education, office hours, and research for venture capital firms to help establish standards and encourage movement in a positive direction across the industry. It’s been said that we can’t fix what we can’t measure. When it comes to improving the impact business has on the environment, workers, and communities, investors can be proactive in incorporating ESG policies at the very early stages so that everyone can benefit. View Examples of ESG Monitoring Requests in Visible.

Building a startup is difficult. For most founders, it is their first time starting and building a business. However, there is not academy or university a first-time founder can lean on the learn the ways. The best way to learn as a founder is by doing. But founders need to turn to their peers, investors, stakeholders, and resources along the way to help hone their skills and build their company. Related Resource: Business Startup Advice: 15 Helpful Tips for Startup Growth Learn more about the best startup resources for founders below: What are startup resources? As we mentioned earlier, building a startup is difficult. Leveraging the existing resources around is a surefire way to hone your founder skills on the fly. Instead of having to build and learn things in-house, founders can lean on the apps, leaders, and tools around them to build their businesses. Related Resource: Top SaaS Products for Startups Learn about the resources and tools available to startup founders below: 1. Accounting and finance At the core of any business are the financials and data surrounding it. To help with accounting and finance, founders can lean on different software to help automate and improve accounting efforts. In addition to software and tools, there are countless accounting and finance firms geared specifically towards startups. Learn more about popular startup accounting firms below: Related Resource: A User-Friendly Guide to Startup Accounting Accounting software Chances are, most founders do not have the skill set to maintain their startup books. In addition to the skill, it is also time-consuming. Thankfully, there are countless accounting tools that startups can use to stay on top of their financials. Check out a few popular accounting software options below: Xero QuickBooks Online Freshbooks Invoicing software Like accounting, invoicing is a critical part of startup financials. Leveraging software to collect invoices is a surefire way for everyone involved to save time. As most startups use invoicing software, the options are generally robust and can handle any customizations for your business. Check out a few popular options below: Zoho Stripe Square Related Resource: Important Startup Financials to Win Investors 2. Domain and website tools For most modern-day startups, a website is table stakes. As more commerce takes place online, having a modern website can separate you from the field. Of course, most founders don’t have the domain and website knowledge to build a website from scratch. However, there are hundreds of tools to help founders manage their domain and build a website with limited design and coding knowledge. Check out a few of the most popular website tools below: WordPress Webflow GoDaddy Google Domains Related resource: 20 Best SaaS Tools for Startups 3. Marketing and content management Going hand in hand with a modern website is a modern approach to marketing. Currently, most startups are running some form of content and marketing playbook – no matter how big or small. For most startups, this looks like regular email communication, occasional blogs, and a presence on social media. In order to help teams stay on top of their content and marketing efforts, there are hundreds of dedicated tools. Learn more below: Analytics software As the old saying goes, “you can’t improve what you don’t measure.” As a baseline, startups that are investing in content should have some analytics in place to properly measure what is working. Most of these tools can be implemented with limited tech expertise and can be built out as your company scales. Check out a few popular analytics tools below: Google Analytics Google Search Console Amplitude Customer relationship management (CRM) software Another tool that most founders should invest in is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. CRMs are the lifeblood of productive sales and marketing teams and allow everyone to track conversations and pipeline data. CRMs come in all shapes and sizes. Some are dedicated to specific use cases while others cover everything from manual data entry to robust integrations and add-ons. Learn more about a few of the most popular CRMs below: HubSpot Salesforce Pipedrive Email marketing As we previously mentioned, email marketing has become an important aspect of how startups market and communicate with their customers. There are hundreds of email marketing tools that founders can leverage to build out their email marketing efforts. Check out a few of the popular email marketing tools below: Mailchimp HubSpot SendGrid Social media management At this point, it is expected that every business will have some sort of presence on social media. As the platforms continue to grow (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, etc.) staying on top of all of them can be a hassle. In order to help marketers stay on top of their social media efforts, there are countless tools to help. Check out a few of the most popular tools below: Hootsuite Buffer Sprout Social 4. Project management One of the differentiators of a startup is the fact that the team can iterate and move quickly. Whereas larger corporations have thousands of employees and guidelines, building products or new acquisition strategies can come with long delays. On the flip side, startups generally have smaller teams and the ability to push a new product or test new acquisition efforts overnight. In order to stay on top of these efforts, startups should consider implementing a project management tool to stay on top of their day-to-day projects. This can mean everything from bug fixes in products to full-fledged marketing campaigns. Check out a few of the most popular project management tools below: Asana Teamwork Monday Notion 5. Human resources management As startups grow, having the resources in place for employees is vital. Most startups don’t bring on a dedicated human resource manager until later in their company lifecycle. To save time and to make sure you are offering the resources your teammates need, consider a management tool to help. Check out a few of the most popular human resource management tools below: Gusto Bamboo HR Zenefits 6. Legal help Over the course of starting and building a business, founders will face legal aspects. Chances are most founders don’t have the legal chops to get through the basic practices needed throughout their businesses lifecycle it is important to have help with legal. This can come in the form of bringing on an outside law firm or leveraging tools and software to help with the legal aspects that come with building a business. 7. Investor relationship management For startups that have raised venture capital, having a plan in place to communicate and leverage their investors is a must. At Visible, we have found companies that regularly communicate with their investors are 300% more likely to raise follow on funding. Raising venture capital is a relationship-based game. In order to best your chances of raising capital, you need to build relationships and trust with potential investors. Chances are that potential investors will turn to your current investors for due diligence so it is important they give a glowing review. Additionally, investors can be a wealth of knowledge when it comes to hiring, strategy, and building product. Learn more below: Related Resource: The Complete Guide to Investor Reporting and Updates Related Resource: Top VCs Investing in the $100 Billion Creator Economy Related Resource: Advisory Shares Explained: Empowering Entrepreneurs and Investors Fund your startup with Visible Raising capital for your business is another skill founders need to hone. There are countless resources and tools to help founders raise capital too. Related Resources: All-Encompassing Startup Fundraising Guide Business Venture vs Startup: Key Similarities and Differences Find investors for your business, track your fundraising, share your pitch deck, and update investors all from one platform. Give Visible a free try for 14 days here.

By: Kayla Liederbach, Strut Consulting For today’s emerging manager, attracting the best founders and LPs to join on your quest is a critical piece of your fund journey. In order to do this successfully over the long-term, you must address the one thing so many others run from: Marketing. Yes, good old-fashioned getting the word out! While at the end of the day, word-of-mouth referrals will be the most valuable source of quality deal flow, there are some fundamental bases to be covered when it comes to raising your visibility in the venture capital ecosystem, whether through social media, creating blog content, or hosting events. Below is a quick crash course every emerging manager should take when thinking through their fund’s marketing strategy. 1. Codify your main goal(s) The first thing to ask yourself is: What are the fund’s primary goals? Every GP has a limited amount of bandwidth, and countless marketing efforts can be made. So before you race out to start recording a podcast, it’s important to think about tying your efforts to activities that are in line with your main business goal(s). These goals can (and probably will) change every year, sometimes even every quarter, and that’s why it’s important to stop and think through them carefully first. Examples of goals are: Closing your first fund, increasing the number of founder applications by 25%, helping your founders become visible to other investors, cultivating your founder community, and raising another fund. 2. Know your audience For the most part, your audience is going to be founders and LPs, both current and prospective. Secondary audiences include your community-at-large, the media, and the general public. You want to keep this in mind when deciding what types of content and resources to create and where to share them. LPs and founders are already bombarded with emails and cold outreaches, so GPs need to be thoughtful and intentional about their touch points. 3. Build your audience on social media I’m going to give away one of my biggest tips: Follow all of your portfolio companies on social media and set up news alerts for each, which will give you an endless stream of ideas to curate meaningful content. After all, isn’t it really all about the founders and highlighting their success? I recommend using Google Alerts, Feedly, Mention, or any other services that work best for you. You can find creative and thoughtful ways to connect yourself to their success story without being braggy. Also, be sure to make a Twitter list of your portfolio companies to see what they’re sharing that’s newsworthy and/or worth re-sharing. Here’s another tip: Share a mix of your own news and content as well as top-level industry content from others. Think of social media as a cocktail party rather than a sales pitch. No one wants to hang out with that person who only talks about themselves all night. Elevating others almost certainly guarantees positive reverberations. Some other quick social media tips: Share a variety of media when you can, including photos and videos, in the main part of your post to increase engagement on the algorithm. Links are certainly interesting and relevant, but contained media posts on platforms like LinkedIn actually perform better because they increase dwell time (meaning, LinkedIn wants people to stay on LinkedIn). Create public Twitter lists to engage with your portfolio companies and private Twitter lists to engage with writers and other influencers. 4. Start posting thoughtful blog content If you’re investing in early-stage companies, one way to help boost their visibility is to write a blog post when you invest in them or when they have a newsworthy moment. This not only elevates the founder(s) and the company in a meaningful way but also serves as a topic of interest to share on your social media! As a general rule, you should be sharing your blog posts at least two to three times on both Twitter and LinkedIn. Aim to say something unique or different each time you share, such as (1) using the title of the article in the first post, (2) highlighting a great quote from the article in the second post, and (3) sharing a quick but thoughtful summary or insight in the third post. Some solid ideas for blog posts are: Company profiles (this can be written by anyone on the team). A post about why you invested that’s written by you (obviously!). A founder’s background story, which requires an interview with the founder or founding team. 5. Keep people engaged Now that you’re churning out awesome content and tracking portfolio news to share on social media, you can start recapping highlights from the past month or quarter and curating it into a quality newsletter. Creating a newsletter is also the perfect way to let your community-at-large know what types of startups you’re looking to invest in, which in turn helps to drive referrals. If you’re able to segment your newsletter into one that’s founder-focused, one that’s LP-focused, and one for a more general audience and customize content accordingly, that’s even better! Doing so allows you to create a current and clear call to action for each segment to increase engagement. Events are a tested and true way to further engage your community. Especially after enduring the last two years, meeting in person for things like intimate founder dinners to larger summits is more compelling than ever before. However, you can also leverage the virtual power of webinars as a way to connect with founders throughout the year. Bringing in experts who can teach about topics that matter to founders most—like fundraising, PR, sales, marketing, and people ops—is a powerful way to capture their attention while allowing them to learn and also engage with their peers. Final note: Don’t forget about the power of internal comms. I know I’ve talked a lot about external-facing marketing initiatives that can raise your fund’s visibility to the outside world. But keeping your own community of founders, LPs, and your employees informed and engaged through internal comms is what’s going to help your firm’s brand stand the test of time. Never forget that helping your founders as much as possible—especially while their budget for in-house marketing talent might be tight to nonexistent—is what’s going to lead to future (valuable) referrals to other founders. And, if your founders love you and are grateful for your support, they might just mention you to the media when they have major news of their own. We all love a good shoutout, am I right? 🙂 Kayla Liederbach is the Communications & Marketing Manager at Strut, a venture capital consulting firm providing operations, marketing, and people ops expertise to funds of all shapes and sizes. If you would like help with your firm’s marketing and communications strategy, get in touch at ops@strutconsulting.com. Three ways Visible can help VCs with their Fund Marketing: Create a custom branded Investor Update Template for our Template Library. Get in touch with us at Matt@Visible.vc if you’re interested Create or update your Fund profile on our Connect Investor Database. This is an investor database used by 3,000+ founders. Get featured in one of our Investor Spotlight List Articles. Get in touch with us at Angelina@visible.vc if you’re interested.

We can all agree that first impressions are important. Whether we like it or not, our first interactions with someone, often set the tone for the duration of the relationship. This holds true when it comes to welcoming a new company into your fund’s portfolio as well. This is why it’s important for Venture Capital Platforms to provide new portfolio companies with an organized, well-thought-out, first impression to their post-investment support resources. This will help with company <> Platform engagement and is an opportunity to live up to your fund’s brand promise. If you’re looking to improve your onboarding experience for new companies, check out the resources and templates in this guide to get started. This guide covers the following: 1) Sending your initial welcome email 2) Setting up your first introductory meeting 3) Sending out thoughtful swag 4) Integrating founders into your community 5) Scheduling a follow-up meeting Related Resources: How to Hire Your First VC Platform Role Portfolio Data Collection Tips Visible for Investors is a founder-friendly portfolio monitoring and reporting platform. Schedule time with our team to learn more.

Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days. Building a startup is difficult. Being a founder can almost feel impossible. There are very few people that have been in the shoes of a startup founder. This means that there are very few people that know the difficulties that come along with building and leading a startup. As a startup founder, you are responsible for hiring and retaining employees, securing capital, developing a product, building culture, and more. Chances are you haven’t lead all of those things in the past. Because of this it is important for you to look to the founders and leaders that have been there before to uncover advice. Related Resource: 7 Essential Business Startup Resources Check out our 15 helpful tips for startup success below: 1) Be Persistent Leading a startup is full of ups and downs. Inevitably, things will not go as planned and will feel like everything is headed in the wrong direction. Paul Graham, Founder of YC, coined the term “trough of sorrow” to explain when your startup loses momentum and feels like things are all headed in the wrong direction. In order to navigate troughs of sorrow and down periods, startup founders need to stay persistent. You’ll need to focus on what truly matters to your business and stay the course. Related Resource: The 23 Best Books for Startup Founders at Any Stage 2) Always Be Solution Focused As we’ve alluded to earlier, founders are pulled in a hundred different directions. — whether it be with hiring, fundraising, or developing a product. It is easy to get distracted and spend your time (and your team’s time) working on projects or initiatives that are not core to your business. As a startup founder, it is important to stay focused on your solution and the problem you are solving. As Kyle Wong, the CEO of Pixlee, puts it, “Having a product that does a lot of things but doesn’t do anything well is useless. Your goal should be to definitively say that your product is the best at doing X for market Y. You should ask yourself, “Which customers do I care most about, and what can I do to make their experience better?” Determine what your company is uniquely good at and stay focused on that solution. 3) Invest in Yourself When managing a team, it can be difficult to put yourself aside and continue to invest in the team members around you. As a startup founder, it is important that you take the time and resources necessary to invest in yourself. This will differ from founder to founder depending on they do this. For some it might be setting time off from work to hone other skills, attending leadership conferences, etc. 4) Execution, Execution, Execution Forecasting growth and building a product roadmap is a task in itself. Executing those plans and roadmaps is vital, and difficult. In order for a startup to succeed, the leadership team needs to be focused on execution from day to day to make sure everyone is headed in the same direction. As the team at Basis Set Ventures puts it, “Execution is the only aspect that is consistently correlated with startup success. Across all archetypes, day-to-day effectiveness and whether the founder learns and adapts quickly are most correlated with success.” Check out the image from their Founder Superpowers report below: 5) Focus on Results Going hand in hand with execution is the ability to focus on results. It can be easy to get consumed by the inputs, but if the results are not there it is important to quickly pivot and try inputs and strategies that show real results. Because most startups have a limited runway (cash) it is important to move quickly and stay rallied behind results. If you find a marketing or acquisition channel is not moving the needle, it is important to quickly cut that channel and focus on what is driving results. 6) Build a Reliable Network The startup world is a tight-knit community. Different VC funds and corporations have made it incredibly easy for founders and startup employees to network and help one another. Having a reliable network is a great way to help in all aspects of business building. Connections will be able to make introductions to potential investors, ideal customers, and job candidates. It is important to be thoughtful about the relationships you are building and focus on building trust before pursuing business interests. As the team at Hustle Fund wrote, “Networking wasn’t about going to a bunch of conferences and exchanging business cards. Networking is simply about making friends.” 7) Protect Your Equity Equity is the most expensive asset a startup founder has. It is important to protect and manage your equity accordingly. At Visible, we believe that startup leaders should have dedicated tools for managing their equity — just as sales and marketing teams have dedicated tools to manage their day-to-day. Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days. 8) Become a Storyteller Storytelling is a crucial part of building a successful startup. Sure there are more important aspects of business building but being a great storyteller will help immensely with fundraising, hiring, and messaging. As Steve Jobs puts it, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation to come.” Kristian Andersen of High Alpha joined us to discuss how founders can leverage storytelling to craft their pitch deck for successful fundraise. Learn more here or check out a snippet below: 9) Embrace the Journey Building a startup is a journey. As we mentioned previously, there are many ups and downs when it comes to building a startup. While it can be easy to stay focused on the day-to-day it is important to take a step back and look at the journey. It is easy to focus on the lows but is rewarding to allow yourself and your team to celebrate the wins. 10) Don’t Let Yourself Get Burned Out Building a successful startup requires solving a lot of difficult problems. At times it might feel like you are banging your head against the wall. It is easy to get consumed by a problem and put everything you have into solving it day after day. However, this can lead to burnout and cost you, and your team, in the long run. In order to avoid burnout, it is important to make yourself, especially your physical and mental health, a priority. Learn more below. 11) Make Physical and Mental Health a Priority Launching a startup is an exhausting job and can take a toll on a founder’s physical and mental health. As the team at Starting Line VC puts it, “Building a startup is an exhausting process. It is terrifying, stressful, and confusing. It can also be exhilarating. The highs are higher than any other feeling; the lows depress similarly. As a founder remarked to us recently, “my mood is dictated daily by the performance of our Shopify revenue. If not managed and balanced, these volatile emotions can become unhealthy. Worse, they can affect performance.” Learn more about managing your physical and mental health with Ezra Galston of Starting Line Ventures here. 12) Strategically Plan Out Every Work Day If you’ve been following along, you have probably noticed that focus is a core aspect of startup success. Focus in everything from product development to your daily routine can help a company succeed. By having a strategic plan for each workday, you’ll be able to maintain that focus on the big problems you are solving. Of course, there is no one size fits all strategy to planning out a work day. Find what works best for you and stick to it. 13) Make Different Mistakes Things never go as planned when building a startup. Mistakes are inevitable. The only thing you can do is learn from your previous mistakes and do your best to make them again. Mistakes are a great way to learn, especially as an early stage startup. You can’t let the mistakes weigh you down and have to be viewed as a learning opportunity that won’t happen again. 14) Progress Not Perfection Many times it can be intimidating to put a product, pitch deck, email, blog post, etc. out before it is perfect. However, most startups are strapped for cash and need to balance speed with perfection. Of course, it would be ideal to have every aspect of your product be perfect, but that is not realistic. One of the differentiators of a startup is the ability to move quickly. In order to do so, you need to focus on the progress. Finding the right balance of progress and perfection is key to moving efficiently. 15) Know Your Customers Without customers, a business fails to exist. Having a voice of your customers and a true understanding of their needs is a surefire way to make sure you are building the right product, sending the right message, and hiring the right team members. In order to know your customers, you need to take the time to understand their needs and build relationships with individuals. Building relationships with customers will also reduce the likelihood of churn. Chances are your customers are working through the same things as you and will understand what you are going through. Scott Dorsey of High Alpha stresses that founders should be close to their customers than ever before when working through tough times. From our post, 4 Takeaways From Our Webinar with Scott Dorsey, “During uncertain times, it is more important than ever to be close to your customers. Your customers are going through the same things that you are going through. Establish and preserve your relationship so you can grow together on the other side of the downturn.” Learn Everything You Need to Know About Funding With Visible Boiling down what it takes to build a successful startup into 15 tips is unrealistic. Some things may work for one company and not the other. The only way to truly understand what works for you and your business is by getting out there and doing it. At Visible, we want to be there along the way to help you with all things related to fundraising, investor relations, and metric tracking. Learn more about how we can help with your fundraising efforts here. Related resource: Strategic Pivots in Startups: Deciding When, Understanding Why, and Executing How

Kingsley Advani is a British investor who started investing in 2013 and turned $34k in savings into ~$100m in private investments. Since then he’s co-founded an angel group with 1,000+ investors and founded a private markets platform, Allocations. Kingsley is joining Visible.vc to discuss the benefits of creating a hybrid SPV + fund strategy. Kingsley Advani, Founder and CEO of Allocations joined us to discuss trends in SPV investing and the benefits of raising SPV’s for VC fund managers. In this webinar recording, you can expect to learn: SPV Overview (what are they, how did they become popular) Kingsley’s perspective on the ‘Why Now’ for SPV’s 5 Benefits of Creating a Hybrid SPV + Fund Strategy Demo of Creating an SPV in Allocations Using Visible for SPV + Fund Reporting

Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days. The way startups build and innovate changes every year. If you look back at just 20 years, 10 years, or 5 even years ago – the way startups work and innovate has dramatically changed. As the way startups innovate changes so do the tools and resources available to startups. Over the last 2 or 3 decades, SaaS (software as a service) products have continued to grow and take over the technology landscape. Related Resource: The SaaS Business Model: How and Why it Works Learn more about SaaS products and how they can build your business below: What are SaaS products? SaaS is short for software as a service. Salesforce, oftentimes considered one of the original SaaS companies, explains it as, “Instead of installing and maintaining software, you simply access it via the Internet, freeing yourself from complex software and hardware management. SaaS applications are sometimes called Web-based software, on-demand software, or hosted software. Whatever the name, SaaS applications run on a SaaS provider’s servers. The provider manages access to the application, including security, availability, and performance.” Before SaaS products, it required companies to buy expensive hardware and have a physical location for employees to access their software. With SaaS products, any employee with internet can access their software from anywhere in the world. Related Resource: 20 Best SaaS Tools for Startups Learn more about the benefits and types of SaaS products below: Why should startups use SaaS products? At this point, it is assumed that most, if not all, startups are leveraging SaaS products to build their company. SaaS products enable employees to access their software and tools from anywhere across the globe. Because of this it enables remote work and allows startups to hire the best talent anywhere on the planet. Additionally, SaaS products are robust and can be tailored to just about any business. This allows teams to build, communicate, and automate quicker than ever before. It also allows for teams to get set up and use a new tool quickly — in the past, this would be a long process that could take months but now can be solved in a quick onboarding or upload. Learn more about the specific benefits of leveraging SaaS products for your business below: Benefits of SaaS products We’ve alluded to the benefits of SaaS products throughout this post but there are a few key benefits that are especially worth mentioning: Save time with automation One of the biggest benefits of SaaS products is pure time save. Software products can take manual tasks and turn them into an automated process that can save countless hours. Cost efficiency Another major benefit of SaaS products is cost efficiency. Most SaaS products offer tiered pricing and annual discounts that can lead to huge cost savings for startups. As more startups implement SaaS tools the pricing and plans have evolved to help scale with companies as they grow. Easy integration Another benefit of the explosion in SaaS products is the integrations and the ease to set them up. Most companies will have a somewhat similar tech stack so there are natural integrations that have evolved that will help startups connect existing tools and automate even more processes. You can also check out tools like Zapier that help connect SaaS products. Remote work SaaS products only require access to the internet. Because of this, employees can work from anywhere. This might help enable a remote or hybrid work environment and allow employees to work from home or on the fly. Top SaaS Products for Startups As we’ve continued to mention, SaaS products and companies have exploded over the last few decades. Because of this, there are thousands of SaaS solutions to help common business problems. Learn more about some of the top and most popular SaaS products below: Team collaboration As more tools move to the internet, being able to collaborate with colleagues is a must. Team members need a place where they can comment, plan, and collaborate on ongoing projects. Team collaboration tools can be fully dedicated or built into existing tools (e.g. leaving comments on a Google Doc). Learn more about some of the popular team collaboration tools and resources below: Google Drive Notion Slack Project Management Going hand in hand with team collaboration tools are project management tools. Project management tools stay on top of any ongoing projects within your team. These tools are incredibly valuable in every aspect of the business building but especially when it comes to marketing and product teams. Marketing teams can use project management tools to stay on top of their marketing campaigns and efforts — for example, tracking everything from initial copy and inspiration to performance and tweaks. For product teams, project management is extremely important because it keeps the team on the same page throughout the development process. Learn more about some of the most popular project management tools below: Basecamp Notion Asana Marketing and social media A marketing and social media tool is table stakes for most startups. Email marketing, blogs, videos, social media, etc. make up most modern-day marketing tools. Having a place to manage and publish your different marketing efforts is a must. There are some tools that cover every aspect of marketing. On the other hand, there are dedicated tools that will help in specific areas of marketing (e.g. Buffer for social media posting). Learn more about popular marketing and social media tools below: HubSpot Sprout Social Buffer Hoot Suite Accounting Accounting and bookkeeping is another area that has been improved by software products. Accounting tools allow individuals that might not be an expert in accounting to get a good understanding of their financials. On the other hand, accounting tools can also be built out and robust enough for finance professionals. Learn more about popular accounting software below: Xero Quickbooks Online FreshBooks Customer Service As your company grows staying on top of your customer service is a must. Luckily there are hundreds of software tools dedicated to helping with customer service. Like marketing tools, there are some that will cover every aspect of customer service. There are also dedicated tools that will help with different aspects of your customer success efforts — e.g. knowledge base, email support, etc. Learn more about popular customer service tools below: Intercom HubSpot Front Customer relationship management Customer relationship management (or CRM) has turned into a must for most startups. CRMs are the hubs for managing communication and progress with current and potential investors. Customer relationship management tools generally offer add-ons and additional features that will help with other areas of your business. This can be helpful when it comes to cutting costs and finding a simple solution for your employees. Related Resource: 7 Essential Business Startup Resources Learn more about popular CRMs below: Salesforce HubSpot Pipedrive Content management system As software and tools have moved to the internet so have most businesses in general. Even if a business does not sell to customers directly via the internet, chances are they have a website. Having a place to manage your website and the content you are producing is a must. Content management systems (CMS) have become table stakes for any business that has a website and produces any level of content. Learn more about popular content management systems below: WordPress Webflow Contentful Human resources management As a startup founder, it is vital to stay on top of your employees and team members. Startups are in constant competition for both capital and talent. It is crucial to have a human resources management system in place to keep employees happy and supportive. Learn more about popular HR resources below: Gusto Zenefits Lattice Payroll and benefits As we mentioned above, startups need a system to engage with their employees. One of the aspects of successful employee onboarding is having tools in place to help with payroll and managing benefits. As SaaS payroll and benefits tools have become increasingly common, the options are countless. Learn more about popular payroll and benefits tools below: Gusto Zenefits Onpay Investor relationship management Startups are in constant competition for 2 resources — capital and talent. Having a game plan in place to attract both is vital. If you’re a startup that has taken on outside funding it is important to have a game plan in place to report and communicate with your investors. This will not only improve your odds of raising follow-on funding but will allow you to lean on investors for help with hiring, strategy, and more. Investor relationships and communication are our bread and butter at Visible. Related Resources: The Understandable Guide to Startup Funding Stages Valuing Startups: 10 Popular Methods 23 Top VC Investors Actively Funding SaaS Startups Boost your startup’s investor relations with Visible Adopting SaaS tools for your startup is a surefire way to build efficiency around every aspect of your business. In order to best tap into your investors, you need a tool in place to communicate and report to your investors. Give Visible a try to up your investor relations. Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days.

About Trey Trey Closson is the CEO and Founder of Amplio — a platform for proactively identifying the risks of tomorrow’s supply chain. Prior to starting Amplio, Trey spent time at Flexport and Georgia Pacific. Trey joins us to break down his first year as a founder and what he has learned from transitioning from operator to founder. Episode Takeaways A couple of key topics we hit on: The current state of the global supply chain issues How Amplio found their first customers How Amplio is using pilot programs to scale their customer base The importance of relentless focus Why founders should invest in community Why building a startup is a marathon, not a sprint Watch the Episode Give episode 6 a listen below (or give it a listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you normally consume podcasts)

Startups and founders are faced with countless challenges and decisions on a daily basis. Many might be small challenges that can be solved personally but there are always larger decisions and challenges looming that require the help of a lawyer or law firm. In order to better help you choose the right law firm for your startup, we put together some tips, advice, and a few actual firms dedicated to helping startups below. As always, we recommend speaking with your peers, mentors, board members, general counsel, and others when making the decision to bring on a contractor, partner, or law firm. Why It’s Important to Be Selective About Your Law Firm Unfortunately, there is more to building startups than building a product and taking it to market. Along the way, there are events, situations, and decisions filled with legalese that requires the help of a lawyer or law firm. While it might be tempting to get going with the first law firm you speak with, they ultimately will be a partner to your business and should require some selectivity. So what areas will you likely need a hand with from your future law firm? As always, we recommend speaking with your peers, mentors, board members, general counsel, and others when making the decision to bring on a contractor, partner, or law firm. 1. Incorporation Incorporating your startup is an early step in the startup journey. As put at the team at Startup Savant, “Incorporating your startup means establishing your business as a formal legal entity, separate from its founders or owners.” To help with this legal process, you’ll want to make sure you have legal representation to help throughout the process. As written by the team at Contracts Counsel, “A partnership agreement lawyer assists members of a partnership to decide on a business structure through drafting a legal document. Partnership agreement lawyers essentially help businesses craft partnership agreements that reflect the relationship.” 2. Partnership agreements Another early technicality of building a startup is the partnerships and agreements that come with it. 3. Employment Issues Inevitably throughout the life of building a business, employment issues will arise. In order to make sure everyone involved is covered it might make sense to bring in legal help. 4. Protecting your Idea Law firms are also a great way to protect any original ideas or products. This can include trademarks, patents, copyright protection, and more. 5. Protecting your Brand’s Identity Going hand in hand with protecting ideas is protecting your brand’s identity. As the team at HG.org puts it, “Another manner of protecting the ideas of the creator is through a trademark. These may be but are not required to be registered through the United States Patent and Trademark Office. There are benefits when this is completed, but the trademark itself protects the image or brand of a company or owner.” 6. Generating Website Documents and Dealing with Data Privacy Issues As internet regulation continues to change and mature so do the documents and data that deal with privacy issues. As companies have been impacted by GDPR, legal documentation and privacy issues are a standard. Lawyers are a great source to help here. 7. Issuing Stock to Co-Founders When working with cap tables and issuing stock and stock options to co-founders and employees, seeking a lawyer’s help is inevitable. Related Resource: Employee Stock Options Guide for Startups 8. Complying with SEC Regulations When working in the US, startups, and companies are subject to regulations from the SEC. Working with a law firm can be a great source to make sure you are compliant. Related Resource: 6 Components of a VC Startup Term Sheet (Template Included) 9. Financing your Business There is a growing interest amongst law firms to invest in their clients. This has the chance to help fuel growth for your business but can also change the relationship with your law firm. What to Look for In A Startup Law Firm When it comes down to looking for your specific law firm there are certainly questions and thoughts to keep in mind. Before even taking a meeting with a potential law firm, ask yourself the following questions. While you might not be able to answer them fully before speaking with them, you should have a strong understanding and can spend your time meeting with them to focus on the fine details. As always, we recommend speaking with your peers, mentors, board members, general counsel, and others when making the decision to bring on a contractor, partner, or law firm. Do they have startup experience? There are countless types of law firms that all specialize in different areas. Even within business, there are law firms that will hone in on different aspects. Make sure you are communicating and working with law firms that understand the mechanics of startups and have done it before. What does their scope of work look like? Working with a law firm is another relationship and partner for you and your business to take on. Be sure you understand how they communicate, their standards, and more before hiring a firm. Talking to current and past clients of theirs is a great way to verify their scope of work. Do they have valuable startup connections? If you are hiring a law firm that specializes in the startup world, chances are they have connections to other startups and partners in the space. Determine their willingness to make connections and consider if that is something you are looking for in a law firm. Is the cost in-line with your budget? Simply put, are they affordable? Law firms come in all shapes and sizes. It can be a considerable expense for your business so make sure they align with your budget and goals. Do you share similar values and/or culture? As we’ve alluded to previously, adding a law firm is adding a partner to your business. Making sure there is a chemistry and match in your values/culture is a great way to ensure a strong relationship. Related Resource: A User-Friendly Guide to Startup Accounting Great Startup Law Firms to Consider As always, we recommend speaking with your peers, mentors, board members, and others when making the decision to bring on a contractor, partner, or law firm. However, we have laid out a few law firms below that specialize in working with startups: Cooley Cooley is a startup-focused law firm based out of Palo Alto. As the team at Firsthand puts it, “The go-to firm for startups and early-stage companies, Cooley is ideal for those seeking cutting-edge work with innovative clients. The firm has a highly social culture that will no doubt appeal to affable personalities and boasts a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion. With more than 1,200 lawyers practicing across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Cooley is synonymous with tech and venture capital work. The firm is also well regarded for its cleantech, cyber/data/privacy, IP, M&A, private equity, and securities practices.” Learn more here. Related Resource: Private Equity vs Venture Capital: Critical Differences Fenwick Fenwick has offices across the United States and has built a name for itself by working with high-profile technology companies and startups. Fenwick features a startup resources section on their website and takes a founder’s first approach. Learn more here. Gunderson Dettmer As put by the team at NYC Founder Guide, “Six years in a row, Pitchbook has ranked this firm #1 for high-growth technology and life sciences companies and investors globally. With a singular focus on startups and emerging companies, they are recognized as one of the most active law firms in the VC market, and in 2019, they closed $18+ billion of venture capital private financings. Startups they’ve worked with include Harry’s, Vimeo, Skillshare, and Oscar.” Learn more here. Goodwin From their website, “We are a global law firm with a history of working on groundbreaking matters, and an increasingly focused approach to working with clients in the financial, private equity, real estate, technology and life sciences industries. Our more than 1,800 corporate and litigation lawyers leverage their specific experience and assemble full-service teams to advise clients in these and adjacent industries.” Learn more here. Keep Investors Up-To-Date with Visible Getting in the habit of sending monthly investor updates is a surefire way to help with fundraising, hiring, and growing. To get started, pick a template from our library and tailor it to your business. Just remember that at the end of the day, sending anything is better than sending nothing at all. Visible allows founders to update investors, track key metrics, and raise capital all from one platform. Try Visible for free to send your next investor update.

About Matt & Zach Matt Achariam and Zach Hamed are the Co-founders of Clay. Clay is a beautiful and private home for all your relationships. Populated from the ground up using your calendar and social history, Clay is the most stunning, powerful way to remember who you’ve met—and what matters to them. Episode Takeaways Matt and Zach joined us for season 3 of the Founders Forward Podcast to share their stories. Clay has scaled rapidly and has raised capital from the likes of Forerunner Ventures and General Catalyst. They join us to break down: How they acquired their first customers Why they manually onboarded their first users Why they focus on the problem to better build product Why founders should stop overthinking outreach The importance of empathy in the startup world Why you should compliment more people A relationship-based approach to fundraising Related Resource: Investor Outreach Strategy: 9 Step Guide Watch the Episode Give episode 3 a listen below (or give it a listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you normally consume podcasts)

About Yaw Yaw Aning is the CEO and Founder of Malomo. Malomo is a shipment tracking platform that helps eCommerce brands turn order tracking from a cost center into a profitable marketing channel. Episode Takeaways Yaw joined us for season 3, episode 2 of our Founders Forward Podcast to dive into his career as a founder. He started his career in consulting which eventually led him to founding Malomo. Since founding Malomo, the team has rapidly grown and they’ve raised $8M+. Before ever thinking about funding, Yaw and the team had to determine what problems they were going to solve and did everything in their power to find their first customers. Yaw joins us to break down: How Malomo found their first customers The importance of finding a co-founder How and why you need to solve customer’s problems How Yaw found his co-founder The importance of being able to shut down How to prioritize time Watch the Episode Give episode 2 with Yaw Aning a listen below (or give it a listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you normally consume podcasts) The Founders Forward is Produced by Visible Our platforms helps thousands of founders update investors, track key metrics, and raise capital. Try Visible free for 14 days.

Hiring and attracting top talent is a major responsibility of any startup founder. In order to compete with large corporations, startups oftentimes have to get creative to attract top talent. One of the top benefits a startup can offer is employee stock options. This gives an employee potential upside and ultimately aligns both parties. There are two major forms of stock options — NSOs (non-qualified stock options) and ISOs (qualified incentive stock options). How do you know what type of stock options to use for your company? Check out our breakdown of both ISOs and NSOs below: Note: We always recommend seeking advice from lawyers or councils when working with your equity. What Are Qualified Incentive Stock Options or ISOs? As put by the team at Investopedia, “An incentive stock option (ISO) is a corporate benefit that gives an employee the right to buy shares of company stock at a discounted price with the added benefit of possible tax breaks on the profit. The profit on qualified ISOs is usually taxed at the capital gains rate, not the higher rate for ordinary income. Non-qualified stock options (NSOs) are taxed as ordinary income.” The main difference between ISOs and NSOs are the tax structure and possible benefits. Traditionally, ISOs are awarded to high-value employees. How Are ISOs Taxed? As mentioned above, ISOs are taxed at the capital gains rate. This means that ISO holders are subject to tax benefits as the capital gains rate is generally lower than the ordinary income rate. It is worth noting that ISOs are taxed at the time of selling the stock (not when vesting or exercising). When an employee (or person) is granted sock options there is a strike price (which is the value at the time of granting). Once an employee decides to exercise their options, they have the ability to sell their stock or hold on to the stock. If the same person sells their stock at (the fair market value) at a later date the difference between the strike price and fair market value is the profit — or what the employee is taxed on. Check out the long-term capital gains tax rates in 2022 (for the US) below: Learn more about other tax implications and the alternative minimum tax (AMT) in our next section. The Impact AMT Has on ISOs According to the IRS, “The alternative minimum tax (AMT) applies to taxpayers with high economic income by setting a limit on those benefits. It helps to ensure that those taxpayers pay at least a minimum amount of tax.” So what does this mean for ISOs? While very rare and generally reserved for high-earning individuals, the AMT can be triggered if the profile from selling ISOs is large enough. This means that the stock seller will be subject to more taxes and negate some of the benefits of an ISO. What Are Non-Qualified Stock Options or NSOs On the flip side are non-qualified stock options (NSOs). As put by the team at Investopedia, “A non-qualified stock option (NSO) is a type of employee stock option wherein you pay ordinary income tax on the difference between the grant price and the price at which you exercise the option.” NSOs are generally more common than ISOs. While they might not have the tax benefits of ISOs, NSOs are generally more common than ISOs and offer their own benefits. It is worth noting that NSOs can be granted to non-employees as well (board members, advisors, mentors, customers, etc.) Learn more about NSOs and their tax structure below: How Are NSOs Taxed? The main difference between NSOs and ISOs comes down to how they are taxed. If you recall, ISOs are only taxed at the capital gains tax when they are sold. NSOs can potentially be taxed on two occasions. To start, NSOs are taxed when the stock options are initially exercised. If/when someone decides to exercise their NSOs they will pay a tax on the difference between the fair market value and the strike price. Next, NSOs are taxed when someone sells the actual stock — similar to ISOs. Depending on how long someone holds their stock between the time they exercise it and sell it, will determine if they pay short term or long term capital gains tax. The Impact AMT has on NSOs As we mentioned earlier, an alternative tax minimum (AMT) is a potential downside of ISOs. Unlike their counterpart, NSOs are not subject to AMT. ISO vs NSO Which One is Right For You? Now that we understand the difference between qualified incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified incentive stock options (NSOs) it is time to understand how and when you should be using both. Both have expected use cases and their own set of pros and cons depending on the use. Related Reading: How to Fairly Split Startup Equity with Founders When to Choose an ISO Of course, most employees will likely want an ISO plan as it offers tax benefits. However, it is lesser used and should be reserved for high-value employees. As the team at Investopedia writes, “This type of employee stock purchase plan is intended to retain key employees or managers.” A few times for when you should choose a qualified incentive stock option for your employees: When offering stock options for an employee (ISOs are not eligible with individuals who are not employees) When trying to incentivize and retain a high-value employee — this might be a manager or executive that is closely aligned with your companies success. When your company is in a financial position to offer ISOs instead of NSOs When to Choose an NSO While they do not necessarily have the tax benefits of ISOs, NSOs are widely used and are more common than ISOs. Below are a few examples and pros of choosing an NSO instead of an ISO: When issuing stock options to non-employees. This could be consultants, board members, mentors, and more. From the team at Pasquesi Partners, “With NSO, companies are able to take tax deductions when the employee chooses to exercise their option in the stock. Because of the way they are structured, NSO earnings are viewed as income for the employee, hence the tax deductions.” When looking for a more simple option and straightforward stock option to offer employees Share Stock Option Information With Your Investors with Visible No matter how you structure your cap table and share equity with investors, employees, and more, it is important to be straightforward and transparent the entire time. Want to improve your investor reporting and communication? Let us help. Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days.

We surveyed founders in our community and asked, “How likely are you to refer your current lead investor(s) to fellow founders?” (AKA — NPS score). The results were shocking with an NPS score of 23. An NPS score of 23 falls below the average for the airline industry. Not a great industry to be compared to in terms of customer satisfaction scores. As the venture space continues to grow and mature, the importance of investor’s adding value and opportunities is higher than ever. In order to better help investors support their portfolio (and hopefully move that NPS score up) we’ve put together 3 tips below: Systemize your data collection As Peter Drucker put it, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” In order to best help the founders in your portfolio, you need to have a system in place to collect data, quantitative and qualitative, so you can jump in and help when needed. Setting up a system requires a fine balance between being beneficial for your fund and being efficient and easy on the founder. With that said, it is important you only collect what is absolutely necessary (for founders who are already taking the time to send investor updates you want to make sure they are not duplicating efforts). What we suggest requesting from a founder to start: With Visible for Investors, founders can fill out simple Update Requests from their investors (like the example above) and use their data to fuel future investor Updates. Learn more about Visible for Investors here. Take action on the data Collecting portfolio company data is only half the battle. Once you have the data in hand (qualitative or quantitative) you need to make sure you are closing the loop. Keep an eye on qualitative data As we displayed in our example request above, best-in-class investors are specifically requesting a “Where can we help/problems” section. Being sure you can track and manage this data over time will improve your ability to take action. By setting up a view in Visible or exporting answered requests, you can keep your eye on where your companies stand and where your help is needed. Metric alerts and benchmarking When collecting metrics and data from your companies on a recurring basis, you’ll be able to uncover trends for individual companies and your portfolio as a whole. If you notice a core metric for a specific company is slipping month over month, it might be a good time to intervene and see if they need a hand to tackle a problem. Fundraising and Introductions Startups are in constant competition for 2 resources — capital and talent. As an investor, you will oftentimes see founders need help with 1 (or both) of those 2 areas. Being able to make an introduction to a potential investor or new hire can have a huge impact on a startup’s growth. Being able to open up your rolodex will be a huge win in the eyes of your founders. On the flip side, you can use the data from your portfolio as a whole to help benchmark and uncover new trends to the rest of your portfolio. For example, if you see a go-to-market strategy picking up steam with a few companies, it can be a good time to introduce the ideas to other companies that might benefit from the strategy. Learn more about how you can use Visible for Investors to better support your portfolio companies here. Make the most of it Setting up a system to collect data from your portfolio companies is no easy feat so you’ll want to make sure you are getting the most value out of the data as possible. Outside of helping your portfolio companies, you do have your own set of investors you need to report to. Having a strong system to collect portfolio data is a natural backbone to power your next LP report. Building strong rapport with your LPs is a surefire way to make sure your next fundraise goes smoothly. Using Visible, you can roll up your data and use Updates to report to your LPs. No exporting or additional data needed. Simply take the data from your portfolio, add in any necessary fund/investment data, and keep your LPs in the loop. Check out an example report here. Check out more LP update templates here. Learn more about using Visible for Investors to report with your LPs here. Stay engaged with your founders right from your pocket. Monitor your portfolio and be the value-add investor you want to be with Visible for Investors. Schedule a demo to learn more here.