Insights

Video generation company Pika Labs, co-founded by Demi Guo and Chenlin Meng, announced another $80M fundraise led by Spark Capital on a $700m valuation to take on OpenAI’s Sora, Google’s Veo, and RunwayML. GV Partner Terri Burns launches own firm Type Capital. Crypto startup Station Labs, founded by Tina He, was acquired by Coinbase. Cowboy Ventures’ Amanda Robson has left to start her own pre-seed and seed firm. Former A16z general partner Kristina Shen, former Index Ventures partner Mark Goldberg and outgoing Bessemer Venture Partners partner Ethan Kurzweil are aiming to raise around $300M for their debut fund. How Chinese immigrant and Deel co-founder Shuo Wang became one of America’s most successful self-made women. Is the push for board diversity over? The portion of US VC funding that went to female founders hit a new peak in 2023, but only due to massive AI deals. Why investors can't get enough of AI robotics deals right now.

A message from Kernel

Opinionated brand naming for decisive founders

Kernel is an opinionated naming studio for companies, products, brands, and startups. We use a methodical creative process and deep cultural knowledge to create names rooted in linguistic, metaphorical, and historical context. Kernel builds names that are meaningful and memorable. Our process is radically simple. First, we launch a rapid intuitive client discovery. Then we explore the infinite possibilities of sounds and meanings so you don’t have to. In 3 weeks, we present our curated list of 3 winning brand names. You choose the perfect one.

Need a great name?

From builders and investors in our universe…

How to write a great fundraising blurb

Ever struggled with how to summarize your startup in a concise yet compelling way for investors? A good blurb is concise and short. Elizabeth Yin drops pro tips on nailing the one-sentence pitch, showcasing traction with hard-hitting metrics, highlighting your rockstar team's experience, and leveraging press clips or marquee partners…Read more.

Coding smarter, not harder

Can AI truly replace human engineers? Unlocking high-fidelity AI for code generation is a massive opportunity, with startups taking three key approaches: enhancing existing workflows with AI co-pilots, creating end-to-end AI coding agents, and building code-specific foundation models. Corinne Riley on how we can create more powerful context awareness, get AI agents to work better for E2E coding tasks and whether owning a code-specific model lead to long-term differentiation…Read more.

Breaking into VC in 2024

Maya Bakhai from Spice Capital shares her insider tip: Study founders who've raised at least a Series C round across different eras. From the 2020 bull run to the dot-com boom and bust, pattern matching excellence over vintage years provides an unbiased view of "great." Get creative with podcasts, newsletters, consulting gigs and hosting events for that prime "eavesdropping" opportunity…Read more.

Advantages that respected operators with deep domain expertise see when they choose to start a company

While there’s no silver bullet to finding product-market fit, there is one approach that makes fundraising, building an MVP, and ultimately converting early believers into paying customers a tangible reality in a relatively short amount of time: Build for the expert, you. Brianne Kimmel on why this will lead to a faster time to market as you’ve spent your entire career in the customer discovery phase and you’re able to independently drive your own sales pipeline…Read more.

The what, why, how and art of giving and receiving feedback

Ever dread feedback like doing taxes? The most important ingredient for giving effective feedback is care for the other person. Julie Zhuo flips the script, making a zealous case for why you should embrace the "gift" of quality feedback. In her manifesto, Zhuo breaks down the litmus test for helpful feedback (did it spur positive action?), why most feedback falls flat, and the three key ingredients for delivering excellence: care for the other person, courage to be vulnerable, and an ambitiously high bar…Read more.

Common and costly product messaging mistakes

Are messaging missteps strangling your startup's growth? Good messaging is rooted in customer insights, emphasizes the results the product delivers and highlights compelling differentiators with strong proof points. Marketing pro Allyson Letteri breaks down 7 costly mistakes that cause websites to miss the mark - from failing to convey transformation to lacking customer specificity. Letteri shares 4 powerful frameworks to nail your positioning, personality and value props…Read more.

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Brands such as Affinity, Mercury, and Carta value Femstreet. Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, and entrepreneurs.

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Work with Femstreet

In case you missed our recent posts

• Empowering the CFO suite and B2B workflows

• Why SaaS founders should embrace their inner scientist on the path to $1M ARR

• Building a sustainable company without running out of runway

• What it means to be an interim leader

• The secrets of owning your odds and how founders can learn from athletes to build better teams

• A story of pricing, trial retention & purchase UX flows

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

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Find out more about us on femstreet.com

Insights

Thoma Bravo to buy UK-listed Darktrace, run by CEO Poppy Gustafsson, for $5.3B. Funds of funds Amkan Ventures founded by Raida Daouk aims to connect Gulf region investors with emerging U.S. managers with its first $10M fund. Primary Venture Partners launches its DEI-focused Factor Fellowship. Behind Genius Ventures run by Paige Finn Doherty raises its second fund of $8.9M. Impact Shakers launches €20M VC fund to back diverse founders across climate tech and impact infrastructure. How to prioritize company goals amid economic uncertainty. The danger of “What's Next?” and how looking too far ahead can hurt you now. It’s time to retire the term “user”.

A message from Quimby Digital…

Social media solved

Quimby Digital is a female-founded social media marketing agency and paid media agency working with high-growth start-ups around the globe. From social strategy to UGC content creation, Quimby has you covered. As featured in Nasdaq, Inc. Magazine, Business Insider and Forbes.

Book a free consult to learn more

From builders and investors in our universe…

The early-stage founder’s guide to product-led growth

Wondering if product-led growth (PLG) is the right strategy for your SaaS business? GC’s Andrea Wang dives into the foundations of PLG, sharing insights from product leaders at Loom, Spline, and Notion. Explore different PLG models, learn how they differ from product-led sales (PLS), and discover key considerations for implementing PLG, such as organizational structures, success metrics, and determining if it aligns with your product and target audience…Read more.

Sales forecasting 101 for early-stage software companies

Want to build a predictable revenue engine for your startup? In this interview, Jackie Karmel, a former Stripe and Retool employee, shares her insights on the crucial role of sales forecasting. Discover when to start forecasting, who to involve, and how to adapt strategies for different sales motions and market conditions…Read more.

Do you set up your exit before you start your company?

By proactively building relationships with potential acquirers and competitors from day one, startups can potentially manufacture their own exit and achieve faster liquidity. While this approach may seem controversial and may not align with traditional VC models, it offers an intriguing alternative perspective on startup success and the path to acquisition. Elizabeth Yin on why founders should consider their exit strategy before starting a company…Read more.

The harsh realities of product-market fit

Merci Grace shut down her company Panobi and shares lessons learned from failing to find product-market fit. Merci discusses the importance of conducting customer research through proxies, the challenges of disrupting organizational silos, and the differing mindsets of executives and individual contributors when it comes to data transparency and efficiency…Read more.

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25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Our subscribers value Femstreet’s content: the open rate for Femstreet’s newsletter is more than 2x the industry average.

Brands such as Affinity, Mercury, and Carta value Femstreet. Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Connect with our community of young female business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source our readers trust.

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed our recent posts

• Empowering the CFO suite and B2B workflows

• Why SaaS founders should embrace their inner scientist on the path to $1M ARR

• Building a sustainable company without running out of runway

• What it means to be an interim leader

• The secrets of owning your odds and how founders can learn from athletes to build better teams

• A story of pricing, trial retention & purchase UX flows

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Find out more about us on femstreet.com

Insights

Human Ventures, cofounded by Heather Hartnett, is about to close a $50M second fund. Enterprise software investor Jennifer Li was promoted to General Partner at a16z and will help run their $1.25B Infrastructure fund. Why the perfectionism pitfall holds women leaders back and how to break the cycle. The share of women in C-suite roles falls for first time in two decades. Sheila Gulati and Stacey Giard of Tola Capital on the female VCs leading the charge in enterprise AI. Consumer tech fund Maven Ventures run by Sara Deshpande secured $60M for fund IV. Kathryn Haun is stepping off the Coinbase board later this year after 7 years. When to IPO in the age of uncertainty.

Attention wellness warriors! 

Feeling the weight of anxiety? It's time to meet your new BFF: Ally

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The mastermind behind the magic? An ex-Cambridge and Harvard neuroscientist ranked by Stanford as one of the world's most influential scientists. He's developed not one, but TWO proprietary blends: gut-brain probiotics and anxiety-reducing plant polyphenols. 

Get Your Zen On with Ally!

From builders and investors in our universe…

Measuring personal growth

Measuring personal growth doesn't come as naturally to founders as tracking their business metrics. There are three interesting metrics to measure personal growth: rate of change, time to solve problems, and number of future options. Chip Huyen explores unique metrics to gauge individual development. From the rate of change in life every 3-6 years to the time taken to solve significant problems, she delves into unconventional ways to assess personal progress…Read more.

Build your culture like a product

The key challenge for any early-stage people leader? Knowing which to tackle first. Asana’s Anna Binder shares her step-by-step approach to crafting a people strategy from the ground up, constructing a cultural pyramid, and fostering conscious leadership within the executive suite. She tackles culture building like a product manager and zooms out to discuss what makes up a good culture and how it can differ from company to company…Read more.

Where to best incorporate your holding company

Expanding your startup globally? The decision of where to incorporate your holding company is crucial. Many founders of early-stage ventures tend to shy away from legal, financial, and administrative matters. Rena Kakon breaks down the fundamentals of corporate structure and offers valuable insights for entrepreneurs seeking to make well-informed choices about their holding company's jurisdiction. Discover the Jurisdiction ScoreCard and Matchmaker tools that streamline the process, and explore the leading contenders, from Delaware to Singapore, along with the key factors that should influence your decision…Read more.

Building a moat for generative AI applications

We’re still in the very early days of generative AI, and it is unclear what the end market will look like. Will there be huge “LLMs as a service” from cloud providers, will each company have a niche model of its own, or is the whole market overhyped, such that the number of applications will be smaller than expected? Antonia Woodford explores four potential approaches companies are taking to establish technological moats, from building proprietary models to harnessing LLMs in combination with other technologies…Read more.

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25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Our subscribers value Femstreet’s content: the open rate for Femstreet’s newsletter is more than 2x the industry average.

Brands such as Affinity, Mercury, and Carta value Femstreet. Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Connect with our community of young female business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source our readers trust.

***We now have 3 exclusive spots for Femstreet Gold sponsors: guaranteed 6 months of exposure to our audience with your logo on our website and blog + one newsletter appearance included.

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed our recent posts

• Empowering the CFO suite and B2B workflows

• Why SaaS founders should embrace their inner scientist on the path to $1M ARR

• Building a sustainable company without running out of runway

• What it means to be an interim leader

• The secrets of owning your odds and how founders can learn from athletes to build better teams

• A story of pricing, trial retention & purchase UX flows

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Find out more about us on femstreet.com

Insights

After tripling its revenue in 2023, ICONIQ Growth doubles down on French startup Pigment, founded by Eléonore Crespo, with an additional $145M. Rachel Romer, founder of $4.4B edtech unicorn Guild, shares lessons from having a stroke at age 34. Bumble’s new CEO talks about her critical mission to spice things up at the company. Lux Capital’s Deena Shakir published a book on entrepreneurship to encourage young girls to follow their imagination and ambition to do great things. 3 strategies for speaking up at work and building buy-In and understanding from your team. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley joins The Equity Studio, a new investment firm backing beauty, wellness, lifestyle brands. IVP’s General Partner Cack Wilhelm discusses the VC exit landscape for this year. How to create a company culture that takes your team from good to great. Ellevest’s Sallie Krawcheck’s best advice on recovering from career setbacks. Ex-Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg thinks advanced AI can help cure loneliness. Serena Williams has invested in 85 companies and 14 have unicorn status. GV invests $5.4M in Home From College, a career platform for Gen Z co-founded by Julia Haber ex Snap.

From builders and investors in our universe…

What makes for successful consumer founders

As early-stage investors, while we often talk about companies, we really invest in people, specifically those who are rewriting the narratives of how we live, work, and play. Conventional wisdom often dictates the ideal profile for successful consumer founders. But do the stereotypical "Stanford CS grads" and "former Google PMs" really hold the keys to outsized success? Meera Clark of Redpoint analysed 100+ unicorns in hopes of debunking the generally accepted stereotypes surrounding what traits define successful consumer founders. Are you in for a surprise?…Read more.

What it means to ideate and validate your product

The months and even years Pre-Product-Market-Fit can feel like wandering in the dark for founders - trying to hone the right ICP, the right messaging, the right positioning, the right value prop - the testing, testing, testing on all the ways to land Product Market Fit. This stage requires a lot of hustle, but also a delicate dance of speed and quality. But there is no one formula. Work-Bench’s Jessica Lin shares a few general rules of thumbs to consider for any founders building for the enterprise…Read more.

What MidJourney, DeepL, ElevenLabs, and HeyGen have in common

Conventional wisdom suggests incumbents, not startups, are best positioned to capitalize on AI's potential. But this trope oversimplifies a new class of B2B AI companies unlocking tremendous revenue momentum by leveraging a timeless consumer recipe: providing a 10x better experience at a fraction of the cost. Benchmark’s Sarah Tavel explores how AI startups are poised to replicate the success of consumer giants by unlocking limitless use cases through superior experiences and structural cost advantages…Read more.

Shifting positioning as your product matures

Consumer products rarely shift positioning, but for B2B products, repositioning is the norm. April Dunford explores how this key difference stems from the distinct purchasing behaviors in consumer versus B2B. April on why you need to separate your longer-term vision from what you are selling right now and why you should expect your positioning to change over time and have the processes in place to review and adjust…Read more.

The career benefits of self-management

In the workplace, self-management is an employee’s ability to solve problems independently, show self-awareness, and operate autonomously. Why should you self-manage, isn’t this your manager’s job? In theory yes, in practice things are a bit more nuanced. Irina Stanescu shares how self-management can help your career and the 8 skills needed to master it…Read more.

Five non-obvious skills for product & growth managers

Product Leaders must navigate a rapidly evolving landscape with new challenges and opportunities. Leah Tharin shares five essential skills that are often overlooked but can make or break your success as a Product Leader. From the art of summarization to the importance of managing up, and from understanding cross-functional silos to questioning your own basics, her article provides a roadmap for staying ahead of the curve…Read more.

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Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here. New opportunities await.
We’ve got 300+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month of 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Our subscribers value Femstreet’s content: the open rate for Femstreet’s newsletter is more than 2x the industry average.

Brands such as Affinity, Mercury, and Carta value Femstreet. Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Connect with our community of young female business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source our readers trust.

***We now have 3 exclusive spots for Femstreet Gold sponsors: guaranteed 6 months of exposure to our audience with your logo on our website and blog + one newsletter appearance included.

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed our recent posts

• Empowering the CFO suite and B2B workflows

• Why SaaS founders should embrace their inner scientist on the path to $1M ARR

• Building a sustainable company without running out of runway

• What it means to be an interim leader

• The secrets of owning your odds and how founders can learn from athletes to build better teams

• A story of pricing, trial retention & purchase UX flows

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Find out more about us on femstreet.com

Founders are hitting the reset button, going back to the basics, and building companies that are lean, mean, and ready to conquer from day one. Dive into our latest blog post in which founders and investors unveil the strategies and insights essential for creating an enduring business legacy.

Insights

Sora, OpenAI’s new text-to-video AI model, can create realistic scenes. CTO Mira Murati explained how it works but ducked questions about how the model was trained. Congrats to our friends at Ada Ventures co-run by Check Warner for raising fund two of $80M to back diverse founding teams. Stephanie Campbell, Diana Murakhovskaya and Leslie Goldman Tepper close Artemis Fund II of $36M to back diverse founders solving ‘big, hairy problems’. Seven Seven Six’s Katelin Holloway discusses how she evaluates startups and shared advice for first time founders. An interview with Ophelia Brown, the woman who raised $1B. Magdalena Kala on the 10 hard truths about creator-fan relationships. Europe’s female-founded teams still fall behind for funding but they broke two big records in 2023. A list of Open Source LLM Tools by Chip Huyen.

From builders and investors in our universe…

“Discomfort signals learning is ahead.”

Tricks for running GTM experiments

Startups operate based on assumptions and imperfect information — a game of trial and error. Designing go-to-market strategies and planning over months can consume significant time and become a distraction, especially knowing the market will likely invalidate the plans within weeks. Jen Abel from JJellyfish shares her recommendations after conducting/running market experiments for eight years…Read more.

Running a startup during pregnancy

Balancing the pressure of running a pre-product market fit startup and being a passionate, decisive leader while being pregnant is a delicate dance. Founder Alice Pelton shares her perspective on miscarriage anxiety, when to tell your team, and dealing with once-in-a-career opportunity…Read more.

“So the very, very first step that any company has to do is to define what is the moment? The Aha moment is something that we can measure...so for instance, for a delivery driver, it could be the first time they actually successfully completed an order with a client."

The death of classical sales

Sales isn't dying; it's evolving. The old focus on just making sales without considering customer retention is outdated. Now, companies prioritize long-term relationships over quick wins. The role of sales is becoming more data-driven, aiming to provide value and sustain long-term customer monetization. Leah Tharin breaks down the importance of running a product-led strategy and its capability to empower your sales and marketing teams…Read more.

A guide to the wedge marketing strategy

Early-stage marketing strategies that don’t focus on an acute pain for a specific audience segment will fall flat in 2024. The wedge strategy is a much better path to becoming a massive startup even if it feels like you are starting “small”. Emily Kramer on how to find your initial niche, expand from your initial wedge, and how this differs with horizontal and vertical products…Read more.

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Join the Femstreet Talent Collective!

Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here. New opportunities await.
We’ve got 300+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month of 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Our subscribers value Femstreet’s content: the open rate for Femstreet’s newsletter is more than 2x the industry average.

Brands such as Affinity, Mercury, and Carta value Femstreet. Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Connect with our community of young female business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source our readers trust.

***We now have 3 exclusive spots for Femstreet Gold sponsors: guaranteed 6 months of exposure to our audience with your logo on our website and blog + one newsletter appearance included.

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed our recent posts

• Empowering the CFO suite and B2B workflows

• Why SaaS founders should embrace their inner scientist on the path to $1M ARR

• Building a sustainable company without running out of runway

• What it means to be an interim leader

• The secrets of owning your odds and how founders can learn from athletes to build better teams

• A story of pricing, trial retention & purchase UX flows

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Find out more about us on femstreet.com

We believe the importance of enduring company building has become more pronounced than ever before. Founders are hitting the reset button, going back to the basics, and building companies that are lean, mean, and ready to conquer from day one.

Why is enduring company building the new cool?

In an era where trends come and go faster than a meme, building a company that stands the test of time is the ultimate power move. It's all about building a company that's not just a one-hit wonder but a marathon runner. We're talking about playing the long game, focusing on being tough, flexible, and responsible – the triple threat of the business game.

Companies that aren't just after quick wins but are in it for the long run will be the superheroes of 2024. It's not just about cool products; it's about creating a workplace that's always improving and doing business in a way that's good for everyone. So, get ready for a year where building a company to last isn't just a smart move; it's the only move that matters.

But what does enduring company building mean, and how can you integrate it into your company's DNA? Together with Maddyness, Femstreet tapped into the wisdom of tomorrow's female leaders, spilling the tea on what it takes to build a company that's not just a trend but a bona fide legend.

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Building an enduring company in 2024 means…

…being able to iterate at scale.

The “move fast and break things” era is now over. Enduring companies are built by intentional founders who realize the responsibility and the opportunity to make a positive impact through their creation.

I believe founders who build enduring organisations can constantly iterate not only at the early stages but also at scale.

In recent years we had an abundance of venture capital. As a result, the first thing many early-stage founders did was to raise capital as soon as possible, without truly testing their ideas. The idea merely became a tool for raising capital. The reality is that once you raise capital, the clock starts ticking and pivoting becomes limited within set guidelines. I urge founders to take the time to test their ideas, and speak to customers at length before committing to an idea and raising capital, as the idea is not just a tool for raising a seed run but it's a commitment for the next decade+.

- Zeynep Yavuz, Partner at General Catalyst

In 2024, the concept of an enduring company matters more than ever due to 1) rapid technological advancement which is disrupting industries at an unprecedented rate; 2) globalisation and interconnectedness, which means businesses must be able to adapt to diverse markets, cultures, and regulatory environments to remain competitive on a global scale; 3) growing emphasis on corporate social responsibility, sustainability and social impact; 4) talent management and organisational resilience, with gen Z and post-covid workplaces requiring particular support to foster the culture of collaboration and innovation, and cultivate strong leadership.

As a founder, you need to have an unwavering commitment to what you’re building if it is to be an enduring company. You need to believe in yourself, your team and the product that you are the ones to solve this problem, but also have enough humility to listen to the market and course correct when needed.

- Marta Krupinska, Co-founder and CEO of CUR8

…building products through either multiple life stages and/or generations. 

An enduring business is a company that's rooted in solving people's problems not just for the next year or two, but a product that will continue to serve customers through either multiple life stages or through multiple generations (or both!) 

Above everything, remember that your mission goes beyond the product you’re creating today. As founders, both my co-founder and I have executive coaches that are helping us scale ourselves and be more effective leaders. From a product perspective, it's about breaking our strategy into clear phases and only moving to the next one once we've nailed the first problem and as a small team, being very disciplined in what we're taking on to make the most of our current resources. To start, ask yourself if you're building something that could become a generational brand—it's okay if it isn't but being honest about that upfront really helps you set goals. Second, understand the immediate things you need to prove (metrics, hires, etc) at each stage of the business, condense it to a short list and only do those things. Create a set of company values that and lean on your customers and team to iteratively define your culture together. 

- Emma Bates, Founder of Diem

…focus on people, unit economics & product market fit. And not being afraid to make mistakes.

1. People - the most important asset - a high-performing team can move mountains. Inversely - an unmotivated team can create a ton of inertia. 

2. Product market fit (PMF) - are you building things that people need and are willing to pay for? 

3. Unit economics - build a business with unit economics that make sense. Spend money with a really high ROI expectation, even early on. 

Embrace quick decision-making without the fear of missteps. Making the wrong decision will help you learn what the right one is. Your biggest enemy is inertia. 
Also, you should keep an insanely high bar on people - I always think about my duty as a leader as being in charge of protecting the playing field by hiring the best people and addressing poor performance as fast as possible.
Your customer is your boss - even if you are an early-stage company, think about your existing customers and prospective customers as being your ultimate source of existence and work for that to come true. If you do that, your products and sales will be aligned and you will have your unit economics top of mind from day 1.

- Pauline Glikman, Co-founder at Payflows

...creating a tight incentive plan.

Incentives are the most powerful way to manage - they're one of the few ways to ensure driving the most value-creating behaviors when everyone's time is poor. Many skip over building a tight incentive plan; it's really hard, especially when you're not sure if things are working. If you're unsure if things will work, you shouldn't be hiring. Building out an incentive plan (beyond pie-in-sky revenue targets) illuminates a lot of known unknowns. And focus of that plan is so critical, i.e. 2-3 highly specific things you need to hit to prove the experiment, don't allow them to focus on anything else.

…not delegating your vision.

0-1 sales talent does not exist. As founders, you will likely be the Head of Sales for a MIMUMUM of 18-24 months. Don't try to skip this step. Delegating vision is the fastest way to hit a wall.

- Jen Abel, Founder of JJellyfish

…blocking out the noise and learning to say no.

The key to building an enduring company is blocking out the noise of the press, investors, advisors, and the market around you, and being relentless in the pursuit of creating value for your users. An enduring company manages to strike the delicate balance between flexibility and stability: at its core is a robust vision that remains unwavering in the face of external pressures, while the strategies to realize that vision are constantly reassessed.

For us, the game-changer was when we aligned the whole company behind meticulously improving our north-star metric and avoided trying to tackle everything at once. We started by defining the single metric that best captures the core value that our product delivers.

Each quarter, we then identify one bottleneck area — the lever most affecting our north-star metric. For the next 3 months, the entire team focuses solely on improving this specific area, across product development, marketing, content, and operations. As part of this, we’ve also had to learn to say no a lot. Whether it's speaking engagements or potential partnerships, founders are constantly bombarded with projects they could spend their time on (and that might be really exciting!). Learn to decline opportunities that don't align with your core objectives.

…reevaluating what success means for your business.

Start by sitting down with your co-founders and having a real talk about what success means for your business. It's easy to get caught up in the hype of VC funding - from seed, to Series A, B, C and beyond, and to let that dictate the way you run your business. But remember that this isn’t the right model for all companies - your next goal might be a Series A, or it might actually reaching profitability or consolidating with another player through an exit. Get intentional in figuring out what that goal is for you and then make sure everything you do in your business is steering you towards that milestone.

- Margot De Broglie, Co-founder at Your Juno 

This article was originally published on Maddyness UK and Maddyness France.

Insights

Alexa von Tobel and Penny Pritzker close $330M in capital commitments for Inspired Capital fund III. Women CEOs at Fortune 500 companies have shorter tenures than men. Voyager Ventures founded by Sarah Sclarsic and Sierra Peterson just raised its second $100M fund to back climate tech startups.Twins Danielle and Leah Cohen-Shohet share their story and how they raised $75M to build out beauty and wellness platform GlossGenius. The journey of a black female founder. A record number of women and minority owned firms launch new funds. Scale AI founder Lucy Guo raises a $40M Series A for her new creator economy venture Passes led by Bond Capital. Seven-time Grand Slam winner Venus Williams launches Palazzo, a new generative AI-powered interior design platform.

Thingtesting is a product discovery & review platform for consumer brands that are loved by 3.5M+ curious consumers.

They just launched a new tool for omnichannel brands who want to drive sell-through in sales channels like Whole Foods, Target, Amazon, Sprouts, or Sephora.

Calling all consumer brands: check it out here and mention Sarah sent you to get 2 weeks free!

From builders and investors in our universe…

The other dimension of thinking when you’re going multi-product is if it allows you to unlock a net new user base that you weren't targeting before.

- Tara Seshan

Lessons from going multi-product

Embarking on the journey from a single flagship product to a diversified portfolio is akin to navigating uncharted waters in product development. It's a journey of excitement and uncertainty, where strategic decisions can shape a company's growth trajectory. But when is the right time to introduce a second product, and what does it mean for your org design? Tara Seshan shares nine lessons from her playbooks for going multi-product…Read more.

How to market “marketing” internally

Educating the rest of your company on marketing is often the hardest part of doing marketing. Marketing’s job is to understand an audience and communicate to that audience in a value-added way. Yet, when it comes to doing this internally, marketers often fall short–very, very short. You, as a marketer, need to spend more time on “internal marketing” than you may think. Emily Kramer shares advice for getting buy-in on your marketing work…Read more.

The ultimate guide to willingness-to-pay

Why are so few product teams testing their pricing? Pricing is the most under-leveraged growth lever. It can drive enormous sustained growth (quickly) and often takes very little product work, yet is rarely prioritized or even discussed within product teams. That’s because pricing can be scary, irrational, and hard to know if you’ve done it right. Kristen Berman on how you can effectively run your willingness to pay study, with templates and actional guides…Read more.

Why AI killed the traditional SaaS GTM playbook

The exorbitant costs of building AI software—from renting GPUs, talent shortages, sky-high salaries, and API costs—stress the need to achieve positive momentum or risk running out of funds. While the general framework of GTM strategy remains similar to the enterprise SaaS era, the increased time pressure is pushing many AI startup founders to rethink their approach. Viviana Faga of Felicis lays out six major ways GTM is shifting in the age of AI…Read more.

What we should have in a first call is a way for sales reps to consistently communicate our point of view on the market, our differentiated value, and why they should choose us over the alternatives.

- April Dunford

Why positioning fails to make the jump from Marketing to Sales

Great B2B positioning will die inside the company if it doesn’t successfully jump from marketing to sales. Once you’ve worked through your positioning inside the company, the most common way for that positioning to fail is to fumble its activation in the sales team. April Dunford covers the four biggest stumbling blocks for companies…Read more.

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In case you missed our recent posts

• Empowering the CFO suite and B2B workflows

• Why SaaS founders should embrace their inner scientist on the path to $1M ARR

• Building a sustainable company without running out of runway

• What it means to be an interim leader

• The secrets of owning your odds and how founders can learn from athletes to build better teams

• A story of pricing, trial retention & purchase UX flows

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Find out more about us on femstreet.com

Today’s ERP systems were designed 20+ years ago, and copied and pasted into a cloud environment. They are complex and can’t keep up with rising integrations, offering little to no automation or AI functionality. They are also costly and lengthy to implement, with a ‘per set pricing’ that leads companies to only onboard a limited number of users. Historically, ERP emerged as a bundling of tools, serving and connecting different operational and financial parts of an enterprise. That made sense in an era where software development and data storage costs were high and organisational interconnection was low.

Nowadays, APIs enable seamless connections between services, whereas data is spread across various stand-alone SaaS platforms within the CFO suite, their banks, and the ERP system. Data is also increasingly sourced from channels that carry significant signals beyond what traditional business data structures can capture. ERPs can no longer own the breadth of that data, and users and teams have much higher expectations for UI and workflows. Thus, we believe there’s less justification for consolidating all of these functional areas under a single ERP umbrella. This leaves companies with people and data silos.

Various local payment methods, regional ERP systems, and diverse banking systems and regulations expose different product requirements for companies. The European Commission’s intricate 650 tax codes have contributed to fragmentation within Europe, giving rise to geo-specific ERP and accounting systems. Despite their costliness, old-school ERP systems remain the only solution capable of handling the sophistication, volume, and multi-geographical and multi-currency demands of multinational enterprises. Typically, companies don’t purchase all modules, opting rather to onboard a limited number of users within the organisation — even though these modules are designed to work in tandem.

Due to the ERP complexity, CFOs have resorted to deploying ad-hoc custom solutions and third-party best-of-breed software solutions (expense management software, accounts receivable/accounts payable systems, and treasury management tools) to patch the gaps. 

Over the past year, we have spoken to dozens of mid-market CFOs to gain a better picture of their finance stack and understand their pain points. We learned that most use several-point solutions, don’t buy all ERP modules, and want to cut back on tools but still aggregate and disseminate financial data. This paves the way for a platform rebundling of the stack.

Mid-market customers are currently underserved 

SMEs have a good range of new software to pick from when it comes to accounting, cash flow management, and payments automation. Mid-market companies, however, have a higher level of sophistication, and different integration and security needs — but currently lack access to the array of software tools typically found at the enterprise level.

“Netsuite doesn’t communicate well with our internal tools. We are specifically looking for an orchestration layer around financial data on top of our ERP systems across our global entities that is agile and customisable without IT having to be involved.”  - CFO at 6K FTE company 

“We need a tool with a strong approval flow, and permission and cross-functional collaboration capabilities so that everyone can interact with and enrich financial data. We want to consolidate our data and tools, and have a strong preference for an all-in-one platform to automate all of our manual tasks and get more context on financial data.” - CFO at 350 FTE company 

“We have outgrown our spend management solution, and Kyriba is pretty clunky. Due to our high-transaction volumes and challenges with Netsuite, we have to manually reconcile hundreds of transactions every day. We are looking for a more flexible treasury management solution and want to manage our purchase orders in one single tool so that we can easily follow our flows for bank reconciliation purposes. The most important part is that it has to tie back to our financial flows.”
- CFO at 600 FTE company 

“No one in the industry is really happy with their ERP, neither are we. But it is such a mission-critical piece of infrastructure and the implementation was such a pain that replacing it would be really hard. Also, there are no real better alternatives — all of the players are legacy tech.” - CFO at 1K FTE company

“Multi-banking is more prominent in Europe vs. the US. A big catalyst is the cloud migration as thousands of companies — and even more those in the mid-market segment without IT teams — have to restart their treasury project because the whole connectivity will fall down after the ERP migration. Having one system for everything related to liquidity, from treasury management to payments, is a major trend in the industry today. Connectivity with the bank and the ERP is a strategic priority. The better you are, the more value you bring to the customer.” - Former SVP Strategy at Leading Treasury management platform 

How to create a differentiating product experience and a strong wedge 

We have seen the emergence of companies building next-gen finance automation platforms with different approaches to product:  

1. Vertical players challenging incumbent point solutions — in particular procurement (Coupa) and TMS (Kyriba). The likes of Pivot, Omnea, Zip HQ  are essentially building a next-gen Coupa in a greenfield environment, or a wedge as an orchestration layer around Coupa in a brownfield setting. The play is to be 10x better at one thing than the existing ERP, i.e. workflow automation, UX, and time-to-utility, then expand from there. 

   We believe that intake/approvals and supplier management are natural entry points into the procure-to-pay process in companies that are establishing or upgrading their purchasing. The entry is narrow and universal enough to address a broad range of customers. ZipHQ have proven that the entry point of intake works extremely well and enables explosive growth rarely seen in SaaS - they have grown from $0 to approx. $60m in ARR within 3 years. The big challenge for any next-gen generational winner is about tapping into the ‘old economy’ customer segment. 

   
   Treasury is another attractive entry point as there is a clear gap for a cash management solution that serves mid market customers with more complex multi-currency and multi-banking setups. The enterprise solution, Kyriba is outdated, implementation heavy, hard to customise and simply too expensive for mid market companies. Mid-market companies without an IT team or bandwidth are more likely to opt-in for cloud first solutions because they can have the same level of service without any maintenance issues.
   

2. Orchestration layer around ERP on top of the general ledger — Payflows, Atlar, Embat. These companies unbundle a suite of products and offer collaboration around financial data with a big emphasis on banking and ERP connectivity. The idea is to carve out 25-30% of the ERP add-on module surface area’s weak spots by wedging in through one module, for example procurement, AP, or TMS, and then upsell.
   
   We believe these players have higher odds of penetrating larger customers tied to their ERP, and thus commanding larger ACVs. While succeeding with a multi-module approach is difficult as a young company and requires you to be best-in-class across your offering, it enables a strong positioning for competitive RFPs which increases the odds of signing a customer throughout the year. We learned that finance teams in the upper mid-market prefer to replace one piece of the stack at a time.
   

3. Fully-fledged ERPs — Light. This is a full ERP platform with a general ledger at the core and an integrated suite of applications across for example procurement and TMS. These could provide a radical change and offer an alternative to incumbents’ built-on legacy database infrastructure and sub-par UX.
   
   Having repeatedly heard that customers are not satisfied with their ERPs, we feel the need for new solutions, but also see that CFOs and accountants are very careful and hesitant to make big changes to their key infra. Given the massive scope of an ERP, it is also a heavy lift both product-wise and commercially. Moreover, the incumbents have a well-established network of implementation consultants and often offer generous starting prices to mid-sized customers, knowing how sticky they are.
   

It will be very hard to be 10x better at everything than existing ERPs, given these tools have been built over decades. We are probably years away from that. The road will likely be to initially offer specific solution sets and functionality that are currently underserved across the mid-market — such as procurement and treasury — always with a full ERP integration in mind so that the functional need for an ERP abates over time, making the eventual rip-and-replace less scary. 

Where will we eventually end up? 

We witnessed how Netsuite took on the existing systems and won the market with cloud-based offerings. With the initial wedge being a few, critical modules, they kept adding new modules which eventually led them to emerge as category leaders. Netsuite as we know it today took ~15 years to build, before Oracle bought it for $9bn. Now a new row of challengers is forming and we believe that several companies have what it takes to thrive, as we don't view this as a winner-takes-all market. That said, it will likely take longer than many other software categories due to the complexity in both product and commercialisation.

Execution aside, the leap of faith in this category is whether new entrants will be able to combine their solutions into a platform that eventually enables them to rip and replace a chunk or most of the ERP setup. The current ERP setup could also fragment into a small number of key areas that produce large new, deeply interconnected companies that are better at serving organisational needs. We might eventually see a re-bundling of operational and financial information into new ERPs using modern data structures with better role-based prioritisation and actioning, and a number of powerful new automation traits.

We also predict that spend management players like Payhawk and Yokoy will successfully expand beyond cards into AP automation and procurement. We are keeping a keen eye on their move to the mid- and enterprise-level market.  

What we find most promising in early-stage opportunities: 

A differentiated product wedge that stands out in competitive RFPs

While neglected for a while, CFOs are currently being targeted by a variety of providers, and punching through the noise is key. Differentiation can come in many forms — e.g. strong coverage and robustness of ERP, or banking connectivity collaboration capabilities — and the ROI to both finance and non-finance users should be clear. This is not only about building a great product, but also about building the smartest path into customers and crafting a strong sales story. Time-to-utility matters too. It takes many months and consulting dollars to get ERPs implemented. A modern alternative will have to do better.

A clear ICP and the ability to integrate into existing systems

The mid-market segment is where customers are most frustrated with incumbent solutions, yet flexible enough to change parts of their stack. For scale-ups, the pain point might not be strong enough to justify sacrificing margin for a third-party solution. The ability to co-exist in brownfield settings, i.e. alongside SAP or multiple ERPs across geos, will also ease adoption. Finally, challengers need to figure out how to integrate without requiring customers to acquire additional licences. 

An ability to attain sizable ACVs with room for growth

Discounts for the first big logos are fine in order to build out vertical case studies, but price should not be the key selling point. Why? Because horizontal players can afford to undercut vertical players on pricing given that they have a clearer path to upsell. We see a lower willingness to pay for tech-first companies than traditional industries. Based on our research, individual modules across AP, P2P, or treasury within mid-market are largely sold for up to €20-30K; there should be a clear path to €100K+ ACVs and being considered within a mission-critical spend bucket.

A product-centric leadership team that speaks the language of finance teams and has the ability to navigate a complex sales motion 

Selling outside a home market is a big bonus.

If you’re building in the space, want to brainstorm, or challenge my thinking, please reach out.

Insights

Amsterdam-based DataSnipper run by former Marqeta Exec Vidya Peters raised $100M at $1B from Index to empower auditors with AI. Enterprise focused Basis Set Ventures, founded by Lan Xuezhao, raises $185M for its third fund to double down on AI & Automation. Niremia Collective led by Naoko Okumoto and Nichol Bradford closes its inaugural fund with $22.5M focused on well-being technology. Solo GP Sarah Drinkwater is raising a fund to back 'community' startups like Monzo and Depop. Sarah Guo’s TED talk on why you should invest in AI. In an era of short executive tenures, what does a successful personal brand look like for Executives today? How Emily Weiss is steering Glossier in a new direction with CEO Kyle Leahy.

Accelerate your career in 2024 with Sidebar

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How to approach mid-market GTM

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In case you missed our recent posts

• Why SaaS founders should embrace their inner scientist on the path to $1M ARR

• Building a sustainable company without running out of runway

• What it means to be an interim leader

• The secrets of owning your odds and how founders can learn from athletes to build better teams

• Why Freemium might wreck your revenue

• A story of pricing, trial retention & purchase UX flows

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Find out more about us on femstreet.com

We believe the importance of enduring company building has become more pronounced than ever before. If you are a founder, we would love to hear from you about your principles for building an enduring organisation and the advice you would give other early-stage founders who need to balance pace/growth/longevity for setting the right foundations. Hit the reply button below if you have something to share with us and want to get featured in a guide!

Insights

Is separating your identity from work the real key to success? Goldman Sachs quietly ends diversity investment program after fulfilling $1B goal last June. Forerunner Ventures founder Kirsten Green on vulnerability, patience, and human psychology. Danish VC Kost Capital co-founded by Bodil Siden announces its first close of €25M fund to back European food tech startups. NYC based Diem, co-founded by Femstreet friend Emma Bates and Divia Singh, wants to be the go-to social search engine for women and nonbinary folks. It has never been so difficult and so complicated to run a company and the pendulum is swinging back from the “visionary” boss to the professional operator. What differentiates a great team from a good one during times of crisis. Trust Fund’s Sophia Amoruso on why it’s going to be hard for Solo GPs in 2024.

Accelerate your career in 2024 with Sidebar

Do you want to level up your career in 2024? Surround yourself with extraordinary peers - it’s not just a leg up, it’s a leap forward. That’s the Sidebar ethos.

Sidebar is a private, highly vetted leadership program for those who want to do more, do it better, and do it faster.

Sidebar’s approach is focused around small peer groups, a tech-enabled platform, and an expert-led curriculum. Members say it’s like having their own Personal Board of Directors. It’s the 10x tech-enabled experience of the Femstreet community.

And, Sidebar works. 93% of members say that Sidebar has made a significant difference in their career trajectory.

Learn more at sidebar.com, and join thousands of top senior leaders from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta who have taken the first step towards accelerating their career.

Get started with Sidebar for free

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The art and science of Product Marketing

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How to get started as an interim CMO

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How to present to your CEO

Meetings with CEOs and executives can go in any direction. Like doctors with bad handwriting, executives are notorious for zooming in on one detail or unexpectedly changing the topic. Many people assume meetings with CEOs will be a formal presentation, delivered from beginning to end with no interruptions. This might be the case for some meetings, but most will be more interactive and flexible. Wes Kao shares how to prepare for and run a meeting when you present to your CE …Read more.

Building a sustainable company without running out of runway

What is the number one reason PMF work gets deprioritised? Because of the pressures to grow. In a growth role at a startup, you feel a lot of pressure to grow and to perform. Whether this is from investors, your founder or the fact that you know you have a limited runway. Whenever you aren’t working on that growth problem, it feels like you are wasting time and not making progress. Daphne Tideman shares advice on how to grow without PMF…Read more.

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Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here. New opportunities await.
We’ve got 300+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

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Our subscribers value Femstreet’s content: the open rate for Femstreet’s newsletter is more than 2x the industry average.

Brands such as Affinity, Mercury, and Carta value Femstreet. Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Connect with our community of young female business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source our readers trust.

***We now have 3 exclusive spots for Femstreet Gold sponsors: guaranteed 6 months of exposure to our audience with your logo on our website and blog + one newsletter appearance included.

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In case you missed our recent posts

• Why SaaS founders should embrace their inner scientist on the path to $1M ARR

• The secrets of owning your odds and how founders can learn from athletes to build better teams

• Why Freemium might wreck your revenue

• A story of pricing, trial retention & purchase UX flows

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Find out more about us on femstreet.com

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Join the Femstreet Talent Collective!

Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here. New opportunities await.
We’ve got 300+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Our subscribers value Femstreet’s content: the open rate for Femstreet’s newsletter is more than 2x industry averages.

Brands such as Affinity, Mercury, and Carta value Femstreet. Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Connect with our community of young female business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source that our readers trust.

***We now have 3 exclusive spots for Femstreet Gold sponsors: guaranteed 6 months exposure to our audience with your logo on our website and blog + one newsletter appearance included.

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed our recent posts

• Why SaaS founders should embrace their inner scientist on the path to $1M ARR

• The secrets of owning your odds and how founders can learn from athletes to build better teams

• Why Freemium might wreck your revenue

• A story of pricing, trial retention & purchase UX flows

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Find out more about us on femstreet.com

Insights

Demi Guo and Meng Chenlin raised a $55M Seed & Series A round for video AI platform Pika Labs led by Lightspeed, Conviction and Nat Friedman. Negotiating for the salary you deserve. Salesforce Ventures and Female Founders Fund back Kenyan climate-tech Amini founded by Nvidia exec Kate Kallot in a $4M seed round. Being a people pleaser is making you physically sick. OpenAI ditched the only two women on its board. For female founders, even a Ph.D. doesn't close the gender funding gap.

A message from Female Founder World

Partnerships are a smart way to get your business in front of other people’s audiences—and often they cost nothing.

Female Founder World, our fave community for entrepreneurial business owners and brand builders, created a free guide with 40+ partnership ideas. One of their Business Besties used the guide to land a partnership with Katy Perry’s shoe brand! Download the guide here, then check out one of their IRL or URL events (Female Founder World’s kinda famous for them!).

From builders and investors in our universe…

The "15% + 1 level" rule for creating buy-in and moving immovable things

How do you create buy-in from others when trying to change things in a company? Lots of PMs and Growth leaders have a comprehensive understanding of what is wrong within their organisation but they can’t get buy-in for their ideas. Leah Tharin argues you have to think one level higher than you are and affect >15%+ of that with an idea…Read more.

The ten commandments of consumer behaviour

Founders often think their vision and products can change the world, but they can't change human nature. The smartest founders remember they need to understand the human mind first. Consumers are overwhelmed, busy, and often lazy, they are emotional and even though they are pack animals, they adopt new products at different speeds. Magda Kala of Double Down Ventures on the principles of consumer behaviour founders should keep in mind to maximise their chances of success…Read more.

A framework for early revenue

The problem that most people encounter is direction: Not having clarity on the process leads to people building MVPs for 6 months. Doing everything except sales and customer validation. Staying way too long on a bad idea with 0 learning without testing your hypothesis rigorously. Maddie Wang on how to approach ideation and hypothesis validation before making any revenue…Read more.

To Interim CMO or not?

Building your leadership team should be a slow, thoughtful, and deliberate process. Bringing someone on board too quickly and firing them in just a few months creates chaos and affects your credibility as a founder. This is a perfect situation to bring on an interim CMO. It’s a low-risk, high-return option. Hema Padhu on the six signs you should opt for an interim CMO and when not to…Read more.

5 questions to ask your managers every month to help them grow as a leader

When you stop managing individual contributors and start managing other managers, a lot needs to change. So, how can you let go of the control? How can you trust them to do the job while you’re still responsible for it? Vinita Bansal on finding the sweet spot where you know just enough to coach when needed while giving them the space to explore, work things out on their own, and learn from their mistakes…Read more.

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Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here. New opportunities await.
We’ve got 300+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Reach out to our community of young business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source that our readers trust through sponsored ads or job postings on our job board.

Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers. Reserve your spot for now!

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed our recent posts

• Why SaaS founders should embrace their inner scientist on the path to $1M ARR

• Why Freemium might wreck your revenue

• A story of pricing, trial retention & purchase UX flows

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Find out more about us on femstreet.com

👀 We got a new look and website - I hope you like it.

If you are passionate about all things social media and keen to get involved with Femstreet for 3-5 hours a week, we would love to hear from you → Drop me a note here.

Insights

OpenAI’s CTO Mira Murati will step in as interim CEO, replacing Sam Altman. The 34-year-old engineer from Albania has been managing the development and distribution of ChatGPT and DALL-E for years. Salesforce names Denise Dresser to succeed Lidiane Jones as CEO of Slack. Slack’s current CEO Lidiane Jones will be stepping into a new role next year as the CEO of Bumble as Whitney Wolfe Herd is stepping down after a decade at the helm. Growing up in Brazil, Jones is someone who never takes the ‘safe route’ in her career. Melinda French Gates wants to redefine what a ‘smart bet’ in venture capital looks like. Romanian-born Lisa Popovici raises $4.7M for her customer service-focused AI company Siena. Female Founders Fund run by Anu Duggal looks to raise $75M for its new fund. All social networking apps fall on a spectrum from love to fame: here’s a framework for social applications. GTM tactics every founder needs to thrive in today’s market.

Looking for a fresh start for your brand in the new year?

Learn more about 28K.studio

From builders and investors in our universe…

Choosing the right marketing channels

“We’re only doing cold outbound. Is that okay?” “We’re only doing paid search. Is that okay?” The truth is, you need to pick channels that will work for your startup specifically. Emily Kramer highlights common questions regarding channel selection and emphasizes the need to avoid falling into the trap of random acts of marketing. She provides guidance on selecting channels that align with your company’s audience, market, stage, and marketing advantages…Read more.

How to grow while you execute

You typically have the most impact in your career when you are learning the least, and you tend to learn the most when you are least effective. When you get comfortable in your job, it’s easy to get complacent. Deb Liu on the challenge of balancing learning and impact in demanding roles and strategies for balancing the two…Read more.

A complete performance review system for startups

It’s that time of the year again: Annual performance reviews! Performance review cycles are especially tricky for early stage companies because they’re a huge time suck for the whole company. Molly Graham shares her performance review system, which aims to minimize the energy drain while getting those benefits and outlines the steps, tools, and timelines that you’ll need to set up peer review cycles, calibrate reviews, and calculate salary/equity raises…Read more.

How to land a job at a fast-paced startup

Landing your first startup job can be an intimidating challenge, but there are several ways you can make it more manageable. From embracing take-home projects to clarifying your work and talking points, these strategies can help you prepare and stand out. Whether you’re interested in getting hired at a startup or you’re just curious about what it takes to land at one, Wes Kao shares her best advice…Read more.

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Join the Femstreet Talent Collective!

Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here. New opportunities await.
We’ve got 300+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Reach out to our community of young business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source that our readers trust through sponsored ads or job postings on our job board.

Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers. Reserve your spot for now!

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed our recent posts

• Why SaaS founders should embrace their inner scientist on the path to $1M ARR

• Why Freemium might wreck your revenue

• A story of pricing, trial retention & purchase UX flows

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday, have a good start to the week!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Find out more about us on femstreet.com

Insights

VC firm ex/ante, started by Zoe Weinberg who span out of a philanthropic venture arm of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, raises a $33M fund focused on online privacy and security. Revolut appoints Francesca Carlesi (ex Barclays and Deutsche Banks) as new UK CEO as British banking license is still pending since 2021. The Goop strategy: spinning a product into a business. Anu Duggal is building a landscape where female founders thrive. A new TV Series about the rise of Glossier is coming to Amazon.

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From builders and investors in our universe…

SaaS founders, be a scientist, not a builder until you hit $1m ARR.

It takes the average SaaS company 33 months to hit $1m in ARR, a great outcome would be 18 months. Common mistakes founders make in GTM are selling the product before it is ready, not leveraging their product to increase usage and preventing customers from buying the way that they want to buy. Maria McMenamin ex Stripe & Pitch on how to embrace your inner scientist to get to PMF and prepare to learn through many experiments…Read more.

Managing Ops teams at high-growth startups

What makes a startup a startup (at least, for those who have a product to market) is growth. Growth is what creates the soul of any startup. But when should you start focusing on growth? Allison Barr Allen shares lessons from planning processes at Uber…Read more.

Developing high performers

Most managers see high performers and just leave them alone because they are performing well. But high performers are where all the potential of a company lies. There’s nothing more magical than watching someone do things they didn’t know they were capable of. Molly Graham argues if you want to retain high performers, you should offer exciting opportunities that scare them…Read more.

A framework for saying "no"

Saying “no” is a must-have skill for software engineers to manage their workload and align with stakeholders on requirements, timelines, and deliverables. Not pushing back can result in overwhelm, delayed roadmaps, and poor team morale. Irina Stanescu shares how declining, counter-offering, or buying time are effective strategies for saying “no” at work…Read more.

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Join the Femstreet Talent Collective!

Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here. New opportunities await.
We’ve got 300+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Reach out to our community of young business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source that our readers trust through sponsored ads or job postings on our job board.

Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers. Reserve your spot for Q4 2023 now!

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed it

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• A Guide On Web3 Go-To-Market Tactics And Strategies

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Sports cards and the future of retail investing

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

• The future of media, community-driven knowledge networks, and the ownership economy

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday, have a good start to the week!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Insights

VC firm Greycroft co-founded by Dana Settle cuts five investors including Partner Ellie Wheeler and Principal Sharla Grass after missing its fundraising target and refocuses on AI and Climate. General Catalyst acquires La Famiglia VC in Berlin run by Jeannette zu Fürstenberg to expand its Seed investing footprint. Black founders received 0.13% of capital this Q3. Athlete Allyson Felix on the power of speaking up and using your voice even if it shakes. Alpaca VC co-run by Aubrie Pagano closed on $78M in commitments for its third fund. ALIAVIA founded by Marisa Warren and Kate Vale closes a $8.7M fund to invest in female founders across Australia and the US. Caroline Ellison steps out of Sam Bankman-Fried’s shadow and gives her testimony. Banking startup Rho is in talks to buy creator startup Creative Juice run by Sima Gandhi. Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters decided to replace ad sales chief Jeremi Gorman with longtime Netflix executive Amy Reinhard. Having built one of tech’s most valuable startups, Melanie Perkins now has to arm it for huge battles ahead: winning in AI, fighting off Adobe and conquering the public markets.

A message from Range.com

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Built to support modern households, Range is reimagining wealth management with an all-in-one platform, designed to bring together all aspects of your financial planning: Investment Strategy, Tax Optimization, Education and Retirement Planning, Cash Flow Analysis, and Estate Planning.

Members can access our proprietary forecasting technology and 24/7 access to a team of Certified Financial Planners and tax experts.

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From builders and investors in our universe…

How to drive growth by leveraging customer pain for positioning and messaging

How many times have you landed on a website to be hit by product demos and explainer videos about how the product works without a word acknowledging your pain? Hema Padhu shares the four pillars of pain narrative and a simple framework to develop pain messaging to position your product to drive growth…Read more.

How to build a killer sales pitch and transform how you sell your product

Your real competition isn’t competitors, it’s the buyer’s “no decision”. In B2B software, it turns out buyers are more worried about messing up than they are about missing out. April Dunford on the typical B2B purchasing process and a two-part sales pitch structure that’ll transform your sales process…Read more.

The problem with glorifying failure

There’s been well-meaning advice to “talk about your failures” that’s propped on the back of trends like building in public and as a reaction to social media acting primarily as a highlight reel. The stories of failure are sparingly to punctuate a baseline history of wins, to show they’ve overcome challenges, to give them depth of character, and to make them more relatable. Wes Kao shares when and how should you talk about failures and what to consider so you can make an informed decision about what’s most advantageous for you…Read more.

Why Freemium might wreck your revenue

A free account that loves your product is part of your product and acquisition. But when does going freemium makes sense? A freemium offering works great for a new audience that’s waiting for you to open the gates. Not so much with an audience that you’ve already been catering to as you have that audience locked down already. How are you thinking about freemium vs free trial vs sales-led onboarding at your company? Leah Tharin dives into a misunderstanding of when Freemium indeed is the right choice, when it is time to abort and when to invest…Read more.

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Join the Femstreet Talent Collective!

Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here. New opportunities await.
We’ve got 300+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Reach out to our community of young business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source that our readers trust through sponsored ads or job postings on our job board.

Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers. Reserve your spot for Q4 2023 now!

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed it

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• A Guide On Web3 Go-To-Market Tactics And Strategies

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Sports cards and the future of retail investing

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

• The future of media, community-driven knowledge networks, and the ownership economy

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday, have a good start to the week!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Insights

Instacart’s big IPO twist: Born and raised in France, Fidji Simo just IPO’d Instacart and is confident the grocery delivery company will maintain market share. Simo also runs a new and not to small women’s health side hustle Metrodora. Angel investor Liz Wessel joins First Round as its newest Partner. Battle of the funds: do VC specialists outperform generalists? Maxine Minter on 'portfolio careers' and raising Australia's first solo female VC fund. The European Investment Fund puts €40M into female-founded climatetech fund Blume Equity. Does the path to the C-Suite still run through the Ivy League? How to break into VC by Maya Bakhai. Join the Women in AI Co-Working day with General Catalyst. The sophistication era of consumer fintech. Ex-Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg is back with a new app Meeno that helps you have hard conversations. How Alli Webb turned Drybar into a $100M business. Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six leads $4.7M seed round in executive coaching platform The Grand, co-founded by Anita Hossain Choudhry and Rei Wang. USV and Sam Altman lead a $30M round in B2B payments startup Slope co-founded by Alice Deng.

A message from Propeller Industries

Are you thinking about profitability, extending your runway, and improving efficiency in your operations? Managing your company’s finances requires multiple skill sets. Propeller’s fractional model offers a dynamic solution that provides a cost-effective alternative to hiring full-time finance talent. Propeller is more than an outsourced CFO and accounting provider. With experienced talent in specialized roles and the flexibility to adapt as your needs evolve, we’re your long-term partner in growth.

Talk to our Experts.

From builders and investors in our universe…

How to make history with LLMs & other generative models

Deciding which opportunities to pursue is crucial for an intelligent founder. Over the past year, opinions have varied on where new LLM/generative model-related $10B+ companies will be built. Some believe there are many opportunities to build AI-native companies, while others believe there are flash-in-the-pan opportunities. Some categories offer better risk return than others, as parts of the "LLM stack" appear more resilient. Kleiner Perkin’s Leigh Marie Braswell discusses some exciting ideas and others that are less certain of reaching venture-scale as standalone businesses…Read more.

Scaling developer-first products

Great teams that prioritize customer needs above all can build great products and, consequently, great companies. Developers are increasingly influential decision-makers in organizations, with purchasing power and dedicated budgets. Companies like Stripe, Twilio, and Github have transformed developer-first platforms by placing developers at the heart of decisions. Eeke de Milliano of Retool discusses scaling developer-first products…Read more.

Five LP communication principles

Maintaining a transparent and open dialogue with your LPs is crucial to mutual success. But how do you best communicate the good and bad news? GPs often think they have a communication basis covered by putting important updates in an annual/quarterly report. As a baseline, arm them so have a general sense of the potential breakouts and problem children in the fund. Meghan Reynolds on empathy, communication hierarchy, and the PIE framework…Read more.

Culture's hard to replicate market to market. You almost had to have worked at the “Death Star”, if you want to call it that, to understand how the culture worked from the inside out to be able to replicate it.

Marketing across borders

You can’t copy and paste a marketing playbook when expanding into a new market. But you also don’t need to completely reinvent the wheel. It’s all about finding the balance between a global approach and speaking to your audience at a local level. Linktree’s CMO Monica Austin shares how building global marketing strategies is like baking a cake, and the importance of context in communication and decision-making when you have a culturally diverse team working in different time zones…Read more.

The tea on Gen Z

Gen Z represents a whole new breed: from how they shop and save to what they want out of their families and careers, their health, and their beliefs. As arguably more diverse, independent, and inclined towards action than any prior generation, Gen Z will play an active role in rewriting not only the rules but also their own reality. Redpoint’s Meera Clark dives deep into the world of Gen Z and their obsessions…Read more.

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Join the Femstreet Talent Collective!

Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here. New opportunities await.
We’ve got 300+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Reach out to our community of young business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source that our readers trust through sponsored ads or job postings on our job board.

Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers. Reserve your spot for Q4 2023 now!

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed it

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• A Guide On Web3 Go-To-Market Tactics And Strategies

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Sports cards and the future of retail investing

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

• The future of media, community-driven knowledge networks, and the ownership economy

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Insights

How Glossier tried and failed to become a tech company. Elizabeth Clarkson of Sapphire Partners now manages five funds with $1.4B in assets that are focused on emerging managers on behalf of CalSTRS. Nordic-based Unconventional Ventures run by Thea Messel and Nora Bavey nears €30M fund close to back diverse European teams. Mei Lin Ng, Susie Harrison and Nathalie Stratton raised $4.7M in additional funding for their hardware company Hearth Display making digital whiteboards for family task management. The S&P 500 loses its sole black woman CEO with Walgreens departure. An anxious August - contextualizing monthly consumer sentiment and market momentum. Why a lot of small bets are better than a big one. Why ‘Follow Your Passion’ can be perilous career advice for women leaders. Claire Butler on Figma’s unique GTM motion.

A message from guidde

Magically create video documentation with AI.

Tired of explaining the same thing over and over again to your colleagues? It’s time to delegate that work to AI. guidde is a GPT-powered tool that helps you explain the most complex tasks in seconds with AI-generated documentation. Turn tedious documentation into stunning visual guides Save valuable time by creating video documentation 11x faster Share or embed your guide anywhere for your team to see Simply click capture on our browser extension and the app will automatically generate step-by-step video guides complete with visuals, voiceover and call to actions.

The best part? Our extension is 100% free.

Try it here

From builders and investors in our universe…

A story of pricing, trial retention and purchase UX flows

With 100 million users, a 4.8-star rating and 8B activities posted, Strava is one of the most popular fitness apps in the world. How does an app in such a crowded space monetise and stay competitive? Rosie Hoggmascall dives into the history of Strava’s monetisation, pricing changes and their post-purchase UX flow…Read more.

How to take time off and use it well

Time off is about giving yourself the space to breathe. It’s about learning what a day looks like when you’re not in back-to-back meetings. It’s about finding things that make you happy that have nothing to do with work. But there seem to be a lot of objections to taking time off and resetting before starting something new, even from people who can afford it. Molly Graham shares how to best structure and defend your time off…Read more.

Hard lessons from bootstrapping SaaS

You may have a product and happy customers, but it’s not clear how this will compound. Many products suck not because builders have lousy taste, but because they don’t use the product like a real customer. But before you can be customer-driven, you need to be self-driven. The work and the quality has to matter to you, even if there’s no audience in sight. Linda Zhang shares a few things you don’t learn as a tech PM that help you bootstrap your SaaS product…Read more.

How founders can write copy that converts

What if the words you use (accidentally) stir the wrong reactions in your users and prospects? The words we use or don’t use impact decisions and, in turn, money. Money words are the execution arm of persuasion. By strategically choosing your words, you can make people like you more, motivate your team to make good decisions and sound more confident. Joanna Wiebe on how you can use words as persuasive levers…Read more.

Subscribe now

Join the Femstreet Talent Collective!

Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here. New opportunities await.
We’ve got 300+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Reach out to our community of young business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source that our readers trust through sponsored ads or job postings on our job board.

Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers. Reserve your spot for Q4 2023 now!

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed it

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• A Guide On Web3 Go-To-Market Tactics And Strategies

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Sports cards and the future of retail investing

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

• The future of media, community-driven knowledge networks, and the ownership economy

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note.

Insights

Bumble’s Whitney Wolfe Herd envisions dating tech as a cure to the loneliness epidemic. PE firm Alitheia is banking on women in Africa with a $100m fund. 79% of seed funding for diverse founders goes to white women. This self-funded beauty brand started with a quest for a better lipstick. Now it's launching in Sephora. The missing link between female funders and female founders. Juggling startup and household chores. Investment in your well-being will pay dividends. VCs on Black-founded startups you need to know. Office activewear is changing how women dress at work.

A message from guidde

Magically create video documentation with AI.

Tired of explaining the same thing over and over again to your colleagues? It’s time to delegate that work to AI. guidde is a GPT-powered tool that helps you explain the most complex tasks in seconds with AI-generated documentation. Turn tedious documentation into stunning visual guides Save valuable time by creating video documentation 11x faster Share or embed your guide anywhere for your team to see Simply click capture on our browser extension and the app will automatically generate step-by-step video guides complete with visuals, voiceover and call to actions.

The best part? Our extension is 100% free.

Try it here

From builders and investors in our universe…

Creating a product your customers didn’t realise they needed

The easy part is writing code. The hard part is building something people want: No more building. Just talk to customers. Vanta’s Christina Cacioppo shares how she came up with the idea for Vanta and approached customer discovery without any prior sales experience…Read more.

Fundraise like a sales executive

With the 2024 budgeting cycle kicking off in early Q4, how can a scale-up CEO best prepare their business to attract the right new investors, reasonable terms, and valuable Board members in a ‘new normal’? Joyce Liu shares the top reasons that lead to a successful fundraise…Read more.

Mastering the art of negotiation

Whether it's an offer to join a new company, a promotion, or a raise, embracing negotiation should be a proud moment, not a fearful one. When an offer or raise falls short of your expectations, avoid assuming the company undervalues you. Brianna Rooney on why you should seek clarification instead, and take control of the conversation, striking a balance between assertiveness and respect…Read more.

What B2B startups can learn from B2C companies

Take any B2C business - customers and their experience - are at the center of their business. B2C startups start with the customer need and work backward, while B2B frequently starts with the technology or product and moves outwards towards the customer. Hema Padhu on how the B2C mindsets can be easily applied to B2B and the change that is required on how leaders think about building and selling…Read more.

How to hire your first growth team

Many companies are establishing growth teams for the very first time, and there’s still very little practical advice for the sequence of building your first growth team. Growth teams and pods are typically formed around (1) acquisition, (2) activation, (3) monetization, and/or (4) engagement goals. Dropbox’s Elena Verna on why a growth leader should not be your first hire and how you can structure your team…Read more.

Subscribe now

Join the Femstreet Talent Collective!

Join the Femstreet Talent Collective! New opportunities await.
We’ve got 250+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Reach out to our community of young business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source that our readers trust through sponsored ads or job postings on our job board.

Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers. Reserve your spot for Q4 2023 now!

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed it

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• A Guide On Web3 Go-To-Market Tactics And Strategies

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Sports cards and the future of retail investing

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

• The future of media, community-driven knowledge networks, and the ownership economy

Thanks for tuning in this Sunday!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note

Insights

What happened to Katie Haun an her $1.5B crypto fund? Emily Man leaves Redpoint and joins Primary VC as B2B and Fintech Partner. Meet Window Snyder, the cybersecurity trailblazer who helped secure the internet and billions of devices. EventMobi acquiresd a16z-backed and female founded online events platform Run The World for an undisclosed amount. Can ‘No’ be a complete sentence for women leaders? European VCs are seeing an exodus of women investors. African provider pf central banking infra Emtech, founded by Carmelle Cadet, announced $4M from Matrix Partners. Working moms make $31k less than dads with degrees. Leadership and startup advice from a mom, wife, and first-time founder. Canva could be the next big tech IPO.

A message from Revelo

Need speed and flexibility in scaling dev teams? Revelo is the largest platform to hire world-class remote developers from Latin America, who are pre-vetted for technical and soft skills. Get matched with vetted candidates in 3 days. Get a $2,500 credit on your first hire — start with a risk-free trial!

Hire Developers

From builders and investors in our universe…

The art of self-awareness

Self-awareness is a moving target — there’s always more to understand about ourselves. Successful leaders keep an eye on the personality traits that have helped them achieve their success. Strengths without self-awareness become weaknesses. Strengths examined regularly become superpowers. Coa’s Dr Emily Anhalt on dialling up your strengths deep within your founder DNA, while dialling down the weaknesses that might be holding you back…Read more.

Preparing for a new Role

Starting a new job poorly can be detrimental to your trajectory, but starting a new job well will set you up for long-term success. You are a foreigner in a foreign land. You are learning the ropes while also trying your best to fit in, connect with your coworkers, and avoid making mistakes early on. Deb Liu got a few tips that will give you the momentum to succeed…Read more.

Vertical GTM Motions

Verticalization leads to focus, and a focused go-to-market has major benefits. A lot of companies can just ride a vertical all the way to IPO. Ultimately, deciding when and how to “unverticalize” depends on how strong the signals are for your company. Sara Du of Alloy Automation shares her view on when you should verticalize, and when you should move horizontally again…Read more.

How to fix your demo request flow and increase revenue

Am I making it too hard for my prospects to buy our product? Buying software is typically a complicated mess with roadblocks around every corner. Emily Kramer of Mkt1 shares sales-led GTM motions with demo request flows that drive prospects to book a meeting and how to optimize your flow for conversion…Read more.

Subscribe now

Join the Femstreet Talent Collective!

Whether the recent layoffs impacted you or you’re looking for a new challenge or talent - we want to help. Join the Femstreet Talent Collective! New opportunities await.

We’ve got 200+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Reach out to our community of young business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source that our readers trust through sponsored ads or job postings on our job board.

Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers. Reserve your spot for 2023 now!

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed it

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• A Guide On Web3 Go-To-Market Tactics And Strategies

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Sports cards and the future of retail investing

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

• The future of media, community-driven knowledge networks, and the ownership economy

Thanks for tuning in this week!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note

We’ve got some cool news: Femstreet is excited to be a community partner for the highly anticipated Sifted Summit in London this year!

Mark your calendars for October 4-5 and meet us at Magazine London for the hottest startup event in Europe, spotlighting the best strategies to combat the tech downturn and fuel innovation. With over 3,000 attendees, four stages of content, workshops and roundtables, meetups, editorial office hours and an unforgettable afterparty, we can’t wait to see you there!

We’ve got 5 VIP tickets reserved for Femstreet community members. If you’re a founder or C-level operator of a European-based/ founded startup or scaleup and would like to attend, please respond to this email asap. First come first serve!

Get your tickets now!

Insights

Startups with all-women founding teams raised just $1.4B in H1. Supply Change Capital started by Latinas Noramay Cadena and Shayna Harris announces a $40M debut fund to invest in the global food industry. Jessica Verrilli, ex GV, and April Underwood, ex Slack, raised $75M for their debut fund Adverb Ventures. Does Twitter / X CEO Linda Yaccarino have the most difficult job in tech? The transformative shift in fitness culture. As humans confront the machines rapidly racing to replace them, how will advances in AI impact our corporate constructs? It’s time to retire the stereotype that women are worse at networking than men. HerMD, founded by Dr. SomiJavaid, is opening new women’s health clinics across the US following a $18M extension.

A message from Poised

📣  Calling all female leaders and investors! Elevate your communication game with Poised—the AI communication feedback partner designed to empower women to speak confidently at work. Poised offers real-time feedback on your communication style, helping you articulate your ideas with clarity and conviction.

Why try Poised? 🗣️ Confidently express your ideas 🚀 Influence and inspire your team ✨ Deliver compelling pitches and drive impactful results for your ventures.

Let Poised work its magic in your next call.

From builders and investors in our universe…

Build elephants, not unicorns

We’ve spent the past decade celebrating unicorns, their tremendous growth and the founders and investors who shape them. The next decade deserves an icon that corresponds to the behaviours and traits of the most interesting companies operating today: The elephant is grounded in a clear purpose, puts community first and is a magnet for members who commit to the long haul. Erica Wenger of Park Rangers Capital on what makes elephants inevitable…Read more.

On hiring and retaining employees who act more like founders than employees

On one side, there are employees who think of the company as a job. Then there is the other side of the spectrum. This group has a different DNA – they pour their passion into the company because they believe in its mission, and add value to the company beyond their job description and responsibilities. Sarah Tavel of Benchmark shares that during times when growth becomes more of a grind and each incremental hire is evaluated more carefully, now is the time to make sure you are attracting and retaining mitochondria…Read more.

Manage the What, not the How

Micromanaging your employees is a really common pattern in a lot of leaders who have never managed people before. Controlling how work gets done only makes your company slower. Molly Graham says you have to learn to be extraordinary at aligning around the “what” and at coaching people as they go and let go of the “how”…Read more.

How to think like a modern Marketer and adapt to 2023's tools

To be a successful startup marketer in 2023 in addition to being great at distribution, you must be an audience & product expert, a no-code engineer and web developer, a designer and copywriter, a martech specialist and so much more. Incorporating new tools can be overwhelming and intimidating. Emily Kramer of MKT1 on the importance of adapting to changing marketing trends and tools…Read more.

Subscribe now

Join the Femstreet Talent Collective!

Whether the recent layoffs impacted you or you’re looking for a new challenge or talent - we want to help. Join the Femstreet Talent Collective! New opportunities await.

We’ve got 200+ incredibly talented women in our Collective! Companies can get 1 month 50% off our Collective with the code femstreet50, cancel anytime.

For companies: If you're hiring, apply to start getting bi-monthly drops of amazing people in our community for new gigs across Product, VC, Chief of Staff profiles, Marketing, UX, Strategy etc — actively or passively. Apply to join now and choose from the open talent looking for their next thing here.

Are you looking for a new, big gig? Applicants, please apply to join our Talent Collective here.

25% of our audience say the first thing they do when they wake up on Sunday morning is read Femstreet.

Reach out to our community of young business professionals and decision-makers, and tell your story from a source that our readers trust through sponsored ads or job postings on our job board.

Our readers are global, diverse, ambitious professionals, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers. Reserve your spot for 2023 now!

Work with Femstreet

In case you missed it

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Modern GTM motions for a SaaS startups

• A Guide On Web3 Go-To-Market Tactics And Strategies

• The Minimum Viable Finance Set Up

• Sports cards and the future of retail investing

• Community-Led Growth Nirvana

• A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders

• Me, My Teen Self and Instagram

• The future of media, community-driven knowledge networks, and the ownership economy

Thanks for tuning in this week!

👋 Sarah

Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note