Jennifer Dennard

To all #founders and #entrepreneurs out there, our intro meetings are conversational and easy going. Feel free to message me to setup a call. Learn what Pioneera Ventures can do for you!

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How to Profit by Divesting from Companies with Anti-Israel Stances As savvy investors, we must always be alert to the implications of a company's political stance on its financial health. Take, for instance, hims & hers, whose CEO, Andrew Dudum, recently made a controversial statement about hiring pro-Palestinian protesters just days before a potentially underwhelming quarterly earnings report. This statement, coinciding with a 5% drop in share value—erasing $100 million in market equity—raises the suspicion that it might be a psychological maneuver by a CEO fearing for his job ahead of poor earnings results. Given hims & hers' history of underperformance, with shares gaining only 8.32% since its IPO compared to a 23.33% increase in the S&P 500 and similar growth in the Nasdaq, investors could have seen better returns elsewhere. Furthermore, analysts are also showing signs of concern. Recently, Jefferies downgraded hims & hers from 'Buy' to 'Hold' and reduced the price target to $15 from $17, signaling a cautious stance on the company's growth prospects. This downgrade, coupled with the anticipated poor earnings, paints a troubling picture for the future of hims & hers. Additionally, the related Supernova festival tragedy on 10/7, where victims mirror the typical hims & hers customer base, might further alienate its clientele. Customers may sympathize more with the victims than with a company perceived to be exploiting political events to distract from business failures. This scenario suggests potential for increased customer churn and a continued decline in share value, making it a critical time for shareholders to consider divesting. For those open to risk, short selling could capitalize on anticipated downturns.

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A few months ago someone told me they would never consider 'a fractional COO because it's basically a lazy VP Ops' 😂 I really appreciated the honesty! But let me clarify a few things: 1️⃣ A Fractional COO is 𝒏𝒐𝒕 for everyone. For example, if you have a very aligned, organized, and strategic founding team, or if your founding team has worked together successfully in the past. You may not need a COO as you are able to replicate what you did in the past to drive performance. 2️⃣ A Fractional COO is 𝒏𝒐𝒕 a COO or a VP Ops. For the most part, we don't work day-to-day in the business. We don't own responsibilities fully end-to-end (for the most part). We come in to solve a specific problem. For example, you just raised a big round and your investors want you to scale at the speed of light. A fractional COO may come in to design your hiring plan, implement a new tech stack, and map out more efficient workflows. 3️⃣ The title COO is very vague. It can mean so many different things, and that's the same with a fractional COO. Some focus more on optimizing your financials, others on structuring your GTM. For me, 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞. 4️⃣ The engagements vary as well. As mentioned above, we generally don't work in the business day-to-day, but sometimes that happens. We can be full-time, part-time, or project-based. Sometimes that changes over time as well. Many fractionals I know end up building very strong relationships with teams and join them full-time. But mostly, we're more than happy to hire our replacement and end the engagement. For some people, it's not ideal that the role of a fractional COO is so unstructured, but for others, that is exactly what they need. When you have a team full of people with defined roles and responsibilities, in times of growth it's ideal to have someone who can move around, be flexible, and slot in wherever is needed. I hope this helps clarify this a bit, and if you're interested in learning more about hiring a fractional COO, shoot me a DM 📩

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A good datapoint for pre-seed founders looking to onboard advisors. Data shows only 1 in 10 pre-seed advisors get more than 1% equity, highlighting the need for careful allocation. Thanks Peter Walker for the insights to help align grants with the industry & preserve equity for growth. #Advisors #Equity #Founders

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Announcing VSC Ventures' inaugural Dirty Jobs Summit Across the world, companies relying on blue-collar workers face challenges in finding reliable labor as boomers retire and younger generations choose other paths over trade roles. We believe software, automation, and robotics in these Dirty, Dusty, and Dangerous industries is a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’ Over the past two years, we have actively invested in seed-stage companies bringing automation, efficiency, and digital transformation to legacy industries through companies like PaintJet, Glacier, concrete.ai AI, Sesame Solar, Presso®, Homemade, and more… and we’re just getting started! ***Why a Dirty Jobs summit?*** Incredible founders are tackling key issues in slow-to-digitize, hard-to-decarbonize sectors like manufacturing, construction, recycling, and logistics, but they lack a space to share learnings and grow their network with kindred operators and investors. The Dirty Jobs Summit has curated a group of top founders, investors, operators, marketers, and decision-makers, creating a forum for founders to be seen and heard. Our Summit will distill specific takeaways, including strategies and tactics the most ambitious startups are deploying, the solutions legacy players are adopting, and the capital investors are deploying to bring huge transformations to dirty jobs ***Who’s going to be in the room?*** Seed through Series B Founders from Rapid Robotics, Inc, GrayMatter Robotics, Renewell Energy, Jacobi Robotics, @Kodama Systems, Reshape Automation, Olis Robotics, Raise Robotics, Urban Machine, Polymath Robotics, Bedrock Energy, Cambium Carbon LLC, First Resonance, Plantd, GaeaStar,CivilGrid, Gritt.ai, VoltAir Inc., and many more GPs and Partners from Lowercarbon Capital, Eclipse, G2VP, Lux Capital, Pathbreaker Ventures, HCVC, Outsiders Fund, Brick & Mortar Ventures, At One Ventures, Voyager Ventures, Congruent Ventures, AlleyCorp, Blue Bear Capital, F-Prime Capital, Union Labs Ventures, Wireframe, Bee Partners, Schematic, Ravelin, Counterpart, 81 Collection, Climactic, Dart Ventures, Sandhill Angels, and so many more ***What will be discussed at Dirty Jobs?*** Proposed topics we’ll cover in our roundtable discussions: — Accessing downstream capital in unsexy industries (Series A & beyond) — Navigating nearshoring of critical manufacturing — Frameworks for effective storytelling in legacy industries — Writing & winning grants in 2024 — What strategics actually care about and look for — Customer acquisition strategies that actually work We've got a great group already with just a *few* more open spots. If you'd be a good fit for Dirty Jobs please RSVP ASAP: https://lu.ma/4dus91nm Special thanks to our incredible sponsors Fidelity Private Shares, Trinity Capital, SVB and Goodwin. See you on June 4th. cc: Jay Kapoor, Vidush Jaipuria, Maggie Philbin

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Sometimes I encourage founders to socialize their company to prospective investors before actually starting an official fundraise process. We've seen this work in a variety of ways: (1) preemptive term sheets; (2) founders pick up on investor sentiment towards their business; (3) opportunity to form more organic relationship with an investor; and (4) get a sense of what investors want to see for a subsequent fundraise. Some founders are reluctant to socialize their business until it appears more solid and there's obvious traction. While this makes sense, the reality is that early-stage is inherently messy and investors know the plane is being built and flown simultaneously. The art of conveying the narrative of, "this is what I've already accomplished and here's where the business will be in next 3-6-9-12 months" can be the most effect fundraising tool in the game. What do others in the VC community think of this strategy?

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🌱 For pre-seed/seed founders 🌱 The early stage vc markets have changed drastically -- but many founders don't truly understand how or how much things have shifted until its too late or they are deep into the fundraising process already. This recent Allocate pod lifts the veil on the pre-seed/seed 2024 markets. SO MANY GEMS are packed 💎 into the first 20 min, I had to listen twice. Key takeaways from pre-seed VCs I'm a big fan of Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures, Kirby Winfield at Ascend (PNW represent!) & Nate Williams. 💎 The market in one word: 'turbulent' 💎 Fundraising bi-furcation; 2X founder building in AI (rounds take weeks) vs All Others (rounds take up to 6 months). 💎 "Leading VCs" (ie. first check in) are putting in a TON of work - building conviction & then helping founders fill the round. 💎 Up to 5 rounds pre-A; need lower early valuations to enable step ups 💎 Pre-seed entry valuations have corrected to $5-8M 💎 Round sizes have increased at pre-seed & seed for extended runway Many more insights in the full pod here: https://lnkd.in/gYf-DMr6 #venturecapital #preseed

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There was considerable buzz last week about the alarming statistic that a staggering 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, according to PayrollOrg. Instead of trying to diagnose the problem, I decided to dive into the secondary effects it has on emergency savings. Unsurprisingly, I discovered that over 30% of Americans report they would have difficulty covering an unexpected $400 expense. This highlights a critical vulnerability in our financial safety nets. 🚨 Introduce Emergency Savings Accounts (ESA) ... ! As part of Secure Act 2.0, the government introduced employer-offered ESAs to help address the difficulty many Americans face with unexpected expenses by separating emergency savings from retirement funds. And there are already some amazing companies like Sunny Day Fund ☀️, SecureSave, and Ezra Financial, helping make this more seamless for employers and employees, alike. But if you read my posts, you know there has to be a community bank play in here as well! So read the full article and find out more: https://lnkd.in/emiJgRvD And always, leave your thoughts, questions, or concerns in the comments! #communitybanking #emergencysavings #innovation

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this is my favorite blog post in describing the process of pattern matching that VCs use to evaluate fund-returning opportunities: in search of narrative violations. a narrative violation is a contrarian take against conventional wisdom. it is an intentional disregard of the wisdom of the crowds in favor of ideas that are just crazy enough that they might work. the best venture deals have been ones where it wasn't an oversubscribed round; it didn't fall into the secular trends of the market cycle; it was an unpopular opinion that inadvertently led to category creation; and contributed a significant portion of DPI to LPs. all of these narrative violations seem to have 3 things in common: outlier founding teams, a positive inflection in market timing, and an ability to anticipate widespread product adoption in the mid-to-long-term time horizons since company inception. pls pls pls have a read - you won't regret it :)

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I have this discussion with people leaders. There is no 1 right answer to pay transparency and to truly solve it, you need to empower managers. Excited to put my thoughts to paper

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🚀 quick clarification on the recent SBIR guide that I posted. 🤠 Also looking for feedback to see if folks are interested in a congressional engagement guide - ita something I’ve heard some initial demand signal for, but wanted to confirm before building it out!

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Starting up is hard, but getting started is even harder. Its hard to feel ready. Its hard to feel you have a ‘winning idea’. Its hard to find a co-founder. Its hard to leave your job. We understand that, and we can help you! This Sunday we are hosting our first-ever meet-up at Cubbon Park for Future Founders. If you’re ambitious and want to have a massive impact, are curious about entrepreneurship as a vehicle to achieve that impact, but have some doubts that are keeping you from taking that first step, this event is for you. At EF, we believe that the world is missing out on some of its best founders. We believe that there are exceptional people everywhere who could be great founders, if they’re given access to the right environment and the right peer group. We find these exceptional individuals and take them on a company building journey. PS. You’ll also meet founders and investors who have seen this journey several times over, as well as founders from our latest cohort. Rahul Samat Sajal Khanna Dhruv Tyagi Raghav Goyal

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I’m excited to publicly share something that has been in the works for a few months at the 9point8 Collective. We’ve launched our Virtual Studio! This is a program for early-stage companies that provides the coaching, development and venture-building tools they need to find traction and scale. The program is modeled off of the venture-building processes found inside #VentureStudios, which have delivered 2X IRR and exit 45% faster than traditional #VC-backed #startups over the last 10 years. Some of the secret sauce to this is that studios have found a way to validate strategies early on, de-risk execution, preserve and extend limited runway, and create efficient business models very fast. We at 9point8 are seasoned studio builders and are on a mission to bring this value to founding teams as they navigate their startup journeys. What we’ve done with the Virtual Studio is distill these key processes and techniques, add in our own expertise and best practices, and package them into a program which meets start-ups where they are. We are now opening up our Summer 2024 Cohort, slated to begin in July. Space is limited, so I’m sharing the opportunity with my network before we fill the cohort. Here are the details: -It’s a 3-month program which takes the founder through the key phases of venture-building and de-risking (refining target market, product-market fit, economics and financials, planning, and fundraising). -Founders can expect to achieve greater focus, improved operations and increased marketability to customers and investors. -The end results include collaboratively-drafted operational plans, commercial / investment pitch decks, and elevated management practices within the founding team. These draft off frameworks from 9point8's proprietary venture-building process: Targets Over Everything. -It’s built for founders facing (or approaching) a critical inflection point, where fresh perspectives and strategic management levers are critical. These might include fundraising preparation, new product launch, market expansion, and post-MVP scaling efforts. Why did we build this program? Because building a new company is really hard. 90(!) percent of startups fail, and even moderate risk reduction can create a huge lift to survival rate and eventual returns. The studio model is proven to drive greater venture success; our virtual program is extending that success to more and more teams. The program is highly collaborative and hands-on, so we only take on a few companies at a time. This is a great opportunity for founders who are looking to level-up their abilities when it comes to unlocking traction, growth, and an express lane to superior returns. If interested, please reach out immediately as we expect the program to be fully enrolled very soon! Blair Merlino Evan Allen Neal Ghosh

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Earlier this week John Germinario, VP of People at PebblePost, sent me this thoughtful and unprompted note after his company’s offsite that we were lucky enough to support at Marco Experiences. Building and working at a startup is a grind. Notes like this remind me that it’s worth it. First off, hats off to John Germinario. He went out of his way to not only show gratitude for our partnership but also ensure I was aware of the efforts of our TEAM in making the event a success. In business relationships, it’s better to work with partners on the same team. The fact that John went above and beyond, offering to act as a reference or help close a deal also demonstrates that he’s exactly the kind of customer that we feel lucky to work with (don’t worry I asked him before posting this note 😉). Sometimes it’s hard to quantify or measure human connection's impact in an increasingly disconnected world. This is that value. The impact of intentional gatherings, both on a human and business level, is clear. Big praise to Anna Nikiforov and Court Roberts. Both are huge contributors to what we’re building at Marco. #employeeexperience #offsites #futureofwork #futureofculture #hybridwork

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“The deal team tends to forget about the ambers and greens, even though they often outweigh the reds”🚦 That was the feedback shared with me by a seasoned CEO who is now running his third PE-backed company. He was making the point that traffic light (or “RAG”) ratings for diligence findings are usually effective for helping to focus the mind of the deal team on the single-most impactful diligence findings (usually those flagged as red risks). And this is often what is required to get deals across the line⏩ ⚡However, when it comes to operating / integrating the newly acquired asset post-closing, in the aggregate, it is often the lower-order issues identified in due diligence that require the most attention and are those that are most neglected by the deal teams. 🔰 With a degree of compassion, he acknowledged that “you can’t really blame the deal teams. Investment committees and boards rarely have any interest in discussing ambers and greens”. 📄 It is for this reason that some of the more sophisticated corporates and financial sponsors are now broadening their internal reporting and dashboards. 🖼 The goal being to expand the viewing pane through which diligence issues are considered holistically and integrating feedback from the management teams / PMI advisors earlier in the diligence process. One Head of Corporate Development told me that “we used to include a list of the top ten (or so) risks and their mitigants in our board submissions. Now we share a dashboard of all of the findings and we make sure we take into account the feedback of our ops team before we do so”. No doubt to the relief of management teams and PMI advisors, this approach seems to be increasingly common. Although, by way of contrast / light relief, I was also recently talking to the Global Head of Corporate of a large advisory firm about their innovations in the space of diligence. One example he gave – with surprising enthusiasm - was the recent introduction of a traffic light system into their DD reports… Fortunately for them (and their clients) this was not the only (so-called) innovation… #manda #dd #duediligence #pmi #ragreports #dontforgettheambersandgreens

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Very pleased to be leading the Series A in GovDash, and backing the incredible Sean Doherty, Timothy Goltser and Curtis Mason. As a Vertical SaaS investor, I spend a lot of time thinking about different industries: construction, manufacturing, life sciences, insurance, etc. But while a construction company and a life sciences business may sound like they have little in common, there’s actually a workflow that is nearly identical across thousands of different businesses in diverse verticals: doing business with the government. If you want to win a government contract, you have to work within the byzantine RFP requirement system, spending weeks to draft bid responses that illustrate your past performance, your future potential, and ability to be compliant with stringent government standards. And this process is actually a good thing. It prevents corruption and ensures that the $650B of annual US government contractor spend is being captured by the best possible businesses for the job. So while a construction company may be building a new data center for the office of Social Security, a life sciences company may be manufacturing flu shots, and a staffing company might be hiring janitors for a courthouse, all spend anywhere from 2-3 weeks on average to submit a proposal to win these government dollars. Drafting strong RFP responses is critical to their business growth and really painful: this is a hair on fire problem. What’s more, sometimes the best businesses for the job don’t win the government contract because they have fewer BD resources and overworked teams. This is where GovDash comes in. GovDash has learned that to win this market, you can’t only offer AI-based RFP response drafting (which they do really, really well). You have to extend more deeply into government contractor workflows to provide an entire suite of copilot tools purpose-built for federal contractors, and trained on each customer’s specific industry and past performance. Not only can GovDash’s platform draft a compliant RFP, but using AI it can also discover opportunities based on customized market intelligence, guide teams towards best practices in solution development, standardize the reporting and compliance for contracts in place, and eventually will automate recruiting and HR as teams begin to staff that contract. We are thrilled to welcome GovDash to the portfolio and are excited to be working down the street from them in NYC. Their office has a really cute dog and an American flag, and maybe some day I’ll bring them over an Apple Pie. But most importantly, they have the best people. Northzone https://lnkd.in/esNmUVZa

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“Founder-Market Fit” gets thrown around a-lot. I first heard of the concept in 2016 when 🧬 🤖 ⚙️ Alex Iskold wrote a Josh Kopelman-inspired post about it. Since then, it’s become a default checkbox for early-stage investors, as mainstream belief now is that it’s a key predictor of a startup's success. Yet, it feels awkward every time I see it used to reference different situations. Founder solving a problem that took the life of a loved one? ✔️ FMF! Founder with 25+ years in the same domain they’re building in? ✔️ FMF! See what I mean? Super different. While the nuance might not always matter, I think it should be understood. That’s where better defining variations of FMF can provide a helpful framework to, situationally, evaluate the type of fit a founder has. The 4 types of Founder-Market Fit I’ve observed: 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder feels a deep sense of purpose to solve a problem with their company, and they’ve become obsessed with doing so. Emi Gal is a great example of this with what he's building at Ezra. 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder has meaningful experience operating in the domain, and therefore has a unique vantage point and insights to build from. 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder's technical skill and/or SME transcends the top .1% in their field - creating high barriers to entry - and uniquely positions them to win. This fit is often required for founders building in hard sciences (eg biotech). 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘁: The founder already spent time building relationships and trust in the market, ideally with buyers they’ve sold, and can leverage this “native” network. The GTM motion this creates is a wildly powerful advantage for a founder. Each type of fit is an asset with unique value for founders and compounding effects are certainly at play. Fundamentally, I think it comes down to this question: 𝘋𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 (𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮) 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘳 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘧 𝘴𝘰, 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘵, 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯/𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮? It’s proven FMF is not required to build a successful company, but founders having some prior alignment with the market usually impacts outcomes. HT to James Currier over at NFX who, from what I can tell, has written the most on how he thinks about FMF distinctions. So, what do you think I'm missing here? How do you think about FMF?

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Fundraising Insights for Early-Stage Startups 🚀 Reflecting on my time at YC and beyond with Parker, I've noticed a counterintuitive truth that shapes successful fundraising strategies for startups at pre-seed and seed stages - at early stages, investors often care way more about your story over traction or growth metrics. So, here are some key takeaways to nail your investor conversations: #1 Clear Communication: Cut the jargon and buzzwords. Create a pitch that anyone can grasp immediately. For instance, rather than making vague claims, be direct. Here is a Hypothetical example. Bad example: “We’re revolutionizing the electric car industry by creating unique, best-in-class vehicles that democratize electric travel.” Better example: “We are building electric vehicles that are more affordable and have longer range than anything on the market.” Remove abstraction until anyone can understand your pitch. #2 Founder Fit: Showcase why YOU are the right person to build your startup. Do this by highlighting relevant achievements and experiences that show your capacity to realize your vision. Keep in mind that a traditional background isn’t always the highest-leverage thing to mention, for example: • An investor might care a little bit that you went to Stanford. • They might care a lot that, during your time at Stanford, you built a $50k/mo business. #3 Leverage Social Proof: Boost your credibility by sharing achievements like customer numbers, growth rates, and notable investors backing your venture. Give investors solid reasons to believe in your potential. Use whatever you have available. Example: Famous investor? Great. Famous employee? Great. Notable experience on your founding team? Great. Investors have no idea who you are, in most cases—give them a reason to care. For a detailed look into fundraising advice, check out my essay. https://lnkd.in/g6B6kSdN

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Have a story to tell... Use Narratize AI Co-Authoring platform to tell your stories in an impactful manner. Katie Trauth Taylor, PhD and the entire team is committed to helping you in becoming amazing storytellers. Check out their impressive work at https://lnkd.in/gnNYHSSX Start telling your stories with Narratize AI as your co-author. #generativeai #storytelling #innovation #aicoauthoring #innovators #researchers #impactstories #startups #problemsolvers #AI #AIStartup

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