Pascal Levy-Garboua

Aren't you curious how much others are paid? If you are, then take 5 minutes to complete this ESOP survey. We will send you the tea first ☕ Saison Capital & XA Network are conducting a study on ESOPs, whether your company has an ESOP policy or not, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Founder Survey: https://shorturl.at/xABIR Employee Survey: https://shorturl.at/ejr39

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A recent conversation with a founder: His company developed a B2B SaaS product. They showed some initial promise but ultimately couldn’t achieve meaningful growth. They didn’t reach product/market fit. Then they kept developing more features. And some more features. All of a sudden, they had a product with 12 different main features, none of which was a killer differentiator. The product surface area was so large that the engineering team was always busy just maintaining the codebase. As founders, we all know this isn’t the best way to go. But avoiding this trap is easier said than done — it's just how human psychology works. We get backed into a corner, and our instinct is to work harder and do more things. Occasionally, in the history of products, there have been those that were stuck but finally achieved breakthrough growth with that one key feature. We feel we have to keep the team busy; we can’t have them idle. The list goes on. That’s why, when stuck, sometimes the team needs to slow down at least a little bit and use their brains more than their bodies (i.e., building more features). Startups don’t have abundant resources, so the only edge they can have is to do one thing (which will turn out to be the game changer) really well. It’s about finding that one game-changing thing, not doing more things.

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Don’t stack post-money SAFEs. I know YC backs them & I, as an investor, love them. But for founders, 1 post-money SAFE is fine—2+ can be deadly: What if I told you I’ll lead your seed round but I want: 1- Full ratchet anti-dilution rights. If your next round is say at a 50% lower valuation, my share price gets lowered by 50%. 2- Anti-dilution against future options. If you if you increase the size of your ESOP, 100% of the dilution goes to founders and existing employees. 3- Anti-dilution against future notes. If you raise a pre-or post money SAFE or a convertible note, only the founders and employees get diluted, not me. You’d tell me I’m crazy, right? You’d at least tell me it’s not market, not standard? But it is market, it is standard, and it’s called a post money SAFE. #startups #founders #venturecapital

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SAFE is a tool to accept investment with minimum paperwork and negotiation with investors. It's really good at the beginning and helps both investors and founders save time. You just need to understand how the tool works to use it correctly. Mistakes happen when people don't know how it works: ✅ There’s nothing wrong with using a Valuation Cap. As a founder, you should understand that if you raise funds at a valuation lower than the valuation cap in your SAFEs, you’ll end up giving away a larger portion of your company. That said, you really want to pay attention whether the SAFE contains the MFN (Most Favorable Nation) provision or not and make sure you understand how this provision works. ✅ There’s nothing wrong with anti-dilution protection against future options. In fact, it gives investors a clearer understanding of the minimum equity they’re receiving and prevents founders from manipulating the Cap Table after the investment is accepted. If you’re a founder using a SAFE or an angel investor, please take the time to familiarize yourself with this tool and understand how it works. It’s only a 5-8 page document and is well-written (kudos to the YC lawyers).

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99% of tech startup advice is WRONG for Health Tech serving health systems. Here’s what outside advisors or entrepreneurs might tell you… that you should IGNORE: ⛔ 𝗟𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵 𝗮 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘃𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 (𝗠𝗩𝗣) When it comes to tech that touches direct patient care (e.g. digitally guiding patients pre and post-surgery), a MVP isn’t good enough. It has to be fully functional. It has to be safe. It has to be HIPAA / PHIPA-compliant. From Day 1. ⛔ 𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 I like fast… but not if it puts patient safety at risk. It’s not OK if you moved so fast it broke a mission critical feature patients were using to manage their health or providers were using to manage sick patients. Beyond risk of harm, frequently broken products erode trust with patients and providers. Once you lose a patient or provider’s trust, it might be gone forever. ⛔ 𝗗𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁-𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝘃𝗶𝗮 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝗽𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲 If someone convinces you to “do to healthcare what Dropbox did to businesses with viral bottoms-up viral growth”... I’ll stop you right there. If you’re managing Protected Health Information (PHI), there’s no way an individual clinician can (or should!) just sign up without getting approval from IT/security/privacy. Just won’t happen. ⛔ 𝟭𝟬𝟬% 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗻𝗼 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 Maybe this works for the simplest of solutions. But the closer you are to direct clinical care, the more likely you’re dealing with complex patient and provider workflows. E.g. trying to embed remote monitoring workflows and dashboards into the clinician workflow. In those cases, you must invest in Customer Success and professional services to ensure the right change management support is in place to make it successful. Otherwise… expect low user adoption → low impact. ⛔ 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝘂𝗽 𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 Healthcare folks are WAY more skeptical of industry. This isn’t a general “B2B software-as-a-service” industry where it’s normal for vendors to get up and pitch to each other at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference. Especially for medical specialty conferences, vendors are almost never on stage. Clinicians want to hear from their clinician peers, not vendors (yes, even if the vendor is a subject matter expert…!) Some exceptions for health-tech focused conferences… still the minority situation though. Focus on making your health system partners successful and earn their public praises. For clarity: if you get a spot on stage... do it! Just don't expect it. 𝗔𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲? #digitalhealth #healthcareinnovation

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Angel investments backstage – what does the process look like?   At JVH we have a 4 step process that we follow till be wire the 💶 💵 1.)    Deal comes in via referral or website/linkedin: we check if the topic is a match and we see a general fit with the investment criteria. Most of the deals that do not make it past that stage are due to the fact that the companies are great business but not to the extend scalable a venture case would require 2.)    We discuss the topic in our internal meeting. Most discussions evolve around the market, GTM, competition and business model – the highest percentage of deals that does not make it to the next step are due to the fact that we see to narrow markets or to little differentiation vs. existing solutions 3.)    We schedule an interview with the founders in order to hear their story from them and dig a little deeper into the subject – if that is convincing we schedule a deep dive session. 4.)    After the deep dive session we take an investment decision if we want to do a deal we start our DD light to make sure we cover all the matters that are relevant for us that you can find in the blog post: https://lnkd.in/e8e-jF-n Frederik Raspé: thanks for asking the question #angelinvesting #startups #gettingdealsdone

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