Sam Watts

49 founders and senior startup leaders respond to a survey from Sifted on the relationship between founders and VCs. Are expectations off from the start as VCs try too hard to pander to their founders with over promises of "value-add" and extensive platform teams? Do founders need to be reminded of their primary role - execution?

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A couple of recent improvements to Konquest for us to shout about. Our flexible yet accessible calculation engine is already our pride and joy, but we just keep making it better. Firstly, we recently added support for bi-monthly and semi-annual schemes, ideal for those kicker schemes where you want to close out the year strong and have consultants make up for a shaky start to the year. https://lnkd.in/emeMvYUP Then today, we have just shipped support for schemes which are calculated into any number of weeks from (and back from) a specified start date. Want to run three week schemes starting on the 2nd Wednesday of the year - now you can with Konquest 🦍 https://lnkd.in/eeC_KM9G We're currently hard at work on the next set of enhancements, this time looking at ways you can penalise blank months and missed thresholds in a variety of different ways. Feel your current commission structure is not getting the best out of your teams? There's never been a better time to speak to us. #commissionaccomplished

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To all my non-tech founders (and tech founders who make less-than-optimal decisions), this is definitely a session you want to attend. When fundraising, investors will dig into your contracts - and issues identified can be a dealbreaker!!!! Thanks for the tag Bhairav Patel!! #contracting #guide #startups #investable

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The original timeline for the Legal tool we're building with AI was roughly 4-6 weeks with a lot of uncertainty on the technical feasibility (we relied on API's that were haphazard at best). On talking to more customers however, we realised that there is a slightly different problem we can tackle that no one is building for, and requires zero AI integration initially. We would also be able to build the prototype in roughly a week. While there is still value in the original version of the product we'd envisioned, this seemed like the quickest route to validate what we're building and get revenue. Wish us luck 🤞 #startup #founder #entrepreneur

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What if SDE knows something useful about why "43 million adults in America are functionally illiterate"*, and "illiteracy was estimated to cost the UK economy £80bn"** in 2018 alone? Sometimes getting a view from a different angle can make all the difference. The view from Self-Directed Education is about as different an angle as you're likely to get. If you're involved at any level in mainstream reading instruction, are you going to just keep doing the same thing hoping it will work? Or come explore a little? Money back guarantee if you don't find value.*** What does learning to read look like in SDE? Whether you are just curious to find out how we do it, or whether you want to ensure that your own SDE facilitation for young people is effective support rather than unwitting sabotage, here's a series of interactive online sessions you can sign up for this week. Hope to see you there! Please share with anyone you feel might benefit. Parents and facilitators working with PDA will receive priority for discounted places. Bookings here https://lnkd.in/dC-pZ7g3 *https://lnkd.in/dkNneeWV ** https://lnkd.in/d6HfzBgZ ***Full refund if you let me know within 48hours of the end of the 1st session that you regret signing up.

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Synthflow AI recently raised a chunky seed round of $7.4M. Their pitch is that their no-code platform makes it easier than ever for SMEs (which usually have low tech capabilities) to deploy voice agents for a multitude of use cases. And they do have a pretty good flow builder. At Hooman Labs, we too are striving to make voice agents as simple as possible to deploy. But we believe that while self serve is important to enable users to play around with voice agents, it is more critical to build a suite of plug and play agents (including necessary integrations) which don't need a lot of tinkering by the user. To do this, a voice agent provider needs to go deep into a vertical and understand the workflows of their user, end to end. We're doing this for e-commerce and building agents which solve calling needs of brands across the life cycle of the customer, from pre-sales to post. Some of the use cases we're working on are consultative selling, delivery updates, abandoned cart conversion, return requests and warranty claims. If you run an e-commerce brand and are looking to automate your calling function, would love to talk to you and understand how we can help. Tarun Rathore #voiceai #conversationalcommerce #ecommerce

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It's been a while since our first launch at Product Hunt, this is our second launch but to be honest, I need to admit Commented is now more mature and more powerful than our first launch. We interviewed our users, listened to them and analyzed their needs profoundly. We are delighted and excited to serve those new features to you all. - Public commenting sessions - PDF and Image file commenting - Video capturing in Mobile SDKs - Inbox view - All comments view - Jira and Asana integrations - Annotation tool shapes and stroke colours & sizes - UX improvements - Performance enhancements - Slack two-way communication. - Many bug fixes. If you have time, please roast Commented, and share your good and bad thoughts about it. And please don't forget to upvote us from the link below if you enjoyed using Commented. Please reach out to us, if you need a discount or if you need a more specific use case, we will try our best to help you. Happy roasting and thanks in advance. https://lnkd.in/eAvzCC7P #collaboration #communication #publiccomments #commenttogether #buildinpublic #productivity #commenting #mobile

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VC Platform explained, in apples. By the nature of what I do, I think about social systems a lot: how do we build a platform of founders supporting other founders? It’s so easy to get caught up in complexity here, that I make myself think about it, quite literally, in apples. Give it a try: * If I have two apples, and give you one, how many do I have left? One less than I had, so down to one apple. * But in real life the correct answer is that I now have an apple and a relationship with the culture of sharing with others when you can. I‘ll be able to lean back on that relationship when in a twist of fate it’s now me standing with no apples. I am now part of a system. * Can I rely on someone else to start this system? Yes, I can. But apples in life are a bit more complicated: — Maybe the person in front of me doesn’t share the apple with me, because she has already committed it to someone else. — Maybe she borrowed the apple from someone else in the past, and now wants to return it. — Maybe she hasn’t eaten in a while, and now needs not one, but both apples to sate herself. — All these people might be generally willing to share an apple with me—but maybe not this exact one, the timing may be not right at the moment, they are part of a bigger group where they have agreed to only share apples inside the group etc. Yes, the analogy with deal-sharing is intended, too. :) * When we factor in real-life circumstances, it’s hard to tell if the person, in fact, has a spare apple or not. Besides, when I wait for someone else to share an apple first, I make myself dependent on an external factor over which I have no control. I shouldn‘t, therefore, be surprized to find myself in a situation when I would want someone to share an apple with me, but the system is not there yet. * So, in reality, the only sure way to become part of a system like that is to wait for a moment when I have a spare apple and share it. * For this to work, the person I am sharing the apple with should actually need the apple. Let’s imagine I try to share an apple with someone who has just had two, doesn’t like apples, or has an apple tree. In the best case, it just won’t work. In worse cases, if let’s suppose I insist on giving the apple, the person might grow irritated. So, I need to share my spare apple with someone who actually needs an apple at this point in time. * This example is fabulous, as it helps answer other questions as well. For example, should I then give both apples, so that the relationship is 2x stronger? My answer will follow in the next post. PS. The artwork frivolously used by me to illustrate my thoughts is by a generative artist @dmitricherniak on inst who considers automation his artistic medium. He makes it seem easy, but after spending an hour in DALL•E and getting a bunch of really ugly apples in webs, I am a raging fan.

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Last year Mistral raised $113m, to create a European LLM, with just a memo as their investor pitch. Now H has raised $220m to create an 'agentic' LLM, with possibly the simplest but boldest website I've ever seen. H's website is very short on detail, but what is there pulls no punches. Taking up almost half of the site is a big form, dedicated to recruitment, which just says: "Apply to build AGI". I don't know whether they showed investors a memo, a traditional pitch deck or a prototype of an agentic workflow powered by H - but it must have been wildly convincing to raise this amount. At the time Mistral was heralded as raising 'Europe's biggest seed round', H has now set the bar almost twice as high. Is this peak genAI? Or are we set for further months and even years of benchmarks being broken? #genAI #agentic #seedround #europe

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Build vs Buy, the great internal debate every developer product has to overcome when selling to companies of all sizes. I had a great chat with Han Wang at Mintlify on how he sees Build vs Buy. Whether its docs, sdks or any part of the developer stack you will always meet great product teams that believe they should build and maintain exactly what your product does in house. Here are some takeaways 👀 ⏹ Its all about control. You're product needs to increase your users ability to ship high quality product. Think deeply about where you should blackbox vs expose controls to the user. ⏹ Quality. Do you think your product reflects the quality at which they could build AND maintain this themselves ? ⏹ Our job as vendors is to grow with companies over time. As your product matures the gap between what you can do vs what can be built in house will quickly diminish. If you're buyer of docs or sdks how do you think about build vs buy ? 👇 Speakeasy #sdks #docs #buildvsbuy

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As public software companies got hammered over the last week, David Peterson explores what that means in our latest edition of The Angle. Are we witnessing the end of software? Where did all the growth go? Software isn’t dead, but it’s evolving. And building great companies is no longer about riding the wave of the cloud and building products that are a bit better than the incumbent. Founders who want to build great public companies need ideas that break the mold. And we’re excited to partner with such founders. To read David’s column and explore other exciting tech news, please access and subscribe to our newsletter using the links in the comments. 

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TL;DR: A new event for tech startup founders and professionals in London 🚀 As you know, I've been running Tech Startups in the Pub for a few years now, together with a group of wonderful, smart, and handsome co-organisers (because flattery goes a long way!). Pedro Jurado and I are now trying something new: coming to the office and spending a day working alongside other tech startup founders and professionals. We teamed up with The Workers' League to have our first session of the T-Break Club on Friday 20th September. Here's what you need to do: 1. Join the T-Break Club community through the Epic Spaces platform. 2. Book your day pass through the platform. 3. Come and work from the co-working space from 9am. 4. Meet new people, share ideas, and have meaningful conversations during breaks. Whether you’re a founder, developer, or involved in anything tech-related, this is your chance to collaborate and network with like-minded people in a relaxed and productive setting. No pressure, just great conversations and ideas. Want to meet even more people? At 6pm, after this session is over, we're going to Tech Startups in the Pub (I'll post about it separately). The deets: 📅 When: Friday, 20th September from 9am to 5.30pm. 📍 Where: The Workers' League, 6-8 Bonhill St, London EC2A 4BX (near Liverpool Street, Moorgate, and Old Street stations). 🔗 How: Go to https://lnkd.in/ewDfyMrk , join the community, and book your day pass (it's £12, charged by The Workers' League). See you there!

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🚀 Excited to see Gartner's brand new 2024 Hype Cycle for APIs! 🌐 🔍 AI is a significant highlight this year, with AI Gateways making a notable entrance. Delighted to see Aguru mentioned alongside other innovative specialists like Portkey, and established leaders like Kong Inc. and IBM. The evolution of this market is definitely one to watch closely. 🤖✨ 🔐 API security is crucial and well-represented on the Hype Cycle, with Composable security APIs from vendors like Pangea and Skyflow making impressive strides. 🔒 📈 API aggregators, such as Knit and Merge, continue to gain momentum, showcasing their growing importance in the API ecosystem. 🔄 Interesting insights on GraphQL APIs and Service Mesh heading towards the Trough of Disillusionment. The journey of these technologies is crucial for their future developments. 💼 Industry-specific APIs are making significant progress, especially in finance, insurance, healthcare, and supply chain sectors. This targeted focus promises exciting innovations ahead! Gartner's 2024 Hype Cycle for APIs. Kudos to the authors and the whole Gartner team! #APIs #AI #Aguru #Innovation #TechTrends #APISecurity #APIAggregators #GraphQL #IndustryAPIs

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Three lessons from building and launching a P2P payments app without doing the proper customer validation first (despite knowing better): 1) Building something you need is a great starting point - but not enough to validate an idea. As someone drawn to building solutions, I’m an early tech adopter. This led me to overestimate consumers’ willingness to onboard, especially with a P2P payments app that requires KYC/KYB compliance and relies on a network effect to be useful. 2) Manual solutions are often best to start with It’s good business to be in business - transitioning from ideating to operating as early as possible is the BEST way to learn effectively. While the move fast and break things mindset has attracted well-deserved skepticism, getting stuck in a multi-year build trap distracted me from critical real-world validation. 3) Consumer appetite shifts quickly In my case, the proliferation of free and instant P2P payment options like Zelle added additional pricing pressure that I couldn’t compete with. This disincentivized the consumer event/payment collection market, turning my bottom-up go-to-market strategy upside down. Pitch (https://www.pitch.fun) is currently on the back burner as I’ve begun building custom solutions in various industries to sharpen my skills, solve specific problems, gain a hands-on understanding of operations, pain points, and workflows, and build a network of experts to lean on as I keep my eyes peeled for high-impact opportunities.

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Paris-based startup Mistral AI has just closed a staggering €600M funding round at a €5.8bn valuation. Their rapid rise showcases the explosive growth and potential of AI. As a heavy user of AI tools in my work at Glafos, I find this AI race very exciting. Thanks to new tech and tooling built on top of it, we can keep our team lean while efficiently writing code, creating content, optimizing customer support, and more. AI enables us to test our ideas, deploy quickly, and maintain a swift learning loop, which is important for an early-stage startup. However, this rapid technological progress comes with significant societal implications. It's estimated that up to 40% of the workforce will need retraining in the next three years. This pressing issue has not been adequately addressed by EU politicians, especially during the recent elections, and that makes me worried. https://lnkd.in/dzHjEj67

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Today is a huge day for our team, and for me personally, it has deep significance! Two years ago I was facing a fork in the road: I was being recruited to become CEO of a successful product that had just been acquired out of a large company to be run as an individual company, and simultaneously recruited to be a technical co-founder to disrupt the credit card application process with a heavily financed opportunity. I chose neither. I had a feeling about a technology wave I was seeing and I just couldn't stop thinking about it. My wife rolled her eyes but knowing nothing was going to get the idea out of my mind, stopped me mid-conversation and interjected "Well you better just do it then!" I turned down both opportunities to start yet another company from scratch. I immediately called Mark Parson and told him what I was going to do. We both laughed because we knew he was in without even fully understanding what we were about to do. After over a year of Mark and I working on the foundation, we teamed up with Robin Vasan at Mango Capital, and then in short-order filled out the amazing founding team, including Marc Barry, Kevin Romani, Andrew Valencia, Devin Bernosky, Rob Genova, and Jon Friesen. I seriously can't say enough about them, I feel so lucky to have teamed up with such incredible talent and great people. After over two years of grinding, building, and drilling to the center of the earth with eBPF 😅, we're so happy to release our product to the world! Modern apps depend on external 3rd party APIs for critical functionality, and now teams can gain visibility and control of these connections without having to jam a man-in-the-middle proxy with a self-signed cert, creating operational havoc and a security nightmare. For me personally, this is a monumental moment because even though we are still just starting and we have a long journey ahead, it marks the point where yet again, a small nagging intuition has turned into a real solution that solves a real problem for real people and companies. What started out as a risky proposition has turned into not only another real opportunity, but the biggest opportunity for me so far. There is a quote on my wife's parents' fridge: "Opportunity is often missed because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work". Well, it's been WORK and now it's time to change into some new overalls and start a whole new phase. The future is eBPF, come check out what Qpoint can do for you!

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tl:dr: Tech for Good Organisers Network May Retreat - sign up here - https://lnkd.in/eyPmE6yn i don't know if you know the Tech for Good Organisers network? if not - they're a fine and varied group of humans, who support those who help run the networks that share good practise and build connections amongst those digital folk who want to do good with tech. They really helped in developing https://lnkd.in/eMbSK65J particularly the attitude we take towards DEI - more here: https://lnkd.in/eYrbRgcY And they have the following question and offer... Are you a passionate organiser building or dreaming of building a thriving Tech for Good community in the UK? Join us for the Tech for Good Organisers Network May Retreat - a one-of-a-kind unconference designed by and for you! Date: Saturday 18 May Time: 10am - 5:30pm - and a community dinner afterwards! Location: London What is it? This unconference is your chance to connect, collaborate, and share your experiences with fellow Tech for Good community organisers and leaders from across the UK, with a focus on building Just and Regenerative Futures. What's an unconference? Unlike traditional conferences, you set the agenda! This is your opportunity to propose sessions, spark discussions, and dive deep into the topics that matter most to you and your community in relation to creating a just and regenerative future. Here are some things you might want to discuss: Leveraging tech to tackle social and environmental challenges Building inclusive and equitable Tech for Good communities Exploring the tech ethics and tech justice considerations of using tech to promote sustainability and regeneration. Measuring impact for a just and regenerative future Collaboration between communities to achieve a common goal The agenda is entirely up to you! Why attend? Connect with fellow Tech for Good community organisers and leaders who share your passion for a just and regenerative future Learn from each other's successes and challenges in building a better future Share best practices and develop new ideas for using tech for good Collaborate on future initiatives and projects that create positive change Be part of a growing movement of Tech for Good in the UK Lunch and dinner refreshments will be provided. If you are travelling from afar, we also cover travel and accommodation costs. Sign up here - https://lnkd.in/eyPmE6yn We can't wait to see you there!

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