Deep Bedi

Hi everyone! I don’t share too often on here, but we’re at a very exciting moment at AptDeco, and I wanted to let you all in on it. AptDeco opened a community investment round and the response has been incredible. We’ve raised over $2M so far from institutional investors, customers and supporters. Nothing is more validating than customers doubling down with their own capital. And now, I’m inviting you, my network, to be part of our journey. When we started AptDeco, we set out to make buying and selling furniture easier. Over the years, many of our competitors have come and gone, but AptDeco continues to thrive. Why? Our technology, logistics and branding continues to set us apart and that's why major retailers including West Elm, Pottery Barn, La-Z-Boy, Article and 30+ more have partnered with us. The beauty with this investment round is that anyone can be an investor. Learn more and invest directly at wefunder.com/AptDeco.

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Today, Upshift is reinventing car ownership. This is the day I’ve been looking forward to for years. Today, Upshift is reinventing car ownership with a PERSONALIZED fractional car subscription. Now you can create your own plan uniquely tailored to your needs. Choose 4, 8 or 12 days/month. Pick 250, 500, or 750 miles per month. Opt-in for delivery - or pick it up yourself from a central San Francisco lot. It's all up to you now! And we have a new signup flow that helps you choose what’s best for you. Best part? Plans now start at just $149/month for 4 days/month of car access! That's HALF the price of our former plans! Perfect for a hybrid work commuter driving into the office 1-3 days/week or a weekend warrior getting out of the city regularly. With Upshift car subscriptions, everything is included in one monthly plan - even insurance. We do everything for you- we refuel, clean and handle service and repairs. And we guarantee availability. Your car can be conveniently delivered and parked near your home- clean, gassed, and ready when you are. Unlock and drive via our app. When done, park legally anywhere in our San Francisco service zone. We eliminate the worries of car ownership and leave you truly free to enjoy the ride. Imagine having a hybrid Toyota Corolla or AWD Honda CRV hybrid SUV that appears when you need one and disappears whenever you're done. Now stop imagining. Click here to build your personalized fractional car subscription and have your new car at your doorstep today! #carsubscription #carleasing #carrental #carshare #mobility #transportation #EV #AV #autonomousvehicles #autotech #startups #vc #venturecapital #climatetech #insurtech

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There is a lot that white-labeled marketplace tech can learn from public marketplaces. A fair amount of inspiration in this latest version of Morphed actually came from a public solutions and services marketplace I co-founded years ago. It was called On The Bench (OTB). That launch was more of an experiment due to the frustrations with partner directories. Key to this frustration was that customers wanted relevant solutions and services that met their needs at the exact time, and they wanted to move the conversation forward. Most directory listings focus on partner profiles and a contact form. You can see the friction in this process.   One; most profiles look the same and say similar things. The friction here is endless form submissions, setting up meetings just to see if there could be a fit. Time is being wasted. Then there is the friction of time once a partner meets most of the criteria. That friction is time to get an initial call, scope out the requirement, proposal being created, sent and closed. This can take many weeks. I learnt in OTB once relevant solutions and services are listed, even with scoping included, the time to close was cut by more than 70%. Selection was simple as the description of the solution/services was very clear. Thirdly; the tool was used not only by customers but all customer facing teams and other partners. They could on behalf of the customer, find options and start the engagement process and then bring in the customer.   So using this inspiration, we have created a tool that takes so much of the frustration and friction away regarding bringing in partners into specific opportunities. We have taken elements of a focused solutions and services marketplace and a multi-party digital sales room to enable all relevant parties to work with partners solving for the customer ensuring customer success.    

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Wei D. (Founder and CEO of unicorn Clipboard Health) dropped some major 💎 gems of wisdom during her fireside chat with PearX founders at Pear VC SF Studio yesterday. These really resonated: 💎 PMF isn't something you achieve once - staying relevant to your market is an ongoing pursuit 💯 (Wei shared that to date she still LOVES talking with customers and - even at 1000+ employees and with all the success already achieved - she continues to chase unlocks for the business and recently obtained her nursing assistant certification in order to stay close to users and unlock new insights with them 🥇) 💎 If you're scared of sales, don't think of it as sales -- you're just talking to someone who you're trying to help. Approach your customers with care and listen to them as you would a friend. The moment it's an actual conversation with a friend, that's probably where you're going to get your first sale. If it feels "salesy" you're probably not doing it the right way. 🤝 💎 Do whatever it takes to get in front of your customers! (For Wei this meant driving around at 8 months pregnant and walking up to DMs at nursing homes!) 🚗 💎 The users you speak with in your market will give you the key jargon you need to use to speak back to your market. Listen intently and adopt their language! 🗣 💎 There is little you decide that can't be undone. Be smart, make calculated decisions, but don't overthink things --- err on the side of action and quick decision making. 🏃‍♀️ 💎 Iterate until your users feel passionately about what you're doing (ie. they get angry when the product is down or doesn't work). You want your users to care A LOT about the problem you're solving. 😡 Wei's resilience, grit and work ethic are off the charts. What an inspiration! 👏 #femalefounders #inspiration #techfounder #unicornfounder #hero

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🎉 Exciting news: We’ve closed an oversubscribed $2.2M round & launched our Waitlist! 🎉 I’m thrilled to share that Andrés Ornelas Vargas, Jason Kim, and I successfully closed an oversubscribed $2.2M round for Verve Market! This milestone brings us closer to our mission: to empower you to plan, discover, and shop for food in minutes—no matter how unique your needs are. Over 110MM Americans regularly navigate a dietary need or preference—60MM for a medical reason. While following a diet leads to better health outcomes, adherence is hard: hours spent meal planning, shopping, and checking labels. Products and recipes you choke down instead of enjoying. Cheat days turn into cheat weeks, your health worsening all the while. The fact is, the food industry isn’t made for us—partially hydrogenated what? Semolina, spelt, durum—did you know there are 100 terms for wheat? Rosemary extract sounds nice—oh, it’s a preservative the same as any nitrate? Cool. It’s no wonder navigating food is exhausting; they make it So. Damn. Hard. Now add a diet; Low-FODMAP can treat IBS—I saw this myself—but it involves removing or limiting dozens of ingredients and thousands of products. Grocery shopping was like playing gut Russian roulette and yet, my case was pretty simple; many households have to manage multiple, competing diets—yikes. That’s why we’re building Verve: to make it effortless to find the foods that make you—and your family—feel their best. An online supermarket built around your needs. 💫 𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆—𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝘂𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗲 𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗩𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲! 💫 https://lnkd.in/gpb4G-bs — A heartfelt thank you to our amazing backers and supporters: Noramay Cadena, Federico Antoni, Jimena Pardo, Shayna Harris, María Fernanda González, Rachel Stinebaugh, and Jose Manuel Martin. Your belief in us and our vision has been, and will always be, a cornerstone of our journey. #PersonalizedNutrition #FoodTech #HealthAndWellness #HealthyLiving #Nutrition #Startups

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Doesn’t matter if you are building a fintech or lifestyle brand, or anything in between - hiring great journalists is step 1 to nailing the “brand as media company” thing. Robinhood hired Joshua Topolsky to run Sherwood (and then acquired David Crowther’s Chartr) RH hired former Architectural Digest Editor-in-Chief Margaret Russell. Call it what you want - brand publishing, brand journalism, content to commerce - but the brands getting it right understand both the upside (gaining massive trust & authority and reducing customer acquisition cost) and the table stakes (hiring talented reporters + editors). In turn, they're finding sustainable ways to produce content that matters, and audiences rely on to do their jobs/live their lives - while driving the overarching business forward. You don’t need to hire big names or do it on the scale of these behemoths - you just need to hire people with topical expertise and authority, and find your niche. And there are a lot of incredibly talented people out there.

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In 2022, I told the Zoko (YC W21) team we were dropping our highest-paying customers to focus on the lower-paying ones. They thought I was high, but it ended up saving us. (This is what Paul Graham calls 'Founder Mode' in action.) It’s not recklessness. It means having the guts to course-correct when everyone else thinks you're crazy. Here's how it played out for us: We had customers paying us $4,000 a month. But I saw a bigger opportunity with smaller Shopify merchants paying just $600, at the time. So I told them: 'Hey, let's ditch these big-paying customers and focus on the little guys.' Everyone freaked out. "But the money's rolling in!", "Why stop something that's working and start from scratch?"- they said. As a founder, you have to see beyond next month's revenue. You have to spot the opportunities hiding in plain sight. I saw that we had about 20 Shopify merchants loving our product, paying us $30 a month each. That's $600 total. Peanuts compared to our big clients, right? Wrong. I did the math. We needed about 20,000 of these smaller customers to hit unicorn status. If we could get 20, there is no reason why we cannot get another 19,980. And guess what? There were ~300,000 Shopify stores out there with WhatsApp widgets installed. Our market was right there, waiting for us. So I made the call. Forget the $4,000. Let's go all-in on these $600 customers. It wasn't easy. We had to rethink everything. - Our sales approach - Our support process - Our product focus - Our entire strategy We were literally burning down what got us to YCombinator and our initial success. The result? A year later, those same team members who thought I was crazy, came around. - We hit $1M in revenue within 12 months. - Profitable for 2 years now. No need to raise a round unless we want to. - Differentiated from all our competitors. When it comes to Shopify merchants, no one comes close. - Our demos convert at 60%. This makes sales folk's life, easy. - We have 80% retention. i.e. once they convert, merchants continue to pay us for years. The lesson: Sometimes, you have to burn it all down to build something bigger. Initially, you have to navigate in the space of disbelief - you don't know all the steps, but you see the light at the end of the tunnel. That's Founder Mode.

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Instacart is a market leader when it comes to leveraging AI tools to boost productivity at work. I had an amazing conversation with JJ Zhuang, Instacart’s Chief Architect, who has shepherded over 50 AI-driven initiatives to market across the org. We explored what catapulted Instacart to the forefront of AI integration, supporting radically diverse use cases across various functional areas. One striking insight (echoed by Ethan Mollick and others elsewhere) is that you often don't need specialized tools for specialized work. Frontier models like GPT-4 can seamlessly adapt to a wide range of functions and use cases. They're not just for engineers; they're incredibly versatile tools used by marketing, comms, and legal teams. From generating code to proofreading and ideation, GPT-4 empowers every department to leverage AI for enhanced productivity and innovation. By integrating LLM’s like GPT-4 into their workflows, teams can streamline processes, automate repetitive tasks, and unlock bandwidth for new creative possibilities. How can you harness the power of AI in your own work to boost productivity? Share your thoughts below 👇 Want to hear more insights from JJ? Check out the full podcast episode by clicking the link in the comments.

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Shared some thoughts with Pear VC on how we think about marketing at immi, crazy experiments we've tried since the early days, and some of our marketing processes that have helped us scale. Thanks for being in our corner! https://lnkd.in/gBAkTUzH #brand #marketing

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Consumer founders in SF come check out our event next week and register below

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Lots of misconceptions about what product-led growth really is. So I sat down with the man himself, Wes Bush to go deep on: - what PLG really means - Who it's for (and who it's not for) - How you can think about implementing a true PLG motion in your business. Even if you're sales-led today, this is a great listen cause it talks to the psychology of a buyer a lot. https://lnkd.in/d4VvJmru

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Let's finally get rid off the "VC alphabet song" and redo the system to become more founder friendly. "The benchmarks set by funding stages are often arbitrary and not necessarily aligned with the actual development needs of individual startups." #vc #venturecapital #founder #fundraising #startups #fundingstages #funding #fundingrounds #pitchbook

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Strategic alignment across product and field is complex and not easy to get right, but it's a pleasure to work alongside Brett Crane, Trevor Jett (Childers), and Jarod Greene. It's wonderful to be in conversation with them, sharing what we have learned, in this webinar: https://lnkd.in/gc-qp7Hk

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“If there is no clear owner, then it’s the PM that owns it.” I sat down with Esteban Contreras from #ProductState to discuss Product leadership, or Prioritization process at Productboard. We also dug into the concept of Extreme Ownership, which is a principle I firmly believe in. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eVN47mWn #productmanagement #productexcellence #ownership

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Sharing real stories from the trenches of product management. First topic - balancing big visions 🌟 with building MVPs that actually solve problems 💡 Would love to hear your thoughts! 👇 https://lnkd.in/einzrwbZ #ProductManagement #MVP #Startups

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Hello, I'm Anthony and I'm looking for a A+ killer Head of Growth for Equip Foods! Here are some wild stats on Equip: 🚀 Mid 8-figures in revenue, bootstrapped, and highly profitable (no VC BS) ✌️Only 2 FTE at the moment (no micromanaging or endless meetings) ❗️Only currently focusing on one marketing channel (affiliate/influencer) 🛍️ Industry best CR, LTV, and subscription #s (clear product market fit) 🥤Real food supplement products that are clean, transparent, and of the highest-quality that people absolutely love (actually doing something important in CPG) Perfect role for anyone who gives a damn about health, wants to get their hands dirty and build out a growth process, have huge amounts of agency and autonomy, and keen to make a dent every day when they show up to work. Here's a link to why we exist: https://lnkd.in/gGb-qCA4 Here's a link to the job description and app: https://lnkd.in/gxwE7xk7 (TIP: DO NOT APPLY IF YOU ARE PLANT-BASED) Please tag anyone you think could be a good fit! (P.S. I've been a tad quiet here. Are you interested in anything else about this business? Should I share more on LinkedIn?)

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New startups can set up as a public benefit corporation from the start on Clerky! Early-stage startups don’t need to worry about hostile takeovers or activist investors, but PBCs are nevertheless a great option if you have a mission that goes beyond shareholder value. We introduced the first-ever way for startups to incorporate as PBCs in 2017, in partnership with B Lab, the non-profit that invented PBCs. Today, 25% of all Delaware PBCs incorporate on Clerky 😊

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I’m excited to share that Motion has raised $30M in Series B funding, led by Inovia Capital with participation from Threshold Ventures as well as our existing investors Headline, Abstract Ventures and Sugar Capital. In recent years, as audience targeting on ad platforms became algorithm-based, growth leaders shifted their focus toward creative. Very quickly, creative became the biggest lever for success in paid social. Terms like “creative is the new targeting” were popularized across the industry and we entered a new era of digital advertising. In a sense, it’s a pivot back to the old-school advertising principles of the David Ogilvy era. Conducting customer research, storytelling, and craftsmanship are all essential once again. But while the principles are timeless, the digital world is a very different environment. The creative strategist is the modern-day Ogilvy. They know how to blend art and science to ship winning ads. They are as creative as they are analytical and they bridge the gap between media buyers and creative teams. They live by data but know how to move beyond the numbers and let creativity run. We believe the creative strategist is the most critical role in performance marketing today and will be even more so in the age of AI. Soon enough, AI will drive the cost of new creative production to near zero. Which means that the most valuable question teams need to answer is: what to create? We raised this capital to accelerate our product roadmap and to build the command center for creative strategists. Motion’s customers are the best-of-the-best in paid social, and creative strategy is at the core of their workflow. Our goal is to build the tools that creative strategists need to succeed their craft. Over the last 12 months, we've doubled our team to 50 people and we've grown ARR by 3x. The Motion team is on 🔥 and we're hiring across the board. We are fully remote and looking for the most talented people anywhere in the world. If that's you, please get in touch with me or Libby Moyer and tell us about your superpowers!!

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Engineers aren’t the only team members who ship product—marketers can, too. Let me explain. Last week, we rolled out something big at OpenPhone. A gorgeous monthly stats email that gives our customers a snapshot of their usage. I’m so excited! Here’s why: → It's been on our wishlist forever. One of those "wouldn't it be cool if..." ideas that kept popping up in meetings. → Our Marketing team pulled this off without a single line of code from Engineering. They shipped this. All on their own. → As an OpenPhone user myself, I get to show off just how much I rely on it. It’s not “marketing” in the traditional sense. But it’s going to become a core part of our product experience now.  It adds value. It delights our customers. It makes OpenPhone stickier. Whoever said Marketing can’t ship their own “products”? Huge shoutout to my colleagues, John MacGaffey Carolyne Gardener Brian Sun and Phil Jones for knocking this out of the park. John recently shared some behind-the-scenes of how they built this on his profile, so go check that out. And for all our OpenPhone customers—hope you're enjoying your new monthly stats! ps - we're growing our Marketing, Customer Success and Engineering teams. If you love to ship stuff as much as we do, join us :)

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