🌪 Grounding yourself through the market cycl(on)e, 4x women-led unicorns, metrics VCs care about, and more

Lolita Taub
May 15, 2022

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💐 Happy belated Mother’s Day! My mom wishes “women to have the right to choose what to do with their bodies.” Here’s how to help in a post Roe vs Wade world.


Samara M Hernandez (Chingona Ventures), Jennifer Neundorfer and Maren Bannon (January Ventures), Hana Yang and Samir Kaji (Allocate)

Sooooooo.... do you want to know what’s happening with the market, how to respond to it, and what opportunities are out there to grab? If that’s you, you’re in luck because that’s what we’re talking about today.

😬 What’s happening with the market. I wrote a thread about it here and the TL;DR is that the market is down, emotions are high, and for many these thoughts are running in our heads on repeat: interest rates/inflation to go up > LPs to pull back on VC investment > VCs to pull back on startup investment > startups find fundraising to be slower & tougher > the world is ending.

🫣 How to respond to it. Feel your feelings, know that the world is not ending, and that we’re just going through a market-emoji and business cycle. After you ground yourself, acknowledge that we will get through it all and that things will get better.

🤔 What opportunities to grab. The first opportunity lies in identifying the silver lining. For example: COVID cases have declined, seed funding increased in the US 14%, and overall funding increased 65% in Latin America Q1 YTY.

Founders, you know that we’ve gone through worse in our community, and this is just an opportunity to come out on top by doing what we know how to do best: being scrappy and resilient! There’s an opportunity to 1) be cost-effective, 2) weigh your funding options (customers are the best source!), and 3) lean into our community superpowers to succeed. And when you’re ready, pitch us at Ganas Ventures because we want to back founders con ganas.

Investors, LPs, and friends, the biggest opportunity lies in being ready to invest in the best founders and the best deals at the best prices. Yes, the market is tightening. And valuations are going down, which means better prices for our investments. It also means fundamentals matter more as businesses have to be resilient through tough times. This is why I’m extra excited about Ganas’s community-driven thesis. It holds up well in this market - startups may have to deal with tighter budgets, so non-community-driven startups can lose out when they scale back their marketing and recruiting expenditures to survive, while community-driven startups have a lower CAC, higher retention, and lower costs to attract talent, so they are better able to compete and survive.

If you believe in the power of community, its resiliency to the markets, and want to enable the creation of wealth in community, learn more and become my LP at Ganas Ventures.

¡Con ganas y comunidad, todo se puede!

✨ Lolita Taub
twitter | luma | ICYMI Forbes, Techcrunch, and Crunchbase recently featured me.


Congrats

Brynne McNulty Rojas and Sebastiano Guera raised $200M for Habi’s Series C. Christine Kenna, Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui, Otto Graff, and Fabrice Serfati raised $150M for IGNIA's fund II. Joanna Drake Earl and Julie Wroblewski raised $52M for Magnify’s debut fund. Samara M Hernandez raised $52M for Chingona's fund II. Jennifer Neundorfer and Maren Bannon raised $21M for January Ventures fund II. Juan Valdez Rojas and Jazmín Gustale Gill raised $15.5M for iThink VC. Hana Yang and Samir Kaji raised $15.3M for Allocate’s Series A. Kristen Sonday raised $8M for Paladin’s Series A.


Sponsored | SVB Startup Banking is a community of former founders, operators, and investors passionate about supporting founders on their path to success. Beyond banking, we work with early-stage founders to help them navigate the challenges of funding and scaling a startup from Day 1. Please reach out to connect with us! We'd love to learn more about what you're building and how we can help. - RochelleVanessa


Funders

Female Founders Fund | VCs funding women led cos: learn more about the groundbreaking funding numbers for women in 2021

Lolita Taub | VCs: check out this thread if your head is spinning from the sudden changes in the market recently

Startup-Investor Matching Tool | VCs: meet thesis-aligned underrepresented founders

GP-LP Matching Tool | LPs: get thesis-aligned intros to underrepresented GPs


Sponsored | At Ganas Ventures we invest in community-driven founders through our own community of operator-investor LPs. We’re on a mission to produce outsized returns. And, while we’re at it, we’re changing the narrative of who VCs are, who we invest in, and how companies become unicorns by just being us. New LPs from our community are most welcome!


Founders

Lolita Taub | Founders: save this handy visual for a reminders of the metrics VCs care about

Pitchbook | Early-stage founders: learn more about 3 types of debt when raising capital

Asking for a founder | Founders: discover how to find affordable executive coaching

LaaS | Underrepresented founders: get resources made for you


Sponsored | SVB Startup Banking is a community of former founders, operators, and investors passionate about supporting founders on their path to success. Beyond banking, we work with early-stage founders to help them navigate the challenges of funding and scaling a startup from Day 1. Please reach out to connect with us! We'd love to learn more about what you're building and how we can help. - RochelleVanessa


Money

Visible Hands | Early-stage founders: apply for $25K in pre-seed funding by 5/20

You Glow Girl | Women founders: apply for $10K in grants by 7/1

SoGal Foundation | Black female founders: apply for $5-$10K in grants

1863 Ventures | Black founders: apply to get a 3Rs $5K grant

Non-dilutive capital | Create a profile to find non-dilutive capital

Equity Crowdfunding | Raise up to $5 million

Startup-Investor Matching Tool | Founders: get intros to investors


Jobs

Builtfirst | Head of Technology (Remote, US)

Dentsu International | Associate Director, Startup Pipeline (Remote, US)

Ganas Ventures | PT Associate (Remote, US)

Ganas Ventuers | PT Community Manager (Remote, US)

Konvoy | Analyst (Denver, Colorado)

Pollen | Founding Engineer (NYC, New York)

SVB | Vice President, New & Strategic Channels (SF, California)

💥 See all open roles and post yours here.


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