Chris Burgner

KNOW YOUR REAL BUSINESS ECONOMICS • GAAP Revenue • Cash Flow • Cash • Contribution Margin • CAC • CAC Payback FUNDRAISING: PRESENT & SUBSTANTIATE FINANCIALS • Investor needs to know what your forecasts are • They need to believe them David Weiden, Khosla Ventures

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Q3 is out and Q4 is in!  This is a great read about Base10's strategic switch showcasing how Carta is simplifying fund administration for emerging managers, which is especially important now rolling into the year-end busy season. 

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Needing a break from getting back in the saddle after the holidays? Love talking about SaaS metrics? Come join me with CJ Gustafson and Ray Rike where we'll be talking about benchmarking and metrics--what's changing (has changed), top metrics, best practices, and more. Unlike more lecture-based webinars, this is going to be more of a fireside chat conversation with two Masters of Metrics. So get yourself a warm beverage, get comfortable, and pop in a question or two (or more). ⏭️ Sign up for all OnlyCFO Webinars ->https://lnkd.in/gZ4fE-VN ⏭️ Sign up for just this webinar -> https://lnkd.in/gwmn98Tp

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Today, GTMfund’s is excited to announce to launch of Operator, its first incubated company. Max Altschuler (founder of GTMfund) teamed up with co-founder Adam M. (design engineer and 0-1 builder) and co-founder Mark Kosoglow (Outreach employee #1 and former SVP of Global Sales) to create Operator.ai alongside an insanely talented team Pleasant Middelhof, Jeremy Jonas, Carl Gunderson. We've entered a period called “The Great Ignore”. Spam and irrelevant, poorly-automated outbound campaigns are running rampant.   Operator gives you an easy-to-use Growth Engineer that allows you to build and enrich lists with accurate data, and run experiments and queries using AI to generate highly targeted outreach.    Check out their website to get updates, early access, and see how they are taking the world back to 2 touches meant to attract buyers into conversations that convert, instead of 20 touches meant to make sure you hit your activity number: https://www.operator.ai/

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PE - How to Use AI to Unlock Growth in Portfolio Companies All PE firms and portfolio companies should be thinking about unlocking GTM and growth via AI (i.e. not merely ChatGPT or other LLMs but actually implementing apps that are "AI Agents"). 1. What are "AI Agents"? - AI agents are autonomous systems powered by ML and natural language processing, designed to perform tasks with minimal human intervention - They can interpret data, determine the workflow & direction (i.e. make decisions), and execute actions across various functions, continuously improving through self-learning 2. Examples of using AI Agents in PE portfolio companies: - For Sales: AI agents handle lead qualification, respond to inquiries, book meetings, and provide personalized product recommendations, ensuring no opportunities are missed - For Marketing: Generate campaign briefs, segment audiences, create tailored content, and analyze performance to optimize outreach efforts - For Customer Success & Support: Provide 24/7 support, resolve customer issues autonomously, escalate complex cases to human agents with full context, and ensure consistent, brand-aligned responses 3. How PE portfolio companies benefit: - Efficiency: Automate repetitive tasks, enabling teams to focus on high-value activities - Scalability: Handle growing customer volumes without increasing headcount - Personalization: Deliver tailored experiences using real-time data insights - $ Cost Savings: Reduce operational costs by streamlining workflows 4. Business Impact for PE Portfolio Companies: - Accelerate GTM Execution: Faster lead conversion, better customer retention, and enhanced marketing ROI - Improve Metrics: Boost Customer NPS, CSAT, and efficiency - Enable Growth: Scale operations seamlessly while improving team productivity. 5. How PE Firms Must Think About Adoption - Define clear portfolio objectives to use AI agents (not just LLMs) - Ensure integration with existing CRM and data systems - Prioritize high-quality data and ongoing performance monitoring - Use AI agents to complement existing GTM teams, focusing them on automation ------------------ #pe #privateequity #investing #ai

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Want to make your business more attractive to buyers? Focus on one thing: Recurring Revenue. Recurring revenue isn’t just another income stream—it’s the backbone of long-term success. According to a Forbes study, businesses with strong recurring revenue, especially SaaS companies, are seeing 3x higher valuations compared to those dependent on one-off sales. As discussed in the Forbes Tech Council, despite the SaaS development challenges in 2024, companies focusing on subscription models and long-term contracts are leading the way. Here’s why: Stable Cash Flow: Recurring revenue gives you consistent income, which translates to peace of mind. Enhanced Valuation: Buyers love businesses with predictable revenue—they see lower risk. Customer Retention: Strong recurring revenue often reflects deeper customer loyalty and long-term relationships. Curious about how recurring revenue can boost your business’s value? Let’s chat. 👉 https://lnkd.in/gDct67gU #BusinessGrowth #RecurringRevenue #SaaS #Valuation #FinancialSuccess #Forbes #PGAdvisors #ForbesTechCouncil #ProfitandGrowth

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A huge congrats to the Tactyc by Carta team!! You've built an amazing product and have been great partners to those using the platform. I routinely hear from users that are impressed with the speed and quality of help that Tactyc provides to their partners. VC is changing (slowly) and managers need to build better data-driven decision making systems. The market operates on 'pirate rules' - fall behind, left behind. If you're Tactyc Curious, I'd be happy to share how I integrate it into Fund workflows. #VC #emergingmanagers Coolwater Capital #datadriven #VentureFinance #VCfundmanagement #Venturecapital

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The Key to Great Board Reporting (1/2) Last week I spoke on a panel hosted by Rillet, an emerging force in SAAS and Usage based ERPs. It was on a sunset boat cruise around the Statue of Liberty and truly an awesome event. The wanted to avoid discussing the tech stack and provide a forum for NYC finance leaders to share best practices and challenges reporting to boards. The questions ranged from reporting metrics for different types of companies, at different stages, to reporting at a venture capital vs private equity backed business. This past week as I reflected on the event, I wanted to add a few more thoughts. ___________________________________________________________________ The key to great board reporting? It’s understanding the “why” behind the numbers and how they change as the business grows or priorities shift. 1. Everyday Capital Allocation Decisions Founders and management teams are the real investors in any business. They make daily capital allocation decisions that shape the company’s future. They’re like portfolio managers allocating resources to the people & projects that offer the highest & best returns. The focus when explaining investment decisions, isn’t just on specific allocation strategies or balance, it’s about choosing the right metrics to measure how well capital is being deployed. 2. An Audience of Problem Solvers and Business Builders In my experience, investors, whether VC, growth equity, or PE, share two traits: they’re problem solvers and business builders. They want to help, but the level of support they realistically can provide depends on their involvement. Investors with many smaller investments may offer less hands on help, pointing you to advisors and specialists. Those with fewer, larger investments tend to be more actively involved. Effective board communication requires balancing the complexity of day-to-day operations with clear, big-picture narratives. Investors who see the potential for outsized returns often thrive on solving business challenges impacting their investments. To engage them effectively, you need to understand your audience, their incentives and motivations. In my experience, the best results come from reporting which frames key challenges in a way that leads to a targeted request for support. When investor interests are aligned properly, and the right mission critical business challenges defined, many times your board can help you get specific resources or advice needed. Missing this opportunity means missing out on their help. When presenting these challenges, keep your explanations focused, precise, and relevant to avoid overwhelming them with unnecessary details.

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Big announcement below! 👇 Let's talk about the current state of GP-LP affairs: 🤯Emerging VC managers have absolutely exploded over the past 5 years. 📈 At the same time, more and more data has surfaced that shows that emerging VC firms tend to outperform larger, established firms. 🤔 All of this has made it intriguing but tough for LPs to know where to direct their attention. 🛍 GPs frequently meet LPs at conferences who are window shopping but not committed to the asset class or emerging managers. 🧾 And both crews get overwhelmed by transactional convos. So Sydney Paige Thomas and I created Abundance. Abundance is a private, nomination-based retreat for active LPs and top emerging GPs to form new experiences together and build lasting relationships. Why Abundance? Abundance is knowing that there is more than enough for more than one to succeed. And a single win within a community is a win for the community itself. The journey of an emerging VC manager from 1st close to final close or Fund 1 to Fund 2 is (1) communal and (2) requires an abundant mindset. LPs look for structure and confidence to feel comfortable investing in early VC firms. Yet many of the feeds we scroll and conferences we attend reinforce inherent power dynamics and transactional thinking, which allows scarcity mindset to creep in for emerging GPs. Some of the best events I’ve attended have been intentionally non-transactional, e.g. Camp Hustle, Recast Summit, and other GPs’ AGMs. The fundraising success stories we see usually involve a community (usually of other GPs & LPs) coming together to support and open doors for the emerging GP. We designed Abundance to be an immersive gathering that fosters these connections. Starting tonight, ~100 GPs and LPs are descending upon Seattle for the inaugural Abundance retreat. This has been under wraps for months and I can’t wait to see it come to life! Thanks in advance to our awesome sponsors who were the earliest believers in this vision: Sydecar, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Gunderson Dettmer, & Zelda Ventures. And shoutout to my dad Ed Illig for logo design & Halle Kaplan-Allen being the first sponsor to say yes 🤩 Presented by The Council Capital & Symphonic Capital.

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Since early 2021, VC quarterly exit values have plummeted to $50B or below, a stark contrast to the six consecutive quarters of $100B+ exits before then. With IPOs dwindling and M&A activity slow, the future of venture industry exits appears uncertain. Will we see a surge in private venture-backed company acquisitions? This could be a crucial and innovative strategy to boost VC exits. Increased private acquisitions might offer a much-needed lifeline, providing a creative solution to the current exit drought in the venture capital market. #venturecapital #inspireglobalventures

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🚨 Hard truth time: Many founders are running their companies like they're in hypergrowth... without the hypergrowth 📉 What I keep seeing in acquisition targets: ✨ 10% YoY growth ✨ Single-digit EBITDA margins ✨ "We're not optimized for profit" 🤔 Digging deeper reveals: 💸 Enterprise-level org structure with startup-level revenue 💸 Bloated sales teams missing targets 💸 Marketing spend with sub-1x LTV/CAC 😬 💸 Every C-suite position filled (but why?)  💸 "Growth teams" without growth 💸 Product teams bigger than revenue justifies The trap?  Cut costs = kill growth 📉 Keep spending = bleed cash 💸 Optimize later = never happens 🌪️ Here's what nobody wants to hear: 🎯 You can't spend like a Series C company with Series A metrics 🎯 "Building for scale" only works if you're actually scaling 🎯 Every hire should generate 3-5x their cost 🎯 Marketing spend needs to show results, not just "brand building" My controversial take: Efficiency isn't the enemy of growth - it's the foundation. 🏗️ Being bootstrapped taught me the best lesson: Only hire when it HURTS. 🔥 The most successful companies I've seen? They stayed lean until it was painful, then hired strategically. Not the other way around. 💪 Running a business isn't about playing startup - it's about building something sustainable. 🌱 Agree? Disagree? What's your experience with balancing growth and efficiency? 🤝 #startups #entrepreneurship #venturecapital #bootstrapped #leadership #businessstrategy #growthhacking

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Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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In case you missed it last week, one of my favorite SaaS benchmark reports was released. Thanks to High Alpha and OpenView for the work and having us as a partner! This thing is stuffed full of insights on everything from growth rates, net revenue retention, ARR per FTE, and more. You can't build a great SaaS business without it! https://lnkd.in/ghKT_tBY

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🎃 Ready to carve out your path to Product-Market Fit?🎃 Join Companyon Ventures’ Behind the Curtain roundtable tomorrow (Oct 30) with Michael Ho, Firas Raouf, Eric Morgan, and Hersh Tapadia as they 'exorcise' the mysteries of PMF. Don’t ghost us—RSVP in the comments 👻 https://lnkd.in/emCJcn4w #emergingmanager #venturecapital #productmarketfit

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Has Palantir Technologies jumped the shark? Palantir is trading at 27x forward revenues, nearly 5x the Median publicly traded tech company and DOUBLE the Top Ten Median. The stock is up 141% year to date, thanks in part to the AI wave, and has almost quintupled since 2022. And last week it officially made it into the S&P 500. Palantir’s financials are really solid. Their Rule of 40 is 57%, and their revenue is actually expected to accelerate next year. But the valuation they’re garnering goes above and beyond the numbers - it’s about people (namely retail investors) buying into their narrative. And this allows Palantir to pull the future forward. Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp has a cult-like following. And the way he tells the company’s story, shrouded with a heavy dose of mystery, enables him to walk the line between cheap capital and a combustible valuation. Palantir is getting credit for revenues far out into the future. Instead of looking 12 months out, investors are theoretically pulling forward their revenues from a distant far off land, perhaps more than three years out. Make no mistake - this wouldn’t be possible if Palantir was not already crushing it. They’re putting numbers on the board, and have long term contracts with government agencies who aren’t going anywhere. And then, on top of that, they layer in the power of narrative. The best CEOs leverage this as a super power to pull the future forward. As a result, they get access to cheaper capital, employees get rich, and they can invest in their business at a faster rate. In 2020 and 2021, every tech CEO got to pull the future forward (even the not so credible story tellers). Most are still growing into that future they mortgaged. The question becomes how far is too far? When have you lost the plot? When have you jumped the shark? Palantir seems to be teetering on the edge. They trade a full eight turns higher than the next highest EV / NTM Revenue company, Samsara, at 18.9x. Keep in mind - traditionally anything over 10x forward revenue is considered a “premium” valuation. I don't write about picking stocks. I have a team of monkeys throwing darts in the back room who shoulder that burden. I explore metrics, business models and strategic narratives. Palantir operates at the nexus of all three. And the ingredients they’re working with are fascinating. For operators out there working on their own stories, watch this one to see how much is too much before the recipe spoils. You can get all of this week's valuation and efficiency metrics at mostlymetrics.com

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Are you building in AI? The True Ventures deal team is spending time together and like everyone else, the AI conversation is front of mind. We got a chance to hear from Partner Kevin Rose about what he thinks of AI and why he’s so excited about what’s to come in the space. If you’re an AI founder, comment below and let us know what you’re building. Kevin and I want to meet you. Email: [email protected]

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PE - Portfolio / Cost of Revenue is up 68% Key to success in PE: - Optimizing Revenue Growth in a capital-efficient and profitable way - Unique strategies that are profitable and drive disproportionate ROI are critical today in PE - Successful growth is both: ARR and EBITDA Great panel with Seth Brody at Apax Partners, Craig Greenseid at The Carlyle Group Rajveer (Raj) Kushwaha at Warburg Pincus Prerak Vohra at Goldman Sachs and Michael Hoffman at SBI at the Private Equity International NYC conference. --------- #pe #privateequity

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Winning early GTM via founder led sales is an essential step in building a consequential start up. 🎯 But, while there are countless conferences focused on scaling GTM once you've hit a couple million in revenue, to date there hasn't been a conference focused on FOUNDER LED SALES and nailing the earliest days of GTM. 👀 😅 That ends now. 🙌 Pear VC has helped 100+ founders learn how to sell, how to build their 0-to-1 sales engine, how to get from $0 ARR to $1M ARR -- and now we're introducing the first ever GTM CONFERENCE for EARLY STAGE FOUNDERS. ⭐ "Zero to $1M: Winning Early GTM" will be held in San Francisco, CA this September 5th! ⭐ If you're at the idea 💡, pre-seed 🌰 , or seed stage 🌱 , this is the GTM conference for YOU. Come hear from Pear veterans, industry leaders, and successful repeat founders like Sanjit Biswas (Samsara and Cisco Meraki Co-founder and CEO), and leave with actionable guidance to supercharge your startup’s revenue from day 1. ​ ➡ APPLY NOW! Space is limited, and the early application deadline is July 15th. Pepe Agell and I will review applications on a rolling basis. 🚀 CANNOT WAIT TO SEE YOU THERE! 🚀 #earlystageGTM #zeroto1M #founderledsales

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