Omar Divina

In vertical SaaS, the very best companies landed with a product solving a specific, burning pain point that horizontal solutions solved badly and then became broad product suites over time (ServiceTitan, Veeva Systems, Doximity, etc). My partner Gordon Ritter calls this “layering the cake”. In vertical AI, the landing wedges are much more brittle. While the painpoints they solve are very real (and often unaddressable by SaaS alone), they’re also much more likely to commodotize in the near term as the tech advances. 👀 Therefore, the need to layer the cake in vertical AI is much more urgent than in vertical SaaS. 👀 The best vertical AI CEOs not only recognize the dynamic, but talk about it openly. Helps those around them keep up the speed of innovation and their eyes on the bigger prize.

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Amplitude Announces Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results: - Third quarter revenue was $75.2M, up 6% year-over-year - ARR was $298M, up $8M from the end of the second quarter - We now have almost 3,500 paying customers, with 567 of those representing more than $100k or more per year Q3 was all about winning the enterprise. We are starting customer conversations differently, reaching key decision-makers, and demonstrating fast value in ways we weren’t before. The result is a higher-quality book of business, with better attach rates, longer contracts, and bigger expansions (we had multiple expansions exceeding 7 figures in Q3). Consolidation is another big theme that's been playing out for several quarters. It’s clear that our customers are looking for an all-in-one platform, and they are finding that in Amplitude. And we've continued to make our platform better. In Q3, we launched Amplitude Made Easy, our completely redesigned platform experience that takes the difficulty out of analytics. We also deepened our partnership with our friends at HubSpot, launched Web Experimentation, and acquired Command AI (fka CommandBar). To our Ampliteers, partners, and customers—we couldn’t do it without you! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Hey folks, I think you might be aware that what we're building at DeepCast includes a podcast discovery and exploration platform for listeners at www.deepcast.fm. We also recently unveiled www.deepcast.pro -- a promotions, marketing, and monetization platform for podcasters (and folks like networks and agencies who support them). "You make the shows, let us help you with what comes after." Shows claimed and processed via DeepCast Pro are also published for listener consumption on DeepCast. High value all around! If you're a podcaster, claim your show at www.deepcast.pro to get started. Free speaker-labeled transcripts for all your episodes as well as generated insights for each (key takeaways, quotes, topic & keyword sets, summaries, and more) plus many more features—and growing daily! We're shipping fast over here! (Thanks to Rachel Perez Hosna Qasmei Kim Burgaard Benjamin Moon Rachel Magana Hari Ramachandran!)

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Wonderful article about Emily Knight and the whole The Engine Accelerator team on the amazing work their doing changing the world with #ToughTech!

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🚨 Last Call for the Nektar Buzz Boat: Just 2 Days to Go! 🚨 Nektar.ai, DocketAI and RevOps Co-op are bringing you an exclusive GTM leaders Cruise in NYC(5th Sep), Boston(10th Sep), Chicago(12th Sep). Our GTM Leaders NYC Cruise is setting sail in just 48 hours, and we’ve got a couple of exclusive passes left. Don’t miss your chance to join an elite group of GTM pioneers for an evening of strategic insights and high-impact networking—right on the water! 🌊 Here’s why you need to be there: 🎯 Cutting-Edge Discussions: We’ll be diving into how AI is transforming sales, how to turn customer engagement into actionable data, and the latest GTM tactics that are driving real growth. 💡Discover how to operationalize Buying Groups: We’ll be diving into how AI automates capturing & tracking engagement with your buying groups on auto-pilot at scale. 🤝 High-Caliber Connections: This is your chance to network with fellow leaders who are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the GTM space. 🍸 Unwind & Recharge: Kick back with some great drinks, delicious bites, and amazing views on the cruise while you chat and chill with fellow leaders in a laid-back, exclusive vibe. With only a couple of spots left, this is your last chance to secure a seat on the Nektar Buzz Boat. If you’re serious about elevating your GTM strategy, you won’t want to miss this. Register on the link or DM me to grab one of the final passes. Let’s make waves together! 🐝🚢 #GTM #Sales #AI #Networking #Leadership #Nektar #BuzzBoat https://lnkd.in/g59Sxa6Z

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Catch up on Adam Robinson's journey on The Force & Friction Podcast as he discusses scaling a SaaS company from $20M towards $50M ARR. Watch the full episode here: https://bit.ly/3YzjaBH "It’s a game of different rules at each stage". #ForceAndFrictionPodcast #RevOpsLife #GTM #SaaS #B2BGrowth #EntrepreneurJourney #ScalingUp

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As we explore a seed round of VC funding for Avnir, a mentor has driven into me to "interview them as much as they'll do their due diligence on you!" When I consider professional etiquette important to me (and probably every serious founder), I am reminded of what I've coached hundreds of executives on over the past two decades: "Your culture is a culmination of behaviors you're willing to tolerate!" So, here is a Top 10 List of Professional Etiquette crucial to long-term strategic relationships between VCs and founders: 1️⃣ Respect for Time—Punctuality, Efficient Communication, and Timely Feedforward are demonstrated and genuinely felt. We would both rather me invest time in building the business. 2️⃣ Transparency—Clear Expectations, Honest Feedforward, and Disclosures on conflicts of interest or resource limitations save everyone unnecessarily wasted cycles! 3️⃣ Professionalism—Politeness, Confidentiality, and Objective Evaluation allow courteous interactions, respect for proprietary information, and avoiding bias in evaluating the founder's meritocracy. 4️⃣ Empathy—Understanding the Journey and Constructive Dialogue acknowledge the uphill battle founders face while avoiding unnecessary criticism and providing supportive guidance, demonstrating a genuine interest in their vision. 5️⃣ Integrity—Fair Terms, Follow Through, and Avoiding Overpromising honor commitments during discussions, and create realistic expectations from the relationship. 6️⃣ Co-Creation—Value-adding Mindset and Team Player Attitude accelerate the founder's ability to gain traction and position the VC relationship as transformational vs. simply transactional. 7️⃣ Humility—Avoiding Arrogance, Condescension, and Open-Mindedness acknowledges that both parties have unique expertise to add and enhance the receptivity to unconventional ideas, approaches, and perspectives. 8️⃣ Listening Louder—Present, Engaged, and Clarity of Intent eliminates distractions, brings out what's not being said, and jointly crafts better questions to help uncover the unknown and the undiscovered. 9️⃣ Encouraging—Supportive Communication, Positive Reinforcement, and Inspiration help celebrate small wins and key milestone achievements. It's ideal to light a fire within the relationship rather than under anyone, which seldom lasts! 🔟 Playing the Long Game—Relationship Nurturing and Post-Investment Care establishes the runway for a lasting partnership rather than simply pitching a deck and closing a deal. After the investment decision, sustaining the relationship will determine the partnership's long-term perspective. Jason M. Lemkin, Peter Bell, Cassie Young, and Ed Sim - you exemplify world-class in the relationships you build with your founders. Did I miss anything? #VCFounderRelationship #AlignedExpectations #RelationshipsMatterMoreThanEver

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In his latest piece, Paul Graham dives into a thought-provoking realization sparked by Brian Chesky's memorable talk at a recent YC event: **what if the conventional wisdom on scaling companies is fundamentally flawed for founders?** Graham dissects why advice that works for professional managers often fails founders, leading to disastrous results. He introduces the concept of "Founder Mode" — a distinct approach to running a company that clashes with traditional management practices. Graham argues that embracing this mode could be the key to unlocking greater success for startups, potentially revolutionizing how founders scale their companies. Made me think. https://lnkd.in/exHmEE5M

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DeepCast shipped a number of really cool new features recently in advance of a broad outreach push to podcast listeners. One new feature is our new Daily DeepDigest tool that sends you a concise daily email including any new episodes from the trailing 24 hours from any podcasts you Subscribe to (on DeepCast). Think daily podcast cliff notes or podcast news ticker tape, with a hint of Morning Brew various brews or PitchBook News—it's increasing information throughput when you're pressed for time. And this feature is rapidly evolving to distill other key extractions from shows you're already interested in, but also exposing you to other shows you might be unfamiliar with that also have nuggets to share—and thus increasing your aperture yet still conscious of your time. Want to go deeper on any given episode? Click the episode detail and you're off to an episode on DeepCast, where you can subsequently read a longer form distillation of that episode or go straight to the source and listen to the episode. (And podcaster friends, these pages are definitely increasing indexing and thus Google entry points to your shows!) I'm loving this feature as a user, personally. Can't wait to see what others think! #BuildingInPublic #Podcasts #AllTheWorldsInformation #HowYouWantIt

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Amplitude Announces Second Quarter 2024 Financial Results: - Second quarter revenue of $73.3 million, up 8% year over year - Annual Recurring Revenue of $290 million, up 8% year over year - Number of customers representing $100,000 or more of ARR in Q2 grew to 547, an increase of 10% year over year This quarter was all about meeting our customers where they are. In Q2 we took our Snowflake Native offering GA, doubled down on our open ecosystem, and unveiled a self-serve portal that makes it easier than ever to integrate with Amplitude. To our customers, partners, and Ampliteers, thank you! Your trust, partnership, and hard work is invaluable! #PLG #ProductLedGrowth #DigitalAnalytics #ProductAnalytics #Retention #Acquisition #Monetization

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As we move deeper into 2024, tracking the right metrics is critical for scaling a SaaS business. This insightful guide outlines the top metrics to watch and includes valuable benchmarks to keep you on track. Whether you’re focused on ARR, CAC, or CLTV, understanding where your company stands is key to driving sustainable growth. Check out the article for a comprehensive look into the latest SaaS trends and metrics! #SaaS #BusinessGrowth #Metrics

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Primary Venture Partners NY Seed Report is out In Q3 2024, the NYC seed funding landscape saw a strategic pivot. While total funding dropped 13%, the average round size rose by 11%, signaling a high-conviction, low-volume approach from investors. Healthtech, AI, and FinTech deals led the way, with notable growth in transactions within the $6M-$10M range. For the entire report: https://lnkd.in/eByGuxW9

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🚗 Jeremy A. is an engineer and early stage startup operator who fulfilled his childhood goal of living & working in Boston, building his career where the rubber meets the road, friction and all 🚗 It's W1 / Q1 / 2025 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Jeremy,  the Head of Enablement at Seed stage consumer marketplace & shop management platform TireTutor. In this role he owns technical partnerships and is responsible for setting the strategy for how they go to market as a team. He helps set the operating budgets, working closely with Founder & CEO Jason Abrahams and their investors. Jeremy also owns operations & enablement in terms of how their GTM team sells, packages their offerings, and how they deliver their service for customers from strategy to content to better achieve their goals. Heading into 2025, the TireTutor team is highly focused on operations after launching the first true all-in-one POS at the end of 2024, focusing on the key metrics that drive their business. 🗺️ 🧭 Navigating Tough Situations Drives Strategic Success 🧭🗺️ Navigating tough situations is a fundamental part of life in early stage startups. Jeremy’s hard won recipe for success? Get really close to customers, stay close to them, and live in your function. When TireTutor set their early GTM strategy, it was critical for them to be able to “talk the talk” of their customer base. More generally known as “domain expertise”. It was Jeremy’s experience, both by inexperience and logging all of those hours, that having a consistent “ground game” is what drives strategy. Not the other way around. Strategy comes from talking to 100s of customers and properly segmenting your market successfully because not all prospects and customers are created equal. TireTutor found that there were specific tire focused shops that fit their early platform really well. Then, over time, they also grew to serve shops who sold tires in addition to repair work. Each has a unique way of being prospected, closed, and serviced. 3 Career Insights / Learnings 🚪 Leave Ego at the Door - “Leaving your ego at the door and being open to what it means to be good at something and not so good at something is an important first step to succeeding in a startup environment. It took me time to embrace that!” 😤 Having Thick Skin - “Startups aren’t easy. You might get yelled at by your customers some days! Having thick skin is about being able to work through those challenges and around them each day to achieve your long term goals” 😅 All Problems Aren’t Problems - “We all have problems that we deal with. But just because there are challenges, doesn’t mean it's the end of the world. Not all problems need to be or can be solved. But being honest about where things stand is really important to making progress” Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter to see the operator learnings we bring you in the weeks ahead!

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Amplitude Announces First Quarter 2024 Financial Results: - Fourth quarter revenue of $72.6 million, up 9% year-over-year - Number of paying customers grew 37% year-over-year to nearly 3,000 - Free cash flow margin up 7 percentage points YoY We’ve been up-leveling our GTM strategy over the last year, and Q1 was all about execution. Our self-serve account is attracting diverse customers, our named account strategy is seeing early promise, and we're building healthier and deeper relationships with our customers. We also continued to innovate. We released Session Replay and are making it easier than ever before to get started with Amplitude. As always, I’d like to extend a massive thank you to our awesome Ampliteers, partners, and customers—your partnership is invaluable! #ProductLedGrowth #DigitalAnalytics #ProductAnalytics #Retention #Acquisition #Monetization Spenser Skates Christopher (Criss) Harms Kristina Johnson Francois Ajenstat Shadi Rostami Shintaro Matsui Nathaniel Crook Tifenn Dano Kwan Jenna Schwalbe Elliott Chris Sharp Daniel Carpenter Rachel Courtney Jonathan Anderson

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john waller Jeff Bocan - this might be a new podcast y'all might really enjoy! Summary coverage from the most recent 3 shows: In recent episodes of the BG2Pod podcast, hosts Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner explore the evolving landscape of tech investments and innovation. They discuss the changing dynamics of the pre-IPO market, with larger funds and increased capital affecting company behavior and IPO timelines. The hosts analyze the impact of AI advancements, including OpenAI's ChatGPT-4 and Google's Astra, on various industries and debate the potential for AI to disrupt or enhance existing software companies. They also examine the challenges faced by private unicorn companies in achieving liquidity events and the factors contributing to the current dearth of IPOs. Additionally, the podcast touches on broader themes such as the role of capitalism and immigration in driving innovation, the debate around AI regulation, and the implications of recent tech earnings and market conditions. CC Kim Burgaard #podcasts #ai #investing #vc

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Last Friday, Vinay Hiremath, founder of Loom (USD 900M exit to Atlassian), shared on his blog about leaving Loom, leaving $60M payout, breaking up with his girlfriend, dealing with insecurities, a brief stint at DOGE, and how he is now in Hawaii self-studying physics. I, along with a few founders I know who had substantial exits at a fairly young age (late 20s to early 30s), experienced something similar. Post-acquisition, most of us underwent—and many are still going through—a self-discovery phase largely centered on finding a 'purpose' and determining the best possible use of our time at this point in life. Does it mean taking risks that nobody else can, building more companies, accumulating more wealth, reaching the pinnacle of mental and physical health, building a family, getting involved in social impact, or leaving everything behind to sit on an isolated island? Capital does give you freedom and excessive optionality in life choices, especially if you're still unmarried. However, it is difficult to find your anchor, and most of the time, the abundance of choices becomes overwhelming. I was fortunate to meet a few exited founders who had gone through the acquisition process, and they were kind enough to share what worked for them. In one of my conversations with David Haber, he said: "As entrepreneurs, we build companies, but while we do that, we can't discount life. And life is what happens outside our companies." That thought has stuck with me. Today, three years after exiting Recko | A Stripe company to Stripe, I feel there are multiple ways to make life more fulfilling. It is not just the single-minded, unidirectional professional pursuit, which more often than not is driven by a chase for external validation rather than an internal desire to become better at your craft or to do something that uplifts people around you. Until the time you find that burning desire, restlessness, or drive to pick up the shovel again, take that family trip, get in shape, try something that you always wanted but never could, embrace the nothingness, enjoy the boredom, and keep exploring!

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We gathered dozens of operators from the MGMT Boston Operators Club and local founders alongside the 186 Ventures team this October to discuss the evolution of our dear software markets, the status of some predictions for 2024 (all looking good!), and what’s on deck for next year. General Partner Giuseppe Stuto led us through the following predictions for 2025 to share with you all.. ↕ We will see more vertical AI applications manifest themselves within the Enterprise in a similar ways that SaaS moved from horizontal to vertical use cases 🔔 We will see services business models more common and software budget purchasing models less common - SaaS may even be given away for cheap/free as a “way in” ⚖ Capital efficiency, on a relative basis, will almost be required to create enduring & compounding defensible enterprise value. Details like procurement cycle lengths and creativity with non-dilutive financing, like leveraging revenue based financing tools for example, will all matter 💡 Specific to AI, premiums will be placed on applications that can actually get “reasoning” right. All purpose LLMs still have a ways to go and there are multiple approaches with the “jury still out” on how to get context and reasoning right. Infrastructure solutions that use general purpose or customizable knowledge graphs to help application developers get to 100% (enterprise acceptable accuracy) will emerge OR savvy application developers will fill the gaps themselves. We will likely see both, depending upon the specific case! Thank you Giuseppe, Julian, and Sophie for a great discussion and evening!

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📈 Curious about the startup scene in Massachusetts? Explore our detailed funding list featuring startup names, HQ locations, and investor info. Perfect for investors and entrepreneurs alike! Check it out: https://lnkd.in/dAp3xj-Q #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #managementconsulting

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