View from Seed

JUNE 24, 2020

After operating quietly for the past year, our portfolio company Jumbo made a couple big announcements yesterday, including the launch of Jumbo 2 as well as their $8M series A financing led by Balderton Capital. The mission of Jumbo is to give consumers control of their privacy and data and restore peace of mind.

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View from Seed

JULY 24, 2015

The invite-only event was attended by 300 of the area’s best tech leaders, founders, product managers, designers, developers, investors, engineers, salesmen and women, and more, all of whom are hard at work in consumer tech. Half our portfolio is consumer. krianbalma says “designers care about solving real problems.

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View from Seed

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Portfolio companies can contact us to learn more.) ” to the more complex, “Can you design Google?” ” (We’re testing for whether you can design a really large system.). I learned they were good at high-level architecture design but had clearly been doing only that for a really long time.

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View from Seed

JULY 14, 2020

Today, one of our most recent portfolio companies, Opus , announced its rebrand as well as their $2M seed round. This allowed them to design a conversational-based learning experience that is enthusiastically received by both the frontline workers and their managers.

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Portfolio Leadership Metrics Employee 177

View from Seed

JULY 21, 2022

For creatives, we’re a premium, value-aligned partner to help grow their networks and portfolios, and monetize their passions. They can’t afford to spend 10% of their $100,000 salary on Interior Design Services alone, but they would certainly be willing and able to spend a few hundred dollars. And your least?

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View from Seed

FEBRUARY 24, 2020

Last week, one of our most recent portfolio companies, Ten Little , came out of stealth and announced its public launch. . Ten Little was started by Fatma Collins and Julie Rogers , a platform that aims to make finding the perfect fit for your child easy, starting with shoes. My son is 10-month old so he doesn’t need shoes yet (soon!),

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View from Seed

JUNE 5, 2018

Last week, we hosted our very first portfolio-only Hiring Bootcamp in NYC, led by NextView’s talent advisor Kristen Caldwell. The Hiring Bootcamp is something we plan to continue offering as part of our Platform resources for portfolio companies. Intense discussion on what are the right metrics to track around recruiting.

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Hiring Portfolio Metrics B2C 120

View from Seed

DECEMBER 8, 2015

One of our portfolio companies Scratch first tested their buying concierge concept by replicating the service strictly through email and humans on the back-end. As a firm, we build a portfolio of companies, so we can tolerate a handful of companies that require more time and capital to get to market.

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View from Seed

JANUARY 11, 2018

And in the entertainment category, our portfolio company TripleLift provides monetization for online publishers through native ad technology. In our portfolio, Code Climate is a perfect example of this, as its software becomes embedded within an engineering team’s daily workflow. BookBub ), hybrid B2C/B2B2C models (e.g. Alignable ).

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View from Seed

JULY 11, 2019

On Tuesday, one of our most recent portfolio companies, Otis, came out of stealth and announced its public launch. Michael has a real super-power around identifying outstanding talent, building beautifully designed products, and anticipating the way culture and consumer behavior is shifting.

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View from Seed

OCTOBER 18, 2019

We’ve blogged before about valuing founders who have determinist thinking (particularly with respect to product designers & managers ). Here at NextView and within our portfolio, that’s the expectation until circumstances tell us otherwise. 2) be audacious enough to do something. Startups are difficult. But assume success?

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View from Seed

OCTOBER 28, 2019

In reality, a pre-seed is “an early round of financing that is designed to help a company achieve certain intermediate milestones PRIOR to the magic combination of strong PMF + meaningful traction.”. But this financing contour description is just a proxy for underlying business metrics.

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Seed Stage Finance Dilution Early Stage 247

View from Seed

MAY 11, 2016

A few years ago, a friend of mine who was coming off an EIR gig at a well-known venture fund in Boston ended up joining one of my portfolio companies part-time as a technical advisor / interim CTO. A couple suggestions: #1: Try solving other people’s problems.

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View from Seed

JANUARY 5, 2016

This is a major reason NextView offers its portfolio startups free sessions with talent specialists — former in-house recruiters with experience at high-growth tech companies who are able to improve a founding team’s hiring process and efficacy early on.). But org charts are no longer simply a way to draw boxes on a page.

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View from Seed

AUGUST 30, 2017

CPG brands invest significant effort to design packaging that stands out in these environments and supply chains that support this distribution model. We are already seeing this happen with our portfolio company Grove Collaborative , which is increasingly rethinking the form factor of CPG products.

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Denmark Vertical eCommerce Internet 244

View from Seed

AUGUST 20, 2015

But in this episode, Scott Belsky talks about their critical importance and exactly how he built the popular creative portfolio platform, Behance. DESIGNER CONTRIBUTORS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE). Credit goes to the power of a passionate mission combined with an entrepreneur hellbent on gaining traction. Listen and subscribe on iTunes.

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View from Seed

AUGUST 20, 2015

But in this episode, Scott Belsky talks about their critical importance and exactly how he built the popular creative portfolio platform, Behance. DESIGNER CONTRIBUTORS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE). Credit goes to the power of a passionate mission combined with an entrepreneur hellbent on gaining traction. Listen and subscribe on iTunes.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Product Bootstrapping Portfolio 120

View from Seed

JANUARY 24, 2018

When we create new platform initiatives, our team tries to think about how we can be the most impactful with our portfolio companies. Today, we’re thrilled to announce a new program that we hope will help our portfolio companies with two of these bullets. Pierre Valade, Co-Founder of Sunrise & Mobile Designer at Microsoft.

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Operations Cofounder Technical Review Angel Investor 176

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

Dispense is a B2B software company, focused on transaction software specifically designed for the cannabis industry. Dispense recently announced their $2M seed round , which we are pleased to have led here at NextView.

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View from Seed

MARCH 5, 2015

I’ve had multiple conversations with investors that say something like, “I really like this company, the founder reminds me of (insert name) when he/she started (insert successful portfolio company).” For me personally, I tend to be obsessed with what I would call deterministic, design-focused product founders.

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View from Seed

JUNE 21, 2022

A silver coin if the item is high-street and a gold-coin for mid-market and designer brands. AB: While mid-market and designer items see successful recirculation through rental and resale platforms, only 10% of mass-market / fast-fashion is resold through traditional channels eg. Trade the clothes you don’t want for ones you do.

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Ireland Europe Early Stage Founder 156

View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Recently, I’ve been working with a few of our portfolio companies to help them think about how to recruit and interview their first analytics hire. Analytics is about designing, reporting, and leveraging operating metrics to aid strategic and functional decision-making.

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Analytics Hiring SQL Forecast 149

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

Dispense is a B2B software company, focused on transaction software specifically designed for the cannabis industry. Dispense recently announced their $2M seed round , which we are pleased to have led here at NextView.

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View from Seed

AUGUST 5, 2014

As I’m writing this from the office at 8:30pm, our lead designer is exploring Seoul. Portfolio' We keep ourselves accountable to those goals through company progress dashboards, Scrum, etc. Flow: There is a natural ebb and flow to our individual and company work. We’d have it no other way! Say hello to Charlie!

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View from Seed

JANUARY 10, 2022

We chatted with some NextView founders to get a sense of how this distilled design worked for their teams. We’re also including facilitated, hands-on mentorship from experienced advisors, tactical experts, and portfolio founders. Here are a few unprompted quotes from accelerator alums to help better illustrate: .

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San Diego San Francisco Alabama Valuation 156

View from Seed

MAY 12, 2015

Even if an individual is designated by title as being more senior than another, the individual with a longer tenure always yields more soft influence to get a deal done given his or her deeper relationships, organizational know-how, and established trust with colleagues. However, how long a person has been working at the firm matters too.

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View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

Dispense is a B2B software company, focused on transaction software specifically designed for the cannabis industry. Dispense recently announced their $2M seed round , which we are pleased to have led here at NextView.

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Cofounder B2B Early Stage Software 156

View from Seed

MAY 28, 2020

In a similar move, Upserve, a Toast competitor and NextView portfolio company, is offering free online ordering and contactless payment options for restaurants for one year. This enables restaurants to benefit from Toast’s online ordering and payments platform even if they do not use Toast’s POS hardware.

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View from Seed

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

For context, last year, based on questions from our existing portfolio, we launched two board deck templates for seed-stage startups. These were well-received, so we next turned our attention to entrepreneurs outside the portfolio to ask what questions we could address in a similar fashion.

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Seed Stage Startup Seed Capital Audience 120

View from Seed

MAY 11, 2020

Our mantra at NextView is to “ design the future we want to live in ”. Today, Monument announced the launch of their virtual programs for people looking to change their relationship with alcohol. You can read more about the company here and see their segment on GMA from a few weeks ago here. That is particularly true in the case of Monument.

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View from Seed

AUGUST 6, 2019

Notable brands which their team has helped create include Sweetgreen , Harry’s , and NextView portfolio company’s Dia & Co. Designed to help people find a sense of comfort and intuition in the kitchen, this first brand will complement subsequent ones which also foster daily enjoyment.

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Cofounder Early Stage Portfolio Framework 45

View from Seed

JUNE 10, 2020

The need for this arrangement is partially for the synchronized culmination of the program towards a Demo Day (see next point) and the coordination of an operational machine designed to scale with more & more companies with each class. all designed to scale, it requires a logistical effort with a rigid timeline.

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View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

Lastly, Hologram is a company we appreciate in that the founders have made a consistent bet on being “long term market right” What I mean by that is that many early-stage businesses, especially ones who play a meaningful role in shaping or designing a new category, are explicitly staking the company’s success, not only on their own (..)

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Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 156

View from Seed

AUGUST 10, 2021

Lastly, Hologram is a company we appreciate in that the founders have made a consistent bet on being “long term market right” What I mean by that is that many early-stage businesses, especially ones who play a meaningful role in shaping or designing a new category, are explicitly staking the company’s success, not only on their own (..)

Chicago 136

Chicago Cofounder Miami B2B 136

View from Seed

APRIL 7, 2015

Dirty Secret #1: An early-stage startup’s design actually does matter. Of course, nice design and glossy materials is not what gets VCs to invest (hopefully), but the opposite of this hurts more than one would think. Instead, they just used a page that pushed users to download the app. Okay, so this isn’t always true.

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Early Stage Founder Later Stage Engineer 120

View from Seed

JANUARY 28, 2016

In short, I believe that the most accurate definition is this: A pre-seed is an early round of financing that is designed to help a company achieve certain intermediate milestones PRIOR to the magic combination of strong PMF + meaningful traction. Third, a pre-seed isn’t just about economics for an investor or the difficulty of fundraising.

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View from Seed

JULY 28, 2015

And at the very early stages, we are seeing a true surge of really exciting new consumer ideas coming to life in Boston, including some of our own portfolio companies (Bridj, Scratch, Peach, Dunwello and others) and others elsewhere in the city (including Drizly, Smack High, and more).

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