🔋 Issue #41: Supercharging Your Vision
How to supercharge your startup's vision and sleep better without drugs
💬 Welcome to issue #41 of Between the Lines
According to recently released data from Crunchbase, global venture funding fell this past quarter for the first time in over a year. Don’t panic just yet though, because it’s likely too soon to call this quarter the puncturing of the bubble. The $160B of global funding this quarter still topped every quarter from 2020 and beat Q1 2021 by +7%. But, if the venture market continues to slow in Q2, many startups could find themselves hunting for capital in a market that may not agree with their past valuations. Jason Soll shares some advice on how founders and startups can improve their vision and leadership as the 2022 VC hangover could start to settle in.
~ Josh & Miles
📢 👥 Community Voices: Supercharge Your Startup’s Vision & Elevate Your Leadership
Author: Jason Soll
Jason Soll is a Claremont and Stanford graduate. He’s the former Co-Founder and CEO of Cape, a leader in software for drone usability that was acquired by Motorola back in 2019, and he’s also spent time at X-Moonshot Factory and XSeed Capital as an entrepreneur in residence before founding Workshop. After his stints as an entrepreneur and VC investor, he’s now a mentor at Techstars and a startup advisor for over 100 founders. He shares advice that he learned from building Cape on how startups and founders can improve their vision, leadership, and fundraising perspective.
Most founders I’ve met hate fundraising. It feels like such a drag, such a distraction from what’s most important, all to get rejected over and over again. If you hate fundraising and see it as a mere necessary evil, then you’re missing the larger point. Fundraising offers a unique opportunity to discover the true vision for your company. Okay, but isn’t the vision just a story? Just hollow words? What does that really offer besides more capital from VCs?
Everything. It’s the fire in your belly. It’s the fuel that motivates the team. It’s what turns recruiting into a playful performance (“you’re doing WHAT?! No way.”). It attracts PR, customers, and helps you spread more via word of mouth. Your vision is your most important asset for your startup. Period. And if you approach fundraising the right way, it becomes a unique opportunity to accelerate the development of your vision.
Supercharging your vision makes you a better leader, and the research proves it.
According to the Leadership Circle Profile's massive dataset on leadership effectiveness, the leadership competency that is most strongly correlated with overall leadership effectiveness (r = 0.91) is how "Purposeful and Visionary" you are. Furthermore, when your vision is so big that you can't wrap your head around all of it yourself, you're forced to open up to empowering others to take ownership and step up to lead alongside you.
I’m going to start by sharing my story of how I stumbled into supercharging my vision at Cape, my first company. Then, I’m going to share some specific exercises that will help you expand and develop your vision beyond where you’re taken it before. As a bonus, you will learn how to turn fundraising from a painful chore to a process for tangibly growing the value of your startup by supercharging its most valuable asset: your vision. 👇
📣 Pardon the Announcements: Launch House & SageTank
Calling all founders, engineers, investors, designers, and marketers. Launch House is an a16z-backed community start-up built to help ambitious builders achieve success & fulfillment. They run curated, intimate cohorts of high-potential individuals in gorgeous physical and digital spaces, and they believe in creating authentic, deep bonds rather than transactional relationships. They hit up Between the Lines in case there are any Claremont folks interested in learning more about their upcoming Summer ‘22 Houses. Sign up here to be the first to know when they launch. They’re also hiring PMs, Associates, and Designers.
SageTank is an annual start-up pitch competition geared towards developing student start-ups. Modeled after ABCs Shark Tank, SageTank is a month-long experience where SageTank competitors are paired with mentors who help them develop their company ideas and prepare them for their business pitch to a panel of investors for an opportunity to receive cash prizes and investments in their start-ups.
This year over 21 start-up teams applied comprised of students across all of the 7Cs. If you’re interested in being a mentor, investor, or potentially donating to help support the competition, reach out to Pomona Ventures! The competition will also be happening during Pomona’s Alumni weekend. Register below and you can also watch the event virtually here.
Saturday, April 30 - 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM PDT
🚨Claremonster Call-Out: Ali Abramovitz Cook
Want to sleep better without drugs? Join a clinical trial with Chorus Sleep (Y Combinator-backed W '21), founded by CMC alumna Ali Abramovitz Cook. Chorus helps users sleep better by combining 15-minute relaxing audio sessions with short lessons and morning sleep logs to quiet racing thoughts. Many apps help track your sleep, but research finds they do little to actually improve it. Chorus is changing that by building the next-generation sleep product - one that doesn’t just track sleep; it improves it.
Chorus’ evidence-based approach resulted in 90% of users experiencing improved sleep in internal studies and is being further validated in this clinical trial, the gold standard of establishing a program’s efficacy led by Harvard Psychology Researcher David Weissman, Ph.D.
By joining this trial, you are:
Improving your own sleep and supporting foundational research that could pave the way for a non-pharmaceutical sleep solution
Helping a CMC, female-founded business, build a great product, and help people just like you get the rest they need to unlock their full potential
If you’re interested in joining their trial, sign up below. Spots are limited to only 80 people and it’s first come first serve.
💼 Who’s Hiring?:
After spending time at Nextdoor, Beeswax, and Twitter, Sean McQueen (CMC) has now co-founded his own greenfield SaaS company called Readiness 🚀. Readiness is a well-funded stealth start-up building a unique SaaS platform, and the founders are experienced technology and business professionals who sold their last company to a large telecommunications company for over $100 million. Sean and the team are looking to hire some fellow Claremont engineers:
Back in 2019, CMC alumnus Sam Corcos helped co-found Levels. Now, Levels is an a16z-backed health tech company, here to help you see how food affects your health. By leveraging biosensors like continuous glucose monitors (CGM), Levels provides real-time feedback on how diet and lifestyle choices impact your metabolic health. Their members are using personalized data to discover their optimal diet, control their weight, and reduce long-term health risks. Levels is on a mission to solve the metabolic health crisis and they’re looking for some new talent. If you’re curious about connecting with Sam, shoot us a note.
Make sure to check out the other 5,000+ open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, make sure to create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 750+ remote jobs, 180+ internships, or 30+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention Claremonsters!
As always, if any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention Between the Lines. Or if you are an employer and are looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.
🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s top read 🔥
Meet Sara Conte, one of four Claremont alumni/students in her family. After starting her career at big companies like JP Morgan and BCG, she’s now a Senior Director on the Strategy and Transformation team at VMware - a cloud infrastructure company that acquired HMC-founded Heptio (founded by Joe Beda) not too long ago.
Everything else you need to know….📖
Matthieu Hafemeister (CMC), Head of Growth at Jeeves, shares some of his opinion on the value of angel investors for startups.
Robi Ganguly (PO), the CEO and Co-Founder of Apptentive, talks about why community and emotional connection are the keys to brand evangelists. Apptentive allows companies to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across their mobile customer journeys.
The JOBS Act 4.0, proposed only a few weeks ago, could bring about necessary changes for emerging venture capital like increasing the investor cap for funds <$50M. Read about the implications, courtesy of Sydecar (co-founded by Claremont alumnus David Meister).
Can’t get enough of Between the Lines? Follow and connect with us on Twitter!
🍽️ BTL Snacks:
🌿 The European Cannabis Market….. Germany is set to legalize the recreational use of cannabis, and investors are placing bets. Hear market outlooks from Claremont investor Viken Douzdjian, the Managing Partner at Argonautic Ventures, and other cannabis investors.
🎤 Passing the Mic….. In 2019, only 15.2% of partners at venture capital firms in Canada were women, and even lower in the United States at just 13.2%. Former Claremont trustee member and Managing GP at Bay Partners, Neal Dempsey, shares why he’s committed to helping more women enter the VC landscape - starting with his recent podcast series.
🧠 What Motivates People….. After 15 years of studying human memory and attention as a cognitive neuroscientist, Tracy Wang (CMC) is now a research program manager at Microsoft’s Azure Engineering. She reflects on her life thus far dating back to ballroom dancing at Claremont.
🗣️ Start Yodeling On Yoodli….. Varun Puri (CMC) and his AI-powered public speaking company Yoodli are officially out of stealth. Backed by AI2 and Madrona Venture Group, they’re serving up software and speech improvement games to help you practice and improve your communication skills without the pressure of an audience.
Feedback? We love to hear it. Hit us with an email. 👊🏼