Good morning 👋
I love thoughtful threads and learning how other companies grow, so I love threads like this one that gives high-signal info on what actually works for pre-seed companies looking to find PMF.
We’ll break it down more in today’s piece.
P.S. 🌴 We’re sending out early-access invites to our Miami in-person event soon …
If you like good weather, golf, boats, and meeting other allocators, you can apply to join here.
Today’s highlights
Pre-seed distribution hacks
Venture debt hits an all-time high
Clay raises a community round
Thoughts on LPs trying to skip fund investing and go direct
TOP
How to get distribution as a pre-seed company 📶
This is a phenomenal thread by Martin Tobias (@MartinGTobias).
Read the full thing here, or get the high-level bullets below:
Best wedges:
Pick an underserved market segment when going after the king. (ex. Deel)
Go vertical, consolidate
Make your customers Investors (ex. beehiiv, Clay)
Influencers in your vertical with aligned incentives
Build a proprietary lead database (ex. Confluence.VC)
Referrals through happy customers
Bottoms up to Enterprise vs Top down
Worst wedges:
Paid ads
Channel partnerships
Chasing massive enterprise deals that influence product development too much
‘Book a demo’ as only CTA on landing page
Long-term contracts too soon
Multi-channel (before nailing one)
Taking any customer and not qualifying
Services, not software
White-labeling
GP / LP Mastermind
The “anti-conference” for fund managers 🌴
We don’t like conferences, so we created our own version that we would actually look forward to going to.
Small group of 6-10 LPs, GPs, and partners
Golf and padel
Boat charter
Private dinners
No outside sponsors
We only have space for 6-10, and applications close in under a month.
If you’re interested, we’d recommend letting us know sooner rather than later …
TWEET
HEADLINES
How Slow Ventures is giving the creator economy a rebrand (TechCrunch)
Secondaries funds aren’t returning as they should (Pitchbook)
Venture debt hits all-time high as startups diverge from VC expectations (Pitchbook)
MEMOS
Chima: Interoperability for AI agents
Superpower: The all-in-one health membership for elite performers
Documenso: The DocuSign killer
LINKS
📋 Clay’s community round: The popular enrichment tool is letting customers get in on its latest raise
💰 How Much Revenue Do You Need to IPO in 2025?: Mostly Metrics gives a bit of history but the new rule is that size matters in 2025
🤔 How to Make Smart Decisions Without Getting Lucky: Combining intelligent preparation with general thinking frameworks will dramatically improve your decision-making skills
👷 Find and Build Specific Knowledge: Naval believes specific knowledge is found by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion
🟤 Warning—No Brown M&Ms: Serve your company by making sure all the proper checks and balances in the organization are followed (bonus: great Van Halen guitar solo)
♟️ Startups Fail from Bad Strategy, Not Bad Ideas: The VC Corner lays out 6 strategy frameworks every founder should master
VISUAL
BOARDROOM
Get a FREE audit of your business 🆓
Honest take: I’ve made hundreds thousands of mistakes building this business.
GTM mistakes that slow down sales
Marketing / paid advertising mistakes that literally light money on fire
Ignoring platforms or not learning how different algorithms work that results in not getting enough attention
Not delegating or using automation that cost me hundreds of hours of my time
And a thousand others
But after making tweaks for 5+ years, you start to learn what works and what doesn’t.
Lucky for me, 99% of this knowledge of what works is now stored in my head.
Unlucky for you, most of this can’t be shared online, and it has to be applied to specific situations.
That’s why I’m doing FREE business audits for any reader who owns a business and is looking to grow.
You talk, I listen, I come up with a game plan after the call, and you decide what you want to do with that information.
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Thanks for reading this far and giving us a little bit of your attention this week.
Feel free to unsubscribe whenever this stops becoming valuable to you.
- Clay
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