The way I see it is, if you can start there, get near-perfect grades at MIT and defend your PhD thesis in front of Databricks cofounder Matei Zaharia, then nothing in the startup environment is going to scare you. The CEO Cody Coleman was literally born in jail. The founders became best friends at MIT, and came from extremely humble beginnings. Take my most recent investment in Coactive AI. I'm not sure either is easier, just risk-adjusted. But in the series A world, if you find a founder and team that's exceptional, and they have an insight, you make an investment based on projections. Obviously from a risk-reward standpoint, you're investing at a much higher price in late-stage investments, which means they're somewhat priced to perfection and things need to work out the way you see them. In early-stage investments, you just won't have the numbers necessarily to tell that story. You typically have data and historical financials, and those influence us investing in the company. I always tell my team in growth-stage investing, the numbers will always tell the story, and the story can never tell the numbers. ✒️You’ve done both early- and late-stage investing. This week, we have Bessemer Venture Partners’ Elliott Robinson, who started off in early-stage investing before moving to late-stage. Introducing Sixfold, the first generative artificial intelligence built to solve the hardest problems in the insurance industry How do you apply #genai to one of the most traditional, nuanced, and security-focused industries like insurance? You start a company with a group of industry vets (let’s go Jane & Brian!), get backing from the best of the best (thank you Bessemer Venture Partners & Crystal Venture Partners), partner with ambitious customers looking to eliminate grunt work and unlock new ways of selling insurance. “Watershed,” “groundbreaking,” “seismic” are insufficient at describing the society-changing technology revolution Sixfold is a part of. In November, when ChatGPT was unleashed on the masses, you either realized that the world had changed, or you missed the announcement. What an exciting moment to unveil Sixfold! With the world's first generative artificial intelligence trained to solve the hardest problems in the insurance industry, we’re changing how insurance carriers underwrite risks, lowering their expenses, and dramatically expanding their sales. What else would you add to this list? Are there other key areas where revenue leaders should focus for maximum impact? Increasing the number of CXO conversations: Going higher in the organization to align leaders on the business case and how your solutions will help them return value in the coming year. Increasing deal sizes: Focus on the use cases that attach to bigger board and management priorities. There are multiple levers (like increasing conversion rates, quotas, prices, or outreach), but winning sales leaders and CROs are focusing on these two main drivers for revenue generation: Janelle Teng and I had a great conversation about the macro trends impacting the market, how those impact revenue generation, and what leaders can do to get ahead of the curve. There are actions that CROs can take to stay resilient and exceed revenue targets in the next 3-6 months. It’s challenging to grow revenue right now, but not impossible. I’ve heard this a lot from sales and revenue leaders lately. “Our company just cut budgets by 10%, but I still have to grow revenue! How?”
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