Jason Cohen

“Organizations buying your software are asking for a VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) and you can tie business metrics to that.” Andrew Chung Chief Product Officer at Level Access explains that two strong ways of advocating for product resources for accessibility are to bring product customers who are asking for VPATs, and quantifying the business risk of not being accessible. He goes on to share a great reminder that “don’t wait, just start” is a compelling way to create evidence of the benefits of allocating a small amount of resources, which can then be used to build a business case for unlocking more resources to build accessible products. Use free tools to help you get started and if you can show early success you can build a much stronger case for incorporating accessibility early in the product process. We all purchase software, next time ask for a VPAT during the process.  Every request adds up, and it will make a meaningful difference in how Product teams prioritize limited resources. Full interview is in the comments. This is now conversation #5 in our series for National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and we have a few more that we’re editing and will share soon. My mission with these conversations is to help build awareness of the importance and business opportunity for building accessible, and give advocates the tactics and strategies they need to make forward progress in their organizations. Stay tuned for more and in the meantime let me know what more you’d like to hear from our guests.  Upcoming conversations include conversations with startup founders, senior accessibility leaders who have worked at major tech and consumer companies, venture capitalists who invest in the ability space, and more. Drop your questions in a comment, and I'll get as many asked as I can. #NDEAM #GoodJobsForAll #inclusionworks #DisabilityRights #InclusiveWorkplace #InclusionMatters

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Hitting $1.5M Rev in 3 years is impressive... but should he have sold the firm? Was reflecting on this recent podcast with Jordan Sublette, CPA. Clearly he had rapid success both in growing (and then selling to his successor). Can't help but wonder ... with a firm growing so quickly, did he sell too early? On the other side of it, the future is unpredictable and now he has some financial security... What do you think? 🤔 https://lnkd.in/gCnRh8MV #accountingfirm #acquisition #sale #CPAfirm

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When you're not in the board room, you're always wondering, "What's going on in there?". I have now worked with seven companies where I'd regularly present to a board, a mixture of PE and VC-led, and it's almost always centered around a few key topics. If you're meeting your numbers: - what's your future forecast  - how are you going to continue to grow - how will you grow faster and more efficient  - update on money in the bank and spend If you're not meeting your numbers (along with the things I mentioned above): - what is your plan to turn things around and meet your numbers (this includes new logo, back-to-base sales, and churn reduction) - what resources can they offer to help - do you have the right players in the right seat This is an oversimplification because many nuances are at play, but this is generally it. While board meetings can be stressful, almost every board I've worked with wants to be helpful. Of course, their interest is, first and foremost, that the business is healthy and growing, so there's always that undertone, but overall, they want to help. After all, they are guardians of the investments they make on behalf of others and have to report back on their performance. Think of them like they are CSMs for their investors (the folks that give them money). They need to get a great return on the investment they made on their behalf.

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I wrote two term sheets this week into startups backed by amazing founding teams, and in both cases I recommended a pivot to the team’s initial GTM strategy.   Sometimes being well networked, or building in a white hot problem space can be a gift and a curse when it catches the attention of enterprise customers.   On paper, it is the exact type of validation a funding team is seeking as they work through an initial version of their product, but more often than not it has the potential to derail a startup’s potential for success.   The startups in question were both experiencing this exact dynamic.  In one case, the team had caught the eye of one of the largest robotics companies in the world and begun conversations around a potential partnership.   The second company is backed by a 20 year industry veteran with a deep rolodex of enterprise customers within his ICP.  Some of the largest retailers in the world were engaging in conversations around piloting his product.  As I explained to both of these founders, this was amazing validation, but should also not be the focal point of their initial GTM.   The reality is, in order to successfully deploy within either of these customers, they were looking at a long and arduous path, filled with security reviews and product feature sets that realistically an early stage pre-seed company with 2 founders could not deliver upon.   My advice to them, continue those conversations, with the realization that they could take 1 year+ before realistic deployments, but focus the lion’s share of their GTM energies toward customers with lower deployment hurdles, in this case Series A/B backed robotics companies and $50M-$250M retailers.    To be clear, the  genuine interest from these enterprises is a massively positive indicator on the problem/solution set they are building for, and it is part of the reason we are bullish on the market opportunity of each startup.  I’ve just seen so many startups fail to deploy an initial product and ultimately never raise a seed round because they get stuck in a seemingly never ending enterprise sales cycle.

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Have you ever looked for theory that can answer - how to approach investors - what kind of product to build first - how you’ll defend the company against competitors This new article from CDA partner, Kevin Maney extends Steven Johnson's writing from the book Emergence to #CategoryDesign. All #Startups and #VentureCapital teams should dig in. (link to article in comments)

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Let's finally get rid off the "VC alphabet song" and redo the system to become more founder friendly. "The benchmarks set by funding stages are often arbitrary and not necessarily aligned with the actual development needs of individual startups." #vc #venturecapital #founder #fundraising #startups #fundingstages #funding #fundingrounds #pitchbook

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As a founder and CEO, I’ve learned that true founder-market fit isn’t just about understanding your industry, it’s about the tenacity to push through when the inevitable challenges hit. Budget freezes, talent moves, customer churn, investor pullback, lost sales, and product or service quality issues are all part of the journey. Startups aren’t linear; the road is bumpy, and you need to be ready to navigate the unexpected. Building startup businesses in any sector is difficult but surviving and thriving in the technology arena is not for the faint of heart. You can have the best product-market fit in the world, but without the grit to keep going when constant change is afoot, key talent departs, or when you lose a big deal you thought was in the bag, it won’t matter. Your deep understanding, experience, expertise and comfort of the market gives you an edge, but it’s the ability to adapt, stay committed and push forward every day that ultimately drives success. Tenacity isn’t just a trait... it’s the backbone of every successful founder. It’s waking up every day, hungry to improve, iterate, and win. A results and outcomes disposition is key. Founders who embrace the uncertainty and keep the faith are the ones who move industries forward.

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I just finished Isaacson's book on Musk. It's incredible! Every founder and CEO should read it. Here are my top four learnings: (1) Mission Above All: Musk has the fortitude to build many multi-billion dollar companies concurrently because each has a humanity-altering mission that deeply convicts him. He doesn't care about being the top rocket company; he believes humanity is doomed if we don't become multi-planetary. He doesn't care about making the best-selling car; he thinks society must transition to clean energy to survive. To him, SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink's missions are vital to preserving humanity. Musk won't stop until he achieves these missions. (2) Guided by First Principles: Musk challenges all generally accepted conventions with first-principles thinking. This approach allows him to create much grander visions than 99.9% of people. He questions everything. He considers all fresh ideas, no matter how ambitious and unrealistic they appear. So long as the laws of physics don't preclude an idea from becoming an actual product or process, it's game on. (3) Hardcore and Extreme Urgency: Musk sets seemingly unrealistic targets with public launches and oftentimes puts his teams through excruciating circumstances to achieve massive dreams. He catches a lot of flack for it. But show me another way to build numerous multi-billion businesses at the speed he's done it. Bill Gates ran Microsoft equally hardcore in the early days - same result. Every sports championship documentary I've ever watched is about blood, sweat, and tears. I'm convinced that if you want to go big and fast, you must be hardcore. (4) Maniacal Attention to Product Simplicity and Cost: I think this is so overlooked in software. CEOs delegate to CTOs while focusing on fundraising, GTM, and culture. Imagine CEOs obsessed over product details, simplicity, and production costs. Sure, that might drive some product managers and engineers crazy, but if managed well, we'd have much better products requiring much less marketing, sales, and support investment. If you're building a company today, a few key questions: a) How much conviction do you have in your mission? Even if you're not sending rockets to Mars, will your mission fuel your drive for the next 7-10 years? b) Are you breaking conventions or following common processes? How can you shatter the mold and push your industry forward? c) Is your culture hardcore or laid-back? Do you want to go big and win championships or be comfortable and achieve moderate success?  d) Do you really understand your industry, user, and product? What are the top five ways to simplify your product and reduce time-to-market and production costs? #founder #startups #ceo #saas

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My boss Brad Wiskirchen used to say "10% of CEOs have a fraud problem, but 100% have a revenue problem". That was certainly my experience. Rarely was someone compelled by a claim we'd drop their fraud rate 30%. But if we could help them launch cross border sales or enter a risky market without losing their shirts, they were sold. It took me a while to figure out how to sell to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). They only want generational improvements in the state of the art: advance it by 20 years. I'd lose a proposal because they thought it was too speculative, so I'd submit the next one with a clear path. They'd say it looked like I knew exactly how to go about it so I should talk to someone funding near term projects. Finally someone gave me a concrete description of what "strategic" meant to DARPA. When SHTF in the world, they put some options in front of the president. A strategic capability meant there was another folder on the Resolute Desk. When I saw the newspaper after the Bin Laden raid, that thought hit home. Once we found him, the president's options were 1) ask Pakistan to turn him over, knowing that he'd probably get tipped off and escape or 2) go in hot and suppress air defenses 35 miles from the capital of an allied country. Except - probably thanks to DARPA - there was 3) send in stealthy helicopters in a quiet raid with limited collateral damage. The #AI industry needs to take this lesson. No one is excited about cutting call center employees or making emails easier to write. There are other ways to save money, probably with better ROI, that your customer is already passing on because they would rather deploy their resources toward top line growth. Your pitch needs to explain how the product provides a capability that didn't exist before. Something you make possible that is impossible otherwise. The customer is not going to risk bleeding edge tech paying SaaS margins to try to save money. It's like buying a Ferrari because you'll save gas by getting to your destination faster. No one believes that. The value of the Concorde wasn't that it got you to Europe in an hour or two less. It was that you could suddenly make meetings the same day you traveled. This is why I'm unimpressed with all but a few GenAI pitches I've heard. Most of them take some marginal activity and claim it'll be cheaper to do with AI. Few of them actually put new options on the CEO's desk. And CEOs probably don't have the problem you are solving for. But they all want more revenue.

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My boss Brad Wiskirchen used to say "10% of CEOs have a fraud problem, but 100% have a revenue problem". That was certainly my experience. Rarely was someone compelled by a claim we'd drop their fraud rate 30%. But if we could help them launch cross border sales or enter a risky market without losing their shirts, they were sold. It took me a while to figure out how to sell to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). They only want generational improvements in the state of the art: advance it by 20 years. I'd lose a proposal because they thought it was too speculative, so I'd submit the next one with a clear path. They'd say it looked like I knew exactly how to go about it so I should talk to someone funding near term projects. Finally someone gave me a concrete description of what "strategic" meant to DARPA. When SHTF in the world, they put some options in front of the president. A strategic capability meant there was another folder on the Resolute Desk. When I saw the newspaper after the Bin Laden raid, that thought hit home. Once we found him, the president's options were 1) ask Pakistan to turn him over, knowing that he'd probably get tipped off and escape or 2) go in hot and suppress air defenses 35 miles from the capital of an allied country. Except - probably thanks to DARPA - there was 3) send in stealthy helicopters in a quiet raid with limited collateral damage. The #AI industry needs to take this lesson. No one is excited about cutting call center employees or making emails easier to write. There are other ways to save money, probably with better ROI, that your customer is already passing on because they would rather deploy their resources toward top line growth. Your pitch needs to explain how the product provides a capability that didn't exist before. Something you make possible that is impossible otherwise. The customer is not going to risk bleeding edge tech paying SaaS margins to try to save money. It's like buying a Ferrari because you'll save gas by getting to your destination faster. No one believes that. The value of the Concorde wasn't that it got you to Europe in an hour or two less. It was that you could suddenly make meetings the same day you traveled. This is why I'm unimpressed with all but a few GenAI pitches I've heard. Most of them take some marginal activity and claim it'll be cheaper to do with AI. Few of them actually put new options on the CEO's desk. And CEOs probably don't have the problem you are solving for. But they all want more revenue. (Photo of tail section from stealth helicopter that someone sold not because it reduced metrics by 20%, but because it provided capability for counterterrorism operations without suppression that didn't exist before.)

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What does bold leadership look like in 2024? In this latest Product Thinking episode, I sit down with Margaret (MJ) Jastrebski, the SVP of Product at Tegus. We dive into the key strategies for uniting teams, breaking down silos, and leading with transparency. Margaret knows the investor research space inside and out from her work at Tegus, a platform that consolidates key company intelligence to help investors make smarter bets. With experience spanning product, sales, and marketing at companies like Stylitics and TXI, Margaret brought a unique 360-degree view. We discussed: ►Uniting fragmented teams behind one vision ►Breaking down silos between product, marketing, sales, etc. ►Leading with transparency to build trust and alignment Margaret emphasized the need for product leaders to externalize their decision-making process. By communicating rationale openly, you empower teams to truly understand and even constructively challenge your calls. Whether you're an up-and-comer or a seasoned pro, you'll want to hear Margaret's insights on casting a clear vision, tearing down organizational barriers, and inspiring teams to achieve big outcomes. What strategies have you found effective for aligning teams and leading with transparency? Share your insights below! Listen Now: https://lnkd.in/gAdV7k56 #ProductLeadership #Alignment #Transparency #BusinessStrategy

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I’m fortunate to spend time with a small group of people whom I consider to be the next generation of startup c-level executives. These folks have a lot in common. They’re often in VP level roles, have crazy high ceilings, and they’re perpetually looking to take their game to the next level. They’re running hard. Really hard. Oftentimes, they’re running just as hard at home. In many cases this career apex seems to coincide with having a young family. Sometimes, they run until they crash. I find this comes up a lot in our conversations. I’ve been there. I’ve seen good people leave good companies simply because they’re tired. Longevity is about maintenance. I'm into maintenance. Here are five maintenance strategies that have worked for me; 1/ Align time and priorities. In startups workload exceeds capacity so you need to decide when you work and what you work on. This is a life decision, not a business decision. 2/ Develop a maintenance process to increase longevity. What are you doing daily, weekly and monthly to ensure you’re operating in easy mode? 3/ Understand the power of identity. Exercise caution if what you do is who you are. Startups are volatile and high risk. Detach professional failures from failures of self. 4/ Play the infinite game. Understand that the game you're playing has no finish line. The goal is to keep playing and find joy in the pursuit. 5/ Build a personal board of directors. Startups may be for pirates and romantics, but that doesn’t mean you have to face the world alone. Building a network around you will help commiserate and think through difficult problems. More here, On Longevity: https://lnkd.in/duMCPtSV

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Saw the news today that PivotalTracker is shutting down. Although I haven't used the product in years, PivotalTracker was, to me, the perfect example of how opinionated software can supercharge a development team. All software embodies a process. The best tools are ones that not only record information but drive your process and your team forward. If you tried to use PivotalTracker but didn't follow their process, you'd find the tool would not work well - and so you'd be forced to adopt their process (which was a good process). Other tools that are more general, like Jira, let you do whatever you want, which often results in teams with poorly defined or loose processes, which results in teams that don't operate effectively. RIP PivotalTracker. For me, its legacy as an example of what opinionated software can do to make a team operate with peak efficiency will live on. https://lnkd.in/e3_jvQ9g

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Friday insight 💡 replay: The Role of Startups in Moving Platform Engineering Forward #Startups #Engineering #Platformengineering Cory O'Daniel Colton Dempsey

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As we enter the final months of 2024, it's time to shift into high gear and make the most of every tax-saving opportunity out there. Luckily, MASCPA has got your back. We've been helping small businesses just like yours navigate the ever-changing world of taxes and financial regulations for over a decade. And with our expert guidance, you can confidently tackle any end-of-year challenges that come your way. Whether it's maximizing deductions on new equipment purchases, fine-tuning your tax planning strategies, or simply getting your books in order, MASCPA is ready to tackle it all. Our seasoned accountants and consultants will work closely with you to identify every possible way to boost your bottom line before the clock strikes midnight on December 31st. But the real power of partnering with MASCPA goes beyond just tax season. Our comprehensive suite of advisory services is designed to be a year-round resource, empowering you to make informed financial decisions that drive sustainable growth. From cash flow forecasting to business strategy consulting, they've got the tools and expertise to help you finish 2024 strong and set the stage for an even more successful 2025. So as you gear up for the final push, don't go it alone. Reach out to MASCPA and let us be your trusted guide through the home stretch. With our support, you'll be crossing that finish line with confidence, energy, and a whole lot of hard-earned tax savings! #YearEndTaxPlanning #SmallBizFinance #AccountingAdvisory #MomentumMatters #ConquerTheLastStretch

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A cautionary tale for any entrepreneur including warrants in their fundraising efforts. Techcrunch ran a story yesterday on the collapse of Newchip and how warrants flowed through the bankruptcy proceedings. I am guessing in this situation, there were NO clauses protecting the startups from the insolvency of Newchip. If true, my heart aches for these startups now fighting to protect their equity pool/CAP tables from unknown outside investors coming into their company at likely ridiculous valuations via bankruptcy actions. It's a cautionary reminder to get solid advice from legal counsel—or, failing the ability to afford outside counsel, seek advice from experienced entrepreneurs who know their way around term sheets and investment terms. Best of luck to those companies mentioned in this article. And for anyone reading this who is a startup founder or entrepreneur, worth a read! #startup #entrepreneur #fundraising https://lnkd.in/gsvzQ_wT

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Instacart is a market leader when it comes to leveraging AI tools to boost productivity at work. I had an amazing conversation with JJ Zhuang, Instacart’s Chief Architect, who has shepherded over 50 AI-driven initiatives to market across the org. We explored what catapulted Instacart to the forefront of AI integration, supporting radically diverse use cases across various functional areas. One striking insight (echoed by Ethan Mollick and others elsewhere) is that you often don't need specialized tools for specialized work. Frontier models like GPT-4 can seamlessly adapt to a wide range of functions and use cases. They're not just for engineers; they're incredibly versatile tools used by marketing, comms, and legal teams. From generating code to proofreading and ideation, GPT-4 empowers every department to leverage AI for enhanced productivity and innovation. By integrating LLM’s like GPT-4 into their workflows, teams can streamline processes, automate repetitive tasks, and unlock bandwidth for new creative possibilities. How can you harness the power of AI in your own work to boost productivity? Share your thoughts below 👇 Want to hear more insights from JJ? Check out the full podcast episode by clicking the link in the comments.

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Ever since we launched SHAKTI, every quarter we write a letter to our LPs = Each letter includes an update on the portfolios, the GP's (our) view on the zeitgeist, an interview with a portfolio CEO and an interview with a TITAN = So far, we have 16 such letters = it's been on our "to do" list to share these publicly (i am lazy) = then Google comes along to save lazy people like me (thank you NotebookLLM) = here's a 10 min podcast summarizing our journey since Dec/2020 with the 16 LP letters as source = if you wanted to know what we are about, this is a pretty good place to start = https://lnkd.in/db7K2TrT cc SHAKTI

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Parker just posted Rippling's new fundraising memo. It's the manifesto for compound startups and one of our initial inspirations for building Atlas. Here's a nugget that I really liked that summarizes how we feel about the competitive advantage of all-in-one startups over vertical startups (in customer support especially): "When we build corporate cards, we're not innovating on the way we issue corporate cards (through Stripe issuing or Marqeta) or the way we scan and extract metadata from receipts (which is mostly a vendor relationship for us today). We're going to win on the capabilities we have that are common to all Rippling products—the integration with the rest of Rippling and with employee data, the platform capabilities, and the common UX described above." Here's the full doc: https://lnkd.in/gYH59HVZ

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