Non-obvious Growth Hacks, Pre-Seed Investing, & How to Handle Rejection

A newsletter for founders & friends (7th edition)

Hey 👋

Welcome to the 7th edition of Re:Vitalize, a newsletter with tactics, strategies, and stories on building companies plus cool things we’re seeing in the future of work.

Did you miss last week’s newsletter about metrics at seed, the web3 landscape, and how to tell better stories? Subscribe below so you never miss another👇

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FOW Key Insights

💼 Three Lessons For Startups From The Great Resignation

📖 Future of Work Reads

• Twitter wants to figure out the future of work (Protocol)

• The future of hybrid work (VentureBeat)

• The future of work: development tooling and Covid-19 (The Guardian)

• What the Great Reimagination Means for the Future of Work (Entrepreneur)

• The Future Of Work Is Flexible: Google Will Transition To Hybrid Work By April 4 (Forbes)

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Top 3 Tweets

🥇 Non-obvious Growth Hacks

Josh from Party Round @joshqharris

Tell me your startup, I’ll reply with a non-obvious growth hack to gain customers/reach:

🥈 The Secret Sauce of Pre-Seed Investments

Joshua Browder @jbrowder1

After investing in 100 companies, there are only three things that make an incredible pre-seed investment. Here is the “secret” sauce: 1). Does the idea improve the world? 2) Can they actually build it? 3) Will the opportunity excite downstream institutional investors? (1/n)

🥉 How to Handle Rejection

Janine Sickmeyer @myfriendjanine

I’ve had 100s of rejections for investment in my startup and 100s of rejections for investment in my VC fund. It’s no fun getting a no. But it’s important to know how to handle rejection.🧵👇🏼

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Resources

• Common errors startups should avoid

• First Round’s Angel Investor Directory

• A tool for connecting with journalists

• An easy way to build websites from Airtable

• The best resources for founders

• 8 time-consuming tasks you can automate

• Lessons from building a software company with $8 million in sales

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The World of Vitalize

• This week, The Vitalize Podcast featured Nik Talreja, CEO of Sydecar, a company that helps you start and run your fund or SPV so you can focus on making deals, not spreadsheets

• We’re hiring a CFO / Controller at Vitalize

• Vitalize portfolio company, Elevate K-12, was featured in an article about how they’re working to answer the national teacher shortage

• Open jobs at Vitalize portfolio companies

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Future of Work Funding Rounds

• AnyRoad raised a $47M Series B

  • AnyRoad is a platform for the Experience Economy that helps enterprises create brand loyalty and change consumer behavior.

  • Top Investors: BlackRock, Kaiser Permanente, 500 Startups, Andreessen Horowitz, Precursor Ventures

• Metadata raised an $40M Series B

  • The autonomous demand generation platform for B2B enterprises.

  • Top Investors: 500 Startups, Gaingels, Alchemist Accelerator, SeedInvest, Graph Ventures

• Time by Ping raised a $36.5M Series B

  • Time by Ping is an AI company that automates time and billing for professional services starting with enterprise law firms.

  • Top Investors: BoxGroup, Gokul Rajaram, Ulu Ventures, Initialized Capital, Time Ventures

• Fieldguide raised a $17M Series A

  • Fieldguide provides an automation and collaboration platform for modern assurance and advisory firms.

  • Top Investors: 8VC, Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital, UpHonest Capital, Floodgate

• Enterpret raised a $4.3M Seed

  • Enterpret allows the companies to analyze their customer's feedback and help them build new products.

  • Top Investors: Sequoia Capital India, Kleiner Perkins, iSeed, Vinay Hiremath, Unusual Ventures

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Written by Justin Gordon, Director of Marketing at Vitalize, a venture capital firm and 300+ member angel investing community for everyone investing in U.S.-based B2B software founders in the future of work. Find us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.