The Capital Stack

Today, David is speaking with Brian Parks. Brian is the Founder and CEO of Bigfoot Capital. Prior to starting Bigfoot, Brian was on the executive team at P2Binvestor, a working capital-focused marketplace lender. Brian was the Founder and CEO of Brandfolder, an enterprise SaaS digital asset management company (acquired), General Manager at Galvanize, one of the first co-working and coding Bootcamp companies (acquired), and employee #1 at Next Great Place, an online travel distribution company (shut down). Brian began his career in commercial lending at First Tennessee Bank (2 years) and moved into lower-middle market M&A advisory investment banking at The Cypress Group and Green Manning & Bunch (5 years). Brian holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from Southern Methodist University and is a CFA Charterholder.

What You’ll Learn:

• What is Venture Debt
• Banked vs Fund Credit
• Path from Investment banking to Operator to Growth-Oriented Loans
• Understanding When is the Time for a Founder to Step Down as CEO 
• Difficulties of Being an Emerging Manager

Favorite Quote:

“You cannot heck track record, It takes time”

-- 

The Capital Stack

All Things Tech Investing and Value Creation

Early growth investor David Paul interviews the world's greatest ecosystem, learns how to start and scale your own business, and finds an edge in today's capital markets.  To connect with David, visit:

Twitter - CLICK HERE

Substack - CLICK HERE

LinkedIn - CLICK HERE

IG - CLICK HERE

DISCLAIMER:

David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital.  All opinions expressed by David and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DWP capital.  This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.

Today, David is speaking with Bill Binch. 

Bill, a veteran technology leader with nearly three decades of global sales and go-to-market experience, is an operating partner based in Battery’s San Francisco office. He serves as a coach and mentor for sales executives and CEOs in Battery’s portfolio, helping software companies scale through various stages of growth, effectively expand overseas and create multi-product sales platforms.

Bill’s operating experience spans key roles at fast-growing private software companies, such as Marketo and Pendo, as well as billion-dollar public enterprises such as Oracle and PeopleSoft. Before joining Battery, Bill was the chief revenue officer of Pendo, where he helped grow annual recurring revenue to nearly $100 million in three years. Prior to that, he spent more than nine years at the marketing-tech company Marketo. There, he held multiple roles, including EVP of worldwide sales, managing director of APAC, and board director of Marketo Japan. At Marketo, Bill was the 16th employee and led the company’s sales teams through its private stages of growth to an IPO, and until the company’s 2016 acquisition by Vista Equity.

Before Marketo, Bill held senior sales roles at Avolent, BEA, PeopleSoft, and Oracle. He has also been a member of the board of directors at Qvidian and advised companies including Birst, Conversica, Integrate Inc., and Node.io.

Bill holds a BS in marketing from Arizona State University and completed Harvard Business School’s strategic sales program.

What You’ll Learn:

• Being an Operating Partner at a VC firm 
• Day-to-day Activities of an Operating
• Product Lead and Sales Lead Companies 
• Freemium vs. Product Lead Growth
• Understanding the Concept of Having the Buyer Control the Sale
• Steps to test a PLG as a go-to-market strategy
• Consumption vs Per Seat Model
• Tips on How to Choosing Your First VP of Sales 
• Tips on How a founder/CEO can measure a VP of sales
• Tips on how long a founder/CEO should give a VP of sales to present a sales plan after hiring 

Favorite Quote:

“In an interview, I commonly ask this question: If you were on a desert island and you could only have three dashboards what would be the three things that you would like to see?”

-- 

The Capital Stack

All Things Tech Investing and Value Creation

Early growth investor David Paul interviews the world's greatest ecosystem, learns how to start and scale your own business, and finds an edge in today's capital markets.  To connect with David, visit:

Twitter - CLICK HERE

Substack - CLICK HERE

LinkedIn - CLICK HERE

IG - CLICK HERE

DISCLAIMER:

David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital.  All opinions expressed by David and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DWP capital.  This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.

Today, David is speaking with Taylor Cavanah. Taylor Cavanah founder and CEO of PetDesk. 

PetDesk is engaging pet parents in their pet’s health by building deeper relationships with their pet care providers. The company is the leading provider of client communication and is currently being used within 3,500 vet clinics and has over 3M app users.  

Taylor began his technical career at Zyvex Corporation where he helped grow, spin off, and later sell the company. Between undergrad and grad school he worked for Sony America in a think tank tasked with forecasting products 10 years down the road.  

What You’ll Learn:

• Creating products from features 
• Definition of product-market fit 
• Problems with over-engineering products
• Going from product-market fit to go to market fit 
• Founder psychology
• Owning the vet ecosystem

Favorite Quote:

“When things get stressful - you tend to try to control the controllable.  When times get tough you will naturally fall into your comfort zone, and sometimes that is not the right thing to do.”

-- 

The Capital Stack

All Things Tech Investing and Value Creation

Early growth investor David Paul interviews the world's greatest ecosystem, learns how to start and scale your own business, and finds an edge in today's capital markets.  To connect with David, visit:

Twitter - CLICK HERE

Substack - CLICK HERE

LinkedIn - CLICK HERE

IG - CLICK HERE

DISCLAIMER:

David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital.  All opinions expressed by David and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DWP capital.  This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.

Today, David is speaking with Justin Gray. Justin Gray is a serial entrepreneur who has made a career of launching successful companies and scaling them, with successful exits of over 250MM. After joining the Shift Paradigm family as a result of the LeadMD acquisition in early 2021, Justin slotted into a role near and dear to his heart, helming the go-to-market team where he manages Sales, Marketing, and Business Development. Justin is also a strong voice for pragmatic entrepreneurship, modern marketing, and building intentional organizational culture. As a recognized speaker, Justin has been published over 500 times in industry publications and maintains a regular column in Inc., while also contributing to Entrepreneur, Tech Crunch, and others. Justin and his wife Jennifer met over marketing, have a son named like a superhero, Grayson, and a daughter who’s destined to be a Rockstar. When not driving bookings revenues, you can find him roaming the fields at his hemp farm in Missouri or combing the desert looking for a poorly executed shot at the golf course.

Justin Grey LinkedIn 

Justin Grey Twitter 

What You’ll Learn:

• Understanding Marketing Automation
• Evolution of MarTech
• Marketing Fundamentals vs Software
• How Complex a Marketing Position can be in an Organization
• Relationship of Sales vs Marketing
• General understanding of CDP, and its place in the MarTech stack
• Merger between LeadMD and Shift Paradigm

Favorite Quote:

“Say YES! Whenever possible”

-- 

The Capital Stack

All Things Tech Investing and Value Creation

Early growth investor David Paul interviews the world's greatest ecosystem, learns how to start and scale your own business, and finds an edge in today's capital markets.  To connect with David, visit:

Twitter - CLICK HERE

Substack - CLICK HERE

LinkedIn - CLICK HERE

IG - CLICK HERE

DISCLAIMER:

David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital.  All opinions expressed by David and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DWP capital.  This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.

Today, David is speaking with Rei Carvalho. Rei Carvalho is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Wealth.  Wealth is the first comprehensive estate planning platform that provides a holistic view of all your assets, visualized and securely stored in one place. With robust asset aggregation technology, sophisticated APIs, and bank-level encryption, our platform makes estate planning easy and accessible. Prior to wealth, Rei was the founder and CEO of Emailage, a global online fraud prevention company acquired by LexusNexus in March 2020. A serial entrepreneur, he is now focused as an Investor providing insightful help as well as resources to VC firms and CEOs around the world.

What You’ll Learn:

• Go To Market Strategy in Different Technology Companies
• Choosing the Right Investors When Value and Terms All Being Equal
• Post Closing Value Creation from Investors
• Being a Founder to Becoming a Venture Capitalist
• The Growth of US Venture Capital Money Outside the US

Favorite Quote:

“A dollar is a dollar does not matter where you get it”

-- 

The Capital Stack

All Things Tech Investing and Value Creation

Early growth investor David Paul interviews the world's greatest ecosystem, learns how to start and scale your own business, and finds an edge in today's capital markets.  To connect with David, visit:

Twitter - CLICK HERE

Substack - CLICK HERE

LinkedIn - CLICK HERE

IG - CLICK HERE

DISCLAIMER:

David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital.  All opinions expressed by David and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DWP capital.  This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.

Today, David is speaking with Rob Pakalski. Rob is co-founder and CEO of Datum – a venture-backed early-stage startup aiming to be the nucleus of the world’s supply chain. Rob spent the first ~4 years of his career at SpaceX, leading supply chain efforts for various products, including the spacesuit, Falcon Heavy thrust structure, and Dragon Spacecraft structural components. After SpaceX, Rob led the supply chain department at Virgin Hyperloop for 2.5 years before co-founding Datum. Rob is passionate about helping both buyers and suppliers work together to bring hardware to market more efficiently.

What You’ll Learn:

• All things Space Tech 
• Raising a $4.6M Seed Round
• Details about the Supply Chain in Advanced Manufacturing
• Working at SpaceX
• The reason why Datum Source founders decided to solve the supply chain problem in the space industry

Favorite Quote:

“In a Negotiation Never Speak First”

-- 

The Capital Stack

All Things Tech Investing and Value Creation

Early growth investor David Paul interviews the world's greatest ecosystem, learns how to start and scale your own business, and finds an edge in today's capital markets.  To connect with David, visit:

Twitter - CLICK HERE

Substack - CLICK HERE

LinkedIn - CLICK HERE

IG - CLICK HERE

DISCLAIMER:

David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital.  All opinions expressed by David and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DWP capital.  This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.

Today, David is speaking with Zach Ferres. Zach is a serial entrepreneur and technology executive with a passion for building startups and the entrepreneurial communities around them. Zach built and sold his first technology company at the age of 24 and was recognized as one of the Top 33 Student Entrepreneurs in the World by the Kauffman Foundation and Entrepreneurs Organization at the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards. From 2012 to 2020, Zach served as the CEO of Coplex. During this time, Coplex helped start over 200 startups, built a diversified equity portfolio of over 50 companies, and became one of the largest Startup Studios in the US. Coplex partners with enterprises to build technology startups and have been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, The Washington Post, VentureBeat, and Fast Company. Today, Zach holds a variety of board positions at growing technology companies for which I actively support. Outside of work, He is an award-winning speaker, a runner, and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine.

What You’ll Learn:

• Agency metrics
• Keys to a successful agency
• Definition of an incubator, accelerator, and start-up studio
• What is the difference between incubator, accelerator, and start-up studio
• More about corporate venture capital
• Understanding how cash burn in an agency/service business is a problem

Favorite Quote:

“ The no-nonsense that it does when you have an agency that is focused on a vertical; it just makes it really easy for them to win business.”

-- 

The Capital Stack

All Things Tech Investing and Value Creation

Early growth investor David Paul interviews the world's greatest ecosystem, learns how to start and scale your own business, and finds an edge in today's capital markets.  To connect with David, visit:

Twitter - CLICK HERE

Substack - CLICK HERE

LinkedIn - CLICK HERE

IG - CLICK HERE

DISCLAIMER:

David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital.  All opinions expressed by David and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DWP capital.  This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.

Today, David is speaking with Danny Loschavio. Danny is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about marketing. His latest exit was a real estate SaaS company he bootstrapped to $30M ARR. He’s managed over $100M in ad spend and over 200M people in the US have clicked at least one of his ads. His latest venture, Klay Brands, takes a startup studio approach to eCommerce.

What You’ll Learn:

• Importance of having empathy to grow a start-up
• Understanding of product-market fit and how Bold Leads had a product-market fit from day 1 due to tons of customer discovery from their previous service company.
• Real estate tech and real estate market overview
• How the growth and customer acquisition of Bold Leads happened
• How net revenue retention is key in any SaaS company
• Understanding of Amazon Aggregators

Favorite Quote:

“The time to stop working is when working is no longer working”

-- 

The Capital Stack

All Things Tech Investing and Value Creation

Early growth investor David Paul interviews the world's greatest ecosystem, learn how to start and scale your own business, and find an edge in today's capital markets. To connect with David, visit:

Twitter - CLICK HERE

Substack - CLICK HERE

LinkedIn - CLICK HERE

IG - CLICK HERE

DISCLAIMER:

David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital. All opinions expressed by David and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DWP capital. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.

Today, David is speaking with Bogdan Constantin, founder and CEO of Voxie, the leading conversational text marketing and automation platform for innovative retail brands. Voxie is deployed across thousands of locations nationwide to help automate everything from driving repeat purchases from dormant customers to qualifying candidates who applied online within seconds. Voxie averaged a 15x monthly return on investment for its customers in 2021 - culminating in the business growing over 400% and a recent $25M Series A investment.

What You’ll Learn:

• Importance of learning from others
• Scaling your business
• Voxie means “to grow” in Norwegian and Swedish
• In the future for a brand to grow a brand must be able to talk with all its customers at a one to one basis to develop a relationship
• Changes in E-commerce - Google changed filters, so email ads went into spam folders

Favorite Quote:

“Until I reasoned that I needed to grow faster than the set of my own experiences then I wasn't growing at the exponential rate that I needed to to keep up with the business.” - Val Porter quoted by Bogdan Constantin that he thinks about almost daily.

-- 

The Capital Stack

All Things Tech Investing and Value Creation

Early growth investor David Paul interviews the world's greatest ecosystem, learn how to start and scale your own business, and find an edge in today's capital markets.  To connect with David, visit:

Twitter - CLICK HERE

Substack - CLICK HERE

LinkedIn - CLICK HERE

IG - CLICK HERE

DISCLAIMER:

David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital.  All opinions expressed by David and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DWP capital.  This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions.   David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.

Tim Hargis is a serial entrepreneur and lover of all things startup. He was featured among the top 35 Entrepreneurs under 35 by Arizona Republic. He has actively served as a mentor and advisor for many startup companies while supporting young innovators and entrepreneurs through SkySong, ASU’s Scottsdale Innovation Center. 

After the sale of his precious metals franchise company, Tim joined Tuft & Needle (mattresses online) in their early stages and played an integral role helping the company grow from $9m to $200m (while remaining profitable and bootstrapped) by leveraging his expertise and network in the digital marketing arena. In addition, he helped build the wholesale distribution channel for the business by successfully landing and negotiating multiple big-box retail partnerships with companies such as Lowe’s, Crate & Barrel, and Walmart.

What You’ll Learn:

• Tim’s story of how he got started as a serial entrepreneur
• Using Google Analytics to determine where to open locations
• Understanding margins to find value
• Finding a market that can be disrupted
• Finding early adopters
• Iterating a product which results in less returns
• Using Google search terms for marketing
• Using Google Ads
• Decision-making between staying bootstrapped vs. raising venture capital
• Creative marketing – billboard marketing considerations
• Buying a memorable domain name (one word dotcoms)

Favorite Quote:

“When you are bootstrapped, it forces you to be resourceful. It reinforces building good fundamentals. You have to find a space where you have an edge.” - Tim Hargis

-- 

The Capital Stack

All Things Tech Investing and Value Creation

Early growth investor David Paul interviews the world's greatest ecosystem, learn how to start and scale your own business, and find an edge in today's capital markets.  To connect with David, visit:

Twitter - CLICK HERE

Substack - CLICK HERE

LinkedIn - CLICK HERE

IG - CLICK HERE

DISCLAIMER:

David Paul is the founder and general partner at DWP Capital.  All opinions expressed by David and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of DWP capital.  This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions.   David and guests may maintain positions in the securities discussed on this podcast.