Rob Bailey
@RMB
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Following
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Media
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Statuses
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Founder & CEO @BackboneAI . 10+ years building AI companies. Former exec at 2 other AI cos. (COO @Kustomer , CEO @Datasift .) Insta: @robmbailey . 🗽🏃♂️🍱🖼. 🇺🇦
New York, NY
Joined January 2009
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Pinned Tweet
2024 will be one of the best years ever to start a tech company in terms of quality of talent available.
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Very dumb question: How come people are more concerned about Elon's ownership of Twitter than say....China's ownership of Tik Tok?
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If a VC fund is all white men, there is ZERO chance we will consider them for our next round of funding. Partner / portfolio diversity will be a major factor in which funds we decide to engage first. I know *tons* of other founders feel this way.
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Brutal Truth: I have found that there is a strong correlation between how fast people respond to email/texts/calls and how successful they are in their career. Exceptions to every rule, but overall I've found there are few for this one.
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The biggest beneficiary of a tight, well done deck isn't a VC, its the founder. While painful, building a good deck forces a clarity of thought that can be extremely helpful for a founder building a company.
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Dear Enterprise Founders: This was Salesforce's first office. They are now worth $227.63B. Keep building. :-).
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I grew up in Latin Am and lived through periods of huge inflation and devaluations. The biggest crypto critics are typically white guys who grew up in the US and don’t understand the instability of non-G7 fiat.
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Signs of A 🔥 VC:
1. Don’t go to (most) conferences
2. Their founders rave
3. Very fast decisonmaking
4. Generally cool footwear
5. Incredible listeners
6. Very aggressive on hot deals
7. Partnership diversity
8. Uncommon conviction
9. Uncommon sourcing
10. Team players
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Dear VC Associates/Principals: Good news! If you come well prepared to a first call with a founder (know product, smart questions, etc.) you have a great chance of building a solid relationship. If you do a call with no prep, you might kill your fund's chances. Plan accordingly.
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(My) Founder Happiness Goals for 2021: 1. 7-8 hrs sleep/night. 2. Minimal alcohol 3. Work out every day 4. Daily walks 5. Help underrepresented founders 6. Work with investors that are good people 7. Daily gratitude 8. Offboard toxic friends. 9. More mentoring 10. Promote stars!
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Dear (Early) Founders: Make sure your fundraising deck looks awesome. Many investors use it as a proxy for how well designed your product will be. You can get this done cheap and easy by just finding good sample decks online and copying their flow and layout.
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@GovKathyHochul
No one I know wants this or cares about it. They want lower taxes, safer streets, etc.
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VC demand for early stage enterprise start-ups (with traction!) is soaring. "We're not raising for a few months" can change to "we just closed a round"....very quickly. Anecdotally, ≈50% of funds have realized this and playing more aggressively. The rest haven't.
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I have never seen a tech industry sector that spends so much energy attacking itself as crypto. Everybody loses. It would be amazing if some of this energy was spent on collaboration and building more value for users.
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Dear NYC Founders: Would you be interested in a series of very well curated founder dinners with home cooking in 2023?
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Next time you think about interrupting a woman in a business meeting, think about how Trump looked like tonight.
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Are any founders building a platform that ingests health data from tons of different measured self devices then unifies & analyzes it? I’m blown away that I can’t find any apps that do this well.
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It isn't the job of a CEO/Founder to always have the best ideas. It is the job of the CEO/Founder to hire exceptional team members and then make sure that the best ideas from all across the company are consistently surfaced and implemented. :-)
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Different Take: NYC is going to be an amazing place to be for the next few years. Rents down, city sights opening (museums, etc), outdoor eating 6 mos/yr, quiet city charming, tons of great people still here, etc. Sadly less true for families given limited apt space.
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Big News! Our company launched out of stealth today. A year in the making. Our first Fortune 500 customer is live! Huge thank you to our investors including
@fikavc
,
@Boldstartvc
@MetaPropNYC
@ThisIsDynamo
@GGVCapital
Spider Capital
@CendanaCapital
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3 kinds of investors: 1. "Hit us up when you're ready to raise." 2. "Hit us up before you start the process (so we can get a jump on other funds)." 3. "Can we start making customer intros and jam with you on roadmap NOW?" > Feels like
#3
gets much better access to deals.....
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After four years in NYC...I'm moving. To a different floor in my building. I'm in all in NYC. :-)
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Some VCs tell B2B founders to ignore the competition. They are wrong. Having a solid awareness of the landscape helps you focus the value you are building for your customer. I've found that exceptional founders/CEOs have an encyclopedic knowledge of the landscape.
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@thechangj
Two counterpoints:
1. Staying up late + eating late are bad for your health.
2. This:
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When I offered to help underrepresented founders with their pitch decks, I did not expect to be reviewing a business plan for a cow milk production facility in Newfoundland. :-)
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UPDATE: Wow, blown away by the response to this Tweet. :-) Have responded to 20+ founders wanting help w fundraising that have DMed. Keep the DMs coming!
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@Timmy_in_SF
@sfstandard
Have you considered that crime may be a reason for the lack of foot traffic?
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Brutal Truth: 99% of B2B customers actually don't care about your product. But they care *a lot* about how your product can help them make money, get promoted, save time, reduce costs, get more done every day, grow their company, etc. Plan your demos accordingly. :-)
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Reed Hastings founded Netflix because he was mad at a video store’s late fees. Things that annoy you are often good startup ideas in disguise.
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Good news: If you want to work at a start-up, being a tenacious grinder (that works well with others) is a billion times more important than where you went to school, etc.
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Dear Founders: A great way to make your fundraising deck awesome is to avoid these things VCs hate > 1. Set-up sequence that is too long. (2-3 slides max.) 2. No traction info. 3. Walls of text. 4. Top down conceptual TAMs 5. Pages about advisors. 6. Not showing the product.
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The toughest position to fill on a B2B executive team isn’t technical, it is the marketing leader. While tech is hard, there is a huge shortage of talent for Marketing, esp those that have driven the $10M-100M ARR jump.
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Dear VCs: When a founder is emailing you about their company for the first time, what should the email look like? Long/short? Stats? Etc...
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This is the best market I have seen in 20 years for enterprise tech founders. 1. Insane amounts of VC money available if you get traction. 2. Post IPO performance of SaaS cos 🔥. 3. Fortune 500 adopting faster. 4. Tons of experienced execs. 5. Many engines: AI, DLT, RPA, etc.
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How come we have strict accredited investor laws but it is legal for everyone to play the lottery, get high interest payday loans/credit cards?
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I love NYC. But wow, this outreach led by
@FrancisSuarez
is sure tempting me to consider working remotely from Florida for a few months Jan-Feb. Well played.
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Signs of A 🔥 Founder:
1. Passionate about product
2. Constantly curious & learning
3. Leads by example
4. Compelling vision
5. Strong commitment to diversity
6. Rapid iterator
7. Amazing listener but strong POV
8. Knows strengths/weaknesses
9. Immensely resilient
10. Humble
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Dear NYC Founders (& Investors!):
@nihalmehta
& I launched
#pitchandrun
2020 today. We love helping (fellow) founders. We’d love to run w you this year! Want to join us?
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Dear Founders: Behind every big funding and exit announcement are tons of investors that said “no” and passed. (Google almost ran out of money!) If you truly believe in what you are building, don’t let the passes bring you down.
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“Works well with others” is a massively undervalued quality in team members.
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In early stage start-ups, slow decisionmaking can destroy company value. Wrong decisions made quickly can be more valuable than waiting a long time for the right decision if you learn from your mistakes and iterate fast. The perfect, right answer is often an illusion. :)
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@GetTheFabulous
Friendly reminder the Myers Briggs is not based on science. More like horoscopes for nerds. :)
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@AdrienneLaw
@MatthewACherry
Sad irony that a group of Americans that collectively gets treated so badly/unfairly may be the group help save us all. Deeply grateful.
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How To Get Promoted Fast @ A Start-Up: 1. Get stuff done w low/no drama. 2. Do what you say. 3. Be positive. 4. Support diversity. 5. Deeply understand customers/users. 6. Results > smart opinions. 7. Always add more value. 8. Grunt work. 9. Know personalities. 10. Know market.
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If your company is sending out emails from an email address that can't take responses, your Marketing team should be fired. Every communication with users and customers should be two way.
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NYC founders & builders dinner was really fun. :-) Thanks
@andruyeung
for bringing such great people together.
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Dear Miami Friends: Help! A very good (founder) friend of mine is *seriously* considering leaving San Francisco for Miami. He will be visiting Miami next week. Who should he meet/talk to? CC
@FrancisSuarez
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Two kinds of people in the start-up world: 1. Abundance Thinkers - Believe in collaboration, growing the pie together, help without quid pro quo, share when they can, etc. 2. Zero Summers - Don’t collaborate, care only about what they get. Make rules. (Mostly) stay away from
#2
.
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The job of a founder isn't to be the smartest person in the room. It is to make sure the room is full of smart, collaborative (& diverse!) people and ensuring that the best ideas in the room win fast...and get implemented quickly.
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The *best* way for non-technical founders to work better with devs isn’t to learn to code. Build an amazing product definition process: competitive review, strategy, ruthless feature prioritization, feature definition, low/high res screen mocks, UX step by step definition, etc.
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Blockchain company 'red flags': Token only/no equity raised, no traditional VC/investors, no built product, sole source funding, CEO isn't technical, domiciled in tax haven, paid followers on Twitter/Telegram, execs spend lots of time at conferences, sponsor lots of conferences.
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Things VCs Want In Fundraising Decks
1. Traction Info
2. Concise Problem Framing
3. How Does This Become Massive?
4. Customer Economics
5. Product Benefits
6. Sell The Sector
7. What Is The Wow?
8. Why Existing Solutions Suck
9. Who Is The Customer?
10. Team/Market/Product Fit
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I'm blown away by so many VC funds leaning in during the crisis. Long list includes:
@GGVCapital
@Boldstartvc
Spider VC,
@fikavc
@MetaPropNYC
@ThisIsDynamo
@SapphireVC
@BatteryVentures
. Also
@svb
. All are doing deals, supporting founders & supporting charities. Who did I miss?
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So
@ForbesCrypto
@Forbes
asked me to suggest people for their 30 Under 30 in blockchain / crypto. Would love your suggestions. Who should be on the list?
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So if I understand the Airtable story correctly…a company founded 11 years ago and now doing $150M ARR is a failure?
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When an enterprise software customer signs a customer deal with you, only drink a bit of the champagne. Save some for when: 1. You get the wire. 2. Expansion / renewal happens. 3. Your customer decisionmaker gets promoted. :-)
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@downloadcue
I strongly disagree. Going to a big co is an awesome place to build skills and a network that you can then use to be a successful founder.
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Dear Founders: Sadly, 80% of the people who give you advice don't know what they are talking about. Make sure you heavily qualify any advice you get before acting on it and identify the 20% that do. Saw a great company today get some crazy advice from a VC today w a $50M fund.
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@kendaniells
@MrFilmkritik
@msuster
I’ve seen lots of people claim Trump isn’t racist or sexist. Funny how they are almost all....white men.
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Hacks For Founders 0 to 1:
1. Get To Know Everyone On Cap Table
2. Say "No" A Lot
3. Deeply Understand 83B
4. Mental Health Support
5. Pick Good Vendors
6. Pick Your Metrics
7. Hire People Better Than You
8. Sleep & Meditate
9. Good Lawyers Worth It
10. Pick Board Carefully
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When an enterprise software customer signs a deal with you, it isn't the finish line. It's the starting line. You need to wow and execute for them every day in order to build the foundation for expansion, engagement and a long term relationship.
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Yesterday I saw a blockchain founder.
No time on Twitter.
No time on Telegram.
No time at conferences.
No time wasted on pointless debates.
They were just heads down building.
Like a psychopath.
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@downloadcue
Wow, really? Are you suggesting you didn’t learn anything as a design lead at Facebook and Google? (In your bio.)
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One of the most fascinating challenges about growing an enterprise technology company: Continuously making the messaging...more simpler and more human. Every painful iteration of the messaging and sales deck can be a step closer to uncovering what resonates best w customers.
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“We outperformed the crypto market. We used advanced hedging strategies and are only down 40-50% for the year.” > Every crypto hedge fund I talk to.
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Best hack of 2020 (For Me): Long walks daily. 1. Mood enhancer 2. Good for cranking out lots of work calls. 3. BMI Reduction! 4. Sleep Better 5. Minimizes COVID Cabin Fever. 6. Free! 7. Reminds me daily what an incredibly city NYC is.
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One of the qualities of an exceptional Founder/CEO is the ability to make tough & clear decisions in uncertain situations. A quick, wrong decision (that is quickly corrected) is often better than no decision at all.
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The reason why founders have magical insights in the shower and on runs is not because either of those activities are special. It is because they are two of the only times that founders have quiet time for reflection. :-) (Inspired by Glennon Doyle)
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This is really incredible.
Eight years after its start, Coinbase presides over $21 billion of assets and is on target, Forbes estimates, to top $800 million in revenue this year: by
@DelRayMan
and Bill Baldwin
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Dear (Fellow) Founders: Who needs help w their pitch decks? Every weekend I try to help 4-5 founders with some quick, flash feedback. Strong preference for underrepresented founders. DM me.
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Sometimes the most valuable members of the team are..."submarines". Extremely competent people that operate below the surface/behind the scenes: don't talk much in meetings, never cause waves. They just quietly get massive amounts of stuff done. :-)
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Dear (Early Stage) Founders: Easy hacks to make your deck awesome > 1. Show product & roadmap. 2. "Set-up" should be 2 slides max 3. Highlight traction more clearly. 4. Avoid text-filled slides. 5. Describe your moat 6. Highlight founder/market fit. 7. Tell a compelling story.
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I was *really* skeptical when I first started learning about
@vechainofficial
but the more I learn the more impressed I am. Claim 30+ enterprise clients and 250 POCs. Definitely are on our radar now.
@jasonrockwood
.
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Dear Founders: If you are fundraising, start by using Crunchbase to build a well researched, targeted list of funds that do deals like yours. Then share the list in a Google Sheet for intros. Asking randoms if any VCs come to mind a good way to waste a lot of your valuable time.
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Only four things matter in a start-up: 1. Revenue 2. Shipped product 3. Cash balance. 4. Culture. Everything else is noise.
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@schlaf
@jaltucher
This post is terrible. Wealthy hedge fund guy saying a city of 8M is....dead. Will be writing a rebuttal this week.
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I'm old enough to remember some VCs saying enterprise software start-ups couldn't be billion dollar companies. :-)
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@ChrisJBakke
The problem is a lack of good content. Slow rolling the release of bad content won’t fix the problem.
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Dear Founders: It is getting ugly out there but VCs are still doing deals. If I can be helpful in any way (pitch advice, etc.) please DM me.
#foundersunited
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