🚀 ✉️ The best validation
Foresight founders Sagar Shukla and Nigel Hammond share what they've learned about opportunities and challenges of leaning on your network.
🏡 What’s happening on StartupNash
Hey y’all. Big things happening from StartupNash this week. First, the obvious. I’ve restarted our LaunchLetter series, and we’ve moved from Mailchimp to Substack. Our complete LaunchLetter collection lives here now. I absolutely love making these for you, so I hope you want to continue being a subscriber and learning along with me.
🌞Asks And Offers
I am working with a coalition of startup ecosystem builders here in Nashville to
publish a “State of the Ecosystem” report. Based on our past conversations, I
would love to feature your perspectives in the report! The report writers will also be hand selecting a few founders to interview as part of the publication. Interestingly enough, the report is produced by Foresight, the subject of today’s LaunchLetter, so you’ll get a chance to see their product.
📣 Big announcement
StartupNash is partnering with NashTech and Build in SE for Nashville Tech Gives Back’s #615techdrive to make an impactful difference in our community. Together we’re raising money for Nashville Software School, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee, Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee, and Nashville Symphony. The key to this kind of collaboration is you, our greatest partner. Together we can strengthen the programs that make living here fun for everyone. To participate, learn more below.
Startup Spotlight: Foresight
I’ll admit it, when people mention StartupNash and in the same breath talk about the lack of high growth startups in Nashville, I get anxious. Why does it matter so much anyway? I’ll say “oh they’re around,” and they’ll ask me to name a few, and then I freeze. It’s not that I can’t name a few, its just that a few never feels like enough to satisfy the other person. The curious inquisitor might push a little more. “But aren’t there mostly entrepreneurs in your group?” When they say "entrepreneur,” they mean not high-growth, not venture backed. Whatever I share seems to prove their point. We are called StartupNash, but all types of business founders exist there. Interestingly enough, all types of businesses exist everywhere.
So who are the founders in StartupNash? Let’s learn together. If you’re a founder or funder in Nashville, or if you live outside Nashville and want to learn about startups here, I think you’ll enjoy a good old fashioned spotlight. I likely won’t highlight what you think of as a ‘classic’ startup every single time because I care about the story more than the funding category. I will include enough startups to strengthen our collective knowledge. Who knows, maybe we can even move on to how many active seed funds there are in Nashville (hehe).
I’ll kick things off with a B2B SaaS company, Foresight. Foresight gives revenue leaders visibility into why buyers buy. Learn more about them on their website, and find the founders on StartupNash.
The challenge
What is the problem Foresight solves?
Sagar Shukla, Cofounder: The biggest problem that software companies experience today in their go-to-market strategy is differentiation. SaaS is omnipresent today and the average enterprise has over 75 pieces of tech in their stack. Budgets are tightening, competition is increasing, and content is EVERYWHERE.
Nigel Hammond, Cofounder: Foresight gives revenue leaders visibility into why buyers buy. In B2B SaaS, there is tons of data, tech, and metrics focused on the how behind purchasing decisions (close rate, product usage, time to close, etc.), but very little data behind why. Ultimately people buy software because of the business challenges it can support but the detail behind those business challenges is limited to anecdotes living in the minds of client-facing team members or free text notes in a CRM system. We are giving businesses the tools to capture data behind those business needs so they can produce better revenue outcomes and ultimately make more informed, data-driven strategic decisions.
The lesson
Can you share a lesson your team learned from building the business?
Sagar: Many lessons have been learned along the journey, but a here's a recent one that is a hard truth for first-time founders: When you are starting out, you have to lean on your network... for everything. Funding, early hires, first customers, product feedback, everything. The trap of this is thinking is this - just because you have a strong relationship with someone from a previous life, does not mean that will translate to your new startup life. Getting support, encouragement, and validation does not equate to someone putting their neck on the line for you, whether that is convincing a former colleague to join your team, or a friend to buy your product.
At the end of day, you may be willing to put everything on the line and take a "risk". Others are not. People at the end of the day are looking out for what is best for themselves. That is not to say to not learn on your network - you have to and they will be your strongest support system. The learning is to be extra wary of validation that comes from someone that already has a relationship with you. The best validation comes from someone who believes in you but has no reason to (e.g. you've got something super compelling for them).
Nigel: One huge learning is of the importance of consistency and structure. In the early days of a startup there is nothing external that is driving you forward; you don't have huge teams to make sure are on the same page and you don't have 100's of clients asking for things. In this environment, it's easy to take shortcuts (not put meeting notes in, push off creating a process for something, decide to send that follow up next week) and the pain from doing so is not felt until much later. By creating rules and systems for how things should be done, you are embedding accountability and habit into the cultural fabric of the business that ultimately streamlines things when things start to get more and more busy. We are so thankful for some of these processes we ironed out and stuck to in the early days as that has allowed us to make more progress, faster now that things are getting busier and busier.
The update
What is something great that happened recently?
Sagar: We've published our first official client case study! This was a long journey and a huge milestone over the past year. We had to build and launch our product, get a company to buy into our vision, execute relentlessly to deliver results, and generate enough value that they were willing to go on the record and say they are using us (and paying us). This is the most valuable win we can have in our business - generating real results for real companies. The best measure of success is how willing people are to go to bat for you.
Nigel: We've been having some incredibly exciting early outcomes with an absolutely ideal client for us; we've been able to work our way in through relationships and former connections and they represent the top tier client we'd like to be working with (publicly traded, multiple product lines, significant complexity to the product, etc.). It's been challenging to navigate the behemoth that an organization like this is but also very exciting to see eyes light up at what we've been able to provide for them.
Your five minute mentors are:
Sagar Shukla and Nigel Hammond
“The best validation comes from someone who believes in you but has no reason to.”
-Sagar Shukla
What is one (big or small) problem that’s been on your mind that you wish someone would solve?
Sagar: I wish someone would create an elegant solution for "life admin" problems. I move around, a lot. I have lived in 9 places, across three states, in 4 years. Having a universal ID that I can use to easily redirect my mail, register my vehicle / license in a new state, change my voting status, and make taxes easier. Every time I have to do one of these tasks I spend WAY too much time looking for documents that should be in the cloud, easily accessible, wherever I go. Relying on USPS and mail just can't cut it in our digital age!
Nigel: I'm sure it's out there but would love to have an easier way to put people into follow up sequences...the sinking feeling realizing you are a week late to sending a follow up is one I could do without. I manage a to-do list in Notion and also find the email reminders in Gmail helpful but there has got to be a better way.
What is something you learned that only experience could teach?
Sagar: Not all money is created equal. Just because you get an offer of $100K investment from someone, does not mean you should take it. Consider the cost of capital and what "intangibles" that money represents. For example, we had an offer from an investor to come into our round but they would have been more trouble than good. Why? Because they were super opinionated and we felt micro-managing vibes from them during the pitch. At our pre-seed stage, the investors know about as much as we do... which is not much. We ended up going with investors who believed in us as founders and didn't feel the need to get too involved until we got to some real traction. A micro-managing investor at the early stages is just a distraction (unless they've got real subject matter expertise and network to unlock for you).
Nigel: First, our entire business is based entirely on experiencing a problem by spending 6 years in the trenches of B2B Enterprise SaaS sales / account management; we never would have foreseen the problem we found without this experience and I cannot fathom starting a business without first-hand exposure to the problem day in and day out. Second, not everyone understands or appreciates what you are doing and that's ok. From my first sales jobs through getting Foresight off the ground, I've had to repeatedly remind myself that the goal is not to convince everyone that they should buy my product or see the world as I see it. The goal, rather, is to connect with the people who want a certain problem solved and talk with them about doing so. Wasting effort in trying to convince people who don't want to be convinced has led me to endless frustration in the past; realizing that was ok and to instead focus efforts elsewhere has been a huge relief.
What is a habit you’ve learned that you practice daily?
Sagar: I go for walks. Simple and easy. They clear my head, get me outside, and I've learned that I think best while in motion. I take many calls while I walk, have conversations with myself about the business and our needs, and generally reflect. I try to do this every morning and evening that I can, and in an ideal situation once during the day.
Nigel: A habit I like to maintain is a running log of to-do lists; I like to document everything that happens, cross it off, and keep visibility on it. It can be as simple as a note pad or OneNote / Evernote type of thing but having that constant reminder and place to put things gives both a grounding consistency and also an ever-present reminder to keep getting things done.
What is your most unpopular business/startup opinion?
Sagar: Software companies don't win by having superior products. They win by having superior distribution. Your product has to be good, don't get me wrong. But having the best product in the world that nobody knows about is worthless. Stellar distribution, tapping into a real market for your product, that is what truly separates companies. There is this focus on elevating tech to the highest pedestal in the software world, which is definitely warranted. However as technology has advanced, it has also become much more commoditized. Someone can and probably will build a better version of your product, but the advantage they can't replicate is how effectively you take over the market.
Nigel: That the culture of ninja / rockstar / guru employees is a net negative on building good businesses. While strong individual performance should be celebrated and is obviously fantastic, I think of this as another way of saying "we are dependent on individual brilliance and cannot build the right systems and processes so everyone can succeed".
What is a fundamental value or belief that you think has made you successful?
Sagar: Relationships, relationships, relationships. I am not talking about the "you are the average of the 5 closest people in your network". I am talking about actively investing in and building really strong relationships. I love the idea of a relationship bank account where you make deposits, not because someone is asking for it, but because you see an opportunity to add value to someone's life (whether it be personal or professional). To me, the entire journey of business and startups is the journey of bringing people along for the ride in your life. The joy of the shared experience cannot be unmatched.
Nigel: In college I had a project to present on my Philosophy of Life. My topic was "It's all about the recovery", the idea being that we cannot control what happens outside of our own actions and much more important than winning in any moment or being in a great situation now is rolling with the changes inevitable in life and always landing on your feet. With this comes a certain amount of humility, adaptability, and optimism to keep pushing forward no matter what gets thrown at you. This has always stuck with me and in moments of challenge is something I like to remind myself of.
Lamenting on the past will get you nowhere, the only way to go is forward.
LaunchLetter is produced by StartupNash. StartupNash is a community group for founders and funders in Nashville and beyond. If you are an outsider learning about Nashville startups, or you are a founder or funder looking for a supportive, remote first group, StartupNash is your space.
🚀 ✉️