n-of-1
Apps are woven into the fabric of every company. The days of 3-4 core applications selected by IT are long gone. Instead, employees choose their own tools, collectively using thousands of apps for different workflows. That makes app companies easy to start, but hard to scale. Only a small number break out and dominate their markets, as Figma, Notion, Veeva, and Zoom have done. Sometimes, there’s a data network effect. Other times it’s viral adoption, workflow expansion, vertical dominance, or some other mechanic that enables a company to break through. We help founders understand these, and grow in ways that give their companies unfair advantages over the competition. We help them create n-of-1 cloud applications.
$0 to $100m+
It always seems obvious in hindsight, but no company’s success is a linear path. Finding initial product-market fit is an iterative process that requires skill, tenacity, and a little luck. Building on that, by evolving the product and growing with your initial customers, can be even harder. As investors, we’ve seen many companies, from LinkedIn to Docusign to Attentive, initially struggle before finding their way. Other companies, like Gainsight or Sendgrid, get off to a fast start, but then take time to discover their true market before re-accelerating. These are the hard years, when products meet market reality and iterate towards sustainable revenue growth. Many companies get stuck and ultimately die at this stage; we help founders get to the other side.
This work — helping founders realize the full potential of their businesses — is our calling. It’s what drew us initially to operating roles. Ajay partnered with a college classmate to build Trilogy into a leading CRM company. Aaref teamed up with five engineers to start Clearwell, a vertical SaaS company, and grew it to $100m in ARR. Sarah helped scale an analytics company 10x before its acquisition by Mastercard, Zeeza experienced hyper-growth at WeWork, and Kevin helped Fundera find product/market fit. And it’s what drives us as investors. When we invest, we commit to work closely with founders over many years to build enduring companies.
