Daniel Mangum

Hot take: The "Head of Growth" role is going to be the most important role at any early-stage company in a few years. Products and software across each vertical are becoming increasingly commoditized thanks to better + cheaper engineering capabilities. With AI and offshore talent, you can now build software with $5k instead of $50k. Everything is going to start to look the same, and it'll be harder and harder to stand out. Here's where the "Head of Growth" comes in. What they should be able to do: - Build obsessive, cult-like brands - Breaking virality down to a science - Curate a community of loyal product evangelists - Discover creative ways to reach buyers without spending a dime - Master the art of meme-making and creating internet subcultures - Become an expert in hosting in-person events to build awareness - Find scrappy methods to generate attention with a minimal budget - Perfect the ability to debate and influence naysayers on the internet - Build negative CAC (Customer Acq. Cost) channels that can scale indefinitely - Master social content across all formats: short- and long-form text, video, and audio These are the hybrid marketers, salespeople, and content creators who can operate with the rigor of a founder, and the scientific approach of a researcher.

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Big thanks to the Scale Venture Partners infra investing team for having me this summer. At Scale, I spent a lot of time thinking about advanced build systems that help software engineers compile and test code. Software projects are becoming more complex as teams embrace monorepos, import more third party software, and expand their use of CI/CD. Advanced build systems are making builds faster and more reliable, changing the way that companies ship software. Mature systems like Google’s Bazel are finally becoming usable enough for the average team thanks to help from startups like EngFlow (https://www.engflow.com/). Newer tools from teams like Nx (https://nx.dev/) and Determinate Systems (https://lnkd.in/g8p-UNns) are also powerful and worth taking for a spin. Check out the blog for more. Particular thanks to Javier Redondo and Eric Anderson for being great mentors during my time at Scale.

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Outcome-Based Pricing, AgentOS, and User Simulators: 3 takeaways from Sequoia Capital's Pat Grady & Ravi Gupta's chat with Sierra's co-founder Clay Bavor 🧠 1. Outcome-Based Pricing for High-Value AI Tasks: Charge based on the value delivered, not just usage 💰 2. AgentsOS: A powerful concept for coordinating and managing multiple AI agents 🤖 3. User Simulators: Testing AI agents with simulated users to accelerate user alignment and build a moat 🤯 User simulators could be a game-changer, providing a massive dataset of simulated customer behavior to train and refine AI agents. This could lead to a powerful "simulated customer data flywheel," offering a unique competitive advantage. What are your thoughts on these AI agent trends? 🤔 #AI #Agents #Sequoia #Sierra #Innovation #TechTrends Link to the original interview: https://lnkd.in/eK6MG6wx

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🎬 Matt Damon and 🏈 Colin Kaepernick have invested in it, and so has 💰Andreessen Horowitz... Function Health's executive team has "engineered a first-of-its-kind approach that focuses on prevention and empowerment"—very much in line with what we aimed to achieve with Carebook when we started it over six years ago. Could they be the ones to fulfill their lead investors' prophecy (link at the bottom) and Dr. Eric Topol, MD's premonitions in his books "The Patient Will See You Now" and "Deep Medicine"? They have just secured a $50 million grant. Let's hope this is not another Theranos and that we are truly witnessing the rise of the next generation of direct-to-consumer health companies. These companies will be key players in the "transition from reactive to proactive" health care that the system—and we—desperately need. What do you think? Links: 📝 Investment round press release: https://lnkd.in/eUG87qkf 🔗 Andreessen Horowitz's prophecy: https://lnkd.in/eZATCf4f

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PSA: If you send a founder product nits + feedback with concomitant screenshots/mocks you instantly vault into being an S-tier user. (Friction logs are even better, of course.)

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Did you know that 68% of small businesses report having cash flow problems, and many small businesses rely on the owner's personal funds to stay afloat? Relay exists to solve this and the best part is it's actually working! Which makes this announcement even sweeter: We raised a USD $32.2 million Series B round. What does this mean? - More spend management tools to improve financial visibility - More products to give small business owners flexibility - More integrations to streamline operations - And ultimately more businesses making better and smarter financial decisions Exciting times ahead! PS We're hiring: https://lnkd.in/gMT2mN25

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TWO OR THREE-STEPPING TO SERIES A A lot of software founders are still trying to raise a $4-5M seed round from a pre-revenue standpoint to get to Series A. I get that we all want more buffer nowadays but it's also a harder calculus to go from pre-monetization, to early customers, to giving yourself enough sales cycle time in order to hit $1-2M ARR proxy for a strong A. Which is why inevitably, more founders end up having to raise messy extensions/bridges/Seed II or whatever you want to call them. So my advice is that IF you have the luxury of starting a company today, PLAN AHEAD. Even prior to even raising your first angel round. Break up your path to Series A into 2 or 3 tranches of mission-driven capital. Each tranche has a clear goal that you can rally your team and investors around. For example: First tranche to build the product and get early design partners. Second tranche to get to $300K of ARR. Third tranche to get to Series A. This will help support higher operating discipline and awareness. Incremental purchasing and hiring decisions will instantaneously shorten your runway in a way that a larger $5 million seed round obfuscates. And you'll be motivated to find GTM efficiency faster in the journey. Great habits for long term success. For context, Peter Walker of Carta recently sent an update on the arduous path from Seed to Series A. The survival rate is about 1/2 of what it used to be: "Something like 20-24% of startups that raised a seed round would graduate to their Series A in 24 months or less. For companies that raised their seeds in H1 2022, only 13% have made it to Series A across the 6 industries in the chart."

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Know anyone currently involved in software engineering (as a dev, PM, engineering manager, etc.)? Comment below or send me a message As part of a due diligence, I want to learn how teams move from design to engineering today. I’m curious about things like: “How are you using AI?”, “Who writes the tickets?” and “What tools are part of your workflow?” I’ll share what I learn in a few weeks 🤓

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What a week this has been for innovative companies in Seattle (first Smartsheet and now OctoAI). Today NVIDIA made public the news that they have acquired Madrona portfolio company OctoAI. Partnering with the founders since Day 1 (ok Day -1) has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. Luis Ceze, Jared Roesch, Tianqi Chen, Jason Knight, Thierry Moreau and Carlos Guestrin were all involved in the research and insights that helped create the TVM open source technology at the University of Washington computer science school and then the creation of OctoAI back in 2019 to drive commercial impact with this technology. From sorting out the terms of the original "pre-seed" round over a bottle of Caymus Vineyards wine to helping Amazon Web Services (AWS) understand the dynamics around the open source movement in Applied AI to learning our way in to product-market fit with the BEST inference optimization service available (OctoAI can help customers find their optimal fit of performance, customization, and cost), OctoAI has been the best! The company has helped set the table for AI-driven innovation for the years ahead and they will be a perfect compliment to the many capabilities at Nvidia. Luis, his leadership team, the board (including Carlos Guestrin Lip-Bu Tan and Mike Dauber) and so many "friends of OctoAI" know what a motivated, talented and authentic group of people are associated with this company. It is inspiring to see an acquisition at a total deal value of over $250 million in this highly dynamic and fast-moving phase of AI disruption. It is even more exciting to anticipate what will be possible with innovations powered by AI models and related technologies in the years ahead. Madrona has been investing in Applied AI for over a decade and we truly believe that we are just getting started! One of the hardest judgement calls as an investor and board member is to assess the benefits and risks of selling a company at a key inflection point in the journey. Nvidia made a compelling case that the impact for the OctoAI team and technology would be maximized within the market leader for AI infrastructure. I will be rooting every day that they all maximize this impact in the months and years ahead!

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~40% of Frec’s customers are engineers working in tech, many of whom expect frequent and large capital gains. They also prefer to self-manage their money, which makes Frec an ideal platform. Meet Evan: an engineering leader who upgraded from investing in ETFs to direct indexing. Direct indexing appealed to Evan because it offers comparable returns to his ETFs while saving him money on advisory and ETF fees. “ETFs are true and tested, and giving folks a different way of investing in the market while saving more money is really appealing.” He’s used many other robo-advisors and other fintech tools, but “Frec seems to maximize tax loss harvesting opportunities better than any other product that I’ve used.” He also likes Frec's transparent fee structure.  “I feel like with a lot of other companies, that’s muddled in with the cost of investments,” he told us, “and you don’t really know how much you’re paying or how much you’re not saving as a result. I think Frec does a really good job of laying all of that out and giving you a true understanding of the cost of these investment products.” Read more about his Frec journey here ⬇

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Legit quotable and actionable advice: * Power of Threes - 3 mentors, 3 peers, 3 mentees. * If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together

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Alexey's growth eng class is an awesome and refreshingly different approach to accelerating growth teams. I spoke last year and cohort had incredible talent, and Alexey really brought out what problems growth teams concretely face when getting wins. Take Alexey's class!

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💯 agree with this viewpoint Today there are hundreds of products in every vertical that should really be features not products 🤯 Who actually enjoys having 20+ software applications to run a business? I’ve yet to meet a degenerate who does 😂 Building a compound startup or true system of record is not for the faint hearted. Everything is harder. Navigating through the complexity and the breadth vs depth conundrum is agonising 🛣️ 🧟‍♂️ But if you can stick the course and execute on this strategy successfully to build the ‘one stop shop for X’ both the customer and the software provider get incredible rewards 🏆🏆 #compound #startup

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TechCrunch sharing the news about Harbor's fundraise! In the worst fundraising environment since 2009, especially if you're building a real product for real people (and not another AI chatbot for B2B), we've managed to achieve something truly extraordinary, backed by incredible investors. We've already begun changing parents's lives, and we're only just getting started. Harbor exists to create happier parents and healthier families, one restful night at a time. If you haven't ordered a Harbor for yourself or your friends/family yet, now is the time! Rogers Healy Morrison Seger Venture Capital Partners Tim Ferriss Trust Ventures Thomas Morstead Sam Parr Bryan Chambers Chart W. Zak Tanjeloff Carolina Garcia Michael Ivey Hayley Hightower Louden Kyle Cooke Anthony Gustin Carnrite Ventures Jeffrey Carnrite Brian Tochman Salen Churi Scott Harper Lyndsey Harper, MD, FACOG, IF Philip Mayling John Boaz Beau Harbour Rahul 'Harp' Harpalani William Hicks Adam Leeb Marcus D. Stroud Chris Blackman Corey Metz, CLU Dave Dworschak Mark Stoner John Durant Zach Ware Capital Factory Jason McCann Sam Silverlieb Chad Blackburn, MBA Hillary Blackburn, PharmD, MBA - big things ahead! I haven't tagged every one of our investors as some are not on LinkedIn, I reached my tag limit, and others don't disclose their investments publicly. So incredibly grateful for those backing what we're building here! https://lnkd.in/g36imqQ2

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2 months ago, Viam asked our community to use Viam to bring AI to a real world device. It was really cool to see new use cases for Viam brought to life, most of which were practical solutions to everyday problems faced by participants. Here is a look at the winners: DEB-Forge: A Viam Powered Smart Desk With Contextual Lighting System. Made using Viam's camera component, data management service, vision service and ML model service to create a smart desk intuitive to his light sensitivities. Betsy: A  personal assistant robot designed to streamline your daily tasks and elevate your workspace experience. Made using Viam’s base remote control, ML and vision services along with Viam’s speech module to create Betsy. Assisted Smart Trash: A way to accurately and efficiently sort waste. Made using Viam’s camera component, ML model service, vision service and YOLOv5 module. Check out the full blog for tutorials on each + some really cool additional entries (including a companion robot for distance runners and a companion robot). https://lnkd.in/gtWemC4S

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Great article on escape velocity for startup a.k.a Mendoza line for SaaS growth! "“How fast do I need to be growing to be interesting to a venture investor?” This is a question we get asked all the time by CEOs, and we realize “it depends” is not the most actionable answer to give. Instead, we have come up with a simple model that allows us to give a clear numerical answer to this question."

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In this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with notable X personality Trung Phan about the evolving social media landscape, and how to tame the mayhem and pandemonium of X. https://lnkd.in/dVHMzbui

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Setting a vision is just the start. Think about the bold moves needed to make it happen. Sundar, Google's CEO, set a daring vision to tackle climate change. That's where the real work begins. Executing a vision requires bold and tough decisions. Google is buying nuclear energy to feed its AI data centers. Other big tech companies are following this lead. This is a big kudos to Sundar and his leadership team. They are executing on a sustainability vision. Leadership is about taking action. And Sundar is showing the way.

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Qodo raises $40M Series A to bring quality-first code generation and testing to the enterprise Qodo, formerly known as CodiumAI, has raised $40 million in a Series A round led by Susa Ventures and Square Peg. The startup focuses on not only AI code generation but also improving code quality by generating tests throughout the software development lifecycle. Since launching 18 months ago, over 1 million developers and several Fortune 100 companies have adopted its platform. Qodo distinguishes itself by integrating tools such as a git agent, Chrome extension, and CLI tool to reduce coding errors at various stages. It also supports IDE extensions for Visual Studio Code and JetBrains. One unique feature is its "task-aware coding," where developers can describe the issues they are addressing in natural language, helping Qodo's code-completion tool make more relevant suggestions. The platform also helps reviewers identify potential issues in code changes, and the team is considering a feature that creates video walkthroughs of changes for easier reviews. Qodo aims to offer a comprehensive testing approach, expanding to UX testing next, which will simulate human interaction with a website. In total, Qodo has raised $50 million to date, with plans to continue developing its "quality-first" AI code generation tools. https://lnkd.in/e6q54mPT

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