Today we are excited to announce the next chapter of Underscore VC with fresh capital, new leadership, and a renewed opportunity to deliver our community-driven approach to supporting ambitious early-stage founders. Underscore was founded on the belief that there’s a better way to build a venture capital firm. We were inspired by the principles of open source software — community, collaboration, transparency — and guided by the conviction that surrounding founders with a thriving expert community can change the trajectory of their business for the better. So, we rewrote the rules (and the econ ..read more

Like so many students, I spent much of my time at university uncovering the classes and activities that sparked my interest. And unlike so many of my peers, I had a particularly challenging time narrowing down the list — my breadth of interests is wide. I’ve always loved learning about new things and new people. In turn, I found myself taking classes across departments and building deep relationships with students and professors across campus. With such a wide aperture, narrowing in on a career post-graduation seemed daunting. Nevertheless, having spent a chunk of time at Dartmouth doing behav ..read more

Recently, a company in our portfolio brought on an advisor. These co-founders are terrific. They have a big vision and an incredible drive to get things done. So it felt like fate when they connected with a perfect advisor match—someone with extensive early-stage experience in their industry, with the time and interest to work with them.  But when he shared his fee and stock option expectations, the co-founders almost fell off their chairs. Talk about sticker shock. Clearly, expectations between the co-founders and the potential advisor needed to be aligned. In this example, the advisor i ..read more

Rahul Vohra, Founder and CEO of Superhuman, is building the fastest email experience in the world. Superhuman was last valued at $825M, has raised almost $125M in venture dollars, and is backed by firms such as IVP, a16z, and First Round, as well as several celebrity investors.  Rahul is a seasoned, repeat entrepreneur, and is widely known for his expertise in product strategy and entrepreneurship. His unique approach to finding product-market fit was the subject of a First Round Review article that went viral, and has since been the topic of dozens of articles, podcasts, talks and busine ..read more

After the past several years, are you still triggered by the words “supply chain?” Pandemic-era memes brought universal awareness to the global headache created by the COVID-19-induced supply chain delays. But even before “shipageddeon” entered the public lexicon, our world’s supply chain was an absolute value sieve, plagued with inefficiencies. This is particularly true across the air freight market. Air freight, sometimes called air cargo, is the shipment of goods through an air carrier. And the inefficiencies in air freight can be boiled down to a singular, often absent word: consolidation ..read more

Running a restaurant or brick-and-mortar retail business is demanding. Between looking after customers, managing payroll, restocking inventory, hiring staff, fixing equipment, and maintaining reservation software, businesses rarely have time to drop everything to answer inbound phone calls. Even with online ordering and scheduling tools, retailers and restaurants still have phones ringing off the hook. A shocking 60% of customers still prefer to contact businesses over the phone. For restaurants in particular, 70% of customers still prefer to call in reservations, despite restaurants offering ..read more

Product-led growth (PLG) has gone from a fringe go-to-market (GTM) strategy to a primary growth lever for many SaaS companies. According to the OpenView Partners 2022 Product Benchmarks report, the adoption of PLG is up by 20% over the last three years. In 2023, 91% of B2B SaaS companies plan on investing even more in PLG.  If you’ve landed here, you probably don’t need more evidence that PLG works in theory. You want to know why and how you should implement it in practice.  You’re in the right place.  Transitioning Your Team to Product-led Growth Historically at Elastic Path, w ..read more

A customer advisory board (CAB) is a closed, select group of customers that occasionally meets to share ideas, feedback, and insights. A CAB is not the same as a formal advisory board—a paid group of industry or functional experts that advise your startup.  The Value of a Customer Advisory Board The value of a CAB is twofold. In the short term, you get a chance to receive unfiltered feedback on your product plans before you invest time and resources into implementing them.  But in the long run, you strengthen relationships with key customers who can become:  Great investor refe ..read more

Making your first sales hire is a challenge, especially if you don’t have sales experience. Should you hire an experienced leader? How about someone with specific industry experience? How do you determine whether a salesperson will succeed in your company? “A lot of salespeople just want to hit their revenue targets—and they’re used to having a script and a process,” says Michelle Pietsch, Founding Partner at Minot Light Consulting. “But a lot more goes into revenue targets at an early-stage company. Most people don’t want to deal with all the noise.” “Plus, when you get sales candidates in th ..read more

We’ve talked about Seed funding milestones and shared toolkits for raising a Seed round, so now it’s time to discuss announcing your successful Seed funding raise! Some founders can hardly wait to announce their startup’s funding. Others place public relations on the bottom of their priority list, never to be returned to again. The best founders fall somewhere in the middle, wielding the power of PR with intentionality, viewing it as a means to achieve their business objectives. This comprehensive guide will help you evaluate if, when, and how to share your startup’s Seed round funding news. K ..read more