DWP Capital

07/06/2023

30/08/2022

Happy Birthday to my smart, kind, warm, wise, and beautiful wife. I could of chosen any man to spend your life with and I can’t be more grateful that you drew the short straw and got me. I am far from perfect but there is no one that loves you and our daughters more than me.

29/06/2022

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Jacob Findlay, founder and Executive Chairman of Fullbay (vertical SMB SaaS). He is a master of precision, lean process, and vertical SaaS. He scaled his startup to $5M of ARR before taking a massive growth round by Mainsail Partners to expand. Link in the comments.

Jacob Findlay is the Co-founder of Fullbay. Five years ago, he made the leap from healthcare to truck repair. He wanted to take the best ideas from the electronic medical records world and apply them to heavy-duty repair. In other words, build a medical record for trucks.

At the time, Jacob was in the Director of Finance role for a wildly successful startup company called WebPT. More than 10,000 physical therapy clinics in the United States—one-third of all clinics in the country—now run on WebPT’s software.

Despite his success at WebPT, he left to spend a year running the office side of a truck repair shop. He wanted to gain street credibility in truck repair. He then launched Fullbay in the Fall of 2015.

Today Fullbay is the number one fleet repair platform in North America. Jacob is a CPA, a cellist, a so-so surfer, and the father of seven children.

What You’ll Learn:

👉Importance of a good sales ex*****on
👉Steps to achieve product-market fit
👉Understanding and identifying a problem before building a product
👉Progress of the product after launch
👉Understanding customers and how to implement the product
👉Adjusting training accordingly to SMB customer
👉Best ways to identify product-market fit
Importance of keeping a simple finance plan

Favorite Quote:

“If you wanna succeed in business, identify a problem, solve it, and then sell it.”

22/06/2022

Most VCs are Schmucks" says John Francis of Stout Street Capital in my interview with him last week.

John is a Pre-Seed/Seed investor in the midwest who is currently raising his third fund. He has incredible insights on co-investing, VC bias, and diversity. Links are in the comments.

John Francis brings his experiences as an operator and institutional venture investor. John Francis with Clay Gordon started Stout Street Capital in 2017. As General Partner, he focuses on investment opportunities in the IT software serving sectors such as Construction, Government, Energy, Cleantech, Media, Advertising, HR, Healthcare, and Cloud services. John works actively on several portfolio company boards, including Schola, Fluent Forever, Botco.ai, and Ad Fontes. He previously served on the boards of Popwallet (acquired by Snapchat (Nasdaq: SNAP)) and has made investments in companies such as Left-hand robotics(Acquired by TORO(NYSE: TTS)

What You’ll Learn:

• Difficulties in raising capital as a non-operator VC

• Operator vs. non-operator background VC

• The importance of having Empathy as a VC

• Benefits and flexibility of being a small check fund

• Difficult to identify an exceptional founder

• Ways to look at pre-seed and seed companies

• Benefits and necessities of writing a follow on check

17/06/2022

“How should I think about investing in SaaS companies that compete with large tech companies with already established distributions?”

This is the question I asked the besties at the All In Summit this year.

What did you think you their answer?

15/06/2022

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing a great friend and colleague Cory Lee Berg Berg. Cory has been a technology leader for three decades both in startup and enterprise environments. We talked about early stage product development, founder biases, and the deficit in tech leadership. You can listen to the podcast on iTunes and Spotify (links in comments).

Cory is a technology specialist and coach. He believes software teams with a clear vision and proper leadership can build excellent products while enjoying the journey.

Described as a “pragmatic technologist with a rare ability to yield results and make engineers smile,” Cory has devoted his professional life to helping advance a vision where business and software act as true partners in creating exciting, vibrant software and solutions to make the world a better place.

Cory is the author of the 5-star review book, Software++: Must-Have Skills for Software Engineers.

In his spare time, Cory runs www.softwaretshirts.com, an e-commerce site designed to uplift the spirits of technology workers everywhere.

He is also launching a program to foster and promote next-generation leadership skills for technology leaders everywhere.

What You’ll Learn:

👉Product Management
👉Product Strategy (Short / Long term)
👉When to Bring in a Product Manager.
👉Product Simplicity (Framework /right person)
👉Messaging and Expectations around Product Launch
👉Founder Bias within Product
👉Emotional Intelligence in Tech Leadership
👉Recruiting Top Tech Talent

Favorite Quote:

“If you aren’t going to build it deep, then don’t build it at all.”

07/06/2022

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jesse Randall the founder and CEO of Sweater. Jesse is sick
of how unaccredited investors cannot get allocations into venture capital investments. He put on his cape, raised some capital, and is now on the path of creating an investment vehicle to give access to the millions of people who want access. You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or watch it on YouTube. (Links in comments).

Jesse Randall is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sweater, a VC fund that gives access to venture capital to everyone, regardless of your wealth or accreditation status. Sweater just raised $12M Series Seed earlier this year in order to build the technology to put an investment team in the palm of your hands via a mobile app where you can keep up to date on your portfolio. Sweater aims to give everyone a chance at investing in the next big startup through the fund. In addition to Sweater, Jesse is an avid Ironman competitor, family man with five children, and a previous founder to several other companies.

What You’ll Learn:

👉Private Market Accreditation Guidelines
👉Being a Registered Investment Company
👉Comparing Sweater to a Mutual Fund
👉Investment Thesis and Deal Flow
👉Target Returns
👉Redemptions and Managing Cash
👉Managing Deployment Velocity and Fundraising
👉Consumer facing brands, products and apps on the sweater platform

Favorite Quote:

“Focus on your strength. It is better to take your strength from 10-100 than focus on your weakness from 1-10”

31/05/2022

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Jack Freeman who is a partner at PeakSpan Capital. Jack and I spent some time together on the board of PetDesk He is an exceptional growth equity investor.

Jack has worked with growth-stage technology businesses his whole career and has been a partner to nearly twenty portfolio companies at PeakSpan. He currently leads , Supply Chain, and E-Commerce logistics. Prior to joining PeakSpan, Jack worked for Stackpop an early-stage startup where he helped build out a SaaS-based cost management platform to help CTOs and IT teams buy and manage their internet infrastructure. After his startup was disrupted by AWS, Jack joined Macquarie Group where he spent three years executing software M&A and capital markets transactions. Jack holds a B.A. in Economics from Middlebury College; and prior to Middlebury, he played division I soccer for Seton Hill University. Jack lives in Brooklyn Heights with his wife and recently rescued puppy, Willow – the sweetest Great Pyrenees you’ll ever meet. Once a year, Jack champions a team of thirty in a charity bike ride to the Hamptons to support his brother’s autism program, Quest, where he’s raised over $100K. Since retiring from collegiate soccer, Jack has become an avid distance runner and is halfway to completing the “big six” world marathon majors.

What You’ll Learn:
👉Activities in a Later Stage Growth Equity Firm 
👉From Associate to Partner
👉Yearly Strategic Planning at a VC Firm
👉Supplementing SaaS Revenue with Payments 
👉Thematic Research
👉Understanding Internal Biases 
👉Understanding of Tech-Enabled Services
👉Follow-on Strategies 
👉Valuations in Growth Equity
👉10-Year SaaS Benchmarks
👉Good vs. Bad Board Members

Favorite Quote:
“Be patient and think long term.”