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Pricing is one of the most complex topics in software. Changing pricing is never simple. It is a company-wide evolution that has the potential to completely reshape your entire business & your customer relationships.

Few have executed this transition better than Barr Moses, Co-Founder & CEO of Monte Carlo.

Join us for a candid conversation with Barr as she shares how Monte Carlo transitioned from ARR to daily revenue as the core operating metric for the business.

With another tariff induced red-tinged day hammering markets, I wondered: Do private markets follow public ones? The data suggests yes—but with a delay & at a fraction of the magnitude.

A 1% increase in Nasdaq’s (QQQ) quarterly return translates to a 0.47% rise in median Series A valuations—but only after a two-quarter delay.

The inverse holds true as well: when public markets contract, private valuations follow suit approximately six months later at roughly half the intensity.

The new tariffs have markets down broadly. What do they mean for startups?¹

In terms of first order effects, tariffs can impact a startup in two ways : the input costs and consumers’ demand.

Most software companies don’t import or source critical components of the software from abroad so the COGS / gross margin structure of the company shouldn’t change unless they rely on significant hardware purchases, for example GPUs or robotics components.

As startups scale, effective sales implementation becomes the difference between stagnation and sustainable growth. After analyzing hundreds of sales organizations across startups, I’ve distilled the key pieces of advice that founders and leaders should keep in mind.

1. Sales Strategy Fundamentals

• Start with the right price: Establish pricing that reflects value rather than just covering costs.
• Define your ICP: Clearly identify your ideal customer profile before building your sales process.
• Understand sales velocity: Recognize that sales success depends on both deal size and deal frequency—optimize for predictability.

Your first sales hire should generate predictable and consistent revenue, not just hunt elephants

We’re excited to announce our Head of AI, Bryan Bischof, and our first entrepreneur in residence, Philip Zelitchenko.

A practicing professor of data science at Rutgers and a Math PhD, Bryan has spent the past two decades building AI and data science practices across thought-leading startups, including Hex, Weights & Biases, Stitch Fix, Blue Bottle Coffee and many others.

Recently, he published his learnings on a year’s worth of learnings building with AI here.

71% of exit dollars in 2024 came from a new avenue : secondaries.

Historically, IPOs and M&A have been the dominant exit paths for venture backed companies. Some years IPOs dominate, other M&A dominates, but in 2024 secondaries captured the super majority.

When a company sells new shares to investors in exchange for dollars, they create new shares in the company - primary shares. When existing shareholders sell their shares to new investors, we call this a secondary sale. An employee tender is a secondary sale offered to employees of the company. But secondary sales can also occur between one venture capitalist and another venture capitalist.

You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it’s worth it.

The fairy tale version of “be yourself” is that all the pain stops as soon as you allow your distinctiveness to shine. That version is misleading. Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously.

The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.

What is a webinar in the age of AI?

It’s a blog post. And a podcast. And a video. And a meme.

Let me explain.

For many webinars, I’ll send a notetaker in my place, a robot to record the conversation & summarize it in the way I ask. A personal journalist in a sense.

Instead of watching & listening to a conversation, I’m transmogrifying the subset of the content that matters to me into the format I prefer : a summary in a template, in other words, a blog post.

I remember the day I received it : my first Blackberry. A few weeks later I lost it in the back of a taxi cab in Paris. But I haven’t forgotten the chiclet keyboard, its subtle click with each keypress.

A year later, the iPhone presented the world with an all glass keyboard. Who would type on a flat surface, detractors asked? In the end, all of us.

This week, I saw another user interface for a phone : dictation only.

Is tech M&A back?

Google announced its intention to buy Wiz for $32b today. If approved by regulators, it would be the 6th largest technology M&A ever.

This transaction would make Wiz the 5th most valuable pure-play security company.

For Google, this would be its largest acquisition ever second to Motorola for about $12b. Notably two of the top three acquisitions are security. Mandiant sold for $5.4b.