Jan 28, 2021
Don’t let anyone tell you it’s
too late to change your direction.
Emily Walsh went from
being a ballet dancer… to a lead investor at Georgian, a VC firm that has raised $1.2B across 4
funds and
recently added another $850M in
early 2020.
Georgian focuses on
investing in software and fin-tech.
According to Emily,
Georgian typically invests $20M - $40M at a time.
Being a lead investor,
Emily has to be right at the forefront of making the decisions of
how to spend that money and who to give it to.
If you’ve ever thought
about attracting your first or next round of funding, then it’s
vital to know how investors like Emily think.
...especially
because Georgian are a minority investor.
Minority investors
don’t expect to change your company’s direction. They want to see
that you already know where you are going.
If they like the
direction, they’ll strap $20M+ rocket-boosters (aka: investments)
to the back of your SaaS engine to get you there quicker.
But, how does a firm
like Georgian qualify SaaS businesses and evaluate if they’re worth
the investment?
AI.
Georgian has an
internal model that allows them to input data about a business and
validate if the investment will meet their return criteria.
Clever, right?
Let’s hear from Emily
in the latest interview on the Escape Velocity podcast.
Emily has a heart for
growing SaaS businesses and in our chat, we talk about:
- How Georgian grew
from 17 to 60 people
- What got Emily into
investing
- How dancing taught
her discipline and focus
- Why Georgian
structures themselves like a software company
- The 2 questions Emily
will ask of any potential software investment
- The future of
Conversational AI in SaaS sales pipelines
I love speaking with
decision makers at VC firms about the SaaS
industry.
Investors get exclusive
views of company roadmaps, timelines and P&L sheets.
They see the
behind-the-scenes that most companies prefer to keep secret… and
although investors respect the business privacy of their portfolio
clients, they still have the wisdom for picking market winners well
in advance.
I’m telling you… If you
EVER want to attract some serious big-cash investors, you HAVE to
think the way they think.
And it’s priceless
interviews like this one that will help you.
Turn up the volume,
and listen to the episode
here.
--
Dan Martell is a serial entrepreneur, an investor in
40+ startups like Intercom, Udemy, and Unbounce and the creator
of SaaS
Academy, helping over 500 B2B SaaS
founders scale faster. He’s founded five SaaS companies and
successfully exited three of them. If you want to scale faster
without hitting the usual roadblocks, make sure to follow him
on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn & Twitter.