Afore Capital

Are you in product design? If so, you are all too familiar with the painful process of creating your design in Figma and then shipping it off to the front end engineering team to "try" to recreate in code. It never looks the same. Not to mention all the wasted back and forth. In the world of fast-moving AI, you can't afford to use ancient tools. Meet Noon -- the first dual-canvas where you design how a product looks and how it works. We at Afore Capital were lucky to back Aditya, Kushagra, John and the Noon team at pre-seed. Incredible what they've achieved in such a short time. Can't wait to see where they take this. LFG!! https://noon.design/ or msg me for early access!

Yesterday at Afore Capital Showcase we tried something new…instead of name tags, we offered actual, printed blank term sheets. 👀 Investors could grab them on the way in, or after pitches. Not sure if I recommend, it was pretty chaotic between 3.5 minute pitches. We built a web app on the spot to spin up extras after printouts ran out (shoutout to Kayla Kavanaugh & moonlight eng). Anamitra Banerji and Gaurav Jain each took a conference room on standby for founders to literally negotiate terms on the spot… plus Derrick Li ushering founders back and forth making sure to tell them “That literally makes no sense” when things got out of hand. After raising $400M+ in follow-on funding with our founders last few months, this was still by far the most insane 36 hours YTD. Miraculously with all this background insanity, shoutout to jack mcclelland Yulia Urs (Porfireva) Joseph Cardini for keeping the show running. A pro tip: definitely block at least a couple 30 min deal windows so investors are not running in and out during pitches themselves. No one went home before 2am (until Jared Luttrell signed all our docs and even wired several of our pro ratas!) and we were totally exhausted, but rounds were closed so fast it was worth it. I’ve never seen anything like it…pretty sure no one else has either. Happy April Fool’s! What do you think, should we do this next Showcase? (and if you missed your chance to meet the teams and grab a term sheet, drop a comment below to get info on the teams who pitched and request an intro. Many of those did in fact happen). SO incredibly proud of all our founders and Founders-in-Residence for the progress, very late nights and customer value creation over the last 3 months! Cannot wait to cheer you guys on for the journey ahead. Sebastian Tan Prathik Iyengar Sohum Gautam Talha Khan Rudresh Upadhyaya Raghav Katta Matthew Fastow Nobie, Inc. Matt Gapp Keshav Vasudevan Rifa Gowani Michael Huynh Jay Chopra Alex Ungureanu Shane Barakat & more!!

𝗣𝗶𝘃𝗼𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗯𝘂𝗴 It is early 2023. A couple of years into the Goldcast journey, the company has raised over $10M in venture funding and things appear to be going well. Then, the founders - Palash, Kishore and Aashish - notice something 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨. Across several quarters, customer retention starts to decline. Many teams might respond by pouring more marketing dollars into the top of the funnel to maintain growth (esp since they still had a plenty of money in the bank). The Goldcast team took a different approach. They were intellectually honest with themselves and concluded that the current trajectory of the business was a 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗲𝗻𝗱. They needed to pivot quickly. Once the founders recognized the issue, they went into wartime mode. They divided the team. One group focused on maintaining the existing business and keeping the lights on. Another group focused on exploring new use cases. They created a small SWAT team of product and engineering leaders and rapidly iterated on several ideas. Often the best pivots come from adjacencies. Selling additional use cases to the same buyer. The team spent two to three months speaking directly with customers to understand what other problems they could solve. In our experience, companies pivot for two reasons. Either the current product is not working well enough, or the company has reached the limits of its current market and needs to expand. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝘃𝗼𝘁𝘀. We see them as a sign of growth and evolution. While pivots sometimes carry a negative stigma, the reality is that almost every successful startup encounters this moment. At Afore Capital we have found that the best founders closely monitor their key metrics, remain intellectually honest when something is not working, and take deliberate action to change course. Eventually, Goldcast was acquired for just under $300M in cash because the founders treated pivots as a feature of the journey, not a failure. While the initial idea of virtual corporate events ended up not being a big market, they found massive success in being the end-to-end video layer for businesses. 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 The real skill is not avoiding pivots. It is recognizing when one is necessary. Have you ever had to pivot a product because the metrics told you something was wrong? My others posts in the Goldcast series: King making doesn't always work: https://bit.ly/4bZlKHq How to start a company on a student visa: https://bit.ly/3Njuu1T Do not overthink the idea of starting a company: https://bit.ly/4v2oHyx

𝗗𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆. 𝗝𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁!! When I started a company in the mobile space back in 2008, someone eventually showed me a competitor that looked almost identical to what we had built. This was after we had already launched! Part of me felt embarrassed that I had not done more competitor research. But another part of me was relieved. Because if I had known about them earlier, there is a good chance we might never have started. 𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘀. The founders of Goldcast, a company recently acquired for just under $300M in cash, describe their decision to start the company as "𝗻𝗮𝗶𝘃𝗲, 𝗱𝘂𝗺𝗯, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗸𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀." By the time they went out to raise their pre seed round, three competitors had already raised $15M or more each from firms like A16Z and Accel. To make matters worse, the founders had student loans and were on student visas. Several investors passed and told them to go back to school. But what gave them hope was the reaction from customers. When they showed early mockups of the product, customers were excited. So they hacked together a prototype on Bubble, the original no code builder, and kept fundraising. We were fortunate at Afore Capital to meet the Goldcast team before they gave up. We instantly fell in love with the founders - Palash, Kishore and Aashish. They had the qualities we look for in early stage teams: growth mindset, speed, and grit. While others had legitimate concerns about competition and visas, we believed this was the team to back. Ironically, many of the competitors who raised far more capital (billions) eventually shut down. At Afore we prioritize bottom up analysis over top down analysis. Bottom up means evaluating the quality of the team, the wedge product, and market tailwinds. Top down means focusing on TAM and competitive landscapes. This approach has allowed us to invest in companies like Hightouch and Gamma that pivoted multiple times before finding product market fit. There were many rational reasons for the founders of Goldcast to give up and go back to school. But they had a strong instinct that something important was here. And they would regret it if they did not try. Starting a company is, by definition, an 𝗶𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻. There will always be more reasons not to start than to start. 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀: Do not wait for perfect information. Many great companies started because the founders simply began building. My others posts in the Goldcast series: King making doesn't always work: https://bit.ly/4bZlKHq How to start a company on a student visa: https://bit.ly/3Njuu1T