The Raise Tech News

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#12 Making it in the US with Scott Dommett from Rampersand VC

Welcome to The Raise. This issue, we have the pleasure of speaking with Scott Dommett, Investor at Rampersand VC. Rampersand seeks out founders with abnormal potential, with a hardcore focus on big visions, big ambitions, and big beliefs. Their portfolio includes companies like Hatch (a.k.a Seek for GenZ), JigSpace (a.k.a the Canva for 3D), and mx51 merchant technology (investing alongside Mastercard and Artesian Capital). Last month, Scott travelled to the United States, gathering up a heap of wisdom to bring back to the ANZ startup community. So in the spirit of “mateship” - Scott shares what he learnt 👉

unicorn cartoon with caption "farewell, unicorn status"

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Read: Goodbye, Unicorn Status.

While one billion dollars is certainly impressive, I’m here to tell you it’s not the only impressive number. Maybe we should widen our gaze and challenge Unicorn status as the ultimate (or only) goal for SaaS startups in New Zealand.

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#11 When & How to Exit with Investment Banker Mark Clare

This week, we have the pleasure of speaking with Mark Clare, Founding Partner of Clare Capital. Clare Capital provides corporate finance advice around mergers, acquisitions and divestments, corporate finance advisory, and capital raising. He has a wealth of experience in tech and capital markets - some of his notable B2B SaaS clients include Xero, Hatch, APLYiD, Raygun, and Cin7.

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#10 Thriving in Turbulent Times - advice from B2B SaaS Investor Mark Velik

Mark reflects on invaluable lessons from the COVID era

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Read: Blackbird's Phoebe Harrop - What a VC Wants

Being responsible for the capital of their funders, the reputation of their funds, and the success of their portfolio companies, means VCs apply a huge degree of rigour during the screening stage. Once both parties have signed and money changes hands, that carries over into what both parties hope to be a long term relationship. However, Phoebe says, it’s “not like being at the principal's office.” A healthy investor-investee relationship treads the line between mutually beneficial mentorship, pragmatic transparency, and not oversharing every anxiety, whacky idea, and side quest.

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#009 What a VC Wants - A Conversation with Blackbird's Phoebe Harrop

VCs have particular expectations of startups, so you should know what they are. Thankfully, this week on The Raise, Phoebe Harrop from Blackbird has given us a thorough rundown on what you need to know.

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#008 Field Notes from USA SaaS Expert Carter Perez

Calling in from the United States this week, we spoke with Carter Perez, co-founder of Revenue Chemists, a SaaS marketing agency in Palo Alto. In the last four years, they have worked with over 40 companies. Carter is also a fractional GTM leader, working with companies like Aiden Technologies and Ookla. Starting out at Xerox, he has spent most of his career in tech. Carter has a passion for the “phenomenal problem” of scaling companies, having achieved multiple exits during his career. In this week’s issue of The Raise, we’ve put together “field notes” from Carter, laying out his insights from the coalface of global tech growth.

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Read: Carter Perez - Field notes from USA SaaS Expert

Calling in from the United States this week, we spoke with Carter Perez, co-founder of Revenue Chemists, a SaaS marketing agency in Palo Alto. In the last four years, they have worked with over 40 companies. Carter is also a fractional GTM leader, working with companies like Aiden Technologies and Ookla. He has spent most of his career in tech but started out at Xerox. Carter has a passion for the “phenomenal problem” of scaling companies, having achieved multiple exits during his career. In this week’s longform article, we’ve put together “field notes” from Carter, laying out his insights from the coalface of global tech growth.

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Read: Ryan McMillan - 5 Years as a Founder

Time flies is certainly a cliche, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I’ve been a founder for five years now. There wasn’t a big countdown, nor a party (though perhaps a missed opportunity for one).

the raise thumbnail with illustration of people and lightbulb representing ideas

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Read: Tim Duggan - Leadership Lessons for Time Poor Founders

As an entrepreneur himself, and having interviewed dozens of fellow founders while researching his books, it was a privilege to hear firsthand Tim’s lessons on entrepreneurship, creativity, and work. We’ve bundled these lessons together, so you can use them now, or bank them for later.

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#007 Leadership lessons for time poor founders, with author Tim Duggan

This week, we welcome our first Australian guest, Tim Duggan. Tim’s new book, Work Backwards, explores how anyone can take advantage of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink how and why we work. As an entrepreneur himself, and having interviewed dozens of fellow founders while researching his books, it was a privilege to hear firsthand Tim’s lessons on entrepreneurship, creativity, and work. We’ve bundled these lessons together, so you can use them now, or bank them for later.

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Trends: ChatGPT-4o and the Future of Search

‘Wow’ is probably where I’d start. We’ve been told that the rate of improvement for LLMs (large language models) and GPTs (generative pre-trained transformers) will be fast, but ChatGPT-4o’s latest demo knocked me off my seat. The integration of video and voice to the app, along with faster processing times made the experience several times better than before (even using the free version). Trialling the product myself over the weekend got me thinking: ‘How will this change search engines?’

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#006 Serge van Dam: Playbook for Global SaaS Growth

Many of you reading this are founders and marketing leads. The Raise is all about raising the ambition and raising the bar for Kiwi and Aussie SaaS companies. So this week I’ve put together a playbook of wisdom shared during my conversation with Serge. Watch, read, grow. Then take your SaaS business global - bigger, better, faster.

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Read: Serge van Dam - Playbook for Global Growth

Serge is a tech and SaaS veteran, angel investor, board member, operating partner at Movac, advisor at NZTE, advisory council member at KiwiSaaS, and previously CMO at Fiserv (MCom) before a successful exit. Serge’s modus operandi is scaling up his time and using it for good. He dedicates about 500 hours each year to helping others. Reflecting on his career so far, Serge says that failure is not only the best teacher, it’s the only teacher. When he took his first fintech startup, MCom, to the US in the early 2000’s, there wasn’t a blueprint for exporting NZ tech. Most of you reading this are founders and marketing leads. The Raise is all about raising the ambition and raising the bar for Kiwi and Aussie SaaS companies. So this week I’ve put together a playbook of wisdom shared during my conversation with Serge. Watch, read, grow. Then take your SaaS business global - bigger, better, faster.

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Trends: The Tik is Toking

ByteDance, owner of TikTok, has 9 months to divest their operations in the US before Federal Legislation effectively bans it, prompted by concerns that the Chinese government could access sensitive user data through the short-form video app.‍

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#005 JD Trask: Unpacking the AI Hype Cycle

We started this issue of The Raise by asking ourselves, ‘what can we add to the conversation around artificial intelligence?’ There are well-founded debates on issues with bias, privacy, security, transparency and job losses. We’ve taken the optimistic ‘founders view’ in this week’s interview with JD Trask, CEO & Founder of B2B SaaS company, Raygun.

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Read: JD Trask - Unpacking the AI Hype Cycle

Learning how to use AI feels like we are in a giant classroom and the teachers have left the room. There’s every archetype of person, we are making the rules up as we go along, and we are relying on our human good to avoid a ‘Lord of the Flies’ situation. The smart kids know how to use it, the rest of us are feeling self conscious that we don’t know enough yet.JD’s outlook on AI boils down to a simple idea - it takes experimentation to derive meaning.

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Trends: The Power of LinkedIn for B2B

Linkedin is a powerful channel for B2B content distribution. If you’re thinking of building a Linkedin audience, my recommendation would be to put some thought into your strategy and create a clear point of difference. Personally, I believe quality and impact is more important than consistency, especially as we see a proliferation of new creators trying their luck on the platform today.

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Read: Sonya Williams - Startup Mythbusting

Our conversation with Sonya on The Raise this week got us thinking about what assumptions are made while building startups. Her experiences illuminate the nuances of every founder's journey. She unpacks some commonly held beliefs within the startup world. Sonya talks about getting started, forming a team, collaborating with your competition, and getting investors who back your mission.

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#004 Sonya Williams: Startup Mythbusting

This week we caught up with Sonya Williams, one of the bright minds behind fintech app Sharesies. Along with five co-founders, she began Sharesies with a bold mission of creating financial empowerment for everyone. She’s now co-CEO and a Director, and has led the company through some incredible growth, including their Australian expansion.

Ryan McMillan provides a take on the future of search

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Trends: How search is changing, and not in the way that you might think

Search engines have dominated the internet landscape almost since Google’s inception in 1998. But, search is changing, and not in the way that you might think. Why? Well, the first thought that comes to your mind might be ‘AI’, which is the most obvious disruptor of the search engine business. It’s easy to pay attention to the zigs (AI) but don’t let that cause you to miss the zags. Us humans search for content in all different types of ways, and the biggest shift in search engine behaviour right now is actually a move towards ‘social search’ as the preferred method to answer your search queries.

the raise infographic of venture capital team

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Read: Sebastian Cox - What's Special about Venture Studios

Seb unpacks for us what it’s like working with a venture studio, his rules of thumb for deciding if an idea is worth pursuing, plus some insider thoughts on creativity, team building, and capital raising.

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#003 Seb Cox: the Lowdown on Venture Studios

This week we caught up with Sebastian Cox, VP of Ventures at Paloma. Seb launched his career in the United Kingdom, holding various growth marketing and product roles in the venture studio scene. Seb went on to work as an advisor to some pre-launch & seed startups, plus enterprise scale digital transformation projects. At Paloma, Seb nurtures some of the most exciting startups in New Zealand and Australia, so he’s well attuned to turning the raw ingredients for a successful venture into an entity fit for growth.

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#002 Jo Blundell: Building Brand Loyalty

One of the first product marketers at Xero during its hyper growth phase in 2015, Jo Blundell then became the Head of Product and Marketing at Timely off the back of its $7m capital raise from Movac in 2017. Under her leadership, Timely eventually exited at $100m+. Jo is a director of climate-tech venture CarbonCrop. She recently launched ArcStudio, an agency developing brand and go-to-market strategies for scale-up-stage companies.

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Read: Jo Blundell - Serving Customers in Tough Times

Jo Blundell was one of the first product marketers at Xero during its hyper growth phase in 2015. She then became the Head of Product and Marketing at Timely off the back of its $7m capital raise from Movac in 2017. Under her leadership, Timely eventually exited at $100m+. Jo is a director of climate-tech venture CarbonCrop. She recently launched ArcStudio, an agency developing brand and go-to-market strategies for scale-up-stage companies.

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#001 Chris Heaslip: Global from Day One

We’re joined by ‘Billion dollar exit’ Chris Heaslip, who founded Pushpay, and more recently Leadr. Based out of Dallas, TX, Chris hails from New Zealand and we explore his ‘global from day one’ mentality while he also offers other nuggets of advice on sales, growth and planning for success.

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Read: Chris Heaslip - From False Summits to Funding Rounds

Chris Heaslip, founder of global donation platform Pushpay, doesn't mince words. In a recent interview with The Raise, he candidly admitted: "The customers we had in New Zealand didn't matter for anything." This bold statement isn't about downplaying Pushpay's Kiwi roots, but rather highlighting his global vision from day one. However, the road to global success was far from smooth. Heaslip, an accountant by training, had already attempted and failed at 18 startups before Pushpay. It took years of "pain," as he puts it, to finally crack the code. Heaslip's journey offers valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs building scalable startups.

What's included

Get valuable lessons in your inbox every fortnight.

Themed Founder Interviews

From being “Global from day one” to the “Biggest lessons in marketing SaaS”, we gather insights from experienced founders and turn them into bite sized, actionable advice for the tech ecosystem.

Simple video formats

Go as shallow or deep as you like. Each newsletter is designed to help you pull the thread of each topic, with follow-up advice and articles. Watch the full interview or just the shorts.

Trends and
FAQs

Alongside interviews, get unique view points on SaaS customer acquisition, sector trends and common FAQs from the tech community.