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The Current VC Seed Stage Investment Market & Some Key Metrics to Pay Attention Post-COVID for SaaS Founders With Cindy Padnos [SDI]| Podcast #29

08/05/2020
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    Cindy Padnos is an innovator and an advocate for all things entrepreneurial. She is a founder (both of a VC-backed tech startup and a VC firm), with a passion for enabling experimentation that can lead to the discovery of new business models and unique points of leverage. Cindy bleeds B2B/Enterprise Tech – gaining the moniker “Queen B2B” and a place at the table with the top institutional investors in the category.

    Cindy has been working with enterprise technology startups for more than 20 years – as a founder, operating executive, adviser, or investor. She founded Illuminate Ventures, a seed and early-stage venture capital firm that invests exclusively in enterprise cloud and mobile software companies. Illuminate seeks entrepreneurs that are “re-inventing the enterprise” with products that deliver dramatic productivity and decision making improvements while leveraging better, faster, cheaper – cloud technologies and innovative business models.

    Prior to her investing career, Cindy led several successful venture-backed entrepreneurial efforts. She was the founder/CEO of Vivant (now part of Oracle) an early Software as a Service (SaaS) company. She was CEO of Acumen, orchestrating a profitable M&A, and VP Marketing for Scopus, helping position this early CRM company for its successful IPO. Early in her career, Cindy served as a management consultant at Booz Allen and Arthur D Little.

    Illuminate is particularly interested in companies delivering:

    – B2B SaaS applications and infrastructure

    – Application of AI and blockchain technologies to the Enterprise

    – Enterprise mobile solutions

    – Predictive and prescriptive analytics that improve business results

    – Business model innovation enablers

    – Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)”

    Cindy is also an investor at various companies, such as Jacobi, Cafe X Communications, Bedrock Analytics, Peerlyst, ChannelEyes, Pyze Inc., JetStream Software Inc. Influitive, Hoopla Software, Xoupang, Contentstack, BrightEdge, and Allocadia.

    During this interview we cover:

    00:00 – Intro

    02:09 – Early SaaS Experience from Raising VC Capital to Acquisition

    15:00 – The Decision Behind Illuminate Ventures and Transformation to what it is today (Metrics)

    22:21 – Experience & Perspective on the Volatility of Deal Flow Investments with the COVID-19 Pandemic

    24:10 The Value of a Dollar & Current Challenges in the COVID-19 Environment

    26:18 How Founders Deal with the Slow Down in Decision to Buy or Renew Software from Customers and Some Strategies for the New Normal

    31:34 What Illuminate Ventures Share with Startups Beyond Capital Support

    38:46 What is a Founder Heroic & Why Any Founder Should Aim to Become One

    40:54 Cindy’s Winner Startup Criteria for Investing

    42:29 Cindy’s Turn Down Startup Criteria for not Investing

    Mentions

    Terms:

    – Shelfware

    – RRSP

    People:

    – Jennifer Savage

    – Ken Goldman

    – Michael Stonebraker

    – Chris Cabrera

    – Gary Swart “The future of work Ep.”

    Companies:

    – Illuminate VC

    – Vivant Corp.

    – AWS

    – Oracle

    – Google

    – Azure

    – People Soft

    – SAP

    – Evolve

    – Express Ventures

    – Ariba

    – Xactly

    – Vista

    – BrightEdge

    – Hoopla

    – Cafex

    Get in touch with Cindy:

    – Cindy’s LinkedIn Profile

    – Cindy’s Twitter

    Tag us & follow:

    – Facebook

    – LinkedIn

    – Instagram

    – YouTube

    More about Akeel:

    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
    • Saas Podcast
    • SaaS Consulting
    • How to Value a SaaS Company
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