Why VC's love SaaS business models and the companies who have raised series A or B rounds in the last six months
Your weekly guide to start-ups and venturing
Welcome to Heroa, a weekly newsletter for women in start-ups and ventures. If you enjoy what you read, please do share this newsletter with friends and like it above!
Hello and welcome back to Heroa and to our first February newsletter. First of all, congratulations on making it through January!
This week we’ve included.
Why VC’s love SaaS companies
Details of 100 companies that raised their series A or B in the last six months and may be hiring
An interview with Bianca Rangecroft, the founder of Whering. Whering is the Clueless app brought to life and is re-launching on the 2nd of February in the app store.
Round-up of the news this week
Take the time to check out the breakdown of Big Ideas for 2021 by ARK Invest. Clubhouse continues to rise as it eyes European expansion, and Elon Musk joins Clubhouse to interview the CEO of Robinhood. In the biggest news of the week, Robinhood’s mission to democratise finance collided with Wallstreet reality. Robinhood investors rushed to buy GameStop shares after a Hedgefund shorted them (I couldn’t not mention this).
Crypto has also been in the news. Coinbase officially announced a proposed direct listing. Then Elon Musk (who has been very active this week) drove up the price of Bitcoin on Friday morning. The world’s richest person changed his Twitter bio to “Bitcoin,” and sent Bitcoin from ~$32K to ~$38K.
Jessica Alba’s Honest Co. filed confidentially for IPO at a $2B valuation. WeWork is considering a public SPAC in a deal that could be worth $10B. Jack Ma is likely to convert Ant Group into a financial holding company. This is in response to regulatory pressure and Beijing canceling the company’s IPO.
From the investors
“For once, the Tech sector is on the right side of an economic crisis” Pauline Paquet of XAnge
Byfounders have produced this guide to the term sheet for seed-stage companies
The data opportunity by Irina Havais of Atomico. Metadata helps you understand your datasets and the jobs that read from and write to them. Irina talks about where the potential is to create multi-billion dollar opportunities over the next decade
Pauline Paquet of XAnge looks at the successes of the French Tech scene and is optimistic about the year ahead especially given that the tech sector is on the right side of the economic crisis
Why VC’s love SaaS so much with Sarah Nockel of Northzone. The coronavirus pandemic appears to have had less of an effect on this sector than others. As businesses have been forced to accelerate digital transformation programs, stocks in listed SaaS giants like Docusign (up almost 200%), Zoom, and Twilio have soared
Producer vs. promoter: which kind of expert are you? and how you should plan your career around this by Casey Rovinelli, OMERS Ventures Growth Director
From the operators
“Remember, your worth is not tied to your performance at an interview.” Isabel Nyo of Atlassian
Susana de Sousa, a Senior Manager at Loom, has pulled together a list of 100 companies that have raised their series A or B in the last 6 months and who may be actively hiring
Cold e-mails that work. Chrissy Cowdrey, the Founder and CEO of Stagger provides a blueprint of a cold email that works, and Ollie Forsyth of Antler has some great tips as to how to get your cold email read
10 Verbal and Nonverbal Buying Signals to Watch Out For in Sales by Jaclyn Robinson from Crunchbase. Interestingly, a lot of this has to do with understanding psychology and human behavior and, of course, mastering the art of persuasion and objection handling (without being too pushy)
Four Steps To Take When Preparing for Interviews at Tech Companies from Isabel Nyo of Atlassian. Preparation is key in doing well for interviews at tech companies when there are hundreds, if not thousands of other applicants competing for the same role
Events
Sustainable Consumption Business Models with Clara Ricard & Daniel Waterhouse from Balderton Capital on the 3rd of February at 3 pm CET
Black Girl Finance: Beyond the Books on the 4th of February
Social Entrepreneurship with Tessy Antony de Nassau (Co-Founder, Human Highness) 2 Feb at 5 pm GMT
Startup Grind global conference will take place 22-25 February
Job opportunities
The Intrapreneurs Club is hiring for a Head of Accelerator in London
Juno Bio is looking for a Content Lead in London
Eka Ventures is looking for a Research and Data Associate in London
Founders Intelligence is hiring for an Analyst in London
Interview with Bianca Rangecroft, Founder and CEO of Whering
I first met Bianca while we were studying together at SOAS and then met her again when we were both completing our MScs at Imperial. She’s since gone on to set up Whering and is launching a new version of the app on the 2nd of February - do check it out. And now over to Bianca…!
Can you tell us about Whering?
Whering is a personal styling and digital wardrobe app, but we are much more than that. Our mission is to extend the lifecycle of clothes in your wardrobe. We use machine learning to visualise everything you own and then style outfits based on what you have in your wardrobe. We also try to make our users more sustainable in their product purchases. We suggest ethical products to fill wardrobe gaps.
Can you tell us about your career?
My background is in Banking. I spent the first four years of my career at Barclays and then at Goldman Sachs. I was lucky enough to be involved in the FarFetch and SticthFix IPO and various ESG and women in business committees. I started thinking about using tech to democratise personal styling and reduce the carbon and water footprint. That’s where my idea for Whering started. Then I got to go to Unleash in November 2019 (a hackathon for the Sustainable Development Goals), and that’s when I decided to quit my job and start Whering in January 2020.
Why did you decide to set up your own company?
I had a profound desire to democratise the personal stylist landscape. After Stitch Fix, I realised that every woman needs to be able to shop smart and be inspired by what she already has. For me, it’s all about fundamentally wanting to fix something that was broken – impulse buying, not being able to see what you have in your wardrobe, and the lack of inspiration around the styling progress.
What’s been your biggest challenge so far?
I think, in general, stepping into a CEO-type role. It isn’t easy to move from the ideation stage to prototyping. Once you’ve got to something in the market to get to a stage where you have to think really strategically about hiring and identifying what you don’t know. You then have to step away from being a product manager and let people take over. I’m still learning a lot as I move into an internal managerial role.
What do you turn to for inspiration?
Cross-pollination, Sometimes I’ll turn to founders in completely different industries, and I will ask them what they are doing to fix problems. They often come up with great solutions that we haven’t thought about because we’re too close to the product.
We also do something called Wednesday Wine with our users, and I get some incredible ideas from doing this.
What’s next for your company?
One world. Scale. For us, it’s about nailing the machine learning piece and nailing the outfit recommendations needed to get people out of the house in 10 minutes and in an outfit they love. There’s also a wish list and mood board in our new release.
A bigger vision here is to turn the app social in the next quarter and make sure it’s something you can share with your girlfriends.
SEE YOU NEXT MONDAY!
If you have any comments, questions, or want to chat about start-ups and venturing, then do drop me a comment.
Written by Alexandra Wyatt, based in London but a global traveler. You can also reach me on Twitter and Instagram.
Loved the article and Bio on the Whering founder. Inspiring, innovative what a great idea.