Corgi

It’s a rough life being a $2.6B Corgi.

It’s a rough life being a $2.6B Corgi.

"If you are not working 7 days per week, you are going to lose". Corgi Insurance is the most intense workplace culture in startups. - The company works 7 days per week. - Founder (Nico Laqua) lives and sleeps in the office. - He built a cafe in the office because there was no local cafe that was open 24/7. - 2/3 of the first 30 team members have the Corgi logo as a tattoo. Today I went behind the scenes with Nico, who has used this culture to scale the company to a $2.6BN valuation in just two years. My condensed notes below: 1. If You Are Not Working 7 Days Per Week, You Are Going to Lose: Whatever you can get done in 5 days, you'll get more done in 6 and 7. If you are trying to solve the world’s hardest problems, a standard 5-day workweek will not cut it. 2. Work Trials Repel the Mediocre: Corgi forces candidates into mock work trials over the weekend. If seeing a full office on a Saturday scares them, they don't belong. True intensity acts as a natural filter to attract killers and repel clock-watchers. 3. Lead from the Front Lines You can’t demand 7-day weeks while sitting on a yacht. Nico sleeps 3–4 hours a night on a mattress inside the office. If you want your troops to bleed, you have to be in the trenches with them. 4. Culture Only Means One Thing: Winning Forget superficial jargon like "hackers" or "ex-founders." Strip away the corporate fluff. A great startup culture is aggressively optimized around one single word: Winning. 5. Lifespan vs. Victories Building something world-historic requires radical sacrifice. When asked if he'd rather build a trillion-dollar company and die at 50, or fail and live to 80, the answer was easy. "I would rather measure my lifespan in victories." 6. Reject the Comfort of "Quiet Quitting." If you are operating in a hyper-growth environment and your days off happen to be Saturday and Sunday every single week, you are quiet quitting. To win, you must deliberately bypass the off-ramps of personal comfort and low volatility. Corgi isn't for everyone—and that’s exactly the point. (Links in comments) #founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

Corgi, a San Francisco-based provider of an insurance platform, raised $106M in Series B1 funding at a $2.6B valuation. The round was led by TCV, with participation from investors including Prime Capital, Zone 2 Ventures, Oliver Jung, Leblon Capital, Kindred Ventures, and others. The company plans to use the new funding to expand its platform and launch new lines of commercial insurance. Led by CEO and Founder Nico Laqua, Corgi focuses on rebuilding insurance and financial infrastructure through full-stack underwriting, claims handling, and embedded insurance solutions for commercial coverage. FOUNDER: Nico Laqua INVESTORS: TCV, Prime Capital, Zone 2 Ventures, Oliver Jung, Leblon Capital, Kindred Ventures, Quadri Ventures, First Order Fund, Vocal Ventures, Nordstar, GSBackers, Repeat Ventures & 8188 Capital ROUND: Series B1 AMOUNT: 106,000,000 VALUATION: $2,600,000,000 HQ: San Francisco, California #VentureCapital #Corgi #NicoLaqua #TradedVC

Harry Stebbings reminds me a lot of the culture we've built at Corgi. Last week, I spent some time with Harry in London and it's incredible what he's built for the startup community since starting with zero connections and $50 in London (quite some distance from Silicon Valley) back in 2014. Talking to founders across the States, many times I hear how his podcast shaped how they think about building their companies. I can only imagine the impact he's having on the European startup ecosystem. Today, he's running one of Europe's biggest venture funds and has backed incredible companies like Linear, Airwallex, Mercor, Perplexity, Legora, and more. He's all about the hustle and we had a great time swapping stories for the short time we had in the podcast room (pic below). The episode drops tomorrow (May 30th). Catch it on 20VC!

Welcome to the frenzied world of AI, where a two-year-old startup founded by a 26-year-old can have a company-owned dog, run a 24-hour cafe and raise $106 million about a month after becoming a unicorn. Full story here: https://lnkd.in/ebkzdcur (Photo: Courtesy Corgi)