Zayd Syed Ali

Most founders talk about raising capital. Fewer talk about the education that comes with it. Last night I had a phone call masterclass with one of my lawyers at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati that broke down the real difference between raising from accredited vs non-accredited investors and it completely reframed how I think about early-stage capital. At the pre-seed stage, most founders start with the people who believed in them before anyone else did..think of family, friends, mentors. Those early checks aren’t just money; they’re validation that your idea is worth betting on. But it’s also where most founders make their first legal mistakes. Here’s what clicked for me: Raising from non-accredited investors isn’t just a financial decision, it’s a regulatory one. You can’t blast your raise on social media (my bad). You have to cap the number of people. And you need to treat those investors like partners, not donors with the same transparency you’d show a VC. I’m grateful to have over a dozen people already committed to backing Vettable in this early round Not because of returns, but because they’ve seen me build, fail, and build again. This stage isn’t about valuation. It’s about trust. #StartupFundraising #PreSeed #FoundersJourney #FriendsAndFamilyRound #AccreditedInvestors #WilsonSonsini #Vettable #BuildingInPublic

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Just read a sharp articulation of a truth by Mark Buffington: Too many founders learn the hard way that the very traits that create a venture rarely scale it. Yet, here’s the nuance I’d add… We’ve over-romanticized youthful founders as if raw ambition and irrational optimism are sufficient to build enduring enterprises. They’re not. They’re ignition—not propulsion. Seasoned founders bring something far more consequential: earned self-awareness. They know who they are. More importantly, they know who they are not. And that clarity becomes a strategic advantage. Because the transformation from founder to high-performance CEO isn’t about abandoning your entrepreneurial DNA—it’s about augmenting it with judgment, restraint, and intentionality. Older, wiser founders don’t cling to control. They architect capability. They don’t hire for loyalty. They recruit for complementary excellence. They don’t confuse charisma with leadership. They build systems, culture, and teams that scale beyond them. Your ability to grow is directly proportional to the quality of the people you choose to surround yourself with—and to your willingness to let them lead. That’s the real inflection point. Not when the founder gets better… But when they get comfortable being outmatched in key areas of their own business. Because world-class CEOs aren’t the smartest person in the room. They’re the ones who intentionally build rooms where they’re not. Read Mark's article below. https://lnkd.in/ekzTHmMX

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🚨 NEW PODCAST EPISODE ALERT 🚨 💥 From £0 to £10M in 3 Years, Here’s How Daniel Priestley Did It 💥 Most founders are stuck chasing clients, burning out, and wasting time on tactics that don’t work. Daniel Priestley built a multimillion-pound business by doing the opposite. In this no-fluff episode of the No Bollocks Podcast, he shares: ✅ The business model that outperforms lead gen. ✅ Why your personal brand is your most valuable asset. ✅ How to use AI strategically, not blindly. ✅ The power of Scorecard Marketing (and how you can use it today). ✅ What most founders get wrong when hiring. If you're serious about scaling, attracting better clients, and building long-term business equity, this is your blueprint. 🎧 Listen now: https://lnkd.in/dUFM-4EU 📺 Watch now: https://lnkd.in/dFEhsQQJ #Entrepreneurship #DanielPriestley #BusinessPodcast #FounderTips #NoBollocks #PersonalBranding #AIForBusiness #LeadGenStrategy #StartupGrowth

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🚀 Meet PACT, simplifying SBA-backed acquisitions with investors. Think YC’s SAFE, but built for Main Street M&A. 📘 What is PACT and why we built it PACT (Partnership Acquisition Commonsense Terms) is a free, balanced starting point for the agreements used in SBA-backed acquisitions with outside investors. For too long, SBA-backed acquisitions with outside investors have been the wild west: every deal is different, inefficient, and confusing, especially for first-time searchers raising capital. PACT gives everyone a common baseline so reviews are faster, expectations are clear, and operators can focus on acquiring the business. 🧩 SAFE for ETA Y Combinator’s SAFE gave startups a shared template that made early investing easier to execute. PACT brings that same idea to ETA. It teaches the key concepts in plain English, aligns searchers and investors on the economics, and sets a fair place to start. Our goal is for PACT to become the default baseline for investor-backed small business acquisitions using SBA loans. 🤝 Who contributed 🏛️ Legal input from top SMB M&A attorneys: Joseph Spina (Cullen and Dykman LLP), Mark Dittrich (Groundswell Advisors, LLP), and Eric Hsu (Clear Focus Law, PLLC) provided feedback on drafts. 💼 Early investor adopters: Jordan F. (Shareholder Ventures), Grant Hensel (Entrepreneurial Capital), Jason Ehrlich (Fruition Capital), Sean Smith (Search Fund Ventures), Adam Kaplan (ETA Funding Partners), Jacob Hall (Kando Capital), Tony Cappaert (Workbench Capital) and Adam Markley (PROX Search Capital) have adopted PACT on new deals. 🎓 Community support: Chelsea Wood and Walker Deibel at the Acquisition Lab and Buy Then Build have committed to start educating the community on how investor deals work using PACT. 👉 What to do next 🔍 Searchers: download the docs and ask your lawyer to start from PACT. ⚖️ SMB M&A Law firms: review the templates and send feedback so the next version is better. 💸 SMB investors: adopt PACT as your starting point and share redlines from real deals. This is a community-led standard, and we will keep versioning PACT as feedback comes in from all sides. 📝 Thanks: Special thanks to Joseph Spina for leading the legal drafting with me and helping shape a true middle ground. 🔗 Download PACT and see the key terms: ETAPACT.com (link in the comments) Let’s make investor-backed acquisitions clearer, faster, and fairer for everyone. 🚨 DISCLAIMER: PACT is not legal advice. Searchers must engage experienced SMB M&A counsel to review and tailor these documents to their deal.

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Episode 2 of B2B Sales Blueprint is live — and this one gave me a new mental model I haven’t stopped thinking about. XQ. We’ve all heard IQ. Then EQ. But Luke Williams introduced a third one: XQ – exponential curiosity. The people who win in this next era of sales won’t just be smart. They’ll be the ones who stay curious fastest. The ones who test new tools. Rethink old habits. Learn in real time. And adapt before everyone else does. That really stuck with me. Because AI isn’t just changing workflows. It’s changing the gap between average and exceptional. The best reps will use it to move faster, coach better, and execute at a much higher level. The rest will feel that gap widen. That was one of a lot of strong moments in this conversation. We also got into: • what changes when you move from SMB to enterprise sales • why methodology and qualification frameworks are not the same thing • how AI is changing deal inspection and coaching • what actually makes events and outbound work • lessons from building revenue teams across APAC and the US A really practical episode for anyone building or leading a sales team right now.

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🚨 New episode alert! 🚨 Meet Jessica McKellar, CEO and co-founder of Pilot.com. In this episode, she shares how she built three successful startups, including exits to Oracle and Dropbox, and breaks down why staying close to customers is a must for shaping strategy and culture. Jessica explains why founders should keep selling long after scaling begins, and how great teams come from values alignment, not titles. She also reflects on the lessons of being uncool and how empathy, integrity, and curiosity became her biggest superpowers as a leader. 🎧 Links to listen… Apple Podcasts - https://lnkd.in/eDUhAR23 Spotify - https://lnkd.in/eV7g8fRu

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The best advice for founders is also true for GPs. Just start. Launching a venture fund isn't about perfect timing or having every credential. It's about building momentum early and staying in motion longer than everyone else. Managers who apply to VC Lab Cohort 21 before March 23rd get immediate access to our Head Start program. You don't wait for orientation. You start building your fund the moment you're accepted. Direct 1:1 thesis feedback. Working sessions. Decile Hub access from day one. Peer accountability before the cohort starts. A 4 to 8 week runway before Week 1 begins. You arrive at orientation already in motion. Early deadline: March 23rd. Comment "HEADSTART" for the application link.

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What if the most valuable rails are being built away from saturated markets? Growth becomes harder when logistics, identity, warehousing, lending and address intelligence all sit apart. Kwik Now is taking a platform group approach, not a point-solution approach. The Growth Story Not just logistics. Not just identity. Not just lending. A connected stack across the commerce chain. The Stack The stack brings together logistics, PUDO networks, P2P lending, warehousing, address intelligence and identity. That matters because these are not isolated pain points. They are recurring infrastructure gaps that appear across emerging markets. For Investors The company is not starting from a blank page. It has already built six key technologies and 160 API endpoints. Its address intelligence covers 250 countries. The story is bigger than one region. Kwik Now is using Africa as proof for a broader emerging-market infrastructure play. Africa is the starting proof. The wider story is a stack built for markets where the same commerce gaps keep appearing. Kwik Now is raising capital and looking for investors. See company website https://www.kwik.now/ and then DM me for more info. What if the next global platform starts by proving it can work in Africa? Company LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eGrBGC44 CEO LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/e-79PKc4

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Business builders, Venture Builders, Entrepreneurs, etc go through a variety of phases and emotions, but there's one phase that is the most fun to me. First the phases: - Idea - Due Diligence - Launching - Finding Product Market Fit - Getting 1st Customer(s) - Scaling - Exit First, what's your favorite? Mine is the scaling phase. There is something incredibly exciting about the early business days of building from launch to momentum. Getting your first customers, realizing your insanely business, and growing like crazy. 🚀 Here are some things to keep in mind during what could be one of the most stressful times: - People: Surround yourself with those you trust and who compliment you and your skill set. The best of the best hire up. - Purpose: Get your entire team aligned around the big ole why. Make sure they know how they contribute to the overall goal. - Processes: This is where AI, Automation, and Technology are disrupting the game of putting in systems, processes, and dashboards. - Partnerships: Who can help you accelerate your growth (think new markets, regions, territories, etc) - Profits: When you do these right, the result will come. But, focus on the actions and things you can control. Ask, what needles can we move today (as a collective team) that gets us one step closer to our goal. We're about to hop on a call with an international firm that we are partnering with to open up new regions for us at Unisupports LLC. Earlier today, we met with another AI Agency that we can help enter new markets from a tech perspective. Always be building...

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Plaid - The FinTech Effect With trust in fintech at an all-time high, consumer expectations are rising— and steering the industry to deliver faster, safer, more seamless experiences.

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I always hear founders at pre seed say 'we did this without any marketing'. That's really impressive. Truly...it is. But also...why? I understand that you aren't going to hire a head of growth yet. Or buy ads. That's good. Don't do these things. But even at early stage there is a punch list of things you should 1000% be doing. Here it is: - have a coherent positioning document. make sure that you are saying things clearly, coherently and consistently. Yeah, it will change. Update it. - have a GREAT, well designed 5-10 page website. It costs like $1000, and makes you look bigger / stronger than you are. Strong signal to customers, future employees (and VCs) - a whitepaper that explains clearly what your customer problem is, your unique approach, and why you should exist. IN CUSTOMER VOICE (please). - active social channels, most importantly, YOUR OWN. I get it, I don't really want to be doing this either. In the words of a wise friend 'the best time to do content marketing was ten years ago. the second best time is today.' In the age of Ai there is no excuse for not having the above. 'No marketing' isn't the flex you think it is.

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The lower middle market buyer landscape continues its evolution with the "F2E". James Bohannon was the ideal guest to unpack this emergent category and the nature of the talent profile. F2Es refer to the very top Wall Street investment professionals who walk away from BX, KKR, Apollo, Golden Gate, etc etc to become dual threat investor operators in the lower middle market. + They often get long term durable capital backing day one, raising anywhere from 15-100M + They tend to seek a single buy and build. They're not looking to start another PE fund. Perhaps the greatest success story that somewhat emulates the F2E path are the duo behind Lineage, a now massive publicly traded cold storage logistics business. Enjoy and big thanks to James Bohannon !

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Building a business is easy. Running one is the challenge. Every founder has to be scrappy at first. You're the CMO, CFO, and everything in between. But then one day you look up and realize, You've built a machine that only works when you do. That lesson often comes after burnout, stress, or lost momentum. But you deserve to run a business without stretching yourself thin. Here's what you need to avoid: 1. If you’re always available, you’re not leading. ↳ Being constantly accessible keeps you in reaction mode. 2. Dodging hard conversations leads to bigger problems. ↳ Silence solves nothing. 3. Holding on to the wrong people hurts everyone else. ↳ Your team notices when you keep members not performing as well. 4. You’ll always be the bottleneck until you build a system. ↳ If everything runs through you, your business is unscalable. 5. Delegation is the most important skill you learn. ↳ Avoiding it is what keeps you drowning. 6. Your energy is more important than your calendar. ↳ You can control your time and still burn out. 7. Working harder is not a plan. ↳ If more revenue = more hours, you're building a job, not a business. 8. Perfectionism stops you from being useful. ↳ People don’t need you to be flawless. They need you to be real and present. 9. Hiring more people will not fix a broken machine. ↳ A bigger team with no systems creates more chaos. 10. Growth isn’t the goal. Freedom is. ↳ A bigger business means nothing if you lose your time, health, and joy. You didn't start this journey to be exhausted. You started this to build something better for yourself. What's the hardest lesson you've learned as a founder? ♻️ If this hits home, share it with your network. 🔔 Follow Christine Carrillo for more leadership insights. 💡 Get weekly insights in your inbox: https://lnkd.in/gQCveimB

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Good operators find deals. Great operators attract deal flow. When you build trust with founders, investors, and partners, opportunities start showing up before you even ask. That’s where real capital gets deployed.

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We don't invest in early stage sports startups at Champion Venture Partners or Champion Capital because we're not in the VC game at those stages, but what we have done for certain companies that we feel could be a fit for us down the road is to do a stock swap. They get some of our CVP stock and we get in kind some of their startup stock and then once they hit the A round we look to come in with cash if there's a good fit. This gives us an insiders edge into the companies and by them owning our stock, it gives them an edge by having a name brand on their cap table which typically helps with sales and fundraising. We don't do this very often, but we do do it when the right opportunities present themselves.

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Check out the latest funding news from across the Techstars portfolio. → Zipline (Techstars 2011), a drone delivery and logistics startup, raises more than $600M in new funding, boosting its valuation to $7.6B, as it expands commercial deployments. → Language learning startup Preply (Techstars 2015) raises $150M and becomes the 23rd known unicorn from Techstars accelerators. → Hydrosat (Techstars 2019) raises $60M in Series B funding → Tive (Techstars 2017) receives a $20M investment, valuing the shipment-tracking systems developer at slightly more than $500M. → Parambil (Techstars 2023) raises an additional $6M in seed funding ($8M to date). → Seasats (Techstars 2021) receives $24M in Department of War APFIT funding to accelerate the fielding of its autonomous surface vessels. → Hawaiian Airlines’ newly announced $600M Kahuʻewai Hawai‘i Investment Plan features a strategic investment in Ampaire (Techstars 2018) to support hybrid-electric aviation in the islands. → Fintalo (Techstars 2025) secures $500K+ in oversubscribed Pre-Seed funding. → PraxisPro (Techstars 2024) closes an oversubscribed $6M seed round. → Samara Aerospace (Techstars 2024) closes $10M seed round to help bring more stability to sats in orbit. → MyARC (Techstars 2022), a platform that enables fitness creators to train their communities at scale, secures £1.5M investment. Massive congratulations to these incredible portfolio companies!   ��  Read more at https://lnkd.in/dxtCTvrg 

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VCs: Your competitor raised $100M from the same LP you met at a conference. What did they do differently?   They treated it like a deal-sourcing operation, not a networking event.   Here are 19 conferences to build your LP pipeline👇   Venture Atlanta Conference - VC and startup showcase TechCrunch Disrupt - Tech startup and innovation SuperReturn North America - VC and early-stage investment conference RAISE Global Summit - VC and startup investment summit Money20/20 USA - Fintech and payments Web Summit - Technology and innovation Opal Group - Family office networking Carmo Companies - Private markets networking The East Coast Family Office & Wealth Management Conference - Family office networking Marty S.- Family office networkng Life Science Nation (LSN) - Real estate investment 22nd Annual Global ARC Boston - Alternative risk conference for institutional investors DC Finance's Global Family Office & High Net Worth Community - Family office networking California LP Summit - LP and institutional investors The Florida Family Office & High Net Worth Conference - Family office networking Florida Venture Forum - Early-stage VC and startups Angel Capital Association - Angel investor networking Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) - Institutional LP and private markets SuperVenture North America - VC networking   If you meet just 3 meaningful contacts per event, that's 57 potential opportunities for deals, partnerships, or LP commitments. And that's being conservative. Most events offer way more than 3 quality connections if you work them right.   The difference between a $10M fund and a $500M fund is how you work the room!   Which ones are you hitting in 2025?   🤝 Follow me for proven strategies that help VCs close more deals, raise larger funds, and build lasting LP relationships.

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