Practical Founders Podcast: Growth Equity for Efficient Scale-Up Founders

Phil Dur is cofounder and managing partner of PeakSpan Capital, a growth equity investment firm that works with bootstrapped SaaS founders who are scaling up to become sizable market leaders. Phil has been funding capital-efficient software founders for over 20 year and has served on 45 boards with those companies.

In this expert podcast interview, Phil explains:

• Why the practical growth equity approach is fundamentally different from the venture investment approach
• How PeakSpan and other growth equity investors support bootstrapped and capital-efficient SaaS founders
• Why founders should be taking money off the table with every funding or transaction event
• When can growth equity investment be a good fit for practical SaaS founders
• Why founders should be thinking about the risk-adjusted odds of successful exits at multiple milestones

Quote from Phil Dur, Managing Partner of PeakSpan Capital
“It’s a big deal to bring an investment partner into your business because now you’re now collaborating with someone on your big decisions. Some founders only need to look themselves in the morning mirror to decide what will happen in their business this year. When you have investor partners, you will have more dialogue to align around important decisions.

“Unfortunately, I frequently see entrepreneurs picking their first investor partner without much time getting  to know them and experience working with them. That’s why we start actively helping our founders 6 to 12 months before they make a final decision on a transaction.

“We want our founders to get a free trial of what the full experience is going to feel like before we work with them. Founders should be doing that with every other investor they are interested in.

“Don’t bring someone into your business with eight figures of capital at risk when you just met the partner two weeks before term sheets are due. That’s not a smart strategy for founders.”

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