Ex-Growth Equity founder & Exited founder building SaaS platform for private capital markets

Welcome to the 70th edition of the Geeks Of The Valley (GOTV) Newsletter, where we curate interesting early-stage startups (Series A and earlier) every week. If you enjoy and want to keep abreast with insights and interesting early-stage startups before they go big, subscribe to this newsletter ✌️.

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Geeks of the week

Startup Name: Tez (Raising. Please reach out for introduction)

Geography: India

One-liner: B2C Grocery for Tier 2+ India.

Tractions:

• Within 7 months of pilot launch and bootstrapped, making ~$400k in annualized GMV.

• AOV $28 and generating net profits from 3rd month.

• Retention 65% on average.

• Live in 1 city now and expansion to 15 cities in pipeline (around Central India region)

Some interesting insights from the founder on grocery verticals can be found below:

• Does Unit Economics make sense for Kirana Franchises / Chains?

• Group Buying / Social Commerce in Grocery.

• What’s the long-term play for QCommerce players? Consolidation or complete shut down?

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Startup Name: Termgrid

Geography: UK

One-liner: End-to-End SaaS platform for private capital markets.

Founder(s) Background: Co-founder at Farview Equity Partners (Growth investor in SaaS companies in Europe), Investor at Providence Equity Partners, Co-founder / CTO at Link3D (acquired by Materialise - global leader in 3D printing solutions).

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Startup Name: Pledge

Geography: UK

One-liner: Climate infrastructure for today's economy.

Founder(s) Background: International Expansion, Head of Data Science and Analytics, Head of Wealth and Trading at Revolut, CTO at Freetrade ($100m+ raised).

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Founders building in stealth

• 2nd robotics engineer at Ripcord (Kleiner Perkins-backed, Series B).

• Engineering Group Lead at Palantir.

• Investor at Bloomberg Beta.

• Co-founder at SkyRyse ($200m+ raised, Fidelity and Venrock-backed).

• Director of Engineering / Head of Autonomy at Lyft.

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Insight, Idea & Trend

Nicole DeTommaso 🪄 @nic_detommaso

What are GREAT benchmarks for a Series A raise as a DTC or B2C startup? YoY Rev Gr: >4x Gross Margin: >50% MRR net ret: 80% User ret (SaaS): 70% User ret (social): 45% User ret (txn): 50% DAU/MAU: >50% CAC Payback: <1 mos LTV/CAC: >3x

Olivia Moore @omooretweets

The clearest illustration I’ve seen on why every app is trying to “become TikTok” ⬇️ Short video saw the biggest YoY gain in time on mobile by a HUGE margin. Traditional social networks + video sharing (YouTube) saw the biggest losses.

Hadi Partovi @hadip

Coding is dead. Long love coding! Rise of ChatGPT, Generative AI, and “no code” platforms has caused some to question the long term demand for coders and software engineers. In many ways this is a story as old as time… (thread)