On today’s episode, we’re talking numbers, brass tacks, and bottom line math. Laurie and Lee Shapiro, co-founder and managing partner at 7Wire Ventures, fill your toolbox with all the basic, fundamental numerical facts and figures you need to nail to navigate the venture capital landscape and grow your business.
Lee Shapiro knows the importance of numbers. He is co-founder and Managing Partner at 7wireVentures a leading early stage venture firm in the healthcare space. He’s also been the CFO of Livongo Health and President of Allscripts and has led the execution of over $4 billion dollars in mergers, acquisitions and financing.
Key Takeaways
- Product Market Fit: Knowing where your product will fit in the existing market will allow you to create predictions of its success, which can be used to attract funders. Try “hassle-mapping” where you see what are the challenges that people face now and how difficult is the status quo. And then what does that solution for the future look like? You should define your target customer, which will help you pitch your product to both funders during the seed stage and future customers when trying to scale your company. Some ideas may not be ready for the market so gaining market feedback is key to the process. Making sure your business is not too ahead of its time is an important piece of the product market fit.
- Knowing Your Business Cold Means Knowing:
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- Who is your actual customer?
- Cost to build and bring a product to market
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Revenue projections
- And in today’s environment, being cash conscious is very important
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- It Takes Time and Effort to Build Relationships with Funders and Relationships That Can be Used Down the Line: Relationships with funders and individuals in VC will be useful beyond just the immediate funding process. Nurturing relationships with funders will be important during other stages of growing your business. For women entrepreneurs and CEOs, joining the network of women leaders can also be helpful. Women joining together in the entrepreneurial space has significant power.
- Be serious about the work, but enjoy the ride: Building a business is hard work, very hard work. Be proud of the hard work that you put into your company and your product, but still be approachable, charismatic, and likable as an entrepreneur.
Supporting Resources
- 7 Wire Ventures Company Page
- Pitch Deck Example, HBR Alumni
- Knowing Your Customer, Alan Hall, 2012
- Basic Structure of Building a Business Plan for Beginners, Forbes 2021
- Mastering the Money Game: Mastering the Basics of Start Up Finances: 7Wire Ventures
- The art and science of crating a healthcare and life science pitch deck, Anton Xavier, Silicon Valley Bank
- Growing with creativity and authenticity: Lessons from the Digital Health CEO Summit: Rock Health, 2024
- Female Specific Benefits of Networking, Gayathri Gopalan, 2023
- How to Improve your Pitch as a Female Entrepreneur, Malin Malmström, Henrik Wesemann, and Joakim Wincent, 2020
- Taking Your Business Seriously but not Yourself too Seriously, Yini Chua, 2018
Relevant Inspiring Women Episodes
- EP 30: Only 2.3% of all venture funding went to female founders last year. Kristen Valdes changed her pitch to land her Series A.
- EP 140: Rachael Jones on the calling of Leadership. And it starts with Grit and Grace.
- EP 144: Relief in store for those suffering from chronic pain. Jennie Shulkin on why she created Override.
