Liz Christo shares her insights on industries ripe for disruption: - Construction and manufacturing, where legacy technology creates openings for AI-driven solutions - Vertical software, where smaller, focused markets can lead to massive wins like Procore

Should founders ask investors for a NDA before sharing their decks? The answer is no. Here are the 6 reasons why, and how you can actually protect your startup without a NDA. openvc.app/blog/nda 🔒

🚀 On this episode of The OpenVC podcast, we speak with Joakim Achren, one of Europe’s most accomplished gaming investors. He founded Next Games, which grew to 160 employees, went public, and ultimately was acquired by Netflix. youtube.com/watch?v=LC2oRPQN…

This playbook is our home-made, battle-tested process to prepare a killer startup pitch deck. 2 hours of work that will save you 10x more time down the road. Read now at openvc.app/blog/startup-pitc… ⚡️

Liz Christo, General Partner at Stage 2 Capital, shares a key insight: a strong seller with great fundamentals and work ethic can excel across industries—as long as they understand the right sales motion. Her advice? Don’t overvalue industry experience. Focus instead on finding talent who know the motion, whether its PLG inbound leads or enterprise deals.

Here are the top pitch deck designers for startups, including their prices & past works: pitchdeckexperts.app 🫡

Liz Christo, General Partner at Stage 2 Capital, highlights two key pitfalls founders face after raising a big Series A: 1️⃣ Ramping spend too quickly under pressure to hit aggressive growth targets 2️⃣ Overvaluing industry experience in sales hiring

"Your project sounds cool, but I'm not sure it's VC fundable". If you're raising funds, you need to understand what VC fundability is and how you can improve it. Read now at openvc.app/blog/vc-fundable 🥲

Here are some not-so-obvious insights about VCs, their incentives, their goals... ...that will help you get better deals with the investors you choose to work with! Read now at openvc.app/blog/how-to-negot… ♟️

Liz Christo on how AI and automation has led to really high volume of really bad emails getting sent

OpenVC pro tip ⚡️ Take our Fundability test for free and find out how to boost your chances with investors: fundability.app 💯

What Makes Stage 2 Capital Different? 1️⃣ Pod model: Every deal has two partners—one with a go-to-market background and one with a finance/VC background 2️⃣ Operator-powered LPs: With over 800 CROs, CMOs, and GTM leaders as LPs, Stage 2 offers founders direct access to talent referrals, introductions, advisors and more

Advisory shares are a double-edged sword. Let's venture into the realm of startup advisory shares, addressing the whys, whos... and the how muchs. Read now at openvc.app/blog/advisory-sha… 🫢

We have compiled and summarized 16 research papers every VC should know. Being an investor shouldn't be just about Twitter and pitch decks, here's some actual science for VC & angels. Read now at openvc.app/blog/venture-capi… 🎓

What milestones VC want to see

OpenVC pro tip ⚡️ Premium members get unlimited access to $250k+ in software perks: Airtable, Hubspot, Stripe, Notion... Best deal in town: openvc.app/perks 🤑