David Fox

11% up, and still somehow “not good enough”. DoorDash just reminded everyone how weird marketplace math gets when orders fly and costs sprint right behind them. A quick fictional scene from the investor group chat. Someone posts: “Q1 GOV guide: $31B to $31.8B.” Someone else replies: “Nice.” Then the same person adds: “Adjusted EBITDA guide: $675M to $775M.” Silence. That is the tension in one screenshot. DoorDash reported total orders up 32% in Q4 2025, and the stock moved hard because the growth engine is clearly still on. Grocery and retail helped pull that forward, not just restaurant delivery. But the margin crowd immediately spotted the bill. DoorDash is rebuilding the tech stack to bring DoorDash, Wolt, and Deliveroo onto one platform in 2026, with a multi million dollar investment plan. Great long term. Painful quarterly. Sideways observation that matters for every seller and operator. This is what happens when convenience becomes infrastructure. Infrastructure is never cheap, and it never stops evolving. Operator checklist for anyone selling into last mile marketplaces right now: 🧲 Assume promo pressure rises when platforms chase order growth. 🧾 Build item level contribution margin views, not just blended ROAS. 🧠 Treat “platform upgrades” as a signal to expect new ad products and new fees. 🧊 Keep a storm plan, demand spikes are great until pick, pack, and couriers bottleneck. Sharp final signal. When a marketplace chooses speed plus rebuild, sellers get more volume, and less predictability. The ones who win are the ones who measure faster than the platform changes. #ecommerce #marketplaces #lastmile #retailmedia #operations

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Honestly, I have had enough of placid BS podcast episodes where people sit on the fence. “The 2:20 fee and carry model of venture is broken”. “VCs are spreadsheet monkeys”. “It is likely Putin will want more and to expand”. We cannot trust US tech, we need European sovereignty more than ever. My word, this does not lack opinion. Top 7 lessons from Taavet Hinrikus 👇 1. Why We Prefer Serial Entrepreneurs - They usually go for a bigger goal the second time around. - Torsten Reil built a gaming company before Helsing.  - Daniel Ek built an e-commerce company before Spotify. - Even if the likelihood of success is the same the outcome is so much bigger. 2. Why the Fee Structure of Venture Is Broken and VCs Should Not Get Rich From Deploying Capital  - The idea of collecting a 2-2.5% management fee does not align us with the outcomes. - We charge half of that at Plural & it enables us to make a few more investments. - You don’t want to hire people who are here for the biggest salaries. 3. The Fund That Makes Every Partner Invest Their Own Money With Every Check  - Every deal we do, the lead partner writes a personal check. - The size of it depends on the individual’s position. - We don’t like the idea of “playing with the house money”. 4. How This $500M Fund Makes Decisions - Every investor can only do a limited amount of deals a year, they have to commit their personal money & write a memo about the deal. - The memo has to include: - Why is it important to them? - Why is it important to the founder? - How can it be 100x from here? - Every deal we do, the partner has to be excited enough to be a co-founder of the company. 5. If It Is Not 100X We Do Not Want to Do the Deal - There are many great investments that are guaranteed to 5x. - They are not for Plural. - If we cannot imagine a 100x outcome we do not do the deal. 6. Change the GDP of Europe or No More Money for You - We tell our founders we’re here to have GDP levels of impact. - If your company is not doing it, we should not continue to fund it. - You can keep working on it, we’ll do our best to help you but it does not guarantee the next checks. 7. Why Europe Needs to Build Its Own Tech Now More Than Ever - Two things have happened: - The Russia/Ukraine war - Zelensky’s grilling at the White House - The US cannot be trusted to be the protector of Europe anymore.  - We need our own defence, space, & energy sector. Watch the full episode now by searching ‘20VC with Taarvet Hinrikus’ on YouTube, or click the links in the comments. #Founder #funding #business #investing #VC #entrepreneur #startup #investment #20VC

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Performance agencies sometimes think they need to differentiate by building proprietary tech. I’ve seen that story many times — and I disagree. I recently had a check-in with two C-level execs at a performance agency. We’d been delivering exceptional results for their clients, including a $33 CPA using our machine learning optimization engine, compared to $120 manually. But performance wasn’t their focus. They'd decided to build new tech in-house. “If other agencies can use tvScientific,” they said, “we’re not unique.” It brought to mind the New York Times’ decision to build its own ad server — a costly, years-long detour that ended with a move back to DFP. The problem was a lack of clarity about what business they were really in and what they were positioned to excel at. The same applies to performance agencies. They’re not in the business of building ad tech (which is a constantly evolving, capital intensive business and is an entire business in its own right). They’re in the business of delivering outcomes. That means using the best tools available on the market and winning on superior client service. Not rebuilding tools from scratch. The edge comes from execution — knowing how to evaluate, adopt, and apply best-in-class technology to drive better results. Trying to be both a tech company and a service business is a recipe for subpar results on both fronts. Instead, invest in identifying cutting-edge technology, use it better than your competitors, and deliver both superior results and superior client service. That’s the path to agency differentiation. Just my .02. More detailed thoughts on this topic in my weekly newsletter (see comments).

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🤩 Standout Boston startups continue to emerge and Q1 2025 was no exception. Here are the fast growing teams we highlighted in Q1.. 🤩 Cimulate, Inc. is building a generative AI platform for commerce, peering into the future and redefining the customer experience for a gen-AI and LLM-driven era. This team is leveraging AI to reimagine the commerce customer experience starting with search Connective Health is building a healthtech service for doctors so they are better equipped with the right data at the right time to deliver high quality care to patients. This Seed stage startup is leveraging interoperability for automated medical record retrieval and customized summaries to deliver a better experience for providers WHOOP is on a mission to unlock human performance, revolutionizing how people better understand their bodies. This late stage consumer tech company, located just over the Green Monster in Kenmore Square, is a global leader ushering in a new generation of AI driven technology for the human body OnRamp is building a customer onboarding platform for customer success teams and businesses who want to succeed from the first handshake of B2B relationships. Customers and onboarding teams alike need structured guidance to onboard effectively and OnRamp is becoming the go to choice for a growing number of businesses Matterbeam is an infrastructure software startup ending data pipeline tyranny, freeing data to make enterprises more effective. This Seed stage startup envisions a deconstruction of ETL pipelines - extract, transform, load no more - so enterprise data is more portable, immutable, and most importantly...flexible Lynx is building modern fintech infrastructure for healthcare, making it easier for healthcare institutions to build great financial products. This growth stage team is using APIs to become a “Stripe for healthcare” Proton.ai is redefining the way distributors use CRM, bringing an industry stuck in spreadsheets into the future. The distribution industry is massive, touching nearly every vertical (HVAC, electrical, industrial, automotive, construction, janitorial, and more) Tulip Interfaces is building a frontline operations platform to help deskless workforces create and manage applications without writing code. They are helping discrete manufacturers and other physical businesses improve productivity and streamline operations 7AI has built an agentic powered cybersecurity platform to arm organizations with the tools they need to defend themselves from the next generation of AI enabled attackers. Cybersecurity is evolving rapidly and 7AI is stepping into the void to help them meet this moment Copley is building an enterprise grade, AI-powered content optimization and experimentation platform for commerce. They are leveling the playing field to help growing brands compete with the largest storefronts in the world in a scalable way Much more to come in Q2 at MGMT Boston!

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TechCrunch just shared how an early backer of Wiz turned a $6M investment into a staggering 200x return, pocketing $1.2B. Stories like this are a powerful reminder that the biggest wins often come from bold, early bets... and a whole lot of patience. But here's the thing: Most people think you need millions to play this game. In reality, the best angel investors often start small, leveraging industry insight, networks, and conviction over capital. ✅ Know your edge. Investing isn’t about spraying and praying — it’s about knowing where you have a unique perspective. ✅ Back exceptional founders. The early believers in Wiz saw more than just a cybersecurity solution. They saw a team with the grit to disrupt a massive market. ✅ Play the long game. Real returns aren’t overnight. They’re built by holding steady when others get shaky. This Wiz story is inspiring, but the next one? It could have your name on it. 💵 Source: https://lnkd.in/e5_bRMCg

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Most junior estimators do not lose bids because of bad takeoffs. They lose them because they never had time to read the spec book. I hear this constantly when talking with senior estimators: “They get thrown into the bid. You hit the ground running, start pulling fixtures, get gear out for pricing… and you do not have time to dive into the specs.” That is not a discipline problem. It is a time and tooling problem. Specs answer the questions that actually move risk like: - Temporary power and lighting requirements - EMT vs MC restrictions - Owner furnished, contractor installed items Junior estimators are expected to know these, but they are rarely given the space to find them. The fix is not “read harder.” The fix is giving them a clear list of what matters before they start counting. Good estimating is not about speed. It is about removing uncertainty early. Curious how others onboard junior estimators into spec ownership.

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Too many vertical SaaS founders are burning down their markets before they even realize it. You hit $2M-$3M in revenue and think the next move is to scale like a horizontal company. Cold email programs. Spray and pray demand gen. All the tactics that worked for companies you read about on LinkedIn. It works for a quarter or two, then it stops. And by the time you realize it, you've burned through 2/3 of the companies in your vertical. I've worked with dozens of vertical SaaS and AI companies over the last couple years. The same mistakes keep showing up. Vertical markets have their own physics. Three laws in particular: Law 1: Brand velocity compounds fast Early at Levelset, we got into a public legal dispute with a competitor who ran the industry association for one of our core buyer personas. They banned us from their events. Made their position on Levelset very clear. We lost deals we didn't even know existed. Buyers disqualified us before we had a chance to earn their business. We spent 8 years working to overcome negative brand velocity with that segment. Your brand in a vertical is never neutral. It's either building momentum or losing it. And it compounds faster than you think. Law 2: Everyone on your team has to be an expert The founder knows the problem cold. But when you start hiring sales reps, marketers, and CS people, they don't have that foundation. At Levelset, we spent weeks onboarding new hires on how construction payments worked. The lien laws. The payment challenges. The GC and sub dynamics. Without that knowledge, they couldn't have real conversations or build trust. Your customers expect you to understand their world better than they do. Law 3: Vertical markets are local markets We struggled for years to build a repeatable mid-market sales motion at Levelset. Right ICP. Strong product. But we couldn't close consistently. Then we realized our best customers came through local referrals. A contractor in Dallas didn't care who we worked with in New York. They cared about the competitor across town using our software to gain an advantage. Everyone knows everyone in their city. They see each other at association meetings, industry events, job sites. They talk to each other often. You want your company to be part of those conversations. Show up to the conferences. Get active in the communities. Even better if you can own the community. Most industry associations haven't evolved in decades. Shift the center of gravity over to your brand. _______ The tactics change every year. The laws of nature don't. Build a great product. Know your customer. Educate the market. Show up in their world. When the vertical adopts your brand as the one they identify with, you'll have more demand than you can imagine.

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Getting emails from PE firms doesn’t mean your company is valuable. It just means your company is visible. They scraped Crunchbase, filtered for “B2B SaaS over $3M in revenue,” and hit send all. I hear it all the time: “PE firms are emailing me every day.” As if that’s proof of momentum, validation, or investor demand. I get it, when you’ve been heads down for years, that first cold inbound feels like a milestone. It did for me at least. But here’s the truth, 99% of those emails are templated. It’s like getting hit on at a bar and thinking it means you’re ready for marriage. Don’t confuse a mail merge with market validation. Real interest goes deeper. Until then, stay focused. Build something so good the right partners don’t need a process to find you.

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We rebuilt 100+ CI/CD pipelines for top SaaS companies. Here’s what we clean up first (and why every pipeline gets instantly healthier when we do): 1. Bloated YAMLs full of conditionals nobody understands. Most CI files evolve like a junk drawer. People keep adding edge cases, temporary fixes, and legacy logic… and no one ever removes them. ✅ What we do: Break down massive YAMLs → move logic into clean, reusable scripts → use templating if needed, but keep it boring. The goal isn’t clever. It’s clarity. 2. Useless test jobs nobody tracks anymore. We’ve seen pipelines running 10+ tests that haven’t failed in years (and nobody can explain what they’re testing.) ✅ What we do: Audit every job → kill flaky or unowned tests → tag what remains with an owner + runtime budget. Rule: If it’s unowned, it’s out. 3. Frankenstein toolchains that slow everything down. The worst setups are part GitHub Actions, part Jenkins, part ArgoCD, and 100% chaos. ✅ What we do: Pick one core system. Reduce touchpoints. Replace brittle glue scripts with shared libraries. Monolith pipelines = faster iterations. 4. Deploys without rollback or visibility. You’d be shocked how many teams push to prod without alerts, health checks, or rollback logic. ✅ What we do: Add progressive rollout → real-time alert hooks → automatic revert on failure. Shipping to prod shouldn't feel like gambling. 5. Over-permissioned runners. Still seeing pipelines with long-lived IAM tokens and full cloud access? ✅ What we do: Move to short-lived tokens via GitHub OIDC or AWS STS. Scope access down to the least privilege required. Security should be baked into the pipeline. Not duct-taped later. CI/CD doesn’t break because the tools are bad. It breaks because nobody takes ownership of the pipeline like they would their app code. What’s your first move when fixing a messy pipeline? ♻️ 𝐑𝐄𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐨 𝐎𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐂𝐚𝐧 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧.

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Build your dream house. Don’t rent a room in someone else’s. For years, SMBs have been told the same story: Pick a vendor. Accept the constraints. Pay the fees. Work around the software. AI breaks that model. The real opportunity with custom software today is ownership. Ownership of: - Your workflows - Your data - Your decision logic - Your economics Modern AI tools have flattened the playing field. What used to require large dev teams and massive budgets is now accessible to smaller companies that know their business and are willing to be intentional. This isn’t about becoming a tech company. It’s about refusing to contort your operations to fit someone else’s roadmap. You’re now free to start with a business problem and design systems around how value is actually created in your environment. Think about it this way: Off-the-shelf software is renting a room.  It’s convenient. It’s fast. But your at the mercy of your landlord and it’s never truly yours. Custom, AI-enabled systems are building a house. You choose the layout. You decide what matters. You invest once and compound the value over time. Over the next few years, this shift will reshape how durable SMBs are built. The companies that move early will own not only the software…they’ll also own the foundation their growth is built on.

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𝑼.𝑺. 𝑽𝒐𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝑨𝑰 𝑹𝒆𝒈𝒖𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 – 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑭𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓’𝒔 𝑮𝒖𝒊𝒅𝒆 Many founders building voice agents get paralyzed by legal uncertainty. The reality? A handful of U.S. regulations cover the majority of early-stage exposure. This breakdown shows you exactly what matters now and what you can (potentially) defer until later. 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐫: Obviously, this is educational content and not legal advice. Consult a qualified attorney for your specific situation. 

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If you aren't setting records right now on clicks and attendance in live rooms... you're doing it wrong. This is not the time to force a ham-fisted sale - this is the time to service. I've been through these kinds of markets maybe 5x now... you likely won't sell as much ... you will refund... but you CAN win AUDIENCE for when the smoke clears. YOU HAVE TO FOCUS ON THAT. DO NOT AVOID WHAT THEY'RE THINKING ABOUT.

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