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1</head><body class="min-h-screen bg-background text-foreground font-sans antialiased"><div hidden=""><!--$--><!--/$--></div><div data-register="website" class="theme-dark min-h-screen bg-background text-foreground"><nav aria-label="Sticky" data-theme="dark" style="position:fixed;top:0;left:0;right:0;z-index:1000;background:var(--bg);display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:24px;padding:10px clamp(24px,4vw,48px);transform:translateY(-105%);transition:transform 220ms ease;box-shadow:0 1px 0 var(--hair-strong)"><a aria-label="BADideas.fund home" style="display:block" href="/"><img data-slot="wordmark" data-variant="horizontal" src="/logo/badideas-logo-horizontal-white.svg" alt="BADideas.fund" class="" style="width:95px;display:block"/></a><div style="display:flex;gap:clamp(14px,2.5vw,32px);flex-wrap:wrap;align-items:center;font-family:var(--font-mono);font-size:13px"><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear text-(--fg-muted) hover:text-(--fg)" style="white-space:nowrap" href="/portfolio">INVESTMENTS</a><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear text-(--fg-muted) hover:text-(--fg)" style="white-space:nowrap" href="/manifesto">MANIFESTO</a><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear text-(--fg)" style="white-space:nowrap" href="/blog">BLOG</a><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear text-(--fg-muted) hover:text-(--fg)" style="white-space:nowrap" href="/tools">VALUABLE TOOLS</a><a style="color:var(--fg);white-space:nowrap" href="/#send">SEND DECK</a></div></nav><div style="--s:clamp(40px,8.5vw,132px);--m:40px;--b:56px"><header id="top" data-theme="dark" style="background:var(--bg);box-sizing:border-box;padding:clamp(20px,3vw,36px) var(--s)"><nav data-slot="marketing-nav" class="flex flex-wrap items-start justify-between gap-(--space-6)"><a aria-label="BADideas.fund home" style="display:block" href="/"><img data-slot="wordmark" data-variant="horizontal" src="/logo/badideas-logo-horizontal-white.svg" alt="BADideas.fund" class="" style="width:clamp(230px,29vw,420px);display:block"/></a><span class="flex flex-wrap font-mono" style="gap:clamp(14px,2.5vw,32px);font-size:14px;padding-top:10px"><a href="/portfolio" class="no-underline transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear text-(--fg-muted) hover:text-(--fg)">INVESTMENTS</a><a href="/manifesto" class="no-underline transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear text-(--fg-muted) hover:text-(--fg)">MANIFESTO</a><a href="/blog" aria-current="page" class="no-underline transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear text-(--fg)">BLOG</a><a href="/tools" class="no-underline transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear text-(--fg-muted) hover:text-(--fg)">VALUABLE TOOLS</a><a href="/#send" class="text-(--fg) no-underline">SEND DECK</a></span></nav></header><main class="theme-light" style="background:var(--bg);color:var(--fg);font-family:var(--font-sans);overflow-x:hidden"><div data-theme="dark" style="background:var(--bg);color:var(--fg);display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:14px var(--s);border-bottom:1px solid var(--fg-faint);font-family:var(--font-mono);font-size:13px;flex-wrap:wrap"><span style="display:flex;gap:10px;white-space:nowrap"><a style="color:var(--fg-muted)" href="/">HOME</a><span style="color:var(--hair-strong)">âº</span><span style="font-weight:700">BLOG</span></span><span style="white-space:nowrap">FROM THE PORTFOLIO WORK</span></div><div style="max-width:1160px;margin:0 auto;padding:var(--s) var(--s) 0 var(--s);box-sizing:content-box"><h1 style="font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:700;font-size:clamp(44px,6.4vw,96px);line-height:0.96;letter-spacing:-0.045em;margin:0;max-width:16ch;text-wrap:balance">Go-to-market, from inside 40+ companies.</h1><div style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:flex-start;gap:24px;margin-top:var(--b);flex-wrap:wrap"><p style="font-size:17px;line-height:1.65;max-width:520px;margin:0">Each article takes one go-to-market problem we hit in the portfolio, shows the working, and ships with a tool you can run on your own numbers. No frameworks for the sake of frameworks.</p><a href="#newsletter" class="u-caps inline-flex shrink-0 items-center justify-center gap-1.5 text-[length:var(--text-label)] whitespace-nowrap transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear outline-none select-none focus-visible:ring-2 focus-visible:ring-(--ring) focus-visible:ring-offset-0 disabled:pointer-events-none disabled:opacity-40 [&_svg]:pointer-events-none [&_svg]:shrink-0 [&_svg:not([class*='
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Where do you land?</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/distribution-is-the-new-moat">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">How to make a business plan for an early-stage startup (+ free pitch evaluator tool)</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">JUN 2026<!-- -->Â Â <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">Nordigen co-founder Roberts Bernans spent a year on a startup he could have killed in an hour. His fix for how to make a business plan: validate fast, then pre-check your deck with our free Pitch Evaluator.</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/how-to-make-a-business-plan">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">Go-to-market strategy framework for early-stage startups (+ free AI VP of Marketing tool)</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">JUN 2026<!-- -->Â Â <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">A go-to-market strategy framework for early-stage founders, from operator Suhas Ghante: nail buyer, pain and trust - plus a free AI VP of Marketing tool to build.</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/go-to-market-strategy-framework">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">Think Global, Act Local: Win CEE Markets with Focused GTM Playbooks</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">NOV 2025<!-- -->Â Â <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">The majority of B2B SaaS companies entering a new market start with optimism, a good product, and a global brand story that they think will be received anyw
1here. They invest in various aspects, including sophisticated websites, coordinated product messaging, online demand channels, and well-developed content. However, the truth is more basic: markets are different, customers do not necessarily think alike, and expansion should be led by a local mindset as well.</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/think-global-act-local">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">After nearly two months of training, new founders are ready to raise capital</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">NOV 2025<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">On Friday, October 24, the third edition of Fundraising School - a fundraising accelerator organized by venture capital fund BADideas.fund, in partnership with the Latvian Investment and Development Agency (LIAA) and the Riga Investment and Tourism Agency (RITA) - concluded with a dynamic Demo Day event. Over 40% of participating founders have already entered discussions with investors.</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/fs-2025">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">BADideas.fund opens applications for the 3rd Fundraising School; applications close September 4</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">AUG 2025<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">Fundraising School is the only specialized accelerator program in Latvia dedicated solely to preparing startups for fundraising â targeted at pre-seed and seed-stage founders across industries. Over six weeks, participants will learn to approach investors, craft compelling pitches, and close investment deals.</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/fs-applications-open">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">Pleso Therapy raises â¬1.2M to expand its online therapy platform in Europe</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">JUL 2025<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">Pleso Therapy, a European mental health platform that uses AI to match users with the right therapists, has raised â¬1.2 million to strengthen its presence across Europe.
1</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/pleso-therapy">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">What SaaStr 2025 taught us about AI-native GTM (and whatâs already obsolete)</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">MAY 2025<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">If SaaStr 2025 had a headline, itâd be this: âAI isnât a feature. Itâs a forcing function.â </p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/saastr-2025">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">BADideas.fund launches â¬22M fund to back bold early-stage founders across CEE</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">APR 2025<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">BADideas.fund, a founder-first investor syndicate of 250+ unicorn builders, has launched a â¬22M fund to back early-stage startups.</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/22m-fund">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">BADideas.fund celebrates first exit with RoomPriceGenie</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">FEB 2025<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">BADideas.fund announces its first successful exit, following RoomPriceGenieâs $75 million USD investment from Five Elms Capital.</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/roompricegenie-exit">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">Startups to watch in 2024</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">FEB 2024<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">In a twist of an old saying, it takes a village to raise a unicorn. We know that because we at BADideas.fund have been lucky enough to have </p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/startups-to-watch">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">A deep dive into our investment in RoomPriceGenie</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">JUN 2023<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">We are thrilled to back RoomPriceGenie thanks to the value the team brings to the hotel industry and our portfolio, and the chance to partic</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/roompricegenie-investment">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">BADideas.fund's bold bet on Value.Space</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">MAY 2023<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">BADideas.fund's investment in Value.Space is more than just another venture capital deal. It'
1s us taking a bold stance to back innovative te</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/value-space">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">From Lithuania to California: seven lessons on breaking into the US startup scene</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">APR 2023<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">Breezit's journey conquering the US so far teaches us to adapt and embrace the local scene. Think of it as dancing with a new partner â pay </p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/from-lithuania-to-california">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">Tips for successful angel investing with Ben Leblois</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">APR 2023<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">Part of our ethos over here at BADideas.fund is to go beyond writing checks to game-changing startups by building a true community centered </p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/tips-for-angel-investing">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">BADideas.fund hits a â¬1M investment milestone in first 9 months</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">MAR 2023<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">The total amount invested through the early-stage angel investor BADideas.fund crosses the â¬1M mark less than a year after launch. Since April 2022, the angel investor syndicate has invested â¬1.2M in 11 startups overall, ranging from â¬50' 000 to â¬200' 000 per investment ticket. The fund is backed by over 150 members whoâve been building companies such as Pipedrive, Printify, Nordigen and Vinted, Printful among others. Focus on early-traction tech in CEE So far, the fund has invested in 11...</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/1m-investment-milestone">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">The ultimate guide to crushing your pitch: advice for founders</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">MAR 2023<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">As the startup builders behind BADideas.fund, we've seen our fair share of startup pitches. Some are phenomenal, while others... well, let's</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/pitch-advice">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">Negotiating advisor compensation: tips and strategies for advisors and founders</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">FEB 2023<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">As a startup advisor, you play a critical role in the success of a new business. You bring valuable expertise and guidance to the table, and</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/negotiating-advisor-compensation">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">Estonia-based RecruitLab picks up â¬1.9 million to boost video-recruitment platform</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">AUG 2022<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">The Estonian startup will use the new cash to triple the workforce and add functionality to the platform. BADideas.fund was among the invest</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/recruitlab">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div><div style="border-top:1px solid var(--hair);border-bottom:1px solid var(--fg)"><button type="button" aria-expanded="false" class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:flex;justify-content:space-between;gap:24px;padding:18px 0;flex-wrap:wrap;width:100%;background:none;border:none;color:inherit;font:inherit;text-align:left;cursor:pointer"><span style="flex:1;min-width:min(300px,100%);font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:800;font-size:clamp(19px,2vw,24px);letter-spacing:-0.02em">BADideas.fund 1st investment is Breezit</span><span style="color:var(--fg-muted);white-space:nowrap">JUN 2022<!-- -->  <!-- -->+</span></button><div hidden="" style="padding:0 0 24px;max-width:70ch;display:none"><p style="font-family:var(--font-sans);font-size:15px;line-height:1.6;color:var(--fg-muted);margin:0">$185 billion is spent on private event services every year in the US alone. Yet service providers (such as venue operators, photographers, c</p><a class="transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear hover:text-(--fg-muted)" style="display:inline-block;margin-top:14px;color:var(--fg)" href="/post/breezit">READ THE FULL ARTICLE â</a></div></div></div></div><div id="newsletter" style="max-width:1160px;margin:0 auto;padding:var(--s);box-sizing:content-box"><h2 style="font-family:var(--font-display);font-weight:700;font-size:clamp(40px,5.4vw,80px);line-height:0.98;letter-spacing:-0.04em;margin:0;max-width:900px;text-wrap:balance">Get the next one in your inbox.</h2><p style="font-size:17px;line-height:1.65;max-width:520px;margin:var(--b) 0 0">One go-to-market problem per issue, with a free tool to work it. 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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"Every founder I meet has early product-market fit. Very few can tell me what would make them admit they do not. That is what the phrase has turned into: a status you award yourself rather than a bar you clear. So here is the bar, and then the question that actually decides what you do today.\n\n## Product-market fit meaning: the one-line definition\n\nProduct-market fit is when the market pulls the product out of your hands. People adopt it, keep using it, and tell other people, without you in the room. The cleanest working test I have heard comes from [Jason Cohen, who founded Smart Bear and WP Engine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xLquwfx6p0). When he diagnoses a company that has stopped growing, he does not open with revenue or pipeline. He opens with whether customers stay:\n\n\u003e \"Step one is this [logo retention](https://churnfree.com/blog/logo-retention/), essentially do we have product market fit?\"\n\nRetention first. Then pricing and positioning. Then growth. His point is the sequence: run those three in any other order and you are optimising a leak. Spending on acquisition before the retention question is answered makes the top-line number rise while the product quietly fails everyone who arrived last month.\n\n## Product-market fit is a curve, not a moment\n\nFit is not a line you cross once and announce. It is a shape you watch. Group users by the week they arrived, then chart what share are still active 1, 2 and 6 weeks later. You are looking for the curve to stop falling. A curve that flattens means a real group of people found lasting value and stayed. A curve that decays to zero means you are renting attention. The [Y Combinator Startup School session on retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNxBZ7ka5J0) puts the test in one sentence:\n\n\u003e \"If your curves don't flatten out, I would say it's a pretty good sign that you haven't yet made something people want.\"\n\nTwo details decide whether your chart tells you the truth. First, the window has to match how the product is meant to be used: daily for high-frequency products, weekly or monthly for a utility someone opens when a specific job appears. Measure a monthly tool on daily retention and a healthy product looks dead. Second, you need to know which single action predicts that someone comes back. [Sarah Tavel, a partner at Benchmark who was early at Pinterest, calls it the core action](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9g4pzcz6Tk):\n\n\u003e \"It's an action that if they perform the action they're very likely to come back.\"\n\nFor Facebook that action was friending. For Pinterest, pinning. Before fit, most of your work is finding your version of that action and getting more new users to reach it, sooner.\n\n\n\n*In the chart, one cohort flattens with about 30% of users still active. The other is gone by week 6.*\n\n## The misdiagnosis that costs a year\n\nHere is where most founders lose time, and it is the part the definition never covers. A curve that bleeds to zero gets read as a product verdict. The founder concludes the product is not good enough, and goes back to building. Six months of roadmap later, the curve looks the same.\n\nSometimes the product genuinely is the problem. Often it is not. The same Y Combinator session names the other cause directly:\n\n\u003e \"You've built a great product but you're targeting it to the wrong type of customer.\"\n\nIf you are pouring the wrong people into a product that works for a narrower group, the aggregate curve will bleed no matter how good the software gets. The fix is not in the codebase. It is in who you acquire and what you say to them, which is a go-to-market problem with go-to-market levers: the ICP definition, the message, the channel, the sequence in which you test them.\n\nThis is the belief the whole [BADideas thesis sits on](/post/distribution-is-the-new-moat). At seed, great founders with real direction still die, and they rarely die on the product or on what they believe. They die on go-to-market: on which experiments they run, in what order, and how well they run them. Moving from your first handful of customers to a repeatable way to acquire hundreds more is the entire game between now and your next round. Get the bets wrong about what that engine is and it does not slow the company down, it ends it before the product ever gets a real shot.\n\nThe practical version, before you touch the roadmap: split the curve. Chart retention separately by segment, by acquisition channel, and by how the user arrived. If one segment flattens at 35% while the blended average bleeds, you do not have a product problem. You have a targeting problem, and you have just found the customer you should be building the company around. One founder in our [portfolio](/portfolio), Leszek at Juo, had demos convert
1ing well and revenue refusing to follow. The product was not the issue. The ICP had been drawn too wide, so the company was selling to anyone who might plausibly benefit rather than the profile that converted consistently. Redefining that ICP, rebuilding the messaging around it, and sequencing the path from interest to revenue is what moved the numbers.\n\n\n\n## Why a bleeding curve stays hidden for three months\n\nThere is a second reason founders misread the curve, and it has nothing to do with analytics. Naming a retention problem out loud has a cost, especially to the person who wrote you a cheque.\n\nOn a Tuesday morning a founder drafts three sentences to his investor about why the ICP is not working and conversion is down. He reads them back, decides the investor will not know what to do with this, deletes them, and sends something manageable instead. The real situation does not get named until it is three months old and considerably harder to fix. At seed, three months is material. Martin, who runs Fleetfox, described the dynamic without being asked:\n\n\u003e \"With other VCs I feel like I have to draft a message and make sure I don't say anything wrong.\"\n\nThat instinct is rational when your investor asked for a five-year projection on a four-month-old product. It is also the mechanism by which a fixable retention problem becomes a fatal one. A founder performing strength gives everyone a managed version of the problem, and a managed problem gets a managed diagnosis. If you are reading your own curve this week, the useful question is not only what the chart says. It is who you can show it to on Tuesday instead of in October.\n\n## How to measure it honestly\n\nThree practices, drawn from what consistently shows up across Cohen, Tavel and the Startup School material.\n\n1. **Start with cohort retention, not revenue.** One chart: rows are signup week, columns are weeks since signup, cells are the share still active. It answers the fit question more honestly than anything else on your dashboard, and the tool below will build it from whatever export you already have.\n2. **Name your comeback action and instrument it.** Write down the single behaviour that predicts a return visit, measure what share of new users reach it, and treat \"more new users to that action, sooner\" as the job until the curve flattens.\n3. **Segment before you conclude.** Never act on a blended curve. Split by channel and customer type first, because the blended average is what turns a targeting problem into a rebuild.\n\nUnderneath all three is the thing that actually compounds: how many real hypotheses you can test in a week, and how fast you update when the market answers. Not motion for its own sake. Learning rate. Founders close to the problem do not just run more experiments, they run better ones, because they know which hypotheses are worth testing at all.\n\n## The tool of the week: a cohort retention chart builder\n\nThe third of those practices, segmenting before you conclude, is the one founders skip. Not because it is conceptually hard, but because it means wrestling a spreadsheet into a triangle and then doing it again for every segment. So we built it instead.\n\nIt needs two columns: a user id and a date. Activity means whatever counts as using your product, so a login, a session, an order, an invoice or an API call all work. If you have a signup date, map it and the tool uses it. If you do not, it takes each user's first activity as their cohort. Add an optional third column, a segment such as plan, channel, country or industry, and it does the part this article is actually about: it draws the blended curve, splits it by segment, and tells you when the two disagree. On the sample data it reports that self-serve holds at 35% while outbound falls to 2%, and that the blended 17% describes neither of them.\n\nTwo things worth knowing before you paste anything in. It runs entirely in your browser, so your customer data is never uploaded and the page works offline once loaded. And it excludes cohorts that have not lived long enough to reach a given week rather than counting them as zero, which is the most common way a hand-built retention chart flatters you.\n\n\u003ciframe src=\"/tools/cohort-retention-chart-builder.html\" title=\"Cohort retention chart builder\" height=\"550\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n\n## What to do this week\n\n1. Build one cohort retention chart, using the tool above or a spreadsheet, and look only at whether week 6 is flat or falling. Ignore the absolute number for now.\n2. Split that chart by acquisition channel and by customer type. If any single segment flattens, stop planning product work and go read that segment.\n3. Write down your comeback action and the share of new users who reach it. If you cannot name the action, that is this week's work.\n4. Send the Tuesday email. Whatever the curve says, tell the person who funded you now rather than
1in three months.\n\n## Frequently asked questions\n\n\u003cFaq\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"What does product-market fit (PMF) mean?\"}\u003e\n\nProduct-market fit means your product satisfies real demand strongly enough that a group of customers keeps using it without being pushed. In practice it shows up as cohort retention that flattens onto a plateau rather than decaying toward zero.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"How do you measure product-market fit?\"}\u003e\n\nGroup users by the week they joined and track what share stay active over the following weeks. If the curve flattens at a stable level, that is evidence of fit. If it keeps falling to zero, you do not have it yet. Retention is a more reliable signal than signups or revenue, both of which can rise while the product is failing new users.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"Is product-market fit a feeling or a metric?\"}\u003e\n\nIt is a metric. Excitement on sales calls, a rush of demo requests and a strong launch week can all happen without fit. Fit is repeated usage visible in the data, behaviour that continues when the founder is not pushing.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"What's the difference between product-market fit and idea validation?\"}\u003e\n\nIdea validation happens before you build: cheap conversations to decide whether an idea is worth pursuing at all. Product-market fit is measured after people use the product, and it asks whether they keep coming back. You validate to decide what to build, then read retention to find out whether it fits.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"How much retention means you have product-market fit?\"}\u003e\n\nThere is no universal number, because it depends on how often your product is naturally used. The signal is the shape, not the percentage. Google Photos flattened between 20% and 40% by country and device, which was enough. A curve that keeps declining is not fit at any percentage.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"My retention is bad. Is my product wrong?\"}\u003e\n\nNot necessarily. A bleeding curve has two common causes: the product does not deliver lasting value, or you are acquiring the wrong customers for a product that works well for a narrower group. Segment the curve by channel and customer type before you conclude. If one segment flattens while the average bleeds, the problem is targeting, and rebuilding the product will not fix it.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003c/Faq\u003e\n\n---\n\n## Work with BADideas.fund\n\nWe're an early-stage fund backing founders across CEE who are betting on things that sound wrong right up until they are obviously right. We are ex-founders, and our thesis is the one running through this piece: seed companies rarely die on the product or on what the founder believes, they die on go-to-market, on which experiments they run, in what order, and how well they run them. So that is where we go all in. Within weeks of closing, every company runs a structured GTM diagnostic, and when it surfaces a specific problem, a named operator who has run that exact function before, in outbound, growth or product-led, is briefed and in the room. You bring the read on the customer. We work on the translation from that read into the right experiment, in the right order, faster than you would get to it alone."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"Every founder I meet has early product-market fit. Very few can tell me what would make them admit they do not. That is what the phrase has turned into: a status you award yourself rather than a bar you clear. So here is the bar, and then the question that actually decides what you do today.\n\n## Product-market fit meaning: the one-line definition\n\nProduct-market fit is when the market pulls the product out of your hands. People adopt it, keep using it, and tell other people, without you in the room. The cleanest working test I have heard comes from [Jason Cohen, who founded Smart Bear and WP Engine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xLquwfx6p0). When he diagnoses a company that has stopped growing, he does not open with revenue or pipeline. He opens with whether customers stay:\n\n\u003e \"Step one is this [logo retention](https://churnfree.com/blog/logo-retention/), essentially do we have product market fit?\"\n\nRetention first. Then pricing and positioning. Then growth. His point is the sequence: run those three in any other order and you are optimising a leak. Spending on acquisition before the retention question is answered makes the top-line number rise while the product quietly fails everyone who arrived last month.\n\n## Product-market fit is a curve, not a moment\n\nFit is not a line you cross once and announce. It is a shape you watch. Group users by the week they arrived, then chart what share are still active 1, 2 and 6 weeks later. You are looking for the curve to stop falling. A curve that flattens means a real group of people found lasting value and stayed. A curve that decays to zero means you are renting attention. The [Y Combinator Startup School session on retention](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNxBZ7ka5J0) puts the test in one sentence:\n\n\u003e \"If your curves don't flatten out, I would say it's a pretty good sign that you haven't yet made something people want.\"\n\nTwo details decide whether your chart tells you the truth. First, the window has to match how the product is meant to be used: daily for high-frequency products, weekly or monthly for a utility someone opens when a specific job appears. Measure a monthly tool on daily retention and a healthy product looks dead. Second, you need to know which single action predicts that someone comes back. [Sarah Tavel, a partner at Benchmark who was early at Pinterest, calls it the core action](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9g4pzcz6Tk):\n\n\u003e \"It's an action that if they perform the action they're very likely to come back.\"\n\nFor Facebook that action was friending. For Pinterest, pinning. Before fit, most of your work is finding your version of that action and getting more new users to reach it, sooner.\n\n\n\n*In the chart, one cohort flattens with about 30% of users still active. The other is gone by week 6.*\n\n## The misdiagnosis that costs a year\n\nHere is where most founders lose time, and it is the part the definition never covers. A curve that bleeds to zero gets read as a product verdict. The founder concludes the product is not good enough, and goes back to building. Six months of roadmap later, the curve looks the same.\n\nSometimes the product genuinely is the problem. Often it is not. The same Y Combinator session names the other cause directly:\n\n\u003e \"You've built a great product but you're targeting it to the wrong type of customer.\"\n\nIf you are pouring the wrong people into a product that works for a narrower group, the aggregate curve will bleed no matter how good the software gets. The fix is not in the codebase. It is in who you acquire and what you say to them, which is a go-to-market problem with go-to-market levers: the ICP definition, the message, the channel, the sequence in which you test them.\n\nThis is the belief the whole [BADideas thesis sits on](/post/distribution-is-the-new-moat). At seed, great founders with real direction still die, and they rarely die on the product or on what they believe. They die on go-to-market: on which experiments they run, in what order, and how well they run them. Moving from your first handful of customers to a repeatable way to acquire hundreds more is the entire game between now and your next round. Get the bets wrong about what that engine is and it does not slow the company down, it ends it before the product ever gets a real shot.\n\nThe practical version, before you touch the roadmap: split the curve. Chart retention separately by segment, by acquisition channel, and by how the user arrived. If one segment flattens at 35% while the blended average bleeds, you do not have a product problem. You have a targeting problem, and you have just found the customer you should be building the company around. One founder in our [portfolio](/portfolio), Leszek at Juo, had demos convert
1ing well and revenue refusing to follow. The product was not the issue. The ICP had been drawn too wide, so the company was selling to anyone who might plausibly benefit rather than the profile that converted consistently. Redefining that ICP, rebuilding the messaging around it, and sequencing the path from interest to revenue is what moved the numbers.\n\n\n\n## Why a bleeding curve stays hidden for three months\n\nThere is a second reason founders misread the curve, and it has nothing to do with analytics. Naming a retention problem out loud has a cost, especially to the person who wrote you a cheque.\n\nOn a Tuesday morning a founder drafts three sentences to his investor about why the ICP is not working and conversion is down. He reads them back, decides the investor will not know what to do with this, deletes them, and sends something manageable instead. The real situation does not get named until it is three months old and considerably harder to fix. At seed, three months is material. Martin, who runs Fleetfox, described the dynamic without being asked:\n\n\u003e \"With other VCs I feel like I have to draft a message and make sure I don't say anything wrong.\"\n\nThat instinct is rational when your investor asked for a five-year projection on a four-month-old product. It is also the mechanism by which a fixable retention problem becomes a fatal one. A founder performing strength gives everyone a managed version of the problem, and a managed problem gets a managed diagnosis. If you are reading your own curve this week, the useful question is not only what the chart says. It is who you can show it to on Tuesday instead of in October.\n\n## How to measure it honestly\n\nThree practices, drawn from what consistently shows up across Cohen, Tavel and the Startup School material.\n\n1. **Start with cohort retention, not revenue.** One chart: rows are signup week, columns are weeks since signup, cells are the share still active. It answers the fit question more honestly than anything else on your dashboard, and the tool below will build it from whatever export you already have.\n2. **Name your comeback action and instrument it.** Write down the single behaviour that predicts a return visit, measure what share of new users reach it, and treat \"more new users to that action, sooner\" as the job until the curve flattens.\n3. **Segment before you conclude.** Never act on a blended curve. Split by channel and customer type first, because the blended average is what turns a targeting problem into a rebuild.\n\nUnderneath all three is the thing that actually compounds: how many real hypotheses you can test in a week, and how fast you update when the market answers. Not motion for its own sake. Learning rate. Founders close to the problem do not just run more experiments, they run better ones, because they know which hypotheses are worth testing at all.\n\n## The tool of the week: a cohort retention chart builder\n\nThe third of those practices, segmenting before you conclude, is the one founders skip. Not because it is conceptually hard, but because it means wrestling a spreadsheet into a triangle and then doing it again for every segment. So we built it instead.\n\nIt needs two columns: a user id and a date. Activity means whatever counts as using your product, so a login, a session, an order, an invoice or an API call all work. If you have a signup date, map it and the tool uses it. If you do not, it takes each user's first activity as their cohort. Add an optional third column, a segment such as plan, channel, country or industry, and it does the part this article is actually about: it draws the blended curve, splits it by segment, and tells you when the two disagree. On the sample data it reports that self-serve holds at 35% while outbound falls to 2%, and that the blended 17% describes neither of them.\n\nTwo things worth knowing before you paste anything in. It runs entirely in your browser, so your customer data is never uploaded and the page works offline once loaded. And it excludes cohorts that have not lived long enough to reach a given week rather than counting them as zero, which is the most common way a hand-built retention chart flatters you.\n\n\u003ciframe src=\"/tools/cohort-retention-chart-builder.html\" title=\"Cohort retention chart builder\" height=\"550\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n\n## What to do this week\n\n1. Build one cohort retention chart, using the tool above or a spreadsheet, and look only at whether week 6 is flat or falling. Ignore the absolute number for now.\n2. Split that chart by acquisition channel and by customer type. If any single segment flattens, stop planning product work and go read that segment.\n3. Write down your comeback action and the share of new users who reach it. If you cannot name the action, that is this week's work.\n4. Send the Tuesday email. Whatever the curve says, tell the person who funded you now rather than
1in three months.\n\n## Frequently asked questions\n\n{/* TODO Wix COLLAPSIBLE_LIST node ud23510301: 6-item accordion (initialExpandedItems FIRST). Titles and bodies rendered below as bold question + answer paragraph. */}\n\n**What does product-market fit (PMF) mean?**\n\nProduct-market fit means your product satisfies real demand strongly enough that a group of customers keeps using it without being pushed. In practice it shows up as cohort retention that flattens onto a plateau rather than decaying toward zero.\n\n**How do you measure product-market fit?**\n\nGroup users by the week they joined and track what share stay active over the following weeks. If the curve flattens at a stable level, that is evidence of fit. If it keeps falling to zero, you do not have it yet. Retention is a more reliable signal than signups or revenue, both of which can rise while the product is failing new users.\n\n**Is product-market fit a feeling or a metric?**\n\nIt is a metric. Excitement on sales calls, a rush of demo requests and a strong launch week can all happen without fit. Fit is repeated usage visible in the data, behaviour that continues when the founder is not pushing.\n\n**What's the difference between product-market fit and idea validation?**\n\nIdea validation happens before you build: cheap conversations to decide whether an idea is worth pursuing at all. Product-market fit is measured after people use the product, and it asks whether they keep coming back. You validate to decide what to build, then read retention to find out whether it fits.\n\n**How much retention means you have product-market fit?**\n\nThere is no universal number, because it depends on how often your product is naturally used. The signal is the shape, not the percentage. Google Photos flattened between 20% and 40% by country and device, which was enough. A curve that keeps declining is not fit at any percentage.\n\n**My retention is bad. Is my product wrong?**\n\nNot necessarily. A bleeding curve has two common causes: the product does not deliver lasting value, or you are acquiring the wrong customers for a product that works well for a narrower group. Segment the curve by channel and customer type before you conclude. If one segment flattens while the average bleeds, the problem is targeting, and rebuilding the product will not fix it.\n\n---\n\n## Work with BADideas.fund\n\nWe're an early-stage fund backing founders across CEE who are betting on things that sound wrong right up until they are obviously right. We are ex-founders, and our thesis is the one running through this piece: seed companies rarely die on the product or on what the founder believes, they die on go-to-market, on which experiments they run, in what order, and how well they run them. So that is where we go all in. Within weeks of closing, every company runs a structured GTM diagnostic, and when it surfaces a specific problem, a named operator who has run that exact function before, in outbound, growth or product-led, is briefed and in the room. You bring the read on the customer. We work on the translation from that read into the right experiment, in the right order, faster than you would get to it alone."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"*Building a product is nearly free now - so distribution is the new moat. Our manifesto, in Ben Leblois' words, backed by seven founders and operators who've lived it. Tell us where you land.*\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: author avatar image + byline paragraph); content preserved below */}\n\n\u003cAuthorByline photoSrc={\"https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f33507_b49147782e1e49da870601df309497eb~mv2.png\"} photoAlt={\"JurÄ£is, community and brand lead at BADideas.fund\"}\u003e\n\nI'm [JurÄ£is](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgiskalnins1/) - community \u0026 brand lead at BADideas.fund and host of the Bad Advice podcast. Most issues dig into one go-to-market problem from the show and hand you a free tool to fix it. This one's different: no guest chair, no tool - it's what we actually believe, and an invitation to argue with it.\n\n\u003c/AuthorByline\u003e\n\n**The short version, for the people in a hurry.** Everyone thinks building a company got easier - cheaper to build, cheaper to ship, no gatekeepers. It got easier to start and harder to win. When anyone can build your product in a weekend, building stops being the moat. Two things are left: a real, non-consensus conviction, and distribution - getting it in front of the right people fast enough to matter. That's why, now more than ever, distribution is the new moat. Below, [Ben Leblois](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-leblois-7a416654/) lays out the whole argument, each piece backed by a founder or operator who said the same thing on Bad Advice - and next to each one, a poll, because we'd rather hear where you disagree.\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (grey callout box with two CTA links); content preserved below */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply
1/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)\n\nAlthough I didn't have my camera with me, I sat down with Ben last week - one of the people who's been shaping what this fund actually stands for - and got him to say the quiet part out loud. Here's what stuck, point by point.\n\n## It got easier to start, and harder to win\n\nBen's opening line is a splash of cold water. Everyone treats cheap tools as good news. He thinks that's exactly backwards for anyone trying to build something that lasts.\n\n\u003e \"Everyone thinks it got easier. Cheaper to build, cheaper to ship, no gatekeepers left - so it must be easier to make money, right? Maybe. At the margins. But to build something that lasts, that wins a market, that defines a category? That's harder now than it has ever been. And if you don't feel that in your gut, you're already on a path I can't join you on.\"\n\nIt's the same thing [Madara KÅÅ«tiÅa](https://www.linkedin.com/in/madaraknutina/) told me on Bad Advice. The glossy startup story is a lie of omission - and the grind isn't a bug, it's the whole point: \"*Startups may look cool from the outside. They are gruesome on the inside - and that is the point, in the sense that it is that pain and overcoming challenges that drives satisfaction and drives the success and drives the team forward.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/Uh-3CyZD41c */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"It has gotten easier to start a company, but harder to build one that wins. Where do you land? \" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## The first thing that's left: a non-consensus conviction\n\nIf building no longer sets you apart, Ben says only two things do. The first is
1what you believe that nobody else does yet.\n\n\u003e \"What do you believe that others laugh out of the room as too outlandish, too far in the future? Bolting a 1% twist onto the obvious wins you nothing. Push deeper - find something you truly believe is worth doing. And for the love of god, don't outsource that insight to an LLM. We're all thinking with the same machine now. Ask it what to build and it hands you the median. The average is free - and worthless.\"\n\nThat's literally what we mean by *bad ideas*: not reckless, non-consensus. [Roberts BernÄns](https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberts-bernans-87264b17/) lived the whole arc - Nordigen was laughed out of the room before GoCardless bought it: \"*Most people said our idea was bad - and who in their right mind would make such a business? In our earlier speeches in front of investors, we were often at the bottom.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z8ih2St3J94 */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"The strongest startups are built on a belief most people think is wrong. What do you think?\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## Everything else is secondary - by orders of magnitude\n\nOnce you have the conviction, Ben's rule is brutal about focus: the two things that matter get everything, and the rest - the decks, the logos, the vanity - gets almost nothing.\n\n\u003e \"Everything else - genuinely everything else - is secondary, by orders of magnitude. Find the thing you actually believe, the thing you *have* to do, and run at it with everything you've got.\"\n\n[Kristaps Krafte](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristapskrafte/) put the same discipline in founder terms: chase the business, not the theatre around it: \"*Entrepreneurs, focus on bringing in the cash. Focus on the cash flow. Don't focus on making the most perfect pitch deck, on being in the best relationships with the investor. Although that's important - really focus on your business.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/GKhdPRfUt34 */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"Founders waste too much energy on pitch polish and not enough on the actual business.\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## The second thing that's left: distribution is the new moat\n\nHere's the hinge of the whole manifesto. When the product can be copied in a weekend, the thing that decides who wins is who reaches the market first and best. Ben doesn't hedge it.\n\n\u003e \"Distribution. How fast can you move? Can your growth create a sense of inevitability - with customers, investors, partners, talent? In a world where someone can take you by storm overnight, you're running for your life every day.\"\n\n[Suhas Ghante](https://www.linkedin.com/in/suhasghante/) agrees: \"*It's become so easy to start a company, to vibe code. So what sets you apart? Number one, storytelling. But number two, it's distribution... distribution, I would argue these days, is more important than product.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/wbuTsKl54JQ */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"The hardest part of your startup isn't building the product - it's getting anyone to notice it.\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## Building isn't the win - getting noticed is\n\nThe trap Ben keeps seeing is founders who mistake a finished product for a finished job.\n\n\u003e \"That's where most great companies quietly die. The product is right, the belief is right, and it never reaches the market fast enough to matter. In a world this noisy, that gap kills more good companies than bad ideas ever will.\"\n\n[JÄkabs EndziÅÅ¡](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jekabsendzins/) has been shouting this one for years: \"*I need to get a tattoo on my forehead: distribution-first mindset. Thanks to AI, building something is very easy. Right now the world is full of beautiful and unique products that no one knows about. Young founders should not think 'how do I build?' but 'how do I get noticed?'*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/L4uIf2gc_AY */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"Distribution is now more important than product. Where do you stand?\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## Speed is the moat inside the moat\n\nDistribution isn't just reach - it's velocity. Ben's framing is that speed used to matter; now it's existential, because you're not outrunning ten competitors, you're outrunning a thous
1and.\n\n\u003e \"Speed has always mattered in startups. But outrunning a thousand people is a whole different sport from outrunning ten.\"\n\n[Egija Gailuma](https://www.linkedin.com/in/egijagailuma/), who's raced the same clock building OX Drive, put it in one line: \"*We have to have speed. The one who will be the first to break through is still going to be the winner.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/yQ7HP7hykWE */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"Being first to break through matters more than being best.\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## The generational companies are being built right now\n\nBen's closing bet is a timing argument. Every cycle mints its defining companies at the very start - and we're at the very start of the AI one. Incrementalism is a late-cycle move. Which means the founders who run hardest now, with the hungriest teams, get the once-a-decade opening.\n\n\u003e \"We're at the very beginning of the AI cycle. The incremental companies aren't the ones being built right now - the amazing ones are. You need one thing you actually believe and the stubbornness to run at it harder than anyone alive.\"\n\n[Lauris Rutkis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauris-rutkis/) found the same thing building Swotzi - raw, hungry, all-in beats seasoned and comfortable when the clock is the enemy: \"*Young people straight out of university with the right mindset would outwork the experienced ones. In early stage, when time is so valuable, outworking others is everything.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/c0Vun-9hy2U */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"At the start of a cycle, hunger and speed beat experience.\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## Why we exist - and who throws everything at the distribution half\n\nThe judgment is the founder's half - the conviction, the read on the market, the thing you have to build. We can't manufacture that, and we don't try. It's why we back you. Distribution is the other scarce thing, and it's the half we go all-in on with you: a bench of GTM operators who are winning right now, matched to your motion, plus the system that closes the gap between their advice and your execution - so world-class distribution help lands in days, not quarters. A few of the operators in the room with you:\n\n{/* TODO Wix COLLAPSIBLE_LIST (accordion, 4 items, first item initially expanded); titles and bodies preserved below */}\n\n[**Danny Leonard**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielpleonard/) **â SMB Outbound Sales**\n\nTop rep of 1,000+ at Groupon (2010 Salesperson of the Year); Square's first sales hire (architected a 200+ person, $5B GPV org); grew OrderAhead 1,300%+; co-founded Ramped (acquired by Teal); 7-year Sales EIR at 500 Startups; now Sales Operating Partner at Maschmeyer Group Ventures.\n\n[**Ruslan Nazarenko**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruslannazarenko/) **â Marketplace \u0026 P
1LG Growth**\n\nHead of Growth at Scale AI; founding growth member at Vimeo (4x users, 3x revenue); growth at Bird ($2.5B, Sequoia-backed); took Braid 0â$1M monthly while cutting CAC from $200 to $40; top-5 Reforge contributor; now founder of Lumos AI and Labela.\n\n[**Greg Volm**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregvolm/) **â Enterprise Outbound Sales**\n\n20+ years across 8 venture/PE-backed companies; top AE at Salesforce, built Zendesk's first SMBâEnterprise teams through IPO; VP Sales NA at Xero, SVP Global Sales at Prezi (100M+ users), EVP Sales at Envoy; built the GTM team at [Aircover.ai](http://Aircover.ai) that sold the first enterprise AI deals to Fortune 500s; now VP Business Development at Harbor Compliance.\n\n[**Mario Araujo**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marioandrearaujo/) **â Product-Led Growth**\n\nLed company-wide PLG transformation at OutSystems ($10B+ platform), 0âmulti-million self-service revenue in under 2 years, growth team 1â100+; 3x'd ARR at Softr in a year; built Penpot's monetization from zero; now Head of PLG at Flosum; advises Google, Mozilla, Boomi through ProductLed.\n\n\n\n## Frequently asked questions\n\n\u003cFaq\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"What does \\\"distribution is the new moat\\\" mean?\"}\u003e\n\nIt means that now that building a product is cheap and fast, the product itself is no longer scarce or defensible - anyone can rebuild it. What's scarce is reaching the right customers first and building momentum competitors can't match. That reach and speed - distribution - is the new moat.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"If building is nearly free, does the idea still matter?\"}\u003e\n\nYes, more than ever - but only a non-consensus one. Free tools hand everyone the same average output. The edge is a conviction others dismiss, which tells you what to build and who for. Distribution then decides whether the world hears it in time.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"What does BADideas mean by \\\"bad ideas\\\"?\"}\u003e\n\nNon-consensus ideas, not reckless ones - the bets that sound wrong right up until they're obviously right. We back founders with one real conviction and the stubbornness to run at it harder than anyone alive.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"Who does BADideas back?\"}\u003e\n\nFounders building with small teams and betting they'll win on distribution, not on being the only ones who could build the thing. That belief - not stage or sector - is the filter.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"How does BADideas actually help with distribution?\"}\u003e\n\nWe pair founders with a bench of GTM operators winning right now - enterprise and SMB sales, PLG, marketplace growth - matched to your motion, so world-class distribution help lands in days, not quarters.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003c/Faq\u003e\n\n## Work with BADideas.fund\n\nWe're an early-stage B2B fund across CEE and the Nordics, and everyone here has built companies before - the fund we wished we'd had. We back founders whose drive borders on unreasonable and go all-in on the distribution half of the game: the go-to-market drift that quietly kills startups between rounds, caught while there's still room to correct.\n\nIf you're building with a small team and betting on distribution, and you'd rather have operators who've walked your exact walk in the room with you:\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (grey callout box with two CTA links); content preserved below */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply
1/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)"])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"*Building a product is nearly free now - so distribution is the new moat. Our manifesto, in Ben Leblois' words, backed by seven founders and operators who've lived it. Tell us where you land.*\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: author avatar image + byline paragraph); content preserved below */}\n\n\n\nI'm [JurÄ£is](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgiskalnins1/) - community \u0026 brand lead at BADideas.fund and host of the Bad Advice podcast. Most issues dig into one go-to-market problem from the show and hand you a free tool to fix it. This one's different: no guest chair, no tool - it's what we actually believe, and an invitation to argue with it.\n\n**The short version, for the people in a hurry.** Everyone thinks building a company got easier - cheaper to build, cheaper to ship, no gatekeepers. It got easier to start and harder to win. When anyone can build your product in a weekend, building stops being the moat. Two things are left: a real, non-consensus conviction, and distribution - getting it in front of the right people fast enough to matter. That's why, now more than ever, distribution is the new moat. Below, [Ben Leblois](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-leblois-7a416654/) lays out the whole argument, each piece backed by a founder or operator who said the same thing on Bad Advice - and next to each one, a poll, because we'd rather hear where you disagree.\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (grey callout box with two CTA links); content preserved below */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply
1/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)\n\nAlthough I didn't have my camera with me, I sat down with Ben last week - one of the people who's been shaping what this fund actually stands for - and got him to say the quiet part out loud. Here's what stuck, point by point.\n\n## It got easier to start, and harder to win\n\nBen's opening line is a splash of cold water. Everyone treats cheap tools as good news. He thinks that's exactly backwards for anyone trying to build something that lasts.\n\n\u003e \"Everyone thinks it got easier. Cheaper to build, cheaper to ship, no gatekeepers left - so it must be easier to make money, right? Maybe. At the margins. But to build something that lasts, that wins a market, that defines a category? That's harder now than it has ever been. And if you don't feel that in your gut, you're already on a path I can't join you on.\"\n\nIt's the same thing [Madara KÅÅ«tiÅa](https://www.linkedin.com/in/madaraknutina/) told me on Bad Advice. The glossy startup story is a lie of omission - and the grind isn't a bug, it's the whole point: \"*Startups may look cool from the outside. They are gruesome on the inside - and that is the point, in the sense that it is that pain and overcoming challenges that drives satisfaction and drives the success and drives the team forward.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/Uh-3CyZD41c */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"It has gotten easier to start a company, but harder to build one that wins. Where do you land? \" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## The first thing that's left: a non-consensus conviction\n\nIf building no longer sets you apart, Ben says only two things do. The first is
1what you believe that nobody else does yet.\n\n\u003e \"What do you believe that others laugh out of the room as too outlandish, too far in the future? Bolting a 1% twist onto the obvious wins you nothing. Push deeper - find something you truly believe is worth doing. And for the love of god, don't outsource that insight to an LLM. We're all thinking with the same machine now. Ask it what to build and it hands you the median. The average is free - and worthless.\"\n\nThat's literally what we mean by *bad ideas*: not reckless, non-consensus. [Roberts BernÄns](https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberts-bernans-87264b17/) lived the whole arc - Nordigen was laughed out of the room before GoCardless bought it: \"*Most people said our idea was bad - and who in their right mind would make such a business? In our earlier speeches in front of investors, we were often at the bottom.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z8ih2St3J94 */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"The strongest startups are built on a belief most people think is wrong. What do you think?\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## Everything else is secondary - by orders of magnitude\n\nOnce you have the conviction, Ben's rule is brutal about focus: the two things that matter get everything, and the rest - the decks, the logos, the vanity - gets almost nothing.\n\n\u003e \"Everything else - genuinely everything else - is secondary, by orders of magnitude. Find the thing you actually believe, the thing you *have* to do, and run at it with everything you've got.\"\n\n[Kristaps Krafte](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristapskrafte/) put the same discipline in founder terms: chase the business, not the theatre around it: \"*Entrepreneurs, focus on bringing in the cash. Focus on the cash flow. Don't focus on making the most perfect pitch deck, on being in the best relationships with the investor. Although that's important - really focus on your business.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/GKhdPRfUt34 */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"Founders waste too much energy on pitch polish and not enough on the actual business.\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## The second thing that's left: distribution is the new moat\n\nHere's the hinge of the whole manifesto. When the product can be copied in a weekend, the thing that decides who wins is who reaches the market first and best. Ben doesn't hedge it.\n\n\u003e \"Distribution. How fast can you move? Can your growth create a sense of inevitability - with customers, investors, partners, talent? In a world where someone can take you by storm overnight, you're running for your life every day.\"\n\n[Suhas Ghante](https://www.linkedin.com/in/suhasghante/) agrees: \"*It's become so easy to start a company, to vibe code. So what sets you apart? Number one, storytelling. But number two, it's distribution... distribution, I would argue these days, is more important than product.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/wbuTsKl54JQ */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"The hardest part of your startup isn't building the product - it's getting anyone to notice it.\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## Building isn't the win - getting noticed is\n\nThe trap Ben keeps seeing is founders who mistake a finished product for a finished job.\n\n\u003e \"That's where most great companies quietly die. The product is right, the belief is right, and it never reaches the market fast enough to matter. In a world this noisy, that gap kills more good companies than bad ideas ever will.\"\n\n[JÄkabs EndziÅÅ¡](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jekabsendzins/) has been shouting this one for years: \"*I need to get a tattoo on my forehead: distribution-first mindset. Thanks to AI, building something is very easy. Right now the world is full of beautiful and unique products that no one knows about. Young founders should not think 'how do I build?' but 'how do I get noticed?'*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/L4uIf2gc_AY */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"Distribution is now more important than product. Where do you stand?\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## Speed is the moat inside the moat\n\nDistribution isn't just reach - it's velocity. Ben's framing is that speed used to matter; now it's existential, because you're not outrunning ten competitors, you're outrunning a thous
1and.\n\n\u003e \"Speed has always mattered in startups. But outrunning a thousand people is a whole different sport from outrunning ten.\"\n\n[Egija Gailuma](https://www.linkedin.com/in/egijagailuma/), who's raced the same clock building OX Drive, put it in one line: \"*We have to have speed. The one who will be the first to break through is still going to be the winner.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/yQ7HP7hykWE */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"Being first to break through matters more than being best.\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## The generational companies are being built right now\n\nBen's closing bet is a timing argument. Every cycle mints its defining companies at the very start - and we're at the very start of the AI one. Incrementalism is a late-cycle move. Which means the founders who run hardest now, with the hungriest teams, get the once-a-decade opening.\n\n\u003e \"We're at the very beginning of the AI cycle. The incremental companies aren't the ones being built right now - the amazing ones are. You need one thing you actually believe and the stubbornness to run at it harder than anyone alive.\"\n\n[Lauris Rutkis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauris-rutkis/) found the same thing building Swotzi - raw, hungry, all-in beats seasoned and comfortable when the clock is the enemy: \"*Young people straight out of university with the right mindset would outwork the experienced ones. In early stage, when time is so valuable, outworking others is everything.*\"\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (2 columns: HTML embed + poll) */}\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: YouTube Short iframe 360x640, src https://www.youtube.com/embed/c0Vun-9hy2U */}\n{/* TODO Wix POLL: \"At the start of a cycle, hunger and speed beat experience.\" with options: 1 â Strongly disagree; 2 â Somewhat disagree; 3 â Neither agree nor disagree; 4 â Somewhat agree; 5 â Strongly agree */}\n\n## Why we exist - and who throws everything at the distribution half\n\nThe judgment is the founder's half - the conviction, the read on the market, the thing you have to build. We can't manufacture that, and we don't try. It's why we back you. Distribution is the other scarce thing, and it's the half we go all-in on with you: a bench of GTM operators who are winning right now, matched to your motion, plus the system that closes the gap between their advice and your execution - so world-class distribution help lands in days, not quarters. A few of the operators in the room with you:\n\n{/* TODO Wix COLLAPSIBLE_LIST (accordion, 4 items, first item initially expanded); titles and bodies preserved below */}\n\n[**Danny Leonard**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielpleonard/) **â SMB Outbound Sales**\n\nTop rep of 1,000+ at Groupon (2010 Salesperson of the Year); Square's first sales hire (architected a 200+ person, $5B GPV org); grew OrderAhead 1,300%+; co-founded Ramped (acquired by Teal); 7-year Sales EIR at 500 Startups; now Sales Operating Partner at Maschmeyer Group Ventures.\n\n[**Ruslan Nazarenko**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruslannazarenko/) **â Marketplace \u0026 P
1LG Growth**\n\nHead of Growth at Scale AI; founding growth member at Vimeo (4x users, 3x revenue); growth at Bird ($2.5B, Sequoia-backed); took Braid 0â$1M monthly while cutting CAC from $200 to $40; top-5 Reforge contributor; now founder of Lumos AI and Labela.\n\n[**Greg Volm**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregvolm/) **â Enterprise Outbound Sales**\n\n20+ years across 8 venture/PE-backed companies; top AE at Salesforce, built Zendesk's first SMBâEnterprise teams through IPO; VP Sales NA at Xero, SVP Global Sales at Prezi (100M+ users), EVP Sales at Envoy; built the GTM team at [Aircover.ai](http://Aircover.ai) that sold the first enterprise AI deals to Fortune 500s; now VP Business Development at Harbor Compliance.\n\n[**Mario Araujo**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marioandrearaujo/) **â Product-Led Growth**\n\nLed company-wide PLG transformation at OutSystems ($10B+ platform), 0âmulti-million self-service revenue in under 2 years, growth team 1â100+; 3x'd ARR at Softr in a year; built Penpot's monetization from zero; now Head of PLG at Flosum; advises Google, Mozilla, Boomi through ProductLed.\n\n\n\n## Frequently asked questions\n\n{/* TODO Wix COLLAPSIBLE_LIST (accordion, 5 FAQ items); titles and bodies preserved below */}\n\n**What does \"distribution is the new moat\" mean?**\n\nIt means that now that building a product is cheap and fast, the product itself is no longer scarce or defensible - anyone can rebuild it. What's scarce is reaching the right customers first and building momentum competitors can't match. That reach and speed - distribution - is the new moat.\n\n**If building is nearly free, does the idea still matter?**\n\nYes, more than ever - but only a non-consensus one. Free tools hand everyone the same average output. The edge is a conviction others dismiss, which tells you what to build and who for. Distribution then decides whether the world hears it in time.\n\n**What does BADideas mean by \"bad ideas\"?**\n\nNon-consensus ideas, not reckless ones - the bets that sound wrong right up until they're obviously right. We back founders with one real conviction and the stubbornness to run at it harder than anyone alive.\n\n**Who does BADideas back?**\n\nFounders building with small teams and betting they'll win on distribution, not on being the only ones who could build the thing. That belief - not stage or sector - is the filter.\n\n**How does BADideas actually help with distribution?**\n\nWe pair founders with a bench of GTM operators winning right now - enterprise and SMB sales, PLG, marketplace growth - matched to your motion, so world-class distribution help lands in days, not quarters.\n\n## Work with BADideas.fund\n\nWe're an early-stage B2B fund across CEE and the Nordics, and everyone here has built companies before - the fund we wished we'd had. We back founders whose drive borders on unreasonable and go all-in on the distribution half of the game: the go-to-market drift that quietly kills startups between rounds, caught while there's still room to correct.\n\nIf you're building with a small team and betting on distribution, and you'd rather have operators who've walked your exact walk in the room with you:\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (grey callout box with two CTA links); content preserved below */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply
1/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)"])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"*The contrarian guide to how to make a business plan when you're pre-launch - validate the idea fast, kill it faster, and let one real buyer do what a 40-page document can't. From GTM operator and Nordigen co-founder Roberts Bernans.*\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT node (2-cell author-bio row: IMAGE + PARAGRAPH). Original layout dropped; inner content rendered below. */}\n\n\u003cAuthorByline photoSrc={\"https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f33507_b49147782e1e49da870601df309497eb~mv2.png\"} photoAlt={\"JurÄ£is, community and brand lead at BADideas.fund\"}\u003e\n\nI'm [JurÄ£is](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgiskalnins1/) - community \u0026 brand lead at BADideas.fund and host of the Bad Advice podcast. Every newsletter issue digs into multiple go-to-market problems from the show and hands you a free downloadable tool to fix it (a skill, an md spec, an AI VP of Sales or Marketing, etc.).\n\n\u003c/AuthorByline\u003e\n\n**The short version, for the people in a hurry.** If you're working out how to make a business plan for an early-stage startup, the most useful move is the opposite of what the templates tell you: don't write the long document first. At pre-launch your job isn't to plan, it's to learn whether the idea survives contact with one real buyer. [Roberts Bernans](https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberts-bernans-87264b17/) - who co-founded Nordigen, scaled it across Europe and sold it to GoCardless - spent a full year building a startup he could have killed in an hour, because he validated late instead of early. The fix is a short loop: a couple of slides, one honest conversation with someone in the field, then kill or proceed. The plan is the output of validation, not the input. And before you pitch an investor, you can now see how we'd score your deck in minutes (free tool below).\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT node (single-cell CTA callout box, grey #F6F5F4 background). Original layout dropped; inner content rendered below. */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply
1/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Access the tool of the week](#the-badideasfund-pitch-evaluator)\n\nI sat down with Roberts for an hour on our podcast, *Bad Advice*. Here's the go-to-market strategy framework that stuck.\n\n## The year-long business plan that should have been a one-hour kill\n\nBefore Nordigen, Roberts and his co-founder [Rolands](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rolandsmesters/) (who's now working on [BirdyChat](https://www.startupreporter.eu/birdychat-raises-1-7m-launches-europe/)) had an idea: a marketplace where travellers could resell airline tickets they weren't going to use. The market logic looked fine - around 5% of people don't show up for their flights. So they did what founders are told to do. They built the business cards, the presentations, \"all sorts of nonsense you don't need,\" and worked the idea for a year.\n\n\u003e \"We worked for a year on this idea, and we should have taken an hour to kill it\"\n\nThe thing that finally killed it was a single conversation - they needed an airline as a launch partner, got in front of the AirBaltic board, and heard a flat no. A year of planning, one meeting to end it. The lesson Roberts pulled out is the one that should reshape how you think about how to make a business plan: the plan didn't protect them from anything. The market conversation they delayed for twelve months was the only document that mattered.\n\n\n\n## How to make a business plan that's actually a validation loop\n\nHere's the reframe. A business plan for an early-stage startup isn't a document you write once and defend. It's a fast loop you run dozens of times until something sticks. When Roberts and Rolands reset after the airline flop, they built a weekly ritual: meet for a beer, each bring a list of ideas, pick one or two, and spend a week trying to validate them.\n\n\u003e \"Get a product as early as possible in front of your users, because only a user can tell you if it's good or bad\"\n\nThe validation itself was deliberately cheap. No build. Maybe a couple of slides to illustrate the point.\n\n\u003e \"Don't build anything. Maybe build a couple of slides just to illustrate the point. Get it in front of a couple of people, validate, kill or proceed. Very simple.\"\n\nThey ran 100 ideas through that filter. Idea number 100-ish was Nordigen. That's the real shape of an early-stage business plan - not a tidy narrative you author in a vacuum, but the residue of a hundred fast kills.\n\n---\n\n## Stop chasing statistical significance. One person is often enough.\n\nThe most common mistake Roberts sees in younger founders is over-engineering the validation step - the exact thing that makes a \"proper\" business plan feel productive while teaching you nothing.\n\n\u003e \"Young entrepreneurs over-engineer. Let's create a Google Form with 100 questions, build it out for weeks - then how do I find 100 people to get a statistically significant response? Sometimes it's enough with one person to tell you.\"\n\nThe point isn't to be rigorous for its own sake. It's to reduce ambiguity as fast and as cheaply as possible. One credible buyer who says \"I'd never pay for this\" has just saved you a year. He calls the mindset the cockroach: relentless, hard to kill, willing to ask.\n\n\u003e \"It doesn't cost you anything to invite someone on LinkedIn and say, 'Hey, I'm building a startup - can I grab you for a coffee chat?' Most will say no. Fine. Didn't cost you anything. But some will reply.\"\n\n---\n\n## Whose advice belongs in the plan - and whose doesn't\n\nA business plan absorbs advice from everywhere: accelerators, hackathons, investors, that one angel with strong opinions. Roberts' hard-won filter is to weigh the source before the advice. Early on, most people told him his i
1dea was bad and Nordigen ranked at the bottom of pitch competitions. Following all of it would have been fatal.\n\n\u003e \"Most people who gave us advice had good intentions. It's just that their experience was either incomplete or too specific to be useful in our case.\"\n\nHis practical move: instead of asking an advisor \"tell me about you,\" ask \"tell me what you're great at,\" then take everything in context. The plan is yours to own - advisors inform it, they don't write it.\n\n## The AI mistake that wrecks a plan before it starts\n\nRoberts now leads [BADbrain](https://www.badideas.fund/why-us), the AI infrastructure behind BADideas - effectively an AI interface to the fund that connects our [300+ operator and founder members](https://www.badideas.fund/members) to the help they need. So when he talks about AI in your business plan, it's worth listening.\n\n\u003e \"People start from the end. They go for the flashy things - autonomous agents - and don't realise nothing's working. You can't expect agents to do magic if you don't have any data, or it's structured the wrong way. The agent isn't working badly. What you're expecting from it is unfounded.\"\n\n[The plan-level takeaway](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply): AI and automation are means to an end, not the strategy. \"Every tool should have a purpose.\" Don't write \"AI-powered\" into your plan before you've written down what data you actually have.\n\n---\n\n## The BADideas.fund pitch evaluator\n\nRoberts' whole philosophy is that the best validation is one honest read from someone who actually decides. The trouble is that those people - investors - are exactly who you can't easily get a coffee with before you're ready. So we built the next best thing, and the same validate-fast logic runs underneath it.\n\nRoberts matched a year of our [real investment committee decisions](/portfolio) - the scores and the written comments - against the pitch decks behind them, and extrapolated how BADideas actually makes decisions from a deck. Then he flipped that into a small tool: **upload your pitch deck and get a glance at how BADideas would evaluate your business.**\n\nThe feedback is personalised to how we score, so you're not getting boilerplate suggestions - you're getting a preview of how an early-stage B2B investor reads your business. Use it to find the holes before the real conversation.\n\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: \u0026lt;iframe src=\"https://badideas-deck-reviewer.onrender.com/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"800px\" style=\"border:none;\"\u0026gt;\u0026lt;/iframe\u0026gt; */}\n\n---\n\n## Watch / listen to the full episode\n\nRoberts goes deeper on the Nordigen journey, the lucky acquisition, hiring fast (and firing fast), and why he calls himself productively lazy.\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Watch on YouTube](https://youtu.be/HIuDDv-KZfc?si=3gwdV0Yf-iv589-s) â¶ï¸ [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5NFMynTkzSJOx5jdOMCetC?si=2dcf4f76a7e3472d)\n\n{/* TODO Wix VIDEO embed: src \"https://youtu.be/HIuDDv-KZfc?si=3gwdV0Yf-iv589-sbe.com/watch?v=Z4qf0ZrrKno\", title \"âListen to everyoneâ â BAD ADVICE #6 w/ Roberts Bernans\", thumbnail \"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HIuDDv-KZfc/maxresdefault.jpg\", duration 1315 */}\n\n---\n\n## Frequently asked questions\n\n\u003cFaq\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"How do you make a business plan for an early-stage startup?\"}\u003e\n\nAt the earliest stage, treat the business plan as a fast validation loop rather than a long document. Define the idea in a couple of slides, get it in front of one real potential buyer who can tell you it's good or bad, and then kill it or proceed. Run that loop across many ideas. The written plan is the output of validation, not the thing you write before validating.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"Do I need a business plan to raise funding?\"}\u003e\n\nYou need clarity far more than a long document. Investors back founders who can show who the buyer is, how acute the pain is, and evidence that real people want the thing. A clear, validated pitch deck does more than a 40-page plan. You can pre-check yours with the BADideas Pitch Evaluator before you pitch.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"How much customer validation is enough before writing a plan?\"}\u003e\n\nOften far less than founders think. As Roberts Bernans puts it, sometimes one credible person in the field is enough to tell you whether an idea is worth pursuing. Chasing statistical significance with a 100-question survey usually delays the only signal that matters - a real buyer's honest reaction.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"What's the biggest mistake founders make with AI in their plans?\"}\u003e\n\nStarting from the end. Founders reach for flashy autonomous agents before they have the data or data infrastru
1cture to support them. AI should be a means to an end with a clear purpose, not the strategy itself written into the plan.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003c/Faq\u003e\n\n---\n\n## Work with BADideas.fund\n\nWe're an early-stage B2B fund across CEE and the Nordics, and everyone here has built companies before. We back founders whose drive borders on unreasonable and work alongside them on the GTM drift that kills startups between rounds - while there's still room to correct.\n\nIf you're raising and want operators who've walked your exact walk in the room with you:\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT node (single-cell CTA callout box, grey #F6F5F4 background). Original layout dropped; inner content rendered below. */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Access the tool of the week](#the-badideasfund-pitch-evaluator)"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"1e:T2d3b,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"*The contrarian guide to how to make a business plan when you're pre-launch - validate the idea fast, kill it faster, and let one real buyer do what a 40-page document can't. From GTM operator and Nordigen co-founder Roberts Bernans.*\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT node (2-cell author-bio row: IMAGE + PARAGRAPH). Original layout dropped; inner content rendered below. */}\n\n\n\nI'm [JurÄ£is](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgiskalnins1/) - community \u0026 brand lead at BADideas.fund and host of the Bad Advice podcast. Every newsletter issue digs into multiple go-to-market problems from the show and hands you a free downloadable tool to fix it (a skill, an md spec, an AI VP of Sales or Marketing, etc.).\n\n**The short version, for the people in a hurry.** If you're working out how to make a business plan for an early-stage startup, the most useful move is the opposite of what the templates tell you: don't write the long document first. At pre-launch your job isn't to plan, it's to learn whether the idea survives contact with one real buyer. [Roberts Bernans](https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberts-bernans-87264b17/) - who co-founded Nordigen, scaled it across Europe and sold it to GoCardless - spent a full year building a startup he could have killed in an hour, because he validated late instead of early. The fix is a short loop: a couple of slides, one honest conversation with someone in the field, then kill or proceed. The plan is the output of validation, not the input. And before you pitch an investor, you can now see how we'd score your deck in minutes (free tool below).\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT node (single-cell CTA callout box, grey #F6F5F4 background). Original layout dropped; inner content rendered below. */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply
1/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Access the tool of the week](#the-badideasfund-pitch-evaluator)\n\nI sat down with Roberts for an hour on our podcast, *Bad Advice*. Here's the go-to-market strategy framework that stuck.\n\n## The year-long business plan that should have been a one-hour kill\n\nBefore Nordigen, Roberts and his co-founder [Rolands](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rolandsmesters/) (who's now working on [BirdyChat](https://www.startupreporter.eu/birdychat-raises-1-7m-launches-europe/)) had an idea: a marketplace where travellers could resell airline tickets they weren't going to use. The market logic looked fine - around 5% of people don't show up for their flights. So they did what founders are told to do. They built the business cards, the presentations, \"all sorts of nonsense you don't need,\" and worked the idea for a year.\n\n\u003e \"We worked for a year on this idea, and we should have taken an hour to kill it\"\n\nThe thing that finally killed it was a single conversation - they needed an airline as a launch partner, got in front of the AirBaltic board, and heard a flat no. A year of planning, one meeting to end it. The lesson Roberts pulled out is the one that should reshape how you think about how to make a business plan: the plan didn't protect them from anything. The market conversation they delayed for twelve months was the only document that mattered.\n\n\n\n## How to make a business plan that's actually a validation loop\n\nHere's the reframe. A business plan for an early-stage startup isn't a document you write once and defend. It's a fast loop you run dozens of times until something sticks. When Roberts and Rolands reset after the airline flop, they built a weekly ritual: meet for a beer, each bring a list of ideas, pick one or two, and spend a week trying to validate them.\n\n\u003e \"Get a product as early as possible in front of your users, because only a user can tell you if it's good or bad\"\n\nThe validation itself was deliberately cheap. No build. Maybe a couple of slides to illustrate the point.\n\n\u003e \"Don't build anything. Maybe build a couple of slides just to illustrate the point. Get it in front of a couple of people, validate, kill or proceed. Very simple.\"\n\nThey ran 100 ideas through that filter. Idea number 100-ish was Nordigen. That's the real shape of an early-stage business plan - not a tidy narrative you author in a vacuum, but the residue of a hundred fast kills.\n\n---\n\n## Stop chasing statistical significance. One person is often enough.\n\nThe most common mistake Roberts sees in younger founders is over-engineering the validation step - the exact thing that makes a \"proper\" business plan feel productive while teaching you nothing.\n\n\u003e \"Young entrepreneurs over-engineer. Let's create a Google Form with 100 questions, build it out for weeks - then how do I find 100 people to get a statistically significant response? Sometimes it's enough with one person to tell you.\"\n\nThe point isn't to be rigorous for its own sake. It's to reduce ambiguity as fast and as cheaply as possible. One credible buyer who says \"I'd never pay for this\" has just saved you a year. He calls the mindset the cockroach: relentless, hard to kill, willing to ask.\n\n\u003e \"It doesn't cost you anything to invite someone on LinkedIn and say, 'Hey, I'm building a startup - can I grab you for a coffee chat?' Most will say no. Fine. Didn't cost you anything. But some will reply.\"\n\n---\n\n## Whose advice belongs in the plan - and whose doesn't\n\nA business plan absorbs advice from everywhere: accelerators, hackathons, investors, that one angel with strong opinions. Roberts' hard-won filter is to weigh the source before the advice. Early on, most people told him his i
1dea was bad and Nordigen ranked at the bottom of pitch competitions. Following all of it would have been fatal.\n\n\u003e \"Most people who gave us advice had good intentions. It's just that their experience was either incomplete or too specific to be useful in our case.\"\n\nHis practical move: instead of asking an advisor \"tell me about you,\" ask \"tell me what you're great at,\" then take everything in context. The plan is yours to own - advisors inform it, they don't write it.\n\n## The AI mistake that wrecks a plan before it starts\n\nRoberts now leads [BADbrain](https://www.badideas.fund/why-us), the AI infrastructure behind BADideas - effectively an AI interface to the fund that connects our [300+ operator and founder members](https://www.badideas.fund/members) to the help they need. So when he talks about AI in your business plan, it's worth listening.\n\n\u003e \"People start from the end. They go for the flashy things - autonomous agents - and don't realise nothing's working. You can't expect agents to do magic if you don't have any data, or it's structured the wrong way. The agent isn't working badly. What you're expecting from it is unfounded.\"\n\n[The plan-level takeaway](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply): AI and automation are means to an end, not the strategy. \"Every tool should have a purpose.\" Don't write \"AI-powered\" into your plan before you've written down what data you actually have.\n\n---\n\n## The BADideas.fund pitch evaluator\n\nRoberts' whole philosophy is that the best validation is one honest read from someone who actually decides. The trouble is that those people - investors - are exactly who you can't easily get a coffee with before you're ready. So we built the next best thing, and the same validate-fast logic runs underneath it.\n\nRoberts matched a year of our [real investment committee decisions](/portfolio) - the scores and the written comments - against the pitch decks behind them, and extrapolated how BADideas actually makes decisions from a deck. Then he flipped that into a small tool: **upload your pitch deck and get a glance at how BADideas would evaluate your business.**\n\nThe feedback is personalised to how we score, so you're not getting boilerplate suggestions - you're getting a preview of how an early-stage B2B investor reads your business. Use it to find the holes before the real conversation.\n\n{/* TODO Wix HTML embed: \u0026lt;iframe src=\"https://badideas-deck-reviewer.onrender.com/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"800px\" style=\"border:none;\"\u0026gt;\u0026lt;/iframe\u0026gt; */}\n\n---\n\n## Watch / listen to the full episode\n\nRoberts goes deeper on the Nordigen journey, the lucky acquisition, hiring fast (and firing fast), and why he calls himself productively lazy.\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Watch on YouTube](https://youtu.be/HIuDDv-KZfc?si=3gwdV0Yf-iv589-s) â¶ï¸ [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5NFMynTkzSJOx5jdOMCetC?si=2dcf4f76a7e3472d)\n\n{/* TODO Wix VIDEO embed: src \"https://youtu.be/HIuDDv-KZfc?si=3gwdV0Yf-iv589-sbe.com/watch?v=Z4qf0ZrrKno\", title \"âListen to everyoneâ â BAD ADVICE #6 w/ Roberts Bernans\", thumbnail \"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HIuDDv-KZfc/maxresdefault.jpg\", duration 1315 */}\n\n---\n\n## Frequently asked questions\n\n{/* TODO Wix COLLAPSIBLE_LIST node (4 COLLAPSIBLE_ITEMs, accordion). Original accordion dropped; item titles and bodies rendered below. */}\n\n**How do you make a business plan for an early-stage startup?**\n\nAt the earliest stage, treat the business plan as a fast validation loop rather than a long document. Define the idea in a couple of slides, get it in front of one real potential buyer who can tell you it's good or bad, and then kill it or proceed. Run that loop across many ideas. The written plan is the output of validation, not the thing you write before validating.\n\n**Do I need a business plan to raise funding?**\n\nYou need clarity far more than a long document. Investors back founders who can show who the buyer is, how acute the pain is, and evidence that real people want the thing. A clear, validated pitch deck does more than a 40-page plan. You can pre-check yours with the BADideas Pitch Evaluator before you pitch.\n\n**How much customer validation is enough before writing a plan?**\n\nOften far less than founders think. As Roberts Bernans puts it, sometimes one credible person in the field is enough to tell you whether an idea is worth pursuing. Chasing statistical significance with a 100-question survey usually delays the only signal that matters - a real buyer's honest reaction.\n\n**What's the biggest mistake founders make with AI in their plans?**\n\nStarting from the end. Founders reach for flashy autonomous agents before they have the data or data infrastru
1cture to support them. AI should be a means to an end with a clear purpose, not the strategy itself written into the plan.\n\n---\n\n## Work with BADideas.fund\n\nWe're an early-stage B2B fund across CEE and the Nordics, and everyone here has built companies before. We back founders whose drive borders on unreasonable and work alongside them on the GTM drift that kills startups between rounds - while there's still room to correct.\n\nIf you're raising and want operators who've walked your exact walk in the room with you:\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT node (single-cell CTA callout box, grey #F6F5F4 background). Original layout dropped; inner content rendered below. */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Access the tool of the week](#the-badideasfund-pitch-evaluator)"])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"*The go-to-market strategy framework a decade-deep operator uses to fix what quietly kills pre-seed startups - buyer, pain, and trust. Plus a free AI VP of Marketing tool you can build this week.*\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (author byline, 2 cells: image + paragraph) - inner content preserved below */}\n\n\u003cAuthorByline photoSrc={\"https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f33507_b49147782e1e49da870601df309497eb~mv2.png\"} photoAlt={\"JurÄ£is, community and brand lead at BADideas.fund\"}\u003e\n\nI'm [JurÄ£is](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgiskalnins1/) - community \u0026 brand lead at BADideas.fund and host of the Bad Advice podcast. Every newsletter issue digs into multiple go-to-market problems from the show and hands you a free downloadable tool to fix it (a skill, an md spec, an AI VP of Sales or Marketing, etc.).\n\n\u003c/AuthorByline\u003e\n\n**The short version, for the people in a hurry.** Most early-stage startups don't die because the product is bad - they die because they never built a real go-to-market strategy framework. [Suhas Ghante](https://intro.co/suhasghante), who's advised startups that have raised over $100M combined, boils that framework down to three questions: who's the buyer, how acute is the pain, and how much trust is needed before they pay. Get those right and the rest of the motion - pricing, channel, messaging - falls into place. (We've also packaged the operator side of it into a free AI VP of Marketing tool - grab it below.)\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (CTA panel, 1 cell of 3 link paragraphs) - inner content preserved below */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply
1/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Download the tool of the week](#build-your-ai-vp-of-marketing)\n\nI sat down with Suhas for an hour on our podcast, *Bad Advice*. Here's the go-to-market strategy framework that stuck.\n\n\u003e \"The salesperson you hire is only inheriting your confusion\"\n\nIt usually starts the same way. A founder raises a pre-seed round, an investor says \"right, go get to $1M ARR,\" and the gut reaction is to hire someone to go sell. Suhas just shook his head at that.\n\n\u003e \"That's almost always the wrong thing to do. At the very earliest stages, the founder's job is to learn. The salesperson you hire is simply inheriting the confusion you already have. You can't outsource that.\"\n\n\n\nHis point: at pre-seed you don't have a sales problem, you have a *learning* problem. You're trying to figure out who actually signs the cheque, what pain is real enough to pay for, and how much trust has to be built first. Hand that to a new hire and you've just paid someone to inherit your fog.\n\n## **The go-to-market strategy framework: buyer, pain, and trust**\n\nAsk Suhas what go-to-market actually means at pre-seed and he hands you a simple go-to-market strategy framework - three questions:\n\n1. **Who is your buyer?** The person who can actually sign the cheque - not the user, not the fan, the signer.\n2. **How acute is the pain?** Is this a painkiller or a vitamin? Vitamins don't get budget.\n3. **How much trust is needed before the purchase?** \"Nobody's going to pay $200,000 without shaking your hand.\"\n\nAnswer those three and the motion picks itself:\n\n- If value is **easy to express and see**, you've got a classic product-led growth (PLG) motion.\n- If **trust and implementation are heavy** - long conversations, dinners, procurement - it's enterprise sales.\n- If **access and credibility are the barrier** - they won't even take the meeting unless you're \"one of them\" - it's partner-led.\n\nHe frames the early days as setting a trajectory:\n\n\u003e \"They're on a ship going west. If you get the degrees off by a bit, you can end up in South America instead of the US.\"\n\nSpend the six to eight weeks getting the heading right. It's cheaper than a year of rowing the wrong way.\n\n## The real reason startups get stuck: a fuzzy ICP\n\nWhen a founder comes to Suhas stuck - product built, a few users, no real traction - he looks at three things: the messaging, the ideal customer profile (ICP), and the GTM motion. One of them is almost always broken.\n\n\u003e \"I'd say 70% of the time, it's the ICP. The ICP is fuzzy. So your messaging is going to be fuzzy, because you don't know how to talk to the ICP, and your motion is going to be wrong.\"\n\nIt's a domino effect. Blurry on *who*, and everything downstream blurs with it. His mental model is a cheat code - the one from StarCraft, \"black sheep wall,\" that lifts the fog of war so you can see the whole map.\n\n\u003e \"When I work with founders, I try to be the black sheep wall. The cheat code that removes the fog and shows you where to go.\"\n\nAnd the goal isn't a permanent answer. Every successful company he's worked with pivoted hard.\n\n\u003e \"Success isn't getting to a specific answer. It's reducing ambiguity.\"\n\n---\n\n## Don't confuse activity with progress\n\nThe line Suhas keeps coming back to is one his first investor gave him: *never confuse activity with progress.* A thousand customer calls a month is activity. Progress is whether those calls actually answered buyer, pain and trust. Talking to customers is the input - not the strategy.\n\n## Distribution beats product now\n\nThe part founders most underestimate, he says, is distribution. Software is a commodity; anyone can vibe-code a product over a weekend. So what separates you?\n\n\u003e \"Distribution, I would argue these days, is more important than product.\"\n\nHis example is the one everyone feels: Slack is the better product, but Microsoft Teams won adoption because it ships inside Office. Distribution was already cracked. His advice is to find the **flywheel** - the bigger cog you can slot into.\n\n\u003e \"Where can you find the flywheel effect where the symbiosis exists? Where is the North Star the same for you and them?\"\n\n## The other founder-killer
1: storytelling (and friction)\n\nTwo more things he's seen decide outcomes. First, communication:\n\n\u003e \"The best companies don't get funded. The best-communicated companies get funded.\"\n\nClarity of thought - distilling something complex into something anyone can grasp - is, in his words, \"the highest form of intelligence.\" Second, and quieter: co-founder friction. He says 70% of his early read on a company is simply how well the founders handle disagreement. The ones who can air a hard thing and keep building tend to make it. The ones who can't tend not to.\n\n## The skill nobody teaches: spending the money\n\nThere's a moment in our Launchpad programme - the six weeks founders go through right after we back them - where Suhas opens with a warning: elation, followed by chaos. The skill that decides what happens next isn't making money or saving it. It's *spending* it.\n\n\u003e \"VCs gave you money to spend, not to hoard. Capital allocation is what separates the great companies.\"\n\n---\n\n## Build your AI VP of Marketing\n\nHere's where the episode turns practical. If the product isn't the edge anymore and getting to the right customers is, the highest-leverage thing an early-stage founder can do is run a marketing system that thinks like an operator - without hiring one. The same go-to-market strategy framework runs underneath it - the tool just turns buyer, pain and trust into a daily operating rhythm.\n\nSo we wrote the whole spec: the database schema, the integrations, the AI prompts, the cron jobs, the build order. Paste it into your LLM agent (we've been using Replit Agent), point it at your own data, and you'll have a working v1 in a few days - a dashboard on your headline metric and a daily email with three to five specific moves for today. One founder, one agent, running in production. Every company we back gets one. This is that one.\n\n[**â Download the AI VP of Marketing spec**](https://f335079d-b4b9-4973-ac2d-afa7f30d3e9c.usrfiles.com/archives/f33507_5861ef80fde94979840e9e1c2de23afb.zip)\n\n[**â Download the sample data bundle**](https://f335079d-b4b9-4973-ac2d-afa7f30d3e9c.usrfiles.com/archives/f33507_9ec2b696ad6c47dcb0f8af741d930971.zip)\n\nPrefer the full walkthrough first? [See the AI VP of Marketing page â](https://www.badideas.fund/why-us/aivp)\n\n---\n\n## Watch / listen to the full episode\n\nSuhas covers a lot more in the hour - his own cybersecurity startup that ran out of runway underestimating enterprise sales cycles, why \"Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location,\" and why optimism is a force multiplier on the hardest days.\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Watch on YouTube](https://youtu.be/Z4qf0ZrrKno) â¶ï¸ [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5jvnAZN53nUgfAB0GJWJKB) â¶ï¸ [Book time with Suhas](https://intro.co/suhasghante)\n\n{/* TODO Wix VIDEO embed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4qf0ZrrKno (title: \"Build a great product and they'll come\" â BAD ADVICE #7 w/ Suhas Ghante; thumbnail: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z4qf0ZrrKno/maxresdefault.jpg) */}\n\n---\n\n## Frequently asked questions\n\n\u003cFaq\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"Should an early-stage startup hire a salesperson?\"}\u003e\n\nUsually not at pre-seed. The founder's job at the earliest stage is to learn who the buyer is, how acute the pain is, and how much trust is needed to close. A salesperson hired before that just inherits the founder's confusion. Hire once the motion is proven, not to discover it.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"What is a go-to-market strategy for a pre-seed startup?\"}\u003e\n\nAt pre-seed, GTM comes down to three variables - buyer, pain, and trust. Those determine the right motion: product-led growth when value is easy to see, enterprise sales when trust and implementation are heavy, or partner-led when access is the barrier. The goal is to reduce ambiguity, not lock in a permanent answer.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"Why do early-stage startups fail at go-to-market?\"}\u003e\n\nMost often because the ideal customer profile (ICP) is fuzzy. When you're unclear on who you're for, your messaging and your motion both go wrong. Suhas Ghante estimates a fuzzy ICP is behind roughly 70% of stuck early-stage startups.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003cFaqItem question={\"Is distribution more important than product?\"}\u003e\n\nAt the early stage, increasingly yes. Because anyone can build a product quickly now, the durable edge is distribution - slotting into a larger \"flywheel\" (the way Microsoft Teams rode Office) where your growth and a bigger platform's growth point the same way.\n\n\u003c/FaqItem\u003e\n\u003c/Faq\u003e\n\n---\n\n## Work with BADideas.fund\n\nWe're an early-stage B2B fund across CEE and the Nordics, and everyone here has built companies before. We back founders whose drive borders on unreasonable and work alongside them on the GTM drift that kills startups between rounds - while there's still room to correct.\n\nIf you're raising and want operators who've walked your exact walk in the room with you:\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (CTA panel, 1 cell of 3 link paragraphs) - inner content preserved below */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply
1/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Download the tool of the week](#build-your-ai-vp-of-marketing)"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"20:T2c3f,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"*The go-to-market strategy framework a decade-deep operator uses to fix what quietly kills pre-seed startups - buyer, pain, and trust. Plus a free AI VP of Marketing tool you can build this week.*\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (author byline, 2 cells: image + paragraph) - inner content preserved below */}\n\n\n\nI'm [JurÄ£is](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgiskalnins1/) - community \u0026 brand lead at BADideas.fund and host of the Bad Advice podcast. Every newsletter issue digs into multiple go-to-market problems from the show and hands you a free downloadable tool to fix it (a skill, an md spec, an AI VP of Sales or Marketing, etc.).\n\n**The short version, for the people in a hurry.** Most early-stage startups don't die because the product is bad - they die because they never built a real go-to-market strategy framework. [Suhas Ghante](https://intro.co/suhasghante), who's advised startups that have raised over $100M combined, boils that framework down to three questions: who's the buyer, how acute is the pain, and how much trust is needed before they pay. Get those right and the rest of the motion - pricing, channel, messaging - falls into place. (We've also packaged the operator side of it into a free AI VP of Marketing tool - grab it below.)\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (CTA panel, 1 cell of 3 link paragraphs) - inner content preserved below */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply
1/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Download the tool of the week](#build-your-ai-vp-of-marketing)\n\nI sat down with Suhas for an hour on our podcast, *Bad Advice*. Here's the go-to-market strategy framework that stuck.\n\n\u003e \"The salesperson you hire is only inheriting your confusion\"\n\nIt usually starts the same way. A founder raises a pre-seed round, an investor says \"right, go get to $1M ARR,\" and the gut reaction is to hire someone to go sell. Suhas just shook his head at that.\n\n\u003e \"That's almost always the wrong thing to do. At the very earliest stages, the founder's job is to learn. The salesperson you hire is simply inheriting the confusion you already have. You can't outsource that.\"\n\n\n\nHis point: at pre-seed you don't have a sales problem, you have a *learning* problem. You're trying to figure out who actually signs the cheque, what pain is real enough to pay for, and how much trust has to be built first. Hand that to a new hire and you've just paid someone to inherit your fog.\n\n## **The go-to-market strategy framework: buyer, pain, and trust**\n\nAsk Suhas what go-to-market actually means at pre-seed and he hands you a simple go-to-market strategy framework - three questions:\n\n1. **Who is your buyer?** The person who can actually sign the cheque - not the user, not the fan, the signer.\n2. **How acute is the pain?** Is this a painkiller or a vitamin? Vitamins don't get budget.\n3. **How much trust is needed before the purchase?** \"Nobody's going to pay $200,000 without shaking your hand.\"\n\nAnswer those three and the motion picks itself:\n\n- If value is **easy to express and see**, you've got a classic product-led growth (PLG) motion.\n- If **trust and implementation are heavy** - long conversations, dinners, procurement - it's enterprise sales.\n- If **access and credibility are the barrier** - they won't even take the meeting unless you're \"one of them\" - it's partner-led.\n\nHe frames the early days as setting a trajectory:\n\n\u003e \"They're on a ship going west. If you get the degrees off by a bit, you can end up in South America instead of the US.\"\n\nSpend the six to eight weeks getting the heading right. It's cheaper than a year of rowing the wrong way.\n\n## The real reason startups get stuck: a fuzzy ICP\n\nWhen a founder comes to Suhas stuck - product built, a few users, no real traction - he looks at three things: the messaging, the ideal customer profile (ICP), and the GTM motion. One of them is almost always broken.\n\n\u003e \"I'd say 70% of the time, it's the ICP. The ICP is fuzzy. So your messaging is going to be fuzzy, because you don't know how to talk to the ICP, and your motion is going to be wrong.\"\n\nIt's a domino effect. Blurry on *who*, and everything downstream blurs with it. His mental model is a cheat code - the one from StarCraft, \"black sheep wall,\" that lifts the fog of war so you can see the whole map.\n\n\u003e \"When I work with founders, I try to be the black sheep wall. The cheat code that removes the fog and shows you where to go.\"\n\nAnd the goal isn't a permanent answer. Every successful company he's worked with pivoted hard.\n\n\u003e \"Success isn't getting to a specific answer. It's reducing ambiguity.\"\n\n---\n\n## Don't confuse activity with progress\n\nThe line Suhas keeps coming back to is one his first investor gave him: *never confuse activity with progress.* A thousand customer calls a month is activity. Progress is whether those calls actually answered buyer, pain and trust. Talking to customers is the input - not the strategy.\n\n## Distribution beats product now\n\nThe part founders most underestimate, he says, is distribution. Software is a commodity; anyone can vibe-code a product over a weekend. So what separates you?\n\n\u003e \"Distribution, I would argue these days, is more important than product.\"\n\nHis example is the one everyone feels: Slack is the better product, but Microsoft Teams won adoption because it ships inside Office. Distribution was already cracked. His advice is to find the **flywheel** - the bigger cog you can slot into.\n\n\u003e \"Where can you find the flywheel effect where the symbiosis exists? Where is the North Star the same for you and them?\"\n\n## The other founder-killer
1: storytelling (and friction)\n\nTwo more things he's seen decide outcomes. First, communication:\n\n\u003e \"The best companies don't get funded. The best-communicated companies get funded.\"\n\nClarity of thought - distilling something complex into something anyone can grasp - is, in his words, \"the highest form of intelligence.\" Second, and quieter: co-founder friction. He says 70% of his early read on a company is simply how well the founders handle disagreement. The ones who can air a hard thing and keep building tend to make it. The ones who can't tend not to.\n\n## The skill nobody teaches: spending the money\n\nThere's a moment in our Launchpad programme - the six weeks founders go through right after we back them - where Suhas opens with a warning: elation, followed by chaos. The skill that decides what happens next isn't making money or saving it. It's *spending* it.\n\n\u003e \"VCs gave you money to spend, not to hoard. Capital allocation is what separates the great companies.\"\n\n---\n\n## Build your AI VP of Marketing\n\nHere's where the episode turns practical. If the product isn't the edge anymore and getting to the right customers is, the highest-leverage thing an early-stage founder can do is run a marketing system that thinks like an operator - without hiring one. The same go-to-market strategy framework runs underneath it - the tool just turns buyer, pain and trust into a daily operating rhythm.\n\nSo we wrote the whole spec: the database schema, the integrations, the AI prompts, the cron jobs, the build order. Paste it into your LLM agent (we've been using Replit Agent), point it at your own data, and you'll have a working v1 in a few days - a dashboard on your headline metric and a daily email with three to five specific moves for today. One founder, one agent, running in production. Every company we back gets one. This is that one.\n\n[**â Download the AI VP of Marketing spec**](https://f335079d-b4b9-4973-ac2d-afa7f30d3e9c.usrfiles.com/archives/f33507_5861ef80fde94979840e9e1c2de23afb.zip)\n\n[**â Download the sample data bundle**](https://f335079d-b4b9-4973-ac2d-afa7f30d3e9c.usrfiles.com/archives/f33507_9ec2b696ad6c47dcb0f8af741d930971.zip)\n\nPrefer the full walkthrough first? [See the AI VP of Marketing page â](https://www.badideas.fund/why-us/aivp)\n\n---\n\n## Watch / listen to the full episode\n\nSuhas covers a lot more in the hour - his own cybersecurity startup that ran out of runway underestimating enterprise sales cycles, why \"Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location,\" and why optimism is a force multiplier on the hardest days.\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Watch on YouTube](https://youtu.be/Z4qf0ZrrKno) â¶ï¸ [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5jvnAZN53nUgfAB0GJWJKB) â¶ï¸ [Book time with Suhas](https://intro.co/suhasghante)\n\n{/* TODO Wix VIDEO embed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4qf0ZrrKno (title: \"Build a great product and they'll come\" â BAD ADVICE #7 w/ Suhas Ghante; thumbnail: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z4qf0ZrrKno/maxresdefault.jpg) */}\n\n---\n\n## Frequently asked questions\n\n{/* TODO Wix COLLAPSIBLE_LIST (4 accordion items, initialExpandedItems: FIRST) - titles and bodies preserved below as h3 + paragraph */}\n\n### Should an early-stage startup hire a salesperson?\n\nUsually not at pre-seed. The founder's job at the earliest stage is to learn who the buyer is, how acute the pain is, and how much trust is needed to close. A salesperson hired before that just inherits the founder's confusion. Hire once the motion is proven, not to discover it.\n\n### What is a go-to-market strategy for a pre-seed startup?\n\nAt pre-seed, GTM comes down to three variables - buyer, pain, and trust. Those determine the right motion: product-led growth when value is easy to see, enterprise sales when trust and implementation are heavy, or partner-led when access is the barrier. The goal is to reduce ambiguity, not lock in a permanent answer.\n\n### Why do early-stage startups fail at go-to-market?\n\nMost often because the ideal customer profile (ICP) is fuzzy. When you're unclear on who you're for, your messaging and your motion both go wrong. Suhas Ghante estimates a fuzzy ICP is behind roughly 70% of stuck early-stage startups.\n\n### Is distribution more important than product?\n\nAt the early stage, increasingly yes. Because anyone can build a product quickly now, the durable edge is distribution - slotting into a larger \"flywheel\" (the way Microsoft Teams rode Office) where your growth and a bigger platform's growth point the same way.\n\n---\n\n## Work with BADideas.fund\n\nWe're an early-stage B2B fund across CEE and the Nordics, and everyone here has built companies before. We back founders whose drive borders on unreasonable and work alongside them on the GTM drift that kills startups between rounds - while there's still room to correct.\n\nIf you're raising and want operators who've walked your exact walk in the room with you:\n\n{/* TODO Wix LAYOUT block (CTA panel, 1 cell of 3 link paragraphs) - inner content preserved below */}\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Pitch us your idea and get funded](https://www.badideas.fund/how-to-apply
1/pitch-us?utm_source=werl53)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Sign up to your weekly dose of free GTM news \u0026 resources](https://www.badideas.fund/blog?utm_source=hrdi77)\n\nâ¶ï¸ [Download the tool of the week](#build-your-ai-vp-of-marketing)"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"21:T1e36,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"**The majority of B2B SaaS companies entering a new market start with optimism, a good product, and a global brand story that they think will be received anywhere. They invest in various aspects, including sophisticated websites, coordinated product messaging, online demand channels, and well-developed content. However, the truth is more basic: markets are different, customers do not necessarily think alike, and expansion should be led by a local mindset as well. This is particularly true in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where buying, business etiquette, and decision-making styles differ from those elsewhere around the globe. What is effective in London or Amsterdam will not be effective in Warsaw, Vilnius, Prague, or Bucharest.**\n\nThat is why the thinking of locally acting globally turns out to be an important strategic condition. The companies need to have a scalable international approach and suit the local customer expectations, communication culture, selling behavior, and winning trust standards. CEE cannot be approached as a simple translation or basic localization task. It demands a deliberate go-to-market (GTM) playbook influenced by the regional differences and implemented through local know-how. The teams that view CEE as an area of copy-pasting may fail or squander funds, learning unnecessary lessons. Winning companies are those that appear locally, experiment locally, and learn locally â before scaling.\n\n## Why GTM Strategy is Crucial\n\nFirst things first â a marketing plan is not a GTM strategy. It is an operating model that is cross-functional and unites sales, marketing, product, and customer-success teams into a single pathway and a distinct way to market entry and growth. An effective GTM strategy will respond to the following basic questions: Who is our targeted customer in this market? What does our solution offer in this particular competitive environment? What channels will produce traction the most quickly? Measure, learn, and optimize as we go.\n\nAn effective GTM approach will reduce the risk of market entry, make the resource utilization purposeful, and offer a replicable pattern of expansion. The principal benefits of the GTM strategy are:\n\n- Finding the appropriate buyers who need a solution\n- Developing a differentiated market position\n- Choosing the most efficient channels of communication and sales\n- Constantly acting on market reactions\n\nNew markets bring about unknowns â new purchasing stimuli, new partners, new price sensitivity, and new competitive forces. If these unknowns are not identified early, time and budget will be wasted. In a company with a clear GTM strategy, each experiment, campaign, and touchpoint with the customers is clearly defined. In the absence of one, growth is going to be guesswork â and guesswork is costly.\n\n## Evidence-Based GTM Enablers\n\nThree facilitators of victory in the CEE market are always noted in research and experience:\n\n- Face-to-face presence at expos, conferences, and in-person events in the industry to achieve faster trust building\n- Going niche instead of going broad to increase relevance and traction\n- Speedy experimentation to test, learn, and repeat until the appropriate customer segment reacts\n\nThe importance of relationships is significant in CEE: face-to-face communication boosts trust, and niche focus enhances positioning. Any test must have a definite hypothesis and not a conjecture to start with. GTM
1is not a straight line â there is no one perfect way. Companies that have achieved success consider it a process of trial and error until they discover what succeeds.\n\n## Craft a Localized, Focused GTM Playbook\n\nTo succeed in a domestic market, it is necessary to head beyond geographic expansion and into cultural customization. A localized, focused GTM playbook brings about understanding and ensures that the global vision is provided with local relevance. Attending industry gatherings and trade shows is one of the best early-stage strategies. These environments are conducive to gaining trust and collecting actual customer responses, and establishing relationships with already established players in the market. Although this strategy cannot be used on a long-term scale, it is very efficient in the initial growth phases.\n\nLocalized Playbooks take the generic message away and bring relevance. CEE buyers seek operational value, evidence points, and indications that a supplier is close and present and not remote and impersonal. Verbatim dialogues indicate the assessment of vendors, the issues of greatest concern, and how credibility appeals influence buying decisions.\n\n## Run Data-Driven Experiments\n\nWhen a localized playbook is running, experimentation becomes the rhythm of operations. All the assumptions must be put to the test, and all tests must provide quantifiable results. Teams can test pricing, different angles of positioning, and channels can be tested, which include events, partner movements, outbound sequences, or content plays. The adoption, retention, and customer-acquisition cost (CAC) are metrics that offer insight into what, in fact, drives traction.\n\nThe feedback loops should be closed promptly. Test what works, kill what doesnât, and change. There is a high cost of slow learning and a competitive advantage of fast learning. The quicker a team can experiment and learn, the quicker it can discover traction that repeats and dead ends are circumvented.\n\n## Use the Product GTM Canvas\n\nThe Product Go-to-Market Canvas is an effective planning tool to organize expansion. It represents, in an electrically charged diagram, ten dimensions needed to take a product to market: what you are selling, buyer, target market, value proposition, distribution channels, competitors, launch plan, after-launch activities, metrics, and assumptions or risks. Visuals of these components in a single perspective remove the possibility of misalignment, define expectations, and offer an easy model of execution.\n\n\n\n*Lean Canvas is adapted from Business Model Canvas and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.*\n\nIn the case of cross-functional teams, the canvas turns into one source of truth, which is a living GTM blueprint and improves over time as the company gets experience in the market.\n\nIt is the mentality of global thinking and local action that brings success to expansion and halts potential. CEE markets reward presence, relevance, and speed. The winning companies are the ones that create local credibility, have invested in their understanding of the region, have conducted disciplined experiments, and executed them through focused GTM playbooks. When implemented properly, B2B SaaS companies have the potential to make CEE a growth engine that can be repeated over time.\n\n---\n\n### About Vytautas Majauskas:\n\nVytautas is a marketing strategist with deep experience in digital marketing and B2B go-to-market development. His career includes leadership roles as Chief Marketing Officer at Frontu and Spotos, and Head of Marketing at Oxylabs. Today, he consults companies on digital marketing and GTM strategy and is the founder of Magoom, a boutique marketing agency.\n\n[Connect with Vytautas on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/majauskas/)\n\n### About Magoom:\n\nMagoom is a [B2B marketing agency](https://magoom.com/) focused on building digital strategies for go-to-market execution and customer acquisition. By applying a data-driven approach, understanding the specifics of new product launches, and tailoring digital marketing solutions to each client, Magoom ensures brand growth and maximum ROI."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"**The majority of B2B SaaS companies entering a new market start with optimism, a good product, and a global brand story that they think will be received anywhere. They invest in various aspects, including sophisticated websites, coordinated product messaging, online demand channels, and well-developed content. However, the truth is more basic: markets are different, customers do not necessarily think alike, and expansion should be led by a local mindset as well. This is particularly true in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where buying, business etiquette, and decision-making styles differ from those elsewhere around the globe. What is effective in London or Amsterdam will not be effective in Warsaw, Vilnius, Prague, or Bucharest.**\n\nThat is why the thinking of locally acting globally turns out to be an important strategic condition. The companies need to have a scalable international approach and suit the local customer expectations, communication culture, selling behavior, and winning trust standards. CEE cannot be approached as a simple translation or basic localization task. It demands a deliberate go-to-market (GTM) playbook influenced by the regional differences and implemented through local know-how. The teams that view CEE as an area of copy-pasting may fail or squander funds, learning unnecessary lessons. Winning companies are those that appear locally, experiment locally, and learn locally â before scaling.\n\n## Why GTM Strategy is Crucial\n\nFirst things first â a marketing plan is not a GTM strategy. It is an operating model that is cross-functional and unites sales, marketing, product, and customer-success teams into a single pathway and a distinct way to market entry and growth. An effective GTM strategy will respond to the following basic questions: Who is our targeted customer in this market? What does our solution offer in this particular competitive environment? What channels will produce traction the most quickly? Measure, learn, and optimize as we go.\n\nAn effective GTM approach will reduce the risk of market entry, make the resource utilization purposeful, and offer a replicable pattern of expansion. The principal benefits of the GTM strategy are:\n\n- Finding the appropriate buyers who need a solution\n- Developing a differentiated market position\n- Choosing the most efficient channels of communication and sales\n- Constantly acting on market reactions\n\nNew markets bring about unknowns â new purchasing stimuli, new partners, new price sensitivity, and new competitive forces. If these unknowns are not identified early, time and budget will be wasted. In a company with a clear GTM strategy, each experiment, campaign, and touchpoint with the customers is clearly defined. In the absence of one, growth is going to be guesswork â and guesswork is costly.\n\n## Evidence-Based GTM Enablers\n\nThree facilitators of victory in the CEE market are always noted in research and experience:\n\n- Face-to-face presence at expos, conferences, and in-person events in the industry to achieve faster trust building\n- Going niche instead of going broad to increase relevance and traction\n- Speedy experimentation to test, learn, and repeat until the appropriate customer segment reacts\n\nThe importance of relationships is significant in CEE: face-to-face communication boosts trust, and niche focus enhances positioning. Any test must have a definite hypothesis and not a conjecture to start with. GTM
1is not a straight line â there is no one perfect way. Companies that have achieved success consider it a process of trial and error until they discover what succeeds.\n\n## Craft a Localized, Focused GTM Playbook\n\nTo succeed in a domestic market, it is necessary to head beyond geographic expansion and into cultural customization. A localized, focused GTM playbook brings about understanding and ensures that the global vision is provided with local relevance. Attending industry gatherings and trade shows is one of the best early-stage strategies. These environments are conducive to gaining trust and collecting actual customer responses, and establishing relationships with already established players in the market. Although this strategy cannot be used on a long-term scale, it is very efficient in the initial growth phases.\n\nLocalized Playbooks take the generic message away and bring relevance. CEE buyers seek operational value, evidence points, and indications that a supplier is close and present and not remote and impersonal. Verbatim dialogues indicate the assessment of vendors, the issues of greatest concern, and how credibility appeals influence buying decisions.\n\n## Run Data-Driven Experiments\n\nWhen a localized playbook is running, experimentation becomes the rhythm of operations. All the assumptions must be put to the test, and all tests must provide quantifiable results. Teams can test pricing, different angles of positioning, and channels can be tested, which include events, partner movements, outbound sequences, or content plays. The adoption, retention, and customer-acquisition cost (CAC) are metrics that offer insight into what, in fact, drives traction.\n\nThe feedback loops should be closed promptly. Test what works, kill what doesnât, and change. There is a high cost of slow learning and a competitive advantage of fast learning. The quicker a team can experiment and learn, the quicker it can discover traction that repeats and dead ends are circumvented.\n\n## Use the Product GTM Canvas\n\nThe Product Go-to-Market Canvas is an effective planning tool to organize expansion. It represents, in an electrically charged diagram, ten dimensions needed to take a product to market: what you are selling, buyer, target market, value proposition, distribution channels, competitors, launch plan, after-launch activities, metrics, and assumptions or risks. Visuals of these components in a single perspective remove the possibility of misalignment, define expectations, and offer an easy model of execution.\n\n\n\n*Lean Canvas is adapted from Business Model Canvas and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.*\n\nIn the case of cross-functional teams, the canvas turns into one source of truth, which is a living GTM blueprint and improves over time as the company gets experience in the market.\n\nIt is the mentality of global thinking and local action that brings success to expansion and halts potential. CEE markets reward presence, relevance, and speed. The winning companies are the ones that create local credibility, have invested in their understanding of the region, have conducted disciplined experiments, and executed them through focused GTM playbooks. When implemented properly, B2B SaaS companies have the potential to make CEE a growth engine that can be repeated over time.\n\n---\n\n### About Vytautas Majauskas:\n\nVytautas is a marketing strategist with deep experience in digital marketing and B2B go-to-market development. His career includes leadership roles as Chief Marketing Officer at Frontu and Spotos, and Head of Marketing at Oxylabs. Today, he consults companies on digital marketing and GTM strategy and is the founder of Magoom, a boutique marketing agency.\n\n[Connect with Vytautas on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/majauskas/)\n\n### About Magoom:\n\nMagoom is a [B2B marketing agency](https://magoom.com/) focused on building digital strategies for go-to-market execution and customer acquisition. By applying a data-driven approach, understanding the specifics of new product launches, and tailoring digital marketing solutions to each client, Magoom ensures brand growth and maximum ROI."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"**On Friday, October 24, the third edition of Fundraising School - a fundraising accelerator organized by venture capital fund** [**BADideas.fund**](http://BADideas.fund)**, in partnership with the Latvian Investment and Development Agency (LIAA) and the Riga Investment and Tourism Agency (RITA) - concluded with a dynamic Demo Day event. Over 40% of participating founders have already entered discussions with investors.**\n\nThe programâs core goal is to prepare startups for raising investment. According to the organizers, success is measured not only by the quality of pitches, but also by continued investor interest. Investors including NGL Ventures, Firstpick, and Vendep Capital have already expressed willingness to continue discussions with several teams. The most frequently cited reasons: founder strength, determination, and large market potential.\n\n## 97 participants from 25 countries - half with ties to Latvia\n\nThis year, Fundraising School received 290 applications from 34 countries. A total of 97 founders were admitted, half of whom have a connection to Latvia. As the program concluded, 78 founders pitched to 22 investors, and the Top 7 advanced to the final Demo Day stage to pitch in front of a live jury.\n\nThe grand prize - â¬1000 for company growth, sponsored by Make and HubSpot - was awarded to Estonian startup Cyborgs, while the six other finalists received â¬100 each.\n\n## State support helps startups break through\n\nAccording to organizers, the closing event gathered around 120 guests, including startup founders, investors, policymakers, and industry supporters. Thanks to the strategic backing of LIAA and RITA, the program remained completely free for all participants.\n\nâFundraising School has been an excellent opportunity for Latvian startups to improve their fundraising skills, learn from regional peers, and connect with top investors across the CEE region. This project directly helps our companies break through to the next level,â said NatÄlija SiliÅa, Head of Innovation Services at LIAA.\n\nProgram Director JurÄ£is KalniÅÅ¡ added: âThe Baltics have produced 13 unicorns - 10 from Estonia, two from Lithuania, and one from Latvia. To strengthen Latviaâs competitiveness, we ensured that at least half of our participants have local ties. Weâre deeply grateful to see strategic national support for initiatives like this.â\n\n## Diverse startups, shared success factors\n\nLearning from previous years, the 2025 program focused on first-time founders raising capital - especially those building AI-driven startups. Participants represented 25 countries and a wide range of industries, from software and hardware to platforms and consumer products.\n\n\n\nWhile most teams completed the program and successfully pitched to investors, others realized along the way that they werenât yet ready to raise - which, according to the organizers, is also a valuable outcome.\n\nâOur goal was to help teams make the right strategic decisions - and sometimes, swimming against the current takes the most courage,â said KalniÅÅ¡.\n\n## Third year in a row\n\nFollowing a successful pilot in 2023, Fundraising School has now run three consecutive years. Across all editions, more than 230 founders have pitched to investors, with over 30 VC funds involved - collectively managing more than â¬800 million in capital.\n\nThe program was created and curated by [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) angel investors. âFundraising School is our way of reinvesting knowledge back into the startup ecosystem,â said Raimonds Kulbergs, Co-founder of [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund). âWe receive a huge number of investment applications - many from great teams who simply havenât yet learned to tell their story convincingly. Fundraising School was built to fix exactly that.â\n\nOver the past two years, Fundraising School alumni have collectively raised over â¬6 million within six months of completing the program - a significant milestone for startups in Latvia and across the region.\n\nâBased on participant feedback, around 40% of startups are already in active discussions with investors, which is a strong signal that the next six months will bring even more success stories,â added KalniÅÅ¡.\n\n{/* TODO Wix GALLERY node (12 images, THUMBNAIL/ROWS layout): https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f33507_d70de2ba20b343bcb
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"**On Friday, October 24, the third edition of Fundraising School - a fundraising accelerator organized by venture capital fund** [**BADideas.fund**](http://BADideas.fund)**, in partnership with the Latvian Investment and Development Agency (LIAA) and the Riga Investment and Tourism Agency (RITA) - concluded with a dynamic Demo Day event. Over 40% of participating founders have already entered discussions with investors.**\n\nThe programâs core goal is to prepare startups for raising investment. According to the organizers, success is measured not only by the quality of pitches, but also by continued investor interest. Investors including NGL Ventures, Firstpick, and Vendep Capital have already expressed willingness to continue discussions with several teams. The most frequently cited reasons: founder strength, determination, and large market potential.\n\n## 97 participants from 25 countries - half with ties to Latvia\n\nThis year, Fundraising School received 290 applications from 34 countries. A total of 97 founders were admitted, half of whom have a connection to Latvia. As the program concluded, 78 founders pitched to 22 investors, and the Top 7 advanced to the final Demo Day stage to pitch in front of a live jury.\n\nThe grand prize - â¬1000 for company growth, sponsored by Make and HubSpot - was awarded to Estonian startup Cyborgs, while the six other finalists received â¬100 each.\n\n## State support helps startups break through\n\nAccording to organizers, the closing event gathered around 120 guests, including startup founders, investors, policymakers, and industry supporters. Thanks to the strategic backing of LIAA and RITA, the program remained completely free for all participants.\n\nâFundraising School has been an excellent opportunity for Latvian startups to improve their fundraising skills, learn from regional peers, and connect with top investors across the CEE region. This project directly helps our companies break through to the next level,â said NatÄlija SiliÅa, Head of Innovation Services at LIAA.\n\nProgram Director JurÄ£is KalniÅÅ¡ added: âThe Baltics have produced 13 unicorns - 10 from Estonia, two from Lithuania, and one from Latvia. To strengthen Latviaâs competitiveness, we ensured that at least half of our participants have local ties. Weâre deeply grateful to see strategic national support for initiatives like this.â\n\n## Diverse startups, shared success factors\n\nLearning from previous years, the 2025 program focused on first-time founders raising capital - especially those building AI-driven startups. Participants represented 25 countries and a wide range of industries, from software and hardware to platforms and consumer products.\n\n\n\nWhile most teams completed the program and successfully pitched to investors, others realized along the way that they werenât yet ready to raise - which, according to the organizers, is also a valuable outcome.\n\nâOur goal was to help teams make the right strategic decisions - and sometimes, swimming against the current takes the most courage,â said KalniÅÅ¡.\n\n## Third year in a row\n\nFollowing a successful pilot in 2023, Fundraising School has now run three consecutive years. Across all editions, more than 230 founders have pitched to investors, with over 30 VC funds involved - collectively managing more than â¬800 million in capital.\n\nThe program was created and curated by [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) angel investors. âFundraising School is our way of reinvesting knowledge back into the startup ecosystem,â said Raimonds Kulbergs, Co-founder of [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund). âWe receive a huge number of investment applications - many from great teams who simply havenât yet learned to tell their story convincingly. Fundraising School was built to fix exactly that.â\n\nOver the past two years, Fundraising School alumni have collectively raised over â¬6 million within six months of completing the program - a significant milestone for startups in Latvia and across the region.\n\nâBased on participant feedback, around 40% of startups are already in active discussions with investors, which is a strong signal that the next six months will bring even more success stories,â added KalniÅÅ¡.\n\n{/* TODO Wix GALLERY node (12 images, THUMBNAIL/ROWS layout): https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f33507_d70de2ba20b343bcb
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"**The venture capital and angel investment fund** [**BADideas.fund**](http://BADideas.fund)**, in partnership with the Latvian Investment and Development Agency (LIAA) and the Riga Investment and Tourism Agency (RITA), is opening applications for the third edition of** [**Fundraising School**](https://www.badideas.fund/fundraising-school)**, a unique accelerator program equipping CEE startups with the skills and investor access needed to raise global capital. Over the past two years, Fundraising School alumni have collectively raised more than â¬5.2 million in investments.**\n\nThis yearâs program will include interactive webinars and workshops, culminating in one-on-one meetings with investors and a final pitch demo day. The best-performing startups will have the opportunity to win cash prizes from Make and Hubspot to fuel their growth. In previous years, more than a third of participants received invitations from investors for follow-up discussions or entry into other accelerator programs.\n\nâ*This is a unique opportunity to gain fundraising skills in a short and intensive format â and itâs completely free of charge*,â says JurÄ£is KalniÅÅ¡, Program Director of Fundraising School. â*Once again, the program will be led by two experienced instructors with backgrounds both in startups and investment, including Silicon Valley companies â DiÄna LÄce-Davidova, current Head of Operations at Latviaâs success story Whimsical, and Suhas Ghante, a two-time 500 Startups graduate, entrepreneur, and partner at SVethos.*â\n\nIn addition to lectures and workshops, the program will feature more than 20 venture capital funds managing over â¬700 million, as well as four founder-mentors who have successfully raised capital themselves.\n\n### â*Itâs not the best companies that get funded - itâs the best storytellers*.â\n\nâ*Time and again we see that great companies fail to raise because their applications donât answer key investor questions: why this team, how fast is the market growing, and how exactly will capital fuel growth*,â notes Raimonds Kulbergs, founder of [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund). â*In todayâs post-pandemic climate, investors demand rapid but efficient growth. With our 250-strong investor community, weâre able to bring Silicon Valleyâs best fundraising practices and share them with our region. The growing interest from both startups and investors for the third year in a row is a strong signal that this program is needed*.â\n\n### A unique focus on early-stage founders from CEE\n\nFundraising School is the only specialized accelerator program in Latvia dedicated solely to preparing startups for fundraising â targeted at pre-seed and seed-stage founders across industries. Over six weeks, participants will learn to approach investors, craft compelling pitches, and close investment deals.\n\n**Applications are open until September 4, 2025:** [**https://www.badideas.fund/fundraising-school**](https://www.badideas.fund/fundraising-school)\n\n\n\nThe program is free of charge, thanks to strategic support from the Riga Investment and Tourism Agency, as well as the Latvian Investment and Development Agency, that operates under activity 1.2.1.4 \"Support for the improvement of the technology transfer system\" of the Specific Support Objective 1.2.1 \"Strengthening of research and innovation capacity and introduction of advanced technologies in enterprises\" of the European Union Cohesion Policy Programme 2021-2027 (project identification number 1.2.1.4/1/23/I/001)â.\n\nð
Applications close: September 4, 2025\n\nð Apply here: [https://www.badideas.fund/fundraising-school](https://www.badideas.fund/fundraising-school)\n\nMedia contact:\n\nJurÄ£is KalniÅÅ¡, Program Director, Fundraising School\n\n[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) | +371 26757704"])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"**The venture capital and angel investment fund** [**BADideas.fund**](http://BADideas.fund)**, in partnership with the Latvian Investment and Development Agency (LIAA) and the Riga Investment and Tourism Agency (RITA), is opening applications for the third edition of** [**Fundraising School**](https://www.badideas.fund/fundraising-school)**, a unique accelerator program equipping CEE startups with the skills and investor access needed to raise global capital. Over the past two years, Fundraising School alumni have collectively raised more than â¬5.2 million in investments.**\n\nThis yearâs program will include interactive webinars and workshops, culminating in one-on-one meetings with investors and a final pitch demo day. The best-performing startups will have the opportunity to win cash prizes from Make and Hubspot to fuel their growth. In previous years, more than a third of participants received invitations from investors for follow-up discussions or entry into other accelerator programs.\n\nâ*This is a unique opportunity to gain fundraising skills in a short and intensive format â and itâs completely free of charge*,â says JurÄ£is KalniÅÅ¡, Program Director of Fundraising School. â*Once again, the program will be led by two experienced instructors with backgrounds both in startups and investment, including Silicon Valley companies â DiÄna LÄce-Davidova, current Head of Operations at Latviaâs success story Whimsical, and Suhas Ghante, a two-time 500 Startups graduate, entrepreneur, and partner at SVethos.*â\n\nIn addition to lectures and workshops, the program will feature more than 20 venture capital funds managing over â¬700 million, as well as four founder-mentors who have successfully raised capital themselves.\n\n### â*Itâs not the best companies that get funded - itâs the best storytellers*.â\n\nâ*Time and again we see that great companies fail to raise because their applications donât answer key investor questions: why this team, how fast is the market growing, and how exactly will capital fuel growth*,â notes Raimonds Kulbergs, founder of [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund). â*In todayâs post-pandemic climate, investors demand rapid but efficient growth. With our 250-strong investor community, weâre able to bring Silicon Valleyâs best fundraising practices and share them with our region. The growing interest from both startups and investors for the third year in a row is a strong signal that this program is needed*.â\n\n### A unique focus on early-stage founders from CEE\n\nFundraising School is the only specialized accelerator program in Latvia dedicated solely to preparing startups for fundraising â targeted at pre-seed and seed-stage founders across industries. Over six weeks, participants will learn to approach investors, craft compelling pitches, and close investment deals.\n\n**Applications are open until September 4, 2025:** [**https://www.badideas.fund/fundraising-school**](https://www.badideas.fund/fundraising-school)\n\n\n\nThe program is free of charge, thanks to strategic support from the Riga Investment and Tourism Agency, as well as the Latvian Investment and Development Agency, that operates under activity 1.2.1.4 \"Support for the improvement of the technology transfer system\" of the Specific Support Objective 1.2.1 \"Strengthening of research and innovation capacity and introduction of advanced technologies in enterprises\" of the European Union Cohesion Policy Programme 2021-2027 (project identification number 1.2.1.4/1/23/I/001)â.\n\nð
Applications close: September 4, 2025\n\nð Apply here: [https://www.badideas.fund/fundraising-school](https://www.badideas.fund/fundraising-school)\n\nMedia contact:\n\nJurÄ£is KalniÅÅ¡, Program Director, Fundraising School\n\n[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) | +371 26757704"])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"***Pleso Therapy*, a European mental health platform that uses AI to match users with the right therapists, has raised â¬1.2 million to strengthen its presence across Europe.**\n\nPleso Therapy offers a therapist-patient matching system with a transparent pricing model of a single flat rate. Co-founded and led by a licensed psychotherapist, the platform is committed to high-quality service, including rigorous therapist verification. It improves access to therapy while providing professionals with a structured, supportive environment to deliver care.\n\n\u003e âOur mission is to offer therapists a stable, accessible income source, and patients high-quality, affordable, and easy-to-access services. With our successful investment round, weâll leverage our partnersâ expertise and resources to accelerate expansion across Europe, including the Baltics, where we aim to become one of the leading online therapy platforms,â said **Oleksandr Bondariev, CEO and co-founder of Pleso Therapy**\n\nThis funding round has attracted several high-profile investors, such as TA Ventures, a global investment fund investing in early-stage tech startups with projects including DeepL. Other investors include [Vchasno.Group](http://Vchasno.Group) with notable contributions from Ukrainian boxing world champion Oleksandr Usyk and [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), a leading investor from the Baltic region (Riga, Latvia).\n\n\u003e âMental health is one of the top priorities in modern Europe. Pleso Therapy brings together a rare combination: a strong team, a clear social mission, and advanced technology. This is more than just a digital platform â itâs a complete ecosystem for psychological support. At TA Ventures, weâre proud to support this project and are confident in its potential to fundamentally transform the way mental health is addressed across Europe,â said Viktoriya Tihipko, Managing Partner at TA Ventures.\n\nThe newly raised funds will support expansion into new European markets, to ensure leadership positions in the CEE - including Baltic countries. As part of its growth strategy, the company already works with local Latvian and Baltics talents, and plans to expand its team with IT developers and product specialists.\n\n\u003e \"Oleksandr is a top 1% founder, building in a vertical primed for compounded growth as attitudes and cultural acceptance to therapy and mental health change with new generations. The company has established a leadership position with barely any funding, and demonstrated a smart playbook for launching quickly in new markets, developing moat around quality therapist talent and retention, and outpacing competition in customer acquisition through clever acquisition and monetization strategies. Their vision of moving beyond a geo-bound marketplace and expanding into data-based, productized services for niche verticals has me super bullish on the company's future potential,\" said Ben Leblois, General Partner at [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund)\n\nAt the same time, Pleso is also working to provide B2B offering to companies in search of simple, scalable solutions to support employee well-being. Pleso also plans to launch new features that will make therapy more personalized, intuitive, and effective.\n\n\u003e âThe Baltics market is undersupplied, and we see a huge demand in providing a consumer-friendly solution with a clear pricing model for both consumers and businesses willing to support their employees. There are great local individual providers, but the B2B segment demands a unified solution - we offer a tech platform with affordable prices and great selection of verified and only accredited therapists. It is personally crucial for me to build a company which truly cares - we want to provide personalized and friendly solution at scaleâ explains Oleksandr Bondariev, CEO and co-founder of Pleso Therapy\n\nPleso currently operates in Poland, Romania, and Ukraine, offering a therapist-patient matching system powered by AI and supported by trained human guides. The therapist selection process is highly rigorous, involving interviews, verification of education and experience, and an assessment of professional practice - less than 10% of therapists are added to the Platform.\n\nSince launch, over 25,000 users have received care via the platform, with close to 200,000 therapy sessions delivered to date.\n\nThe founding team includes Oleksandr Bondariev (CEO), Anna Lissova (Chief of Therapy), Oleksii Yakubenko (CTO), and Vitalii Marchenko (Head of Engineering), combining deep expertise in business, technology, and psychotherapy."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"***Pleso Therapy*, a European mental health platform that uses AI to match users with the right therapists, has raised â¬1.2 million to strengthen its presence across Europe.**\n\nPleso Therapy offers a therapist-patient matching system with a transparent pricing model of a single flat rate. Co-founded and led by a licensed psychotherapist, the platform is committed to high-quality service, including rigorous therapist verification. It improves access to therapy while providing professionals with a structured, supportive environment to deliver care.\n\n\u003e âOur mission is to offer therapists a stable, accessible income source, and patients high-quality, affordable, and easy-to-access services. With our successful investment round, weâll leverage our partnersâ expertise and resources to accelerate expansion across Europe, including the Baltics, where we aim to become one of the leading online therapy platforms,â said **Oleksandr Bondariev, CEO and co-founder of Pleso Therapy**\n\nThis funding round has attracted several high-profile investors, such as TA Ventures, a global investment fund investing in early-stage tech startups with projects including DeepL. Other investors include [Vchasno.Group](http://Vchasno.Group) with notable contributions from Ukrainian boxing world champion Oleksandr Usyk and [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), a leading investor from the Baltic region (Riga, Latvia).\n\n\u003e âMental health is one of the top priorities in modern Europe. Pleso Therapy brings together a rare combination: a strong team, a clear social mission, and advanced technology. This is more than just a digital platform â itâs a complete ecosystem for psychological support. At TA Ventures, weâre proud to support this project and are confident in its potential to fundamentally transform the way mental health is addressed across Europe,â said Viktoriya Tihipko, Managing Partner at TA Ventures.\n\nThe newly raised funds will support expansion into new European markets, to ensure leadership positions in the CEE - including Baltic countries. As part of its growth strategy, the company already works with local Latvian and Baltics talents, and plans to expand its team with IT developers and product specialists.\n\n\u003e \"Oleksandr is a top 1% founder, building in a vertical primed for compounded growth as attitudes and cultural acceptance to therapy and mental health change with new generations. The company has established a leadership position with barely any funding, and demonstrated a smart playbook for launching quickly in new markets, developing moat around quality therapist talent and retention, and outpacing competition in customer acquisition through clever acquisition and monetization strategies. Their vision of moving beyond a geo-bound marketplace and expanding into data-based, productized services for niche verticals has me super bullish on the company's future potential,\" said Ben Leblois, General Partner at [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund)\n\nAt the same time, Pleso is also working to provide B2B offering to companies in search of simple, scalable solutions to support employee well-being. Pleso also plans to launch new features that will make therapy more personalized, intuitive, and effective.\n\n\u003e âThe Baltics market is undersupplied, and we see a huge demand in providing a consumer-friendly solution with a clear pricing model for both consumers and businesses willing to support their employees. There are great local individual providers, but the B2B segment demands a unified solution - we offer a tech platform with affordable prices and great selection of verified and only accredited therapists. It is personally crucial for me to build a company which truly cares - we want to provide personalized and friendly solution at scaleâ explains Oleksandr Bondariev, CEO and co-founder of Pleso Therapy\n\nPleso currently operates in Poland, Romania, and Ukraine, offering a therapist-patient matching system powered by AI and supported by trained human guides. The therapist selection process is highly rigorous, involving interviews, verification of education and experience, and an assessment of professional practice - less than 10% of therapists are added to the Platform.\n\nSince launch, over 25,000 users have received care via the platform, with close to 200,000 therapy sessions delivered to date.\n\nThe founding team includes Oleksandr Bondariev (CEO), Anna Lissova (Chief of Therapy), Oleksii Yakubenko (CTO), and Vitalii Marchenko (Head of Engineering), combining deep expertise in business, technology, and psychotherapy."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"If [SaaStr 2025](https://www.saastrannual.com/) had a headline, itâd be this: *âAI isnât a feature. Itâs a forcing function.â* From OpenAI to HubSpot, Snowflake to Mosaic, the smartest operators arenât asking *how* to use AI â theyâre rebuilding teams, playbooks, and products around it.\n\nWe attended seven of the most tactical sessions â and hereâs the distilled playbook for founders, sales leaders, and GTM teams trying to stay ahead.\n\n## 1. *[Delphi](https://www.delphi.ai/):* Context \u003e Content in the AI Era\n\nAI is for building âdigital mindsâ that reflect your teamâs actual decision logic.\n\nKey Takeaways:\n\n- Generic advice is dead. Delphi simulated 1M founder conversations â every insight depended on company stage, market, and customer type.\n- Vision + gut still matter. Great startups start with intuition, not dashboards.\n- AI-native UX = fewer buttons, more prompts. Fewer teams, more leverage.\n- Final mantra: *âYour people are your IP.â* Strategy can be cloned â context canât.\n\n## 2. *[HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com/):* AI Is Reshaping the Org, Not Just the Tools\n\n[Yamini Rangan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaminirangan/) made it clear: AI is production-grade at HubSpot. 95% of engineers use tools like Cursor daily.\n\n\u003e âGTM now means human + agent collaboration â and seamless handoffs are the new trust currency.â\n\nWhatâs changing:\n\n- Support: AI resolves up to 80% of tier-one tickets. Knowledge base quality is the #1 driver.\n- Engineering: Velocity is up â but so are expectations. Output = business impact.\n- Outreach: âPersonalizedâ is dead. If your AI sends a generic email, itâs deleted in 10 seconds.\n\n## 3. *[Mosaic.ai](http://3.Mosaic.ai):* Multimodal, Multilingual, Multi-Variant â By Default\n\nMosaic is building a video editing agent that handles global, dynamic content in one pass.\n\nWhy it matters:\n\n- Edit with natural language (âcut all clips with the guy in glassesâ).\n- Instant localization via voice cloning + dubbing.\n- Branch-based editing: like Git, but for video assets.\n\nThe next generation of AI-native tools wonât offer âautomationâ â theyâll offer **scale, leverage, and creative freedom.**\n\n## 4. *[Snowflake](https://snowflake.com/en/product/ai/):* From Data Warehouse to AI-Native GTM Engine\n\nSnowflakeâs real move? Enabling conversational access to any enterprise dataset.\n\n\u003e *âCustomers donât pay for databases. They pay for insights.â*\n\n**The GTM stack theyâre betting on:**\n\n- Embedded co-sell motions (e.g., Observe built fully on Snowflake; customers âpayâ in credits).\n- Usage-based sales comp â reps only win when data flows.\n- Reps as **value architects**, not just contract closers.\n\n## 5. *[OpenAI](https://openai.com/):* How to Actually Build a Sales Org\n\n[Maggie Hott](https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggiehott/) broke it down for founders:\n\n\u003e *âOne exceptional hire is better than three average ones. Every time.â*\n\n**Top lessons:**\n\n- Hire for **impact**, not enthusiasm. Passion is not a plan.\n- Founders must own sales until thereâs a **repeatable motion.**\n- Avoid âlogo hires.â Ask what they built, not where they worked.\n- Look for **chaos translators** â generalists who thrive in ambiguity.\n\n## 6. *[Kyle Norton](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylecnorton/):* Sales Is Getting an AI Teammate\n\nNote-takers are the past. AI co-sellers are the future:\n\n\u003e *âItâs not just Digital Kyle â itâs a better one. Because it knows everything.â*\n\n**Whatâs coming:**\n\n- Agents that sit in Zoom, correct errors, answer questions, and augment reps live.\n- CROs who manage **human + agent hybrid teams**.\n- Always-on assistants that understand the product better than your team.\n\n## 7. [Jason Lemkin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmlemkin/)âs Tough Love Sermon\n\nIf youâre still running 2021 playbooks â youâve already lost:\n\n\u003e *âRemote + AI â less work. It means 6.5-day weeks with compounding output.â*\n\n**Hard truths:*
1*\n\n- 30â40% of SaaS teams arenât re-skillable.\n- Moats are weaker, momentum wins.\n- VCs are chasing $10B+ outcomes. Youâll need 3x more proof, with 70% fewer funders.\n\n---\n\n## ð§ Closing Frameworks for SaaStr 2025\n\n- Refound your company. If you were starting now, what would you build?\n- Donât just adopt AI â operationalize it.\n- Measure outcomes, not engagement.\n- Make AI native â not an add-on.\n\nBecause in 2025, youâre not competing on product. Youâre competing on **execution speed**, **context depth**, and whether your team can build with AI â not just talk about it."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"If [SaaStr 2025](https://www.saastrannual.com/) had a headline, itâd be this: *âAI isnât a feature. Itâs a forcing function.â* From OpenAI to HubSpot, Snowflake to Mosaic, the smartest operators arenât asking *how* to use AI â theyâre rebuilding teams, playbooks, and products around it.\n\nWe attended seven of the most tactical sessions â and hereâs the distilled playbook for founders, sales leaders, and GTM teams trying to stay ahead.\n\n## 1. *[Delphi](https://www.delphi.ai/):* Context \u003e Content in the AI Era\n\nAI is for building âdigital mindsâ that reflect your teamâs actual decision logic.\n\nKey Takeaways:\n\n- Generic advice is dead. Delphi simulated 1M founder conversations â every insight depended on company stage, market, and customer type.\n- Vision + gut still matter. Great startups start with intuition, not dashboards.\n- AI-native UX = fewer buttons, more prompts. Fewer teams, more leverage.\n- Final mantra: *âYour people are your IP.â* Strategy can be cloned â context canât.\n\n## 2. *[HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com/):* AI Is Reshaping the Org, Not Just the Tools\n\n[Yamini Rangan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaminirangan/) made it clear: AI is production-grade at HubSpot. 95% of engineers use tools like Cursor daily.\n\n\u003e âGTM now means human + agent collaboration â and seamless handoffs are the new trust currency.â\n\nWhatâs changing:\n\n- Support: AI resolves up to 80% of tier-one tickets. Knowledge base quality is the #1 driver.\n- Engineering: Velocity is up â but so are expectations. Output = business impact.\n- Outreach: âPersonalizedâ is dead. If your AI sends a generic email, itâs deleted in 10 seconds.\n\n## 3. *[Mosaic.ai](http://3.Mosaic.ai):* Multimodal, Multilingual, Multi-Variant â By Default\n\nMosaic is building a video editing agent that handles global, dynamic content in one pass.\n\nWhy it matters:\n\n- Edit with natural language (âcut all clips with the guy in glassesâ).\n- Instant localization via voice cloning + dubbing.\n- Branch-based editing: like Git, but for video assets.\n\nThe next generation of AI-native tools wonât offer âautomationâ â theyâll offer **scale, leverage, and creative freedom.**\n\n## 4. *[Snowflake](https://snowflake.com/en/product/ai/):* From Data Warehouse to AI-Native GTM Engine\n\nSnowflakeâs real move? Enabling conversational access to any enterprise dataset.\n\n\u003e *âCustomers donât pay for databases. They pay for insights.â*\n\n**The GTM stack theyâre betting on:**\n\n- Embedded co-sell motions (e.g., Observe built fully on Snowflake; customers âpayâ in credits).\n- Usage-based sales comp â reps only win when data flows.\n- Reps as **value architects**, not just contract closers.\n\n## 5. *[OpenAI](https://openai.com/):* How to Actually Build a Sales Org\n\n[Maggie Hott](https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggiehott/) broke it down for founders:\n\n\u003e *âOne exceptional hire is better than three average ones. Every time.â*\n\n**Top lessons:**\n\n- Hire for **impact**, not enthusiasm. Passion is not a plan.\n- Founders must own sales until thereâs a **repeatable motion.**\n- Avoid âlogo hires.â Ask what they built, not where they worked.\n- Look for **chaos translators** â generalists who thrive in ambiguity.\n\n## 6. *[Kyle Norton](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylecnorton/):* Sales Is Getting an AI Teammate\n\nNote-takers are the past. AI co-sellers are the future:\n\n\u003e *âItâs not just Digital Kyle â itâs a better one. Because it knows everything.â*\n\n**Whatâs coming:**\n\n- Agents that sit in Zoom, correct errors, answer questions, and augment reps live.\n- CROs who manage **human + agent hybrid teams**.\n- Always-on assistants that understand the product better than your team.\n\n## 7. [Jason Lemkin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmlemkin/)âs Tough Love Sermon\n\nIf youâre still running 2021 playbooks â youâve already lost:\n\n\u003e *âRemote + AI â less work. It means 6.5-day weeks with compounding output.â*\n\n**Hard truths:*
1*\n\n- 30â40% of SaaS teams arenât re-skillable.\n- Moats are weaker, momentum wins.\n- VCs are chasing $10B+ outcomes. Youâll need 3x more proof, with 70% fewer funders.\n\n---\n\n## ð§ Closing Frameworks for SaaStr 2025\n\n- Refound your company. If you were starting now, what would you build?\n- Donât just adopt AI â operationalize it.\n- Measure outcomes, not engagement.\n- Make AI native â not an add-on.\n\nBecause in 2025, youâre not competing on product. Youâre competing on **execution speed**, **context depth**, and whether your team can build with AI â not just talk about it."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"[BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), a founder-first investor syndicate of 250+ unicorn builders, has launched a â¬22M fund to back early-stage startups across Central and Eastern Europe. The fund has already approved four investments, marking a fast start to its next chapter.\n\nThis announcement follows BADideas.fundâs [first exit â RoomPriceGenie â](/post/roompricegenie-exit) which secured a $75M growth investment from Five Elms Capital in February 2025.\n\n\u003e âWeâre backing underdog founders solving real problems in overlooked markets,â said [**Raimonds Kulbergs**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/raimondskulbergs/)\n\nSince launching three years ago, [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) has invested in 30+ startups and grown a global operator community with extensive startup experience â from Wise and Deel to Printify and Shopify.\n\nWith this new â¬22M fund, the team doubles down on its mission: support pre-seed and seed-stage teams across the Baltics and CEE with capital, operator mentorship, and community-driven support.\n\nThe fund is led by a newly formed full-time team:\n\n- [**Arta AbÄÅ¡ina**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arta/), Chief Operating Officer â seasoned in scaling global teams, leading people ops, and driving operational growth across fintech and startup ecosystems.\n- [**MÄrtiÅÅ¡ Pjalkovskis**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/martins-pjalkovskis/), Head of Investments â experienced across VC and private equity, with a strong background in early-stage investing and corporate finance.\n- [**JurÄ£is K
1alniÅÅ¡**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgiskalnins1/), Marketing \u0026 Community Manager â background in edtech, NGO, and public sector, focused on brand, community, and ecosystem building.\n- [**PÄteris PÅ«pols**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterispupols/), Compliance Officer â regulatory and risk specialist with experience in finance, government-backed funds, and advisory.\n\n\n\nMoving forward, BADideas.fund will invest up to â¬250K in pre-seed and up to â¬1.5M in seed-stage companies.\n\n\u003e âWeâve gone from a scrappy founder community to a full-stack VC fund â without losing what made us different. Now weâre playing on a bigger stage, but staying just as real,â said Kulbergs.\n\nIf youâre a founder with big ambitions â [send us your deck](https://www.badideas.fund/pitch-us).\n\nAnd if youâre looking to angel invest and back the next big thing together with us â [reach out to join](https://www.badideas.fund/for-investors)!"])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"[BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), a founder-first investor syndicate of 250+ unicorn builders, has launched a â¬22M fund to back early-stage startups across Central and Eastern Europe. The fund has already approved four investments, marking a fast start to its next chapter.\n\nThis announcement follows BADideas.fundâs [first exit â RoomPriceGenie â](/post/roompricegenie-exit) which secured a $75M growth investment from Five Elms Capital in February 2025.\n\n\u003e âWeâre backing underdog founders solving real problems in overlooked markets,â said [**Raimonds Kulbergs**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/raimondskulbergs/)\n\nSince launching three years ago, [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) has invested in 30+ startups and grown a global operator community with extensive startup experience â from Wise and Deel to Printify and Shopify.\n\nWith this new â¬22M fund, the team doubles down on its mission: support pre-seed and seed-stage teams across the Baltics and CEE with capital, operator mentorship, and community-driven support.\n\nThe fund is led by a newly formed full-time team:\n\n- [**Arta AbÄÅ¡ina**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arta/), Chief Operating Officer â seasoned in scaling global teams, leading people ops, and driving operational growth across fintech and startup ecosystems.\n- [**MÄrtiÅÅ¡ Pjalkovskis**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/martins-pjalkovskis/), Head of Investments â experienced across VC and private equity, with a strong background in early-stage investing and corporate finance.\n- [**JurÄ£is K
1alniÅÅ¡**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgiskalnins1/), Marketing \u0026 Community Manager â background in edtech, NGO, and public sector, focused on brand, community, and ecosystem building.\n- [**PÄteris PÅ«pols**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterispupols/), Compliance Officer â regulatory and risk specialist with experience in finance, government-backed funds, and advisory.\n\n\n\nMoving forward, BADideas.fund will invest up to â¬250K in pre-seed and up to â¬1.5M in seed-stage companies.\n\n\u003e âWeâve gone from a scrappy founder community to a full-stack VC fund â without losing what made us different. Now weâre playing on a bigger stage, but staying just as real,â said Kulbergs.\n\nIf youâre a founder with big ambitions â [send us your deck](https://www.badideas.fund/pitch-us).\n\nAnd if youâre looking to angel invest and back the next big thing together with us â [reach out to join](https://www.badideas.fund/for-investors)!"])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"BADideas.fund announces its first successful exit, following RoomPriceGenieâs $75 million USD investment from Five Elms Capital.\n\nWhen BADideas.fund invested â¬170,000 in February 2023, RoomPriceGenie had identified a significant gap in revenue management for independent hotels. At the time, the company had fewer than 1,000 customers, yet it was growing 130% year-over-year with a plan to reach â¬2M ARR. Since then, it has expanded to over 3,000 hotel customers, proving the industryâs demand for better pricing automation.\n\n\u003e âRoomPriceGenie exemplifies what we look forâfounders addressing a specific market inefficiency at a global scale,â said Raimonds Kulbergs, General Partner at BADideas.fund. âThis first exit is an important milestone for BADideas.fund, validating our investment approach and the ability to identify globally ambitious founders building in underserved markets.â\n\nSince its launch three years ago, BADideas.fund has invested $3M+ across 25 startups, and now, with its newly launched â¬22M fund, BADideas.fund is doubling down on backing founders with global ambition, ideas with a clear market gap, and highly capable team with roots in CEE.\n\nThe fund combines capital with hands-on support from its 250+ member community of accomplished operators and unicorn builders, who have helped build companies like Deel, Wise, Twilio, Printify, Pipedrive, and Shopify."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"BADideas.fund announces its first successful exit, following RoomPriceGenieâs $75 million USD investment from Five Elms Capital.\n\nWhen BADideas.fund invested â¬170,000 in February 2023, RoomPriceGenie had identified a significant gap in revenue management for independent hotels. At the time, the company had fewer than 1,000 customers, yet it was growing 130% year-over-year with a plan to reach â¬2M ARR. Since then, it has expanded to over 3,000 hotel customers, proving the industryâs demand for better pricing automation.\n\n\u003e âRoomPriceGenie exemplifies what we look forâfounders addressing a specific market inefficiency at a global scale,â said Raimonds Kulbergs, General Partner at BADideas.fund. âThis first exit is an important milestone for BADideas.fund, validating our investment approach and the ability to identify globally ambitious founders building in underserved markets.â\n\nSince its launch three years ago, BADideas.fund has invested $3M+ across 25 startups, and now, with its newly launched â¬22M fund, BADideas.fund is doubling down on backing founders with global ambition, ideas with a clear market gap, and highly capable team with roots in CEE.\n\nThe fund combines capital with hands-on support from its 250+ member community of accomplished operators and unicorn builders, who have helped build companies like Deel, Wise, Twilio, Printify, Pipedrive, and Shopify."])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"2f:T13f8,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"In a twist of an old saying, it takes a village to raise a unicorn. We know that because we at [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) have been lucky enough to have been invited to many of our investments by the VC friends \u0026 partners in the neighborhood.\n\nTheyâre the ones who know the new kids on the block, so when we asked some of them which are the startups to watch in 2024, there were so many we had to turn this into a blog post. ð\n\n### ð¸ð° [Siml.ai](http://Siml.ai)\n\n- One-liner: High-performance, AI-based numerical simulators for engineering and scientific breakthroughs\n- [Siim Teller](https://www.linkedin.com/in/siimteller/), [Lemonade Stand](https://lemonadestand.ee/) ð on [Michal TakáÄ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaltakac/) \u0026 team: \"The promise is to speed up complex physical simulations. Extrapolate small improvements to engineering challenges to critical areas like energy, infrastructure, mobility and you start seeing a real impact on our everyday lives. 2024 is all about early adopters!\"\n\n### ð±ð¹ [Furnisystems](https://furnisystems.com/)\n\n- One-liner: E-commerce platform for the furniture industry\n- [Marijus Andrijauskas](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marijus-andrijauskas/), [FIRSTPICK](https://firstpick.vc/) on [Airidas JuÅ¡kaitis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/airidas-juskaitis-a294ab85/) \u0026 team: \"Furnisystems is at the forefront of digitizing the furniture market with a unique approach to integrating manufacturers' ERP systems with products. With a booming market, Furnisystems is poised to capture a significant share in 2024.\"\n\n### ð«ð® [Kicker.cloud](http://Kicker.cloud)\n\n- One-liner: B2B SaaS reshaping the private finance industry with an end-to-end deal execution platform\n- [Janiina Lammi](https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiinalammi/), [Vendep Capital](https://www.vendep.com/) on [Heini Salonen](https://www.linkedin.com/in/heini-salonen/) \u0026 team: \"After successful pilots, [Kicker.cloud](http://Kicker.cloud) is focusing on sales to high-volume corporate M\u0026A teams in Europe, offering an innovative solution that optimizes processes and data usage across transaction lifecycles.\"\n\n### ð·ð´ [Veridion](https://veridion.com/)\n\n- One-liner: AI-powered firmographic intelligence data\n- [Todor Breshkov](https://www.linkedin.com/in/breshkov/), [LauncHUB](https://launchub.com/) on [Florin Tufan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/florin-tufan-3b0b66173/) \u0026 team: \"Veridion's AI-first approach to firmographic data is capturing the rapidly growing demand for reliable business data in risk assessment, M\u0026A, and supply chain industries, positioning itself as a primary data source.\"\n\n### ðºð¸ [Zendata](https://www.zendata.dev/)\n\n- One-liner: B2B SaaS for monitoring PII distribution and usage compliance\n- [Sviatoslava Luhovet](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sviatoslava/)s, [GeekVC](https://gee
1k.vc/) on [Narayana Pappu](https://www.linkedin.com/in/npappu/) \u0026 team: \"Operating in the booming market of data privacy, Zendata is recognized by industry leaders for its compliance solutions in a sector expected to grow significantly, led by a seasoned founder with a track record of success.\"\n\n### ð«ð® [Pixieray](https://www.pixieray.com/)\n\n- One-liner: Autofocus glasses using liquid crystal technology\n- [Magnus Hambleton](https://www.linkedin.com/in/magnushambleton/), [byFounders](https://www.byfounders.vc/) on [Niko Eiden](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eiden/) \u0026 team: \"Pixieray is revolutionizing the eyewear industry by introducing glasses that adapt their focal length, targeting the vast market of over 4 billion people needing glasses.\"\n\n### ð±ð¹ [#walk15](https://www.walk15.app/en/)\n\n- One-liner: Sustainable activity platform\n- [Gytenis Galkis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gytenis/), [70V](https://www.70v.com/) on [Vlada Musvydaite](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vlada-musvydaite/) \u0026 team: \"With explosive energy and significant traction, 2024 marks the year of cross-border expansion. Their model, aiming for both profitability and social good, has the potential to become a ð¦ in the sustainable activity space.\"\n\n### ðªðª [Align](https://getalign.com/)\n\n- One-liner: AI-powered client feedback intelligence platform\n- [Kaan Eren](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaanerenn/), [500 Emerging Europe](https://ee.500.co/) on [Georg Vooglaid](https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgvooglaid/) \u0026 team: \"Align has rapidly developed a strong product, scaling value for B2B SaaS companies with its system of intelligence leveraging generative AI, poised for significant growth in 2024.\"\n\n### ð±ð¹ [Biomatter.ai](http://Biomatter.ai)\n\n- One-liner: Creating proteins and enzymes with Intelligent Architecture⢠for health and sustainable manufacturing.\n- [Donatas Keras](
1https://www.linkedin.com/in/donatas-keras-063041a/), [Practica Capital](https://practica.vc/en) on [Laurynas Karpus](https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurynaskarpus/) \u0026 team: \"[Biomatter.ai](http://Biomatter.ai)'s accumulated knowledge, partnerships, and commercial networks are set to deliver powerful results, both monetary and innovative, as they act global from day one.\""])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"30:T13f8,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"In a twist of an old saying, it takes a village to raise a unicorn. We know that because we at [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) have been lucky enough to have been invited to many of our investments by the VC friends \u0026 partners in the neighborhood.\n\nTheyâre the ones who know the new kids on the block, so when we asked some of them which are the startups to watch in 2024, there were so many we had to turn this into a blog post. ð\n\n### ð¸ð° [Siml.ai](http://Siml.ai)\n\n- One-liner: High-performance, AI-based numerical simulators for engineering and scientific breakthroughs\n- [Siim Teller](https://www.linkedin.com/in/siimteller/), [Lemonade Stand](https://lemonadestand.ee/) ð on [Michal TakáÄ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaltakac/) \u0026 team: \"The promise is to speed up complex physical simulations. Extrapolate small improvements to engineering challenges to critical areas like energy, infrastructure, mobility and you start seeing a real impact on our everyday lives. 2024 is all about early adopters!\"\n\n### ð±ð¹ [Furnisystems](https://furnisystems.com/)\n\n- One-liner: E-commerce platform for the furniture industry\n- [Marijus Andrijauskas](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marijus-andrijauskas/), [FIRSTPICK](https://firstpick.vc/) on [Airidas JuÅ¡kaitis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/airidas-juskaitis-a294ab85/) \u0026 team: \"Furnisystems is at the forefront of digitizing the furniture market with a unique approach to integrating manufacturers' ERP systems with products. With a booming market, Furnisystems is poised to capture a significant share in 2024.\"\n\n### ð«ð® [Kicker.cloud](http://Kicker.cloud)\n\n- One-liner: B2B SaaS reshaping the private finance industry with an end-to-end deal execution platform\n- [Janiina Lammi](https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiinalammi/), [Vendep Capital](https://www.vendep.com/) on [Heini Salonen](https://www.linkedin.com/in/heini-salonen/) \u0026 team: \"After successful pilots, [Kicker.cloud](http://Kicker.cloud) is focusing on sales to high-volume corporate M\u0026A teams in Europe, offering an innovative solution that optimizes processes and data usage across transaction lifecycles.\"\n\n### ð·ð´ [Veridion](https://veridion.com/)\n\n- One-liner: AI-powered firmographic intelligence data\n- [Todor Breshkov](https://www.linkedin.com/in/breshkov/), [LauncHUB](https://launchub.com/) on [Florin Tufan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/florin-tufan-3b0b66173/) \u0026 team: \"Veridion's AI-first approach to firmographic data is capturing the rapidly growing demand for reliable business data in risk assessment, M\u0026A, and supply chain industries, positioning itself as a primary data source.\"\n\n### ðºð¸ [Zendata](https://www.zendata.dev/)\n\n- One-liner: B2B SaaS for monitoring PII distribution and usage compliance\n- [Sviatoslava Luhovet](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sviatoslava/)s, [GeekVC](https://gee
1k.vc/) on [Narayana Pappu](https://www.linkedin.com/in/npappu/) \u0026 team: \"Operating in the booming market of data privacy, Zendata is recognized by industry leaders for its compliance solutions in a sector expected to grow significantly, led by a seasoned founder with a track record of success.\"\n\n### ð«ð® [Pixieray](https://www.pixieray.com/)\n\n- One-liner: Autofocus glasses using liquid crystal technology\n- [Magnus Hambleton](https://www.linkedin.com/in/magnushambleton/), [byFounders](https://www.byfounders.vc/) on [Niko Eiden](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eiden/) \u0026 team: \"Pixieray is revolutionizing the eyewear industry by introducing glasses that adapt their focal length, targeting the vast market of over 4 billion people needing glasses.\"\n\n### ð±ð¹ [#walk15](https://www.walk15.app/en/)\n\n- One-liner: Sustainable activity platform\n- [Gytenis Galkis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gytenis/), [70V](https://www.70v.com/) on [Vlada Musvydaite](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vlada-musvydaite/) \u0026 team: \"With explosive energy and significant traction, 2024 marks the year of cross-border expansion. Their model, aiming for both profitability and social good, has the potential to become a ð¦ in the sustainable activity space.\"\n\n### ðªðª [Align](https://getalign.com/)\n\n- One-liner: AI-powered client feedback intelligence platform\n- [Kaan Eren](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaanerenn/), [500 Emerging Europe](https://ee.500.co/) on [Georg Vooglaid](https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgvooglaid/) \u0026 team: \"Align has rapidly developed a strong product, scaling value for B2B SaaS companies with its system of intelligence leveraging generative AI, poised for significant growth in 2024.\"\n\n### ð±ð¹ [Biomatter.ai](http://Biomatter.ai)\n\n- One-liner: Creating proteins and enzymes with Intelligent Architecture⢠for health and sustainable manufacturing.\n- [Donatas Keras](
1https://www.linkedin.com/in/donatas-keras-063041a/), [Practica Capital](https://practica.vc/en) on [Laurynas Karpus](https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurynaskarpus/) \u0026 team: \"[Biomatter.ai](http://Biomatter.ai)'s accumulated knowledge, partnerships, and commercial networks are set to deliver powerful results, both monetary and innovative, as they act global from day one.\""])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"31:T1119,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"In the world of investments, some deals are so scorching hot that they demand our attention, even if they sit at the edge of our usual focus. Deal #9 from [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) is exactly this case. [RoomPriceGenie](https://roompricegenie.com/), a rising star in hotel tech, has pushed the envelope, combining an innovative business model, impressive sales numbers, and an exceptional founding team to create a solution that promises to revolutionize the industry, and they appeared on our radar after one of the smartest VCs - Flashpoint VC - introduced us to the founders through our founding member [Artis Kehris](/3a74ea0a4e374f5fb4bdc23cd9df0704?pvs=25).\n\n## The Genius behind the Genie\n\nOur member [Daniel Marhel](https://www.notion.so/Daniel-Marhel-7d47c68da3e348e883db7a7ea1d2a20c?pvs=21), ex-CPO \u0026 CMO at Printify and the driving force behind Cherry's ecommerce sales growth from $5M to $28M, had this to say about RoomPriceGenie:\n\n\u003e RoomPriceGenie addresses a very painful problem for small hotel owners - price setting and management. Even small variations in price can mean the difference between a profitable and a loss-making hotel. They address it in a very simple package, which allows hotel owners to basically set up and forget - RoomPriceGenie does all the work for them.\n\n## **The Problem and Why it Matters**\n\nRoomPriceGenie takes on a persistent problem for small to medium-sized hotels - price setting and management. [Research](https://www.notion.so/BADideas-fund-s-Bold-Bet-on-Value-Space-6077ce29b4814b5a9210fe747fa6a102?pvs=21) shows that price is a key factor in decision making for 85% of travelers. However, [only 5%](https://research.skift.com/report/hotel-tech-benchmark-revenue-management-systems-2021/) of accommodation providers (mainly large and chain hotels) currently use automated pricing software. RoomPriceGenie has built a solution for the other 95% of properties that do not use any solution for automating pricing, serving as a lifejacket in a sea of manual processes.\n\n## **How it Works**\n\nRoomPriceGenie's automated pricing software lets hotel owners set up and then step back, letting the system do the heavy lifting. It simplifies price management and frees up valuable time for hotel owners to focus on improving guest experiences and other core aspects of their business. RoomPriceGenie's software provides the needed pricing expertise in an easy-to-use package, accessible for even those with no previous experience in price management systems.\n\n## **Team, Traction, and Distribution Trifecta**\n\nSteered by an exceptional trio of co-founders - [Ari Andricopoulos](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariandricopoulos/) (CEO), [Marvin Speh](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marvinspeh/) (COO), and [Jörg Siegel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/j%C3%B6rg-siegel-a66822143/) (CTO) - RoomPriceGenie's fully remote team has not only navigated but also thrived in the unpredictable waters of the COVID-19 pandemic, doubling their business even during these challenging times. Their methodical approach and clear vision are reflected in the company's impressive business metrics. The team's combined expertise and dedication are driving RoomPriceGenie towards exciting new frontiers in the hotel industry.\n\n## **Market and Timing**\n\nWith 1.15M properties estimated without automated pricing, the market is ripe for RoomPriceGenie's solution, and the company's founder foresees a majority of the market adopting automated pricing solutions within the next 5 years. RoomPriceGenie is poised to capture a substantial portion of this market with its customer-centric and easy-to-use solution.\n\n## But theyâre not from CEEâ¦\n\nYes, you read that right - we invested in a team that fall outside our primary focus on early-stage CEE startups, because we believe it's crucial to occassionally expose ourselves to the global maximum. RoomPriceGenie, we believe, fits the bill perfectly.\n\n## **The bottom line**\n\nWe are thrilled to back RoomPriceGenie thanks to the value the team brings to the hotel industry and our portfolio, and the chance to participate in a top globally ambitious startup journey.\n\nSo, fellow startup foun
1ders, take a note of that this is the kind of investment we look out for - high potential, exceptional team, and a commitment to solving real-world problems, even if it means bending the rules (a tiny little bit)."])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"32:T1119,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"In the world of investments, some deals are so scorching hot that they demand our attention, even if they sit at the edge of our usual focus. Deal #9 from [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) is exactly this case. [RoomPriceGenie](https://roompricegenie.com/), a rising star in hotel tech, has pushed the envelope, combining an innovative business model, impressive sales numbers, and an exceptional founding team to create a solution that promises to revolutionize the industry, and they appeared on our radar after one of the smartest VCs - Flashpoint VC - introduced us to the founders through our founding member [Artis Kehris](/3a74ea0a4e374f5fb4bdc23cd9df0704?pvs=25).\n\n## The Genius behind the Genie\n\nOur member [Daniel Marhel](https://www.notion.so/Daniel-Marhel-7d47c68da3e348e883db7a7ea1d2a20c?pvs=21), ex-CPO \u0026 CMO at Printify and the driving force behind Cherry's ecommerce sales growth from $5M to $28M, had this to say about RoomPriceGenie:\n\n\u003e RoomPriceGenie addresses a very painful problem for small hotel owners - price setting and management. Even small variations in price can mean the difference between a profitable and a loss-making hotel. They address it in a very simple package, which allows hotel owners to basically set up and forget - RoomPriceGenie does all the work for them.\n\n## **The Problem and Why it Matters**\n\nRoomPriceGenie takes on a persistent problem for small to medium-sized hotels - price setting and management. [Research](https://www.notion.so/BADideas-fund-s-Bold-Bet-on-Value-Space-6077ce29b4814b5a9210fe747fa6a102?pvs=21) shows that price is a key factor in decision making for 85% of travelers. However, [only 5%](https://research.skift.com/report/hotel-tech-benchmark-revenue-management-systems-2021/) of accommodation providers (mainly large and chain hotels) currently use automated pricing software. RoomPriceGenie has built a solution for the other 95% of properties that do not use any solution for automating pricing, serving as a lifejacket in a sea of manual processes.\n\n## **How it Works**\n\nRoomPriceGenie's automated pricing software lets hotel owners set up and then step back, letting the system do the heavy lifting. It simplifies price management and frees up valuable time for hotel owners to focus on improving guest experiences and other core aspects of their business. RoomPriceGenie's software provides the needed pricing expertise in an easy-to-use package, accessible for even those with no previous experience in price management systems.\n\n## **Team, Traction, and Distribution Trifecta**\n\nSteered by an exceptional trio of co-founders - [Ari Andricopoulos](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariandricopoulos/) (CEO), [Marvin Speh](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marvinspeh/) (COO), and [Jörg Siegel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/j%C3%B6rg-siegel-a66822143/) (CTO) - RoomPriceGenie's fully remote team has not only navigated but also thrived in the unpredictable waters of the COVID-19 pandemic, doubling their business even during these challenging times. Their methodical approach and clear vision are reflected in the company's impressive business metrics. The team's combined expertise and dedication are driving RoomPriceGenie towards exciting new frontiers in the hotel industry.\n\n## **Market and Timing**\n\nWith 1.15M properties estimated without automated pricing, the market is ripe for RoomPriceGenie's solution, and the company's founder foresees a majority of the market adopting automated pricing solutions within the next 5 years. RoomPriceGenie is poised to capture a substantial portion of this market with its customer-centric and easy-to-use solution.\n\n## But theyâre not from CEEâ¦\n\nYes, you read that right - we invested in a team that fall outside our primary focus on early-stage CEE startups, because we believe it's crucial to occassionally expose ourselves to the global maximum. RoomPriceGenie, we believe, fits the bill perfectly.\n\n## **The bottom line**\n\nWe are thrilled to back RoomPriceGenie thanks to the value the team brings to the hotel industry and our portfolio, and the chance to participate in a top globally ambitious startup journey.\n\nSo, fellow startup foun
1ders, take a note of that this is the kind of investment we look out for - high potential, exceptional team, and a commitment to solving real-world problems, even if it means bending the rules (a tiny little bit)."])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"33:T17b4,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"Recently we made our biggest ticket to date when we decided to back [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) with a â¬220K check in their oversubscribed second close, a part of their â¬2.1M seed round. Itâs a big milestone for our investor community, so in this piece weâre diving in the ins and outs of this deal and whatâs next for [Value.Space](http://Value.Space).\n\nWhy and how did [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) end up being the next investment of [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) helpful founders and operators community? Letâs dive in.\n\n## **Why** [**Value.Space**](http://Value.Space)**?**\n\n[Value.Space](http://Value.Space) leverages satellite technology to detect anomalies in critical assets like dams, bridges, and mining plants in order to give insurance, finance industry and governments an unprecedented upper hand in risk prevention.\n\nThis isn't just about putting some satellite maps together, but rather complex data computations that involve data rendering from different maps with the ability to both look years back and have it real time. The implications of this approach are huge. Aging and deteriorating infrastructure is a global problem, and climate change is only accelerating the risks associated with these structures. Right now [Value.Space](http://Value.Space)'s technology helps insurers assess risks more accurately and effectively, providing them an edge over competitors.\n\nNeedless to say that their market potential is vast. Just one use-case could lead to 410,000,000 one-time assessments, generating up to â¬340B in revenue, and thatâs without considering the potential of other sectors - governments, international organizations, large scale infrastru
1cture owners, and more.\n\n## **Delving into** [**BADideas.fund**](http://BADideas.fund)**'s Investment Strategy**\n\n[BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) evaluated [Value.Space](http://Value.Space)'s potential based on four critical aspects: team, market, product/traction, and distribution. With a total weighed score of 3.52 out of 4, [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) ticked all the right boxes, and our investors highlight a number of reasons why they believe in [Value.Space](http://Value.Space):\n\nâ
Team - A big part of [Value.Space](http://Value.Space)'s appeal is its strong founding team, which boasts deep technical and domain (insurance) expertise. They've demonstrated the ability to engage policy makers, which is key in educating the market about their novel solution.\n\n\u003e ð¡ Team is always hands down the most important aspect we look for so it was important that all investors were equally excited.\n\nâ
Market potential - with a huge opportunity in the insurance sector alone, it was clear that the team operates in the right segment. This, alongside the experienced team and [Value.Space](http://Value.Space)'s proprietary product, was the key consideration for [Janis Krums](https://www.notion.so/Janis-Krums-2d4280083d5b45e48dbcf84ba9465869?pvs=21).\n\nâ
Product traction - their paradigm-shifting technology and the potential future use-cases it could unlock were a huge draw to us, and the key reason why [Lauris Lietavietis](https://www.notion.so/Lauris-Lietavietis-3eceb85f59034d7eb1e93babd6abae6f?pvs=21) was excited to back them\n\nâ
Distribution strategy - [Ben Leblois](https://www.notion.so/Ben-Leblois-6afd5a22a59a4e3bb75f05e2f08cffea?pvs=21) highlighted the teamâs first-hand experience within target customer base as a key success factor that the team is leveraging with a compelling roadmap to product-market fit.\n\n## [**Value.Space**](http://Value.Space)**'s Growth and Risks**\n\n[Value.Space](http://Value.Space) has already achieved considerable traction, generating revenue and working with Tier-1 insurance companies.\n\nHowever, as with any investment, there are risks. To name a few, sales cycles in insurance are long, and the market is highly concentrated. There's also the challenge of educating the market about this new approach. However, [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) is well-positioned to overcome these hurdles, given that the team has demonstrated the ability to engage policy makers and and use funding to keep building the product in order to increase the number of assessments per month.\n\nThe recent â¬2.1 million funding round is a significant boost for [Value.Space](http://Value.Space)'s growth plans. Not only will this allow them to capture a bigger market share in the insurance industry, but will also open doors for them to expand their product offer to other segments in the finance industry.\n\n## [**Value.Space**](http://Value.Space) **in the Context of Climate Change**\n\nFor us, backing [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) goes beyond having a solid investment opportunity - it's a solution to a critical global issue. The increasingly alarming impact of climate change on aging infrastructure poses immense risks to economies worldwide. By uncovering these risks, [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) leverages risk prevention on a new level to mitigate the impact of climate change and make our future more secure, literally.\n\nAs [Reijo Pold](https://www.linkedin.com/in/reijopold), founder of [Value.Space](http://Value.Space), puts it:\n\n\u003e \"The facts speak for themselves: Swiss Re estimates that in 2021, the economic loss from natural catastrophes amounted to $270 billion, $111 billion of which were insured losses. That is a huge protection gap. We are now able to provide a new and scalable way to make risks and opportunities quantifiable, which the insurance market desperately needs in order to manage and absorb future risks.\"\n\n## To sum up\n\n[BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund)'s investment in [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) is more than just another venture capital deal. It's us taking a bold stance to back innovative technology that solves global problems, and the willingness of daring investors to back truly impactful solutions. The skyâs spaceâs the limit for [Value.Space](http://Value.Space), and we can't wait to see how this investment propels their growth and impact."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"Recently we made our biggest ticket to date when we decided to back [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) with a â¬220K check in their oversubscribed second close, a part of their â¬2.1M seed round. Itâs a big milestone for our investor community, so in this piece weâre diving in the ins and outs of this deal and whatâs next for [Value.Space](http://Value.Space).\n\nWhy and how did [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) end up being the next investment of [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) helpful founders and operators community? Letâs dive in.\n\n## **Why** [**Value.Space**](http://Value.Space)**?**\n\n[Value.Space](http://Value.Space) leverages satellite technology to detect anomalies in critical assets like dams, bridges, and mining plants in order to give insurance, finance industry and governments an unprecedented upper hand in risk prevention.\n\nThis isn't just about putting some satellite maps together, but rather complex data computations that involve data rendering from different maps with the ability to both look years back and have it real time. The implications of this approach are huge. Aging and deteriorating infrastructure is a global problem, and climate change is only accelerating the risks associated with these structures. Right now [Value.Space](http://Value.Space)'s technology helps insurers assess risks more accurately and effectively, providing them an edge over competitors.\n\nNeedless to say that their market potential is vast. Just one use-case could lead to 410,000,000 one-time assessments, generating up to â¬340B in revenue, and thatâs without considering the potential of other sectors - governments, international organizations, large scale infrastru
1cture owners, and more.\n\n## **Delving into** [**BADideas.fund**](http://BADideas.fund)**'s Investment Strategy**\n\n[BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) evaluated [Value.Space](http://Value.Space)'s potential based on four critical aspects: team, market, product/traction, and distribution. With a total weighed score of 3.52 out of 4, [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) ticked all the right boxes, and our investors highlight a number of reasons why they believe in [Value.Space](http://Value.Space):\n\nâ
Team - A big part of [Value.Space](http://Value.Space)'s appeal is its strong founding team, which boasts deep technical and domain (insurance) expertise. They've demonstrated the ability to engage policy makers, which is key in educating the market about their novel solution.\n\n\u003e ð¡ Team is always hands down the most important aspect we look for so it was important that all investors were equally excited.\n\nâ
Market potential - with a huge opportunity in the insurance sector alone, it was clear that the team operates in the right segment. This, alongside the experienced team and [Value.Space](http://Value.Space)'s proprietary product, was the key consideration for [Janis Krums](https://www.notion.so/Janis-Krums-2d4280083d5b45e48dbcf84ba9465869?pvs=21).\n\nâ
Product traction - their paradigm-shifting technology and the potential future use-cases it could unlock were a huge draw to us, and the key reason why [Lauris Lietavietis](https://www.notion.so/Lauris-Lietavietis-3eceb85f59034d7eb1e93babd6abae6f?pvs=21) was excited to back them\n\nâ
Distribution strategy - [Ben Leblois](https://www.notion.so/Ben-Leblois-6afd5a22a59a4e3bb75f05e2f08cffea?pvs=21) highlighted the teamâs first-hand experience within target customer base as a key success factor that the team is leveraging with a compelling roadmap to product-market fit.\n\n## [**Value.Space**](http://Value.Space)**'s Growth and Risks**\n\n[Value.Space](http://Value.Space) has already achieved considerable traction, generating revenue and working with Tier-1 insurance companies.\n\nHowever, as with any investment, there are risks. To name a few, sales cycles in insurance are long, and the market is highly concentrated. There's also the challenge of educating the market about this new approach. However, [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) is well-positioned to overcome these hurdles, given that the team has demonstrated the ability to engage policy makers and and use funding to keep building the product in order to increase the number of assessments per month.\n\nThe recent â¬2.1 million funding round is a significant boost for [Value.Space](http://Value.Space)'s growth plans. Not only will this allow them to capture a bigger market share in the insurance industry, but will also open doors for them to expand their product offer to other segments in the finance industry.\n\n## [**Value.Space**](http://Value.Space) **in the Context of Climate Change**\n\nFor us, backing [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) goes beyond having a solid investment opportunity - it's a solution to a critical global issue. The increasingly alarming impact of climate change on aging infrastructure poses immense risks to economies worldwide. By uncovering these risks, [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) leverages risk prevention on a new level to mitigate the impact of climate change and make our future more secure, literally.\n\nAs [Reijo Pold](https://www.linkedin.com/in/reijopold), founder of [Value.Space](http://Value.Space), puts it:\n\n\u003e \"The facts speak for themselves: Swiss Re estimates that in 2021, the economic loss from natural catastrophes amounted to $270 billion, $111 billion of which were insured losses. That is a huge protection gap. We are now able to provide a new and scalable way to make risks and opportunities quantifiable, which the insurance market desperately needs in order to manage and absorb future risks.\"\n\n## To sum up\n\n[BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund)'s investment in [Value.Space](http://Value.Space) is more than just another venture capital deal. It's us taking a bold stance to back innovative technology that solves global problems, and the willingness of daring investors to back truly impactful solutions. The skyâs spaceâs the limit for [Value.Space](http://Value.Space), and we can't wait to see how this investment propels their growth and impact."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"Hi, founder! ð At [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), our focus is on post-MVP startups with roots in CEE and global expansion plans so when it came to making our very first investment decision, backing [Breezit](https://badideas.fund/some-of-our-investments/breezit-inc) - a SaaS-enabled marketplace revolutionizing the private event industry - was a no-brainer. I will not copy the entire [Linkedin post](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/badideasfund-1st-investment-breezit-raimonds-kulbergs/) explaining why we were excited at the time here, but it essentially boiled down to this:\n\n- A space weâre comfortable advising on, ie, B2B SaaS or marketplace\n- Big market potential - $1T\n- Competitive advantage in distribution - focus on product-led growth and growth loops\n- Battle-tested founders either from or with roots in CEE\n- Global ambition, ideally with US as the target market (more on that below ð)\n\n## Seven lessons learnt\n\nAfter dominating the event planning market in Lithuania within two years, [Breezit](https://badideas.fund/some-of-our-investments/breezit-inc) set its sights on Southern California, and Feb â23 marked their first paying US customers. Reflecting on their journey, [CEO ArtÅ«ras AsakaviÄius](https://badideas.fund/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsuper-static-assets.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8615e1dc-25a7-48a6-91ef-aea303921f34%2Fimages%2F85556e8e-b7de-4fe5-bd27-0362d01ec0ea.png\u0026w=1080\u0026q=80) shared these 7ï¸â£ lessons they learnt along the way and kindly let us share them:\n\n### 1ï¸â£ US users are on it, literally\n\nUnlike in Lithuania, US customers tend to stick to using the platform for contacting vendors, rather than attempting to transact outside of it. It was much easier for us to show the product value in the US compared to Lithuania.\n\n### 2ï¸â£ But US users are more reluctant to sign up in the first place\n\nUS customers show a strong aversion to signing up on platforms. To address this, Breezit adapted its product by making all features available without registration and finding alternative methods for capturing customer emails.\n\n### 3ï¸â£ US users are spoiled: delivering exceptional UX is key\n\nHigh competition in the US market means customers expect exceptional UX and a wide service selection. Breezit had to up its game, as the strong engagement in Lithuania didn't automatically transfer to the US market.\n\n### 4ï¸â£ US customers are more savvy with analytics\n\nUS vendors are more sophisticated in calculating conversions, unlike Lithuanian vendors who rely more on intuition. Budget planning is very strict and we had to time our sales based on budgeting periods.\n\n### 5ï¸â£ US outbound sales is a struggle\n\nUS outbound sales are significantly more challenging due to advanced spam-blocking techniques. Breezit had to overcome flagged numbers and explore innovative ways to reach potential customers.\n\n### 6ï¸â£ Donât skip product localization\n\nA crucial aspect of scaling a startup internationally is understanding the importance of product localization. Initially, we didn't fully grasp the significance of having at least one local team member. Fortunately, the required localizations for the US market were minimal, and only 5% of the code ended up needing alterations.\n\n### 7ï¸â£ US customers share are direct with feedback\n\nUS customers readily share their dislikes about competitors and suggest improvements, making it easier for Breezit to build a better product. In contrast, Lithuanian vendors tend to be less forthcoming with honest feedback.\n\nIn a nutshell, Breezit's journey conquering the US so far teaches us to adapt and embrace the local scene. Think of it as dancing with a new partner â pay attention, adjust, and use feedback to your advantage. So, ready to take your startup global? Dive in and make waves!"])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"Hi, founder! ð At [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), our focus is on post-MVP startups with roots in CEE and global expansion plans so when it came to making our very first investment decision, backing [Breezit](https://badideas.fund/some-of-our-investments/breezit-inc) - a SaaS-enabled marketplace revolutionizing the private event industry - was a no-brainer. I will not copy the entire [Linkedin post](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/badideasfund-1st-investment-breezit-raimonds-kulbergs/) explaining why we were excited at the time here, but it essentially boiled down to this:\n\n- A space weâre comfortable advising on, ie, B2B SaaS or marketplace\n- Big market potential - $1T\n- Competitive advantage in distribution - focus on product-led growth and growth loops\n- Battle-tested founders either from or with roots in CEE\n- Global ambition, ideally with US as the target market (more on that below ð)\n\n## Seven lessons learnt\n\nAfter dominating the event planning market in Lithuania within two years, [Breezit](https://badideas.fund/some-of-our-investments/breezit-inc) set its sights on Southern California, and Feb â23 marked their first paying US customers. Reflecting on their journey, [CEO ArtÅ«ras AsakaviÄius](https://badideas.fund/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsuper-static-assets.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8615e1dc-25a7-48a6-91ef-aea303921f34%2Fimages%2F85556e8e-b7de-4fe5-bd27-0362d01ec0ea.png\u0026w=1080\u0026q=80) shared these 7ï¸â£ lessons they learnt along the way and kindly let us share them:\n\n### 1ï¸â£ US users are on it, literally\n\nUnlike in Lithuania, US customers tend to stick to using the platform for contacting vendors, rather than attempting to transact outside of it. It was much easier for us to show the product value in the US compared to Lithuania.\n\n### 2ï¸â£ But US users are more reluctant to sign up in the first place\n\nUS customers show a strong aversion to signing up on platforms. To address this, Breezit adapted its product by making all features available without registration and finding alternative methods for capturing customer emails.\n\n### 3ï¸â£ US users are spoiled: delivering exceptional UX is key\n\nHigh competition in the US market means customers expect exceptional UX and a wide service selection. Breezit had to up its game, as the strong engagement in Lithuania didn't automatically transfer to the US market.\n\n### 4ï¸â£ US customers are more savvy with analytics\n\nUS vendors are more sophisticated in calculating conversions, unlike Lithuanian vendors who rely more on intuition. Budget planning is very strict and we had to time our sales based on budgeting periods.\n\n### 5ï¸â£ US outbound sales is a struggle\n\nUS outbound sales are significantly more challenging due to advanced spam-blocking techniques. Breezit had to overcome flagged numbers and explore innovative ways to reach potential customers.\n\n### 6ï¸â£ Donât skip product localization\n\nA crucial aspect of scaling a startup internationally is understanding the importance of product localization. Initially, we didn't fully grasp the significance of having at least one local team member. Fortunately, the required localizations for the US market were minimal, and only 5% of the code ended up needing alterations.\n\n### 7ï¸â£ US customers share are direct with feedback\n\nUS customers readily share their dislikes about competitors and suggest improvements, making it easier for Breezit to build a better product. In contrast, Lithuanian vendors tend to be less forthcoming with honest feedback.\n\nIn a nutshell, Breezit's journey conquering the US so far teaches us to adapt and embrace the local scene. Think of it as dancing with a new partner â pay attention, adjust, and use feedback to your advantage. So, ready to take your startup global? Dive in and make waves!"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"37:T13d0,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"Part of our ethos over here at [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) is to go beyond writing checks to game-changing startups by building a true community centered around the idea of meaningfully supporting our portfolio companies as they tackle growth challenges, as well as collectively getting better as investors.\n\nFor many of us - [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) is the first proper experience with angel investing, and now that weâre coming up to our first anniversary, we reflect on the buzz around figuring out the basics of how to think about capital allocation, dealflow creation and investment decision mare more broadly. Thankfully, we have a few experienced investors in our community, and picking their brain has been invaluable. One of them is [Ben Leblois](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-leblois-7a416654/), a 3x founder with 1 successful exit and over 35 investments.\n\n## Find a Thesis and Stay True to It\n\n### It *really* is that Important\n\nBen emphasizes the importance of having a thesis - a set of criteria that guides an investor's decisions - when it comes to angel investing. It helps maintain focus on specific areas and filter out potential investments that don't fit the strategy. Without a thesis, investors can get lost in the sea of opportunities and end up making impulsive or unwise investments.\n\n### What is a Good Thesis\n\nA good thesis should be specific, realistic, and grounded in the investor's strengths and interests. It should also be flexible enough to adapt to changes in the market and the investor's circumstances. For example, Ben's thesis is focused on backing teams with unique advantages in emerging markets.\n\n### Staying True to it\n\nOnce an investor has established their thesis, it's important to keep the discipline and stay true to it. This means turning down opportunities that don't fit the criteria and resisting the urge to chase trends. Easier said than done - It can be tempting to invest in the latest hot startup or follow the crowd, but that's not always the best approach.\n\n## Look for Teams with Unique Advantages\n\n### Why That Matters\n\nBen believes that investing in teams with unique advantages is crucial for success in angel investing. Unique advantages can take many forms, such as domain expertise, network, startup building superpowers, to name a few. These advantages make it harder for competitors to replicate the startup's success.\n\nFrom a macro perspective, the CEE makes an attractive investment case thanks to talented founders that can build stellar teams at a fraction of cost of what theyâd need in London, NY or Silicon Valley. On an individual level, identifying great founders and focusing on the long-term potential of their ideas is key, be it looking at the product-market fit, the total market size or competitive space.\n\n### What to Look for\n\nA team should have solid domain expertise related to the problem in the space they are solving. Also, look for teams that have already achieved some early traction - even if theyâve only built a minimum viable product or have a small customer base. This helps reduce risk and provides evidence that the team is capable of executing on sound ideas. It's also crucial to assess the team's ability to handle challenges and pivot when necessary. As Ben notes, \"things always go wrong in startups,\" and it's the team's ability to adapt that often determines their success.\n\n## Build a Network to Create Dealflow\n\nAnother important aspect of successful angel investing is getting access to high quality dealflow. For investors just starting out this is a crucial obstacle, as one typically does not have neither the network nor the brand to be able to access quality dealflow.\n\n\u003e One way to solve this is [joining an angel syndicate](https://badideas.fund/want-to-co-invest), such as [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund). At [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), we we have built a community of 150+ founders, operators, and experienced investors from 16 countries (and counting!), passionate about supporting the next generation of startups.\n\n
1Being part of an investor community provides not just access to dealflow but the collective brainpower behind it as you learn as much from your co-investors as you do from your own investments. Building relationships with other investors and entrepreneurs is key as that can lead to future investment opportunities.\n\n## Take a Long-Term View\n\nBen advises taking a long-term view when it comes to angel investing. This means not focusing solely on short-term gains, but rather building a track record over time. Angel investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and it takes time to build a solid portfolio of investments and see the first liquidity event.\n\n## Be Consistent\n\nConsistency is key when it comes to angel investing. Ben recommends being consistent with check sizes, investing in startups that fit your thesis, and staying true to your long-term goals. By being consistent, you can build a portfolio that reflects your investment strategy and helps you achieve your financial goals."])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"38:T13d0,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"Part of our ethos over here at [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) is to go beyond writing checks to game-changing startups by building a true community centered around the idea of meaningfully supporting our portfolio companies as they tackle growth challenges, as well as collectively getting better as investors.\n\nFor many of us - [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) is the first proper experience with angel investing, and now that weâre coming up to our first anniversary, we reflect on the buzz around figuring out the basics of how to think about capital allocation, dealflow creation and investment decision mare more broadly. Thankfully, we have a few experienced investors in our community, and picking their brain has been invaluable. One of them is [Ben Leblois](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-leblois-7a416654/), a 3x founder with 1 successful exit and over 35 investments.\n\n## Find a Thesis and Stay True to It\n\n### It *really* is that Important\n\nBen emphasizes the importance of having a thesis - a set of criteria that guides an investor's decisions - when it comes to angel investing. It helps maintain focus on specific areas and filter out potential investments that don't fit the strategy. Without a thesis, investors can get lost in the sea of opportunities and end up making impulsive or unwise investments.\n\n### What is a Good Thesis\n\nA good thesis should be specific, realistic, and grounded in the investor's strengths and interests. It should also be flexible enough to adapt to changes in the market and the investor's circumstances. For example, Ben's thesis is focused on backing teams with unique advantages in emerging markets.\n\n### Staying True to it\n\nOnce an investor has established their thesis, it's important to keep the discipline and stay true to it. This means turning down opportunities that don't fit the criteria and resisting the urge to chase trends. Easier said than done - It can be tempting to invest in the latest hot startup or follow the crowd, but that's not always the best approach.\n\n## Look for Teams with Unique Advantages\n\n### Why That Matters\n\nBen believes that investing in teams with unique advantages is crucial for success in angel investing. Unique advantages can take many forms, such as domain expertise, network, startup building superpowers, to name a few. These advantages make it harder for competitors to replicate the startup's success.\n\nFrom a macro perspective, the CEE makes an attractive investment case thanks to talented founders that can build stellar teams at a fraction of cost of what theyâd need in London, NY or Silicon Valley. On an individual level, identifying great founders and focusing on the long-term potential of their ideas is key, be it looking at the product-market fit, the total market size or competitive space.\n\n### What to Look for\n\nA team should have solid domain expertise related to the problem in the space they are solving. Also, look for teams that have already achieved some early traction - even if theyâve only built a minimum viable product or have a small customer base. This helps reduce risk and provides evidence that the team is capable of executing on sound ideas. It's also crucial to assess the team's ability to handle challenges and pivot when necessary. As Ben notes, \"things always go wrong in startups,\" and it's the team's ability to adapt that often determines their success.\n\n## Build a Network to Create Dealflow\n\nAnother important aspect of successful angel investing is getting access to high quality dealflow. For investors just starting out this is a crucial obstacle, as one typically does not have neither the network nor the brand to be able to access quality dealflow.\n\n\u003e One way to solve this is [joining an angel syndicate](https://badideas.fund/want-to-co-invest), such as [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund). At [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), we we have built a community of 150+ founders, operators, and experienced investors from 16 countries (and counting!), passionate about supporting the next generation of startups.\n\n
1Being part of an investor community provides not just access to dealflow but the collective brainpower behind it as you learn as much from your co-investors as you do from your own investments. Building relationships with other investors and entrepreneurs is key as that can lead to future investment opportunities.\n\n## Take a Long-Term View\n\nBen advises taking a long-term view when it comes to angel investing. This means not focusing solely on short-term gains, but rather building a track record over time. Angel investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and it takes time to build a solid portfolio of investments and see the first liquidity event.\n\n## Be Consistent\n\nConsistency is key when it comes to angel investing. Ben recommends being consistent with check sizes, investing in startups that fit your thesis, and staying true to your long-term goals. By being consistent, you can build a portfolio that reflects your investment strategy and helps you achieve your financial goals."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"The total amount invested through the early-stage angel investor [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) crosses the â¬1M mark less than a year after launch. Since April 2022, the angel investor syndicate has invested â¬1.2M in 11 startups overall, ranging from â¬50' 000 to â¬200' 000 per investment ticket. The fund is backed by over 150 members whoâve been building companies such as Pipedrive, Printify, Nordigen and Vinted, Printful among others.\n\n### Focus on early-traction tech in CEE\n\nSo far, the fund has invested in [11 different startups](https://www.notion.so/Our-portfolio-1f097ef5123147d8ab6eab0dc61068f7?pvs=21), exceeding the original expectations to make 10 investments in the first year. Even though the current portfolio represents a very diverse mix of industries - including [an operations platform for event planning](http://breezit.com/), [on-demand dropshipping service](https://supliful.com/) and [an all-in-one recruitment platform](https://recruitlab.co.uk/), to name just a few - the syndicate has been deliberately targeting tech-enabled startups in the B2B and marketplace spaces with roots in the Baltics/CEE and global expansion plans. The overall portfolio includes predominantly early-traction (73%) companies from Latvia (37%), Estonia (27%), Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia and Germany, and covers B2B (55%), marketplace (27%) and enterprise (18%) sectors.\n\nâThe combination of our own startup building experience and geographical focus allows us to spot and make bets on the best startup teams in the region,â says [Raimonds Kulbergs](https://www.notion.so/63928c4bc6b94c60a3d981c1c8853cd0?pvs=21), founder of [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund). âOur strength lies within the collective expertise of our 150+ strong community of experienced startup builders including unicorn founders that our startups can tap into, starting from a rigorous vetting process and extending to individual support. â Startups particularly appreciate the fast funding turnaround, feedback and support provided by the angel syndicate.\n\n### Plans center around helping companies beyond writing the check\n\nLooking ahead, [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) has growth plans beyond expanding its member base and portfolio. âThe idea was borne out of a shared interest across accomplished startup builders and founders to not just build wealth, but also meaningfully support our startups, â Kulbergs adds. Their future plans include creating space for investors to connect with startups within a particular expertise area, launching a platform with online learning resources, and teaming up with TechChill 2023, arguably the most highly-anticipated startup in CEE, to support the pitch battle with a prize - a chance to get up to â¬150' 000 in investment.\n\nThe notion that early-stage startups value deep expertise, support and advice as much as funding is not new to Kulbergs whoâs previously built multiple successful startups, including Funderful (exited) and [Klix.app](http://Klix.app). Since launching [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) in 2022, [over 150 startup operators from 16 countries have joined in](https://www.notion.so/b85397ffbba5496687dbdaa102b04586?pvs=21), representing companies such as Vimeo ($450M funding), Printify ($54), Pandadoc ($51M), Pipedrive ($90M), Bolt ($1.3B), Apollo ($151M), Bird ($783M funding), Shopify ($122M), Printful ($130M), Twilio ($614M), Veriff ($192.3M), Wise ($1.3B), Interactio ($30M), Vinted ($562.3M), NordVPN ($100M) and Hubspot ($100.5M), among others."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"The total amount invested through the early-stage angel investor [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) crosses the â¬1M mark less than a year after launch. Since April 2022, the angel investor syndicate has invested â¬1.2M in 11 startups overall, ranging from â¬50' 000 to â¬200' 000 per investment ticket. The fund is backed by over 150 members whoâve been building companies such as Pipedrive, Printify, Nordigen and Vinted, Printful among others.\n\n### Focus on early-traction tech in CEE\n\nSo far, the fund has invested in [11 different startups](https://www.notion.so/Our-portfolio-1f097ef5123147d8ab6eab0dc61068f7?pvs=21), exceeding the original expectations to make 10 investments in the first year. Even though the current portfolio represents a very diverse mix of industries - including [an operations platform for event planning](http://breezit.com/), [on-demand dropshipping service](https://supliful.com/) and [an all-in-one recruitment platform](https://recruitlab.co.uk/), to name just a few - the syndicate has been deliberately targeting tech-enabled startups in the B2B and marketplace spaces with roots in the Baltics/CEE and global expansion plans. The overall portfolio includes predominantly early-traction (73%) companies from Latvia (37%), Estonia (27%), Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia and Germany, and covers B2B (55%), marketplace (27%) and enterprise (18%) sectors.\n\nâThe combination of our own startup building experience and geographical focus allows us to spot and make bets on the best startup teams in the region,â says [Raimonds Kulbergs](https://www.notion.so/63928c4bc6b94c60a3d981c1c8853cd0?pvs=21), founder of [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund). âOur strength lies within the collective expertise of our 150+ strong community of experienced startup builders including unicorn founders that our startups can tap into, starting from a rigorous vetting process and extending to individual support. â Startups particularly appreciate the fast funding turnaround, feedback and support provided by the angel syndicate.\n\n### Plans center around helping companies beyond writing the check\n\nLooking ahead, [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) has growth plans beyond expanding its member base and portfolio. âThe idea was borne out of a shared interest across accomplished startup builders and founders to not just build wealth, but also meaningfully support our startups, â Kulbergs adds. Their future plans include creating space for investors to connect with startups within a particular expertise area, launching a platform with online learning resources, and teaming up with TechChill 2023, arguably the most highly-anticipated startup in CEE, to support the pitch battle with a prize - a chance to get up to â¬150' 000 in investment.\n\nThe notion that early-stage startups value deep expertise, support and advice as much as funding is not new to Kulbergs whoâs previously built multiple successful startups, including Funderful (exited) and [Klix.app](http://Klix.app). Since launching [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) in 2022, [over 150 startup operators from 16 countries have joined in](https://www.notion.so/b85397ffbba5496687dbdaa102b04586?pvs=21), representing companies such as Vimeo ($450M funding), Printify ($54), Pandadoc ($51M), Pipedrive ($90M), Bolt ($1.3B), Apollo ($151M), Bird ($783M funding), Shopify ($122M), Printful ($130M), Twilio ($614M), Veriff ($192.3M), Wise ($1.3B), Interactio ($30M), Vinted ($562.3M), NordVPN ($100M) and Hubspot ($100.5M), among others."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"Hey there, founders! As the startup builders behind [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), we've seen our fair share of startup pitches. Some are phenomenal, while others... well, let's just say they could use some work. To help you nail your next pitch, we've put together this ultimate guide, inspired by our experiences and the wisdom of renowned investors.\n\n## Craft Your Storyline\n\n- People hear statistics, but they feel and remember stories - start by creating one. ([data storytelling](https://www.effectivedatastorytelling.com/post/data-storytelling-what-it-is-and-is-not))\n- Think about your target customers' problem and how your startup is the hero\n- Check out Simon Sinek's TED Talk on [\"Start with Why\"](https://youtu.be/u4ZoJKF_VuA)\n- Learn from [this blog post](https://brendanbakersposts.quora.com/Startups-How-to-Storyboard-your-Pitch-Deck-in-10-Steps?share=1) on storyboarding your pitch deck\n- Present your traction effectively - read [this article](https://futurestartup.com/2019/12/23/startups-how-to-communicate-traction-to-investors/)\n\n## Pitch Deck Essentials\n\n1. **Introduction \u0026 High-Level Pitch**: Begin with your company purpose and mission, condensed into a single powerful sentence. Include a simple graphic that describes your business model.\n2. **Problem**: Describe the pain of your customer, explain how it's currently addressed, and show why existing market offerings are inadequate.\n3. **Solution**: Highlight your unique value proposition, showcase product features that address the pain, and provide evidence of traction (testimonials, customer numbers, etc.).\n4. **Market Size**: Communicate both the bottom-up (how many people you can sell to) and top-down (total market revenue) market size.\n5. **Business Model**: Explain your customer acquisition costs, delivery costs, and revenue (or lifetime value). Make sure your bottom-up market sizing multiplied by your business model equals your top-down market size.\n6. **Proprietary Tech/Expertise**: Highlight your unique advantages, whether it's IP, special access to customers, lower costs, higher prices, or something else.\n7. **Competition**: Explain why your customers choose you over others. Avoid feature comparison grids and focus on customer testimonials or visual representations.\n8. **Marketing Plan**: Demonstrate your knowledge of customers, channels, and success in utilizing those channels. Include evidence that your marketing plan is working.\n9. **Team**: Showcase the right skills for the current stage of the company, individual success in roles, and demonstrated execution and success as a team.\n10. **Money / Milestones**: Communicate the milestone you will achieve with the investment and how it will take risk out of the business. Never put valuation metrics on the slide.\n\n## Preparing Your Elevator Pitch\n\n- Create a 1-sentence pitch using this Madlibs template: [https://fi.co/madlibs](https://fi.co/madlibs)\n- Use your 1-sentence pitch for introductions and 30-second pitches to investors, partners, customers, or recruits\n- For investors, follow up with a crisp statement of your traction\n\n## Pitching Dos and Don'ts\n\nâ
DO iterate and practice your pitch\n\nâ
DO keep animations simple or avoid them altogether\n\nâ
DO think of your pitch as an advertisement\n\nâ
DO use screenshots instead of live demos\n\nâ
DO convey passion and excitement\n\nâ
DO finish with a specific ask\n\nâ DON'T use animated transitions between slides\n\nâ DON'T deep dive into the product during the pitch\n\nâ DON'T read your slides; use them as backup and provide context or stories\n\n## Extra Tips for Pitch Events\n\n- Leave \"openings\" in your presentation to prompt questions from judges, allowing you to explain intriguing aspects of your business\n- Practice, practice, practice â improve your pitch by giving it multiple times, getting feedback, and making adjustments\n\n## Additional tips on slide design\n\n- Keep your pitch deck basic and light on details to capture investor attention.\n- Follow the 1 slide=1 message rule and spell out the message in the headline.\n- Use minimal text, no more than 1 datapoint and/or sentence per slide.\n- Split content into Headline 1, Headline 2 and body text - each having a distinct font size from bigger to smaller. Ensure consistent font sizes throughout the deck.\n- Include your company website, ideally as a hyperlink, and contact information on every slide.\n\nAnd there you have it.\n\n### Extra resources:\n\n- [What to include in a pitch](https://www.slideshare.net/slidesthatrock/how-to-pitch-a-vc-redesigned)\n- [How to Build Your Seed Round Pitch Deck](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/2u-how-to-build-your-seed-round-pitch-deck)\n- [How to Design a Better Pitch Deck](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/4T-how-to-design-a-better-pitch-deck)"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"3c:T12b5,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"Hey there, founders! As the startup builders behind [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), we've seen our fair share of startup pitches. Some are phenomenal, while others... well, let's just say they could use some work. To help you nail your next pitch, we've put together this ultimate guide, inspired by our experiences and the wisdom of renowned investors.\n\n## Craft Your Storyline\n\n- People hear statistics, but they feel and remember stories - start by creating one. ([data storytelling](https://www.effectivedatastorytelling.com/post/data-storytelling-what-it-is-and-is-not))\n- Think about your target customers' problem and how your startup is the hero\n- Check out Simon Sinek's TED Talk on [\"Start with Why\"](https://youtu.be/u4ZoJKF_VuA)\n- Learn from [this blog post](https://brendanbakersposts.quora.com/Startups-How-to-Storyboard-your-Pitch-Deck-in-10-Steps?share=1) on storyboarding your pitch deck\n- Present your traction effectively - read [this article](https://futurestartup.com/2019/12/23/startups-how-to-communicate-traction-to-investors/)\n\n## Pitch Deck Essentials\n\n1. **Introduction \u0026 High-Level Pitch**: Begin with your company purpose and mission, condensed into a single powerful sentence. Include a simple graphic that describes your business model.\n2. **Problem**: Describe the pain of your customer, explain how it's currently addressed, and show why existing market offerings are inadequate.\n3. **Solution**: Highlight your unique value proposition, showcase product features that address the pain, and provide evidence of traction (testimonials, customer numbers, etc.).\n4. **Market Size**: Communicate both the bottom-up (how many people you can sell to) and top-down (total market revenue) market size.\n5. **Business Model**: Explain your customer acquisition costs, delivery costs, and revenue (or lifetime value). Make sure your bottom-up market sizing multiplied by your business model equals your top-down market size.\n6. **Proprietary Tech/Expertise**: Highlight your unique advantages, whether it's IP, special access to customers, lower costs, higher prices, or something else.\n7. **Competition**: Explain why your customers choose you over others. Avoid feature comparison grids and focus on customer testimonials or visual representations.\n8. **Marketing Plan**: Demonstrate your knowledge of customers, channels, and success in utilizing those channels. Include evidence that your marketing plan is working.\n9. **Team**: Showcase the right skills for the current stage of the company, individual success in roles, and demonstrated execution and success as a team.\n10. **Money / Milestones**: Communicate the milestone you will achieve with the investment and how it will take risk out of the business. Never put valuation metrics on the slide.\n\n## Preparing Your Elevator Pitch\n\n- Create a 1-sentence pitch using this Madlibs template: [https://fi.co/madlibs](https://fi.co/madlibs)\n- Use your 1-sentence pitch for introductions and 30-second pitches to investors, partners, customers, or recruits\n- For investors, follow up with a crisp statement of your traction\n\n## Pitching Dos and Don'ts\n\nâ
DO iterate and practice your pitch\n\nâ
DO keep animations simple or avoid them altogether\n\nâ
DO think of your pitch as an advertisement\n\nâ
DO use screenshots instead of live demos\n\nâ
DO convey passion and excitement\n\nâ
DO finish with a specific ask\n\nâ DON'T use animated transitions between slides\n\nâ DON'T deep dive into the product during the pitch\n\nâ DON'T read your slides; use them as backup and provide context or stories\n\n## Extra Tips for Pitch Events\n\n- Leave \"openings\" in your presentation to prompt questions from judges, allowing you to explain intriguing aspects of your business\n- Practice, practice, practice â improve your pitch by giving it multiple times, getting feedback, and making adjustments\n\n## Additional tips on slide design\n\n- Keep your pitch deck basic and light on details to capture investor attention.\n- Follow the 1 slide=1 message rule and spell out the message in the headline.\n- Use minimal text, no more than 1 datapoint and/or sentence per slide.\n- Split content into Headline 1, Headline 2 and body text - each having a distinct font size from bigger to smaller. Ensure consistent font sizes throughout the deck.\n- Include your company website, ideally as a hyperlink, and contact information on every slide.\n\nAnd there you have it.\n\n### Extra resources:\n\n- [What to include in a pitch](https://www.slideshare.net/slidesthatrock/how-to-pitch-a-vc-redesigned)\n- [How to Build Your Seed Round Pitch Deck](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/2u-how-to-build-your-seed-round-pitch-deck)\n- [How to Design a Better Pitch Deck](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/4T-how-to-design-a-better-pitch-deck)"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"3d:T1cf6,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"As a startup advisor, you play a critical role in the success of a new business. You bring valuable expertise and guidance to the table, and as such, you deserve to be compensated fairly for your contributions. However, negotiating advisor compensation can be a tricky process, both for advisors and for founders. In this post, we'll discuss some tips and strategies for negotiating advisor compensation that benefits both parties, and we'll introduce the [Founder / Advisor Standard Template](https://fi.co/fast) (FAST) as a tool for simplifying the process.\n\n## The Importance of Advisor Compensation\n\nBefore we dive into negotiation strategies, let's discuss why advisor compensation is important in the first place. As an advisor, you're taking time out of your busy schedule to offer your expertise to a startup. You may be foregoing other advising or project opportunities to work with this particular company, and you're investing time and energy into helping them succeed. As such, you deserve to be compensated for your efforts.\n\nOn the other side of the equation, founders understand the value of having a knowledgeable advisor on their team. They recognize that you bring unique insights and experience that can help them avoid common pitfalls and accelerate their growth. By compensating you fairly, they can ensure that you're motivated to continue working with them and helping them achieve their goals.\n\n## Tips and Strategies for Negotiating Advisor Compensation\n\nNegotiating advisor compensation might appear tricky for both founders and advisors. Here are a few strategies which can help advisors to properly evaluate their contribution and benefit both sides:\n\n### 1. Understand your value proposition\n\nAs an advisor, it's important to understand what you bring to the table. What specific expertise or experience do you have that can help this startup grow and become successful? By expressing your value proposition clearly, you can help founders understand why they should compensate you fairly for your time and energy.\n\n### 2. Do your research\n\nBefore entering the negotiations, make sure you understand their goals, pain points and target market. That way you can tailor your advice and make yourself more valuable to them in particular.\n\n### 3. Understand the company's financials\n\nIt is very important to understand the financial health of the startup you'll be working with. How much funding have they raised? What is their burn rate? By understanding these financials, you can understand what advice would be suitable and what - irrelevant. Moreover, it will give you a realistic picture of their needs and abilities in terms of compensation.\n\n### 4. **Add Value Before Formalizing the Relationship**\n\nYour advice can be perceived as a small investment for startup founders. They need to have a clear vision, so itâs important to demonstrate your value before negotiating a compensation. This can be done by offering free advice and feedback, making introductions or volunteering to help with a project.\n\nBy adding value in this way, you'll establish trust and credibility with the founder. It also shows that you're invested in their success and are willing to go above and beyond to help.\n\nRemember, the best advisor relationships are built on mutual respect and trust. By taking the time to build a relationship and add value, you'll be in a better position to negotiate fair and equitable compensation that reflects your contribution to the company's success.\n\n## Compensation for Advisors\n\nThe compensation level for advisors is a critical aspect of the agreement. It is important to strike the right balance between incentivizing the advisor and preserving equity for the founding team.\n\nTo help both advisors and founders set fair compensation levels, the Founder Institute has developed a standard equity compensation framework for advisors called the Founder / Advisor Standard Template (FAST). The framework is designed to be simple, transparent and flexible enough to fit a wide range of startup sce
1narios.\n\nThe FAST Agreement is used by tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and advisors per year to establish productive working relationships, trading advice and support for a standardized amount of equity. It simplifies the process of establishing an advisory relationship by removing the need for cumbersome negotiation, legal drafting and review.\n\nThe FAST Agreement includes three levels of engagement for advisors: Standard, Strategic, and Expert. The compensation levels vary based on the company stage and the level of engagement.\n\n| Level of Engagement | Idea Stage | Startup Stage | Growth Stage |\n| --- | --- | --- | --- |\n| Standard | 0.25% | 0.20% | 0.15% |\n| Strategic | 0.50% | 0.40% | 0.30% |\n| Expert | 1.00% | 0.80% | 0.60% |\n\nThe levels of engagement reflect the amount of time and effort an advisor commits to the company. For example, an expert advisor for an early-stage startup who meets with the team monthly, recruits some talent, and takes a customer call will earn 1% of the company in the form of restricted stock or options vesting over a two-year time period.\n\nIt is important to note that the FAST Agreement is only a guide, founders and advisors should negotiate the compensation levels based on their specific circumstances.\n\n## Negotiation Tips for Founders\n\nIf you are a founder, negotiating with advisors can be challenging, but it is essential to ensure that you are not giving away too much equity. Here are a few tips to deliver your needs and expectations:\n\n1. Be clear on the advisor's role: Define the advisor's role and responsibilities upfront to avoid any misunderstandings later.\n2. Establish a vesting schedule: The vesting schedule should be used to incentivize the advisor to stay engaged with the company over the long term.\n3. Define what your needs are: with so much going on as a founder itâs a challenge to articulate the needs clearly. Speak to other founders who are at a later stage.\n4. Manage your expectations: any single advisor will be great for a specific task and stage, but is likely not the solution to all the challenges you face and need advice on.\n5. Youâll need the cooperation capacity: ensure you or your team have time available to extract value from the advisor. Don't try to maximize value, as it will require more time with the advisor. Typically, 2-4 hours/month with an advisor is enough for a valuable relationship.\n6. Think about your leadership team: itâs not just you who needs an advisor. The company will benefit if you help your co-founders and management grow through the help of advisors.\n\n## Conclusion\n\nNegotiating advisor compensation can be a challenging task for both advisors and founders. By utilizing a standardized agreement like the [Founder/Advisor Standard Template](https://fi.co/fast) (FAST), both parties can save time and money and focus on building a productive and successful relationship. Advisors and founders should approach the relationship carefully and take the time to build chemistry and assess the fit before committing to a formal agreement.\n\n\u003e By following the tips and strategies outlined in this post, both advisors and founders can skip the lengthy dance of negotiating advisor compensation or avoid the energy that the advisor brings to the startup evaporating over time, because parties did not agree on a sustainable and fair c
1ompensation in time."])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"3e:T1cf6,"])</script>
1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"As a startup advisor, you play a critical role in the success of a new business. You bring valuable expertise and guidance to the table, and as such, you deserve to be compensated fairly for your contributions. However, negotiating advisor compensation can be a tricky process, both for advisors and for founders. In this post, we'll discuss some tips and strategies for negotiating advisor compensation that benefits both parties, and we'll introduce the [Founder / Advisor Standard Template](https://fi.co/fast) (FAST) as a tool for simplifying the process.\n\n## The Importance of Advisor Compensation\n\nBefore we dive into negotiation strategies, let's discuss why advisor compensation is important in the first place. As an advisor, you're taking time out of your busy schedule to offer your expertise to a startup. You may be foregoing other advising or project opportunities to work with this particular company, and you're investing time and energy into helping them succeed. As such, you deserve to be compensated for your efforts.\n\nOn the other side of the equation, founders understand the value of having a knowledgeable advisor on their team. They recognize that you bring unique insights and experience that can help them avoid common pitfalls and accelerate their growth. By compensating you fairly, they can ensure that you're motivated to continue working with them and helping them achieve their goals.\n\n## Tips and Strategies for Negotiating Advisor Compensation\n\nNegotiating advisor compensation might appear tricky for both founders and advisors. Here are a few strategies which can help advisors to properly evaluate their contribution and benefit both sides:\n\n### 1. Understand your value proposition\n\nAs an advisor, it's important to understand what you bring to the table. What specific expertise or experience do you have that can help this startup grow and become successful? By expressing your value proposition clearly, you can help founders understand why they should compensate you fairly for your time and energy.\n\n### 2. Do your research\n\nBefore entering the negotiations, make sure you understand their goals, pain points and target market. That way you can tailor your advice and make yourself more valuable to them in particular.\n\n### 3. Understand the company's financials\n\nIt is very important to understand the financial health of the startup you'll be working with. How much funding have they raised? What is their burn rate? By understanding these financials, you can understand what advice would be suitable and what - irrelevant. Moreover, it will give you a realistic picture of their needs and abilities in terms of compensation.\n\n### 4. **Add Value Before Formalizing the Relationship**\n\nYour advice can be perceived as a small investment for startup founders. They need to have a clear vision, so itâs important to demonstrate your value before negotiating a compensation. This can be done by offering free advice and feedback, making introductions or volunteering to help with a project.\n\nBy adding value in this way, you'll establish trust and credibility with the founder. It also shows that you're invested in their success and are willing to go above and beyond to help.\n\nRemember, the best advisor relationships are built on mutual respect and trust. By taking the time to build a relationship and add value, you'll be in a better position to negotiate fair and equitable compensation that reflects your contribution to the company's success.\n\n## Compensation for Advisors\n\nThe compensation level for advisors is a critical aspect of the agreement. It is important to strike the right balance between incentivizing the advisor and preserving equity for the founding team.\n\nTo help both advisors and founders set fair compensation levels, the Founder Institute has developed a standard equity compensation framework for advisors called the Founder / Advisor Standard Template (FAST). The framework is designed to be simple, transparent and flexible enough to fit a wide range of startup sce
1narios.\n\nThe FAST Agreement is used by tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and advisors per year to establish productive working relationships, trading advice and support for a standardized amount of equity. It simplifies the process of establishing an advisory relationship by removing the need for cumbersome negotiation, legal drafting and review.\n\nThe FAST Agreement includes three levels of engagement for advisors: Standard, Strategic, and Expert. The compensation levels vary based on the company stage and the level of engagement.\n\n| Level of Engagement | Idea Stage | Startup Stage | Growth Stage |\n| --- | --- | --- | --- |\n| Standard | 0.25% | 0.20% | 0.15% |\n| Strategic | 0.50% | 0.40% | 0.30% |\n| Expert | 1.00% | 0.80% | 0.60% |\n\nThe levels of engagement reflect the amount of time and effort an advisor commits to the company. For example, an expert advisor for an early-stage startup who meets with the team monthly, recruits some talent, and takes a customer call will earn 1% of the company in the form of restricted stock or options vesting over a two-year time period.\n\nIt is important to note that the FAST Agreement is only a guide, founders and advisors should negotiate the compensation levels based on their specific circumstances.\n\n## Negotiation Tips for Founders\n\nIf you are a founder, negotiating with advisors can be challenging, but it is essential to ensure that you are not giving away too much equity. Here are a few tips to deliver your needs and expectations:\n\n1. Be clear on the advisor's role: Define the advisor's role and responsibilities upfront to avoid any misunderstandings later.\n2. Establish a vesting schedule: The vesting schedule should be used to incentivize the advisor to stay engaged with the company over the long term.\n3. Define what your needs are: with so much going on as a founder itâs a challenge to articulate the needs clearly. Speak to other founders who are at a later stage.\n4. Manage your expectations: any single advisor will be great for a specific task and stage, but is likely not the solution to all the challenges you face and need advice on.\n5. Youâll need the cooperation capacity: ensure you or your team have time available to extract value from the advisor. Don't try to maximize value, as it will require more time with the advisor. Typically, 2-4 hours/month with an advisor is enough for a valuable relationship.\n6. Think about your leadership team: itâs not just you who needs an advisor. The company will benefit if you help your co-founders and management grow through the help of advisors.\n\n## Conclusion\n\nNegotiating advisor compensation can be a challenging task for both advisors and founders. By utilizing a standardized agreement like the [Founder/Advisor Standard Template](https://fi.co/fast) (FAST), both parties can save time and money and focus on building a productive and successful relationship. Advisors and founders should approach the relationship carefully and take the time to build chemistry and assess the fit before committing to a formal agreement.\n\n\u003e By following the tips and strategies outlined in this post, both advisors and founders can skip the lengthy dance of negotiating advisor compensation or avoid the energy that the advisor brings to the startup evaporating over time, because parties did not agree on a sustainable and fair c
1ompensation in time."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"The Estonian startup will use the new cash to triple the workforce and add functionality to the platform. [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) was among the investors in this round, and it was [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund)âs second investment.\n\nTallinn-based startup [RecruitLab](https://recruitlab.co.uk/) has raised â¬1.9 million in a seed round to offer video-recruitment platform that helps streamline and automate recruitment processes. The funding was led by Baltic market specialist [Change Ventures](https://www.changeventures.com/) and backed by [StartupIst VC](https://startupist.vc/), [FFF.vc](http://FFF.vc) and the [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), an early-stage angel syndicate led by founders and operators of companies like Bolt, Vimeo, Shopify, Printify, Pipedrive, Deel, Bird.\n\nThe funds will be used for expansion in the U.K. and other European markets, tripling the company's workforce and adding new functionality to its platform.\n\nRecruitLab plans to offer solutions for recruiters at SMEs and small recruitment agencies who require a plug-and-play solution. It provides an alternative to the incumbent Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) players, like Workable, Bullhorn, Taleo, Lever and Greenhouse. The platform provides the same ATS functionality in addition to recruitment marketing, social media, candidate experience, and asynchronous video recruitment tools to automate the recruitment process at a price point that every company can afford.\n\nWith a portfolio of clients such as DPD, Circle K, Tallink and KPMG, the company claims it reduces hiring time by 50%, and improves the overall candidate experience.\n\n[Paavo Heil](https://www.linkedin.com/in/paavo-heil/?originalSubdomain=ee), founder and CEO of RecruitLab said:\n\n\u003e Despite the ever-increasing workflow of recruitment teams, it is estimated that around 50% of employers still use programs like Excel and Outlook to track applicants. Furthermore, most of the existing ATS are inflexible, underperform when it comes to customer support and struggle to keep up with the rapidly changing industry.\n\n[Epp Sillaste](https://www.linkedin.com/in/epp-sillaste/), head of people at KPMG Baltics, added:\n\n\u003e We chose RecruitLab as were on the hunt for a video interviewing tool also featuring other essential recruiting tools such as interview planning, talent pool capability mapping, automating interview scheduling and feedback e-mails, and easy access to necessary recruitment statistics for labour intensive recruitment projects."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"The Estonian startup will use the new cash to triple the workforce and add functionality to the platform. [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) was among the investors in this round, and it was [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund)âs second investment.\n\nTallinn-based startup [RecruitLab](https://recruitlab.co.uk/) has raised â¬1.9 million in a seed round to offer video-recruitment platform that helps streamline and automate recruitment processes. The funding was led by Baltic market specialist [Change Ventures](https://www.changeventures.com/) and backed by [StartupIst VC](https://startupist.vc/), [FFF.vc](http://FFF.vc) and the [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund), an early-stage angel syndicate led by founders and operators of companies like Bolt, Vimeo, Shopify, Printify, Pipedrive, Deel, Bird.\n\nThe funds will be used for expansion in the U.K. and other European markets, tripling the company's workforce and adding new functionality to its platform.\n\nRecruitLab plans to offer solutions for recruiters at SMEs and small recruitment agencies who require a plug-and-play solution. It provides an alternative to the incumbent Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) players, like Workable, Bullhorn, Taleo, Lever and Greenhouse. The platform provides the same ATS functionality in addition to recruitment marketing, social media, candidate experience, and asynchronous video recruitment tools to automate the recruitment process at a price point that every company can afford.\n\nWith a portfolio of clients such as DPD, Circle K, Tallink and KPMG, the company claims it reduces hiring time by 50%, and improves the overall candidate experience.\n\n[Paavo Heil](https://www.linkedin.com/in/paavo-heil/?originalSubdomain=ee), founder and CEO of RecruitLab said:\n\n\u003e Despite the ever-increasing workflow of recruitment teams, it is estimated that around 50% of employers still use programs like Excel and Outlook to track applicants. Furthermore, most of the existing ATS are inflexible, underperform when it comes to customer support and struggle to keep up with the rapidly changing industry.\n\n[Epp Sillaste](https://www.linkedin.com/in/epp-sillaste/), head of people at KPMG Baltics, added:\n\n\u003e We chose RecruitLab as were on the hunt for a video interviewing tool also featuring other essential recruiting tools such as interview planning, talent pool capability mapping, automating interview scheduling and feedback e-mails, and easy access to necessary recruitment statistics for labour intensive recruitment projects."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"$185 billion is spent on private event services every year in the US alone. Yet service providers (such as venue operators, photographers, caterers, and event coordinators) currently need to use separate tools to run a successful business.\r\n\r\nThey use traditional listing portals to get leads outside their initial friend and family network, tools that help to convert these leads into paying customers (discovery, quotes, contracts, deposit and full payments), and other solutions to run day-to-day business administration. The result is increasing cost, poorly qualified leads, and friction at every transaction step.\r\n\r\n\u003e [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) comes to the market with a unique value proposition. As a SaaS-enabled marketplace, [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) offers both the customer acquisition and business management solutions, so event service providers can focus on what they love.\r\n\r\n\u003e [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) is proud to announce [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) as our first investment - a pre-seed â¬100K SAFE note investment as part of a bigger round, that's in the process of closing.\r\n\r\n## Why [Breezit](https://breezit.com/)?\r\n\r\n[BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) first investment needed to tick many boxes to fit our ideal profile and relay the right message about the type of startups we'd like to invest in the future:\r\n\r\n- It had to be B2B SaaS or marketplace\r\n- Big market - $1T\r\n- Competitive advantage in distribution - focus on product led growth and growth loops\r\n- Founders either from or with roots in CEE, that know the fundamentals of building a rocketship startup.\r\n- Founders with global ambition, ideally with US as the target market (as that's where part of the [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) community is based and can help with the next round in the US)\r\n\r\nWith over 100 startups waiting in our pipeline for investment, here is how we decided to invest in [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) as our flagship startup. Having reviewed their application, we liked their vision, approach to distribution and product-led growth focus, so we advanced them to the next step - set up an interview.\r\n\r\nAt [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) we have members form a deal evaluation team - they interview the founders, and evaluate the startup based on our deal evaluation framework. [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) is a SaaS enabled marketplace, so who better to lead the evaluation and interview process than [Daniel Marhel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-marhel-a5240830/), ex-CPO \u0026 CMO at Printify (the marketplace for custom printing; $54M funding) - scaled GMV to $100M.\r\n\r\nDuring the 1h interview we didn't just try to just understand how the founders think and about their business, but also try sharing practical feedback either on the pitch or advice on their growth challenge. But it was not just great impressions. We also saw plenty of reasons why [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) could fail:\r\n\r\n- Demand side - weddings are low frequency business - need to expand touch points and make UX excellent to keep top of mind. Though it does not affect SaaS part of the business.\r\n- Risk of launching in the US - more competition than in Lithuania.\r\n\r\nWe packaged our analysis of the investment case in a structured investment memo and shared that with our members. Soon after we have 21 of [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) members, who are founders and startup operators themselves, investing in aggregate â¬100,000 in [Breezit](https://breezit.com/)."])</script>
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1<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"$185 billion is spent on private event services every year in the US alone. Yet service providers (such as venue operators, photographers, caterers, and event coordinators) currently need to use separate tools to run a successful business.\r\n\r\nThey use traditional listing portals to get leads outside their initial friend and family network, tools that help to convert these leads into paying customers (discovery, quotes, contracts, deposit and full payments), and other solutions to run day-to-day business administration. The result is increasing cost, poorly qualified leads, and friction at every transaction step.\r\n\r\n\u003e [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) comes to the market with a unique value proposition. As a SaaS-enabled marketplace, [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) offers both the customer acquisition and business management solutions, so event service providers can focus on what they love.\r\n\r\n\u003e [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) is proud to announce [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) as our first investment - a pre-seed â¬100K SAFE note investment as part of a bigger round, that's in the process of closing.\r\n\r\n## Why [Breezit](https://breezit.com/)?\r\n\r\n[BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) first investment needed to tick many boxes to fit our ideal profile and relay the right message about the type of startups we'd like to invest in the future:\r\n\r\n- It had to be B2B SaaS or marketplace\r\n- Big market - $1T\r\n- Competitive advantage in distribution - focus on product led growth and growth loops\r\n- Founders either from or with roots in CEE, that know the fundamentals of building a rocketship startup.\r\n- Founders with global ambition, ideally with US as the target market (as that's where part of the [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) community is based and can help with the next round in the US)\r\n\r\nWith over 100 startups waiting in our pipeline for investment, here is how we decided to invest in [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) as our flagship startup. Having reviewed their application, we liked their vision, approach to distribution and product-led growth focus, so we advanced them to the next step - set up an interview.\r\n\r\nAt [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) we have members form a deal evaluation team - they interview the founders, and evaluate the startup based on our deal evaluation framework. [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) is a SaaS enabled marketplace, so who better to lead the evaluation and interview process than [Daniel Marhel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-marhel-a5240830/), ex-CPO \u0026 CMO at Printify (the marketplace for custom printing; $54M funding) - scaled GMV to $100M.\r\n\r\nDuring the 1h interview we didn't just try to just understand how the founders think and about their business, but also try sharing practical feedback either on the pitch or advice on their growth challenge. But it was not just great impressions. We also saw plenty of reasons why [Breezit](https://breezit.com/) could fail:\r\n\r\n- Demand side - weddings are low frequency business - need to expand touch points and make UX excellent to keep top of mind. Though it does not affect SaaS part of the business.\r\n- Risk of launching in the US - more competition than in Lithuania.\r\n\r\nWe packaged our analysis of the investment case in a structured investment memo and shared that with our members. Soon after we have 21 of [BADideas.fund](http://BADideas.fund) members, who are founders and startup operators themselves, investing in aggregate â¬100,000 in [Breezit](https://breezit.com/)."])</script>
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No frameworks for the sake of frameworks.\"}],[\"$\",\"a\",null,{\"href\":\"#newsletter\",\"className\":\"u-caps inline-flex shrink-0 items-center justify-center gap-1.5 text-[length:var(--text-label)] whitespace-nowrap transition-colors duration-150 ease-linear outline-none select-none focus-visible:ring-2 focus-visible:ring-(--ring) focus-visible:ring-offset-0 disabled:pointer-events-none disabled:opacity-40 [\u0026_svg]:pointer-events-none [\u0026_svg]:shrink-0 [\u0026_svg:not([class*='size-'])]:size-3.5 rounded-(--radius-sm) bg-(--ink) px-5 py-[11px] font-medium text-(--ink-fg) hover:opacity-80\",\"style\":{\"fontFamily\":\"var(--font-mono)\",\"fontSize\":\"14px\",\"fontWeight\":700,\"padding\":\"14px 22px\",\"whiteSpace\":\"nowrap\",\"flexShrink\":0},\"children\":\"SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEKLY DIGEST\"}]]}],[\"$\",\"$L18\",null,{\"posts\":[{\"id\":\"receiABob6yLjiEq9\",\"title\":\"Product-market fit meaning: a plain-English definition for founders (+ free cohort retention chart builder)\",\"slug\":\"product-market-fit-meaning\",\"excerpt\":\"The product-market fit meaning most founders get wrong: PMF is a retention curve, not a feeling. How to read yours, and why a curve that bleeds to zero is often a go-to-market problem rather than a product one.\",\"firstPublishedDate\":\"2026-07-30\",\"lastPublishedDate\":\"2026-07-31\",\"minutesToRead\":9,\"coverImage\":\"https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f33507_2483b03478e24f2b83adfd1880d71689~mv2.png\",\"coverAlt\":\"Product-market fit meaning: a plain-English definition for founders (+ free cohort retention chart builder)\",\"category\":\"gtm\",\"author\":\"BADideas.fund\",\"published\":true,\"wixPostId\":\"74569caa-ca4b-4321-bac3-e66012b2a786\",\"focusKeyword\":\"\",\"authorPortraitUrl\":\"https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f33507_b49147782e1e49da870601df309497eb~mv2.png\",\"authorExcerpt\":\"I'm [JurÄ£is](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgiskalnins1/) - community \u0026 brand lead at BADideas.fund. This issue kicks off a new format for the newsletter: each week we take one bit of startup jargon and gut it: what it means, what everyone gets wrong, and what to do about it.\",\"shortVersion\":\"Product-market fit is when a group of customers keeps coming back without you pushing them. It shows up as cohort retention that flattens, not as a good launch week. Take everyone who signed up in the same week, track what share are still active at weeks 1, 2 and 6, and read the shape. If the curve settles onto a plateau, even a low one, you have fit with somebody. [Google Photos flattened between 20% and 40% depending on country and device](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNxBZ7ka5J0), and that was enough to build on. If the curve slides toward zero, you do not have fit, and adding signups will hide that for roughly two quarters. The second half of the answer matters more: a bleeding curve is not automatically a verdict on your product. Often you are acquiring the wrong users, and that has a completely different fix. There is a free tool further down this page that builds the chart and the segment split from your own data, in your browser.\",\"readNext1\":\"\",\"readNext2\":\"\",\"content\":\"$19\",\"rawContent\":\"$1a\"},{\"id\":\"recOgYjmokwLKnuuJ\",\"title\":\"Why distribution is the new moat for early-stage startups\",\"slug\":\"distribution-is-the-new-moat\",\"excerpt\":\"Building is nearly free, so distribution is the new moat. The BADideas manifesto with Ben Leblois - plus 7 Bad Advice clips and polls. 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