Eric Sharp

After exiting Drivably - Acquired by ACV Auctions (NASDAQ: ACVA), I came to Utah to look for the companies Trent Mano is asking about. What startups were all substance, no hype? What startups were simply creating motion, not heat or noise? Local awareness of your startup can be driven by community ties (e.g. you have local investors), product type (e.g. you're building consumer or startup B2B SaaS), or actual traction (this is or should be your real goal). Hype, heat, and noise can help you secure your initial product, investors, and customers. Some social awareness is desirable: you want awareness with the customers who will give you ARR, the investors who will give you runway, and with the talented people who will build the company when you're not in the room. But too often, heat and noise are the unintended byproducts of systems designed to produce something else entirely. Light. Motion. Acceleration. What kind of systems are we trying to build here? For many startups, broad social awareness is NOT what gets you to the magical product, true fans, and TAM dominance. What gets you there is focus. Focus on uncomfortably narrow, intensely specific groups of people that no one else is focused on the way you are. It requires getting used to flying under a general purpose radar. Getting used to explaining, "So what exactly do you do again?" For much of Savi's life, we've been so far under the general purpose radar, we weren't just in stealth mode, we were in exile. Turns out, exile is the perfect place to build something dangerous for a small group of people. Exile is where Savi sat down with fast-growing Utah brands and operators like Swig, Gourmandise, and Savory Fund, and designed and built the vision AI operating system for restaurant and retail. Exile is where we found Next Coast Ventures and other investors that shared our conviction about AI transforming Main Street businesses. So, get on the radar that matters for you. Focus on the small, sub-scale groups of people that matter to your startup. And maybe your time off-the-radar will be the reason you get on-the-radar in the ways that matter.

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That's a wrap on an incredible Colorado Startup Week! I'm still catching up on all the amazing sessions and connections (huge thanks to the organizers at Downtown Denver Partnership!), but one brutally honest lesson stood out: 𝗣𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗩𝗖 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 #𝟭 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱. It’s easy to get stars in your eyes thinking about landing that top-tier fund. But it's a trap. You get one shot with them. If your pitch isn't battle-tested, you've burned your most valuable bridge. When raising rounds the real pros use a different playbook: 𝟭. 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗺 𝗨𝗽 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 "𝗕-𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁." Before you even think about your A-list, pitch angel groups and smaller VCs. This is your live-fire practice range. Let them poke holes in your model and expose every weakness. You get priceless feedback *without* burning your dream lead. 𝟮. 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗸 𝗛𝗮𝘀 𝟭𝟬 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝘀. 𝗠𝗮𝘅. An investor in one session said it best: "I'm not in your industry. I don't get your jargon." Our world is real estate AI, but the deck needs to be understood by a general SaaS investor. If they have to ask what you do on slide one, you've already lost. 𝟯. 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 "𝗡𝗼" 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗺 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼. A "no" is only a dead end if you let it be. Your final question should always be: *"Based on this, is there anyone else in your network who you think would be a better fit?"* A warm referral from another VC is gold. 𝟰. 𝗕𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲, 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲. The best VCs have pattern recognition from seeing a hundred other PropTech companies. You've only seen one: yours. Arguing with them proves you're uncoachable. Integrating their feedback shows you're a true partner.\ 𝟱. 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟵𝟬-𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗖𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗸. Fundraising isn't an endless process. If you don't have significant traction in 2-3 months, something is broken. It's either the pitch or the business. The pros know when to stop, reassess, and pivot instead of burning through their remaining runway. *𝘐'𝘷𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩. 𝘐𝘵'𝘴 𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵.* Special thanks to everyone that we made memories this year with: Tias Dacuma Isela Vega Karey G. Michael Schonebaum ISINGOMA JOEL Lior Schinagel Adeel Khan Tundė Kelani Axel Martinez Stewart Orr Elisabetta Rappo Paul Foley Amol Deshpande Margarita Belunni Shaquille Carter Teombre' Calland,Esq. Ariana Patterson Even though we are currently bootstrapped, I'm obsessed with this process because it's the ultimate test of a business's clarity. For the founders who *are* raising, 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁? #DenverStartupWeek #PropTech #VentureCapital #SaaS #Fundraising #ColoradoStartup

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Watch this short clip to hear how we help clients recognize when their system is no longer supporting their growth. We often hear from teams who can’t get the visibility or functionality they need. They’re spending more time managing workarounds than managing the business. When your software can’t keep up, it’s time to consider a system that aligns with your strategy and scales with your goals. Learn more in the blog: https://okt.to/drny6J #QuickBooks #QuickBooksAlternatives

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Title experts are hired to solve complex problems, not to be data entry clerks. If your team is swiveling between screens to copy-paste data, you're underutilizing your best assets. Here is how to stop paying the "Swivel Chair Tax." 👇 https://lnkd.in/gw5xwtnv

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Custom software often feels like the safest option. It feels like control. But control comes with long-term costs. This becomes obvious in teams where software supports the business rather than defines it. Maintenance grows. Ownership blurs. Speed declines. A simple rule changed how I approach this: Build when the software is the business. Buy when it supports the business. Custom code isn’t neutral. It’s a long-term commitment. Teams don’t regret building too late. They regret building too early.

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The era of bloated teams is over. The era of lean teams + automation is here. You don’t scale by adding more people to manual tasks. You scale by removing the manual altogether. Efficiency is no longer a nice-to-have it’s the new competitive edge. At Abacus Technology and DATA INTUITIONS, we’ve seen it firsthand: automated workflows unlock speed, clarity, and real business potential. Lean doesn’t mean less. It means smarter. It means focused. It means built to last. 2026 will reward teams that move fast, think clearly, and build with precision. #Automation2026 #EfficiencyIsStrategy #AbacusTechnology #DataIntuitions #BuiltToScale

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Agents that actually understand your business need to model three things. 1. The things in your business and the relationships between them. A quote isn't just a document. It's connected to a customer, a set of product configurations, engineering constraints, pricing rules, vendor lead times, and a history of decisions that got you there. The web of relationships is where the meaning lives. 2. The state of those things and how they transition. Every entity in your business is somewhere in its lifecycle, and getting to the next state isn't just a status update. In a complex CPQ process, moving from a customer requirement to a valid, accurate quote might involve dozens of intermediate states across configurations, approvals, and feasibility checks, each with their own preconditions and dependencies. That's a lot of detail to keep coherent. 3. What people care about those transitions. A configuration moving to "approved for quote" lands differently for the sales rep trying to close, the engineer checking feasibility, and the ops manager looking at capacity. Agents that don't model stakeholder intent end up being very good at finding things and very bad at doing anything useful with them. The agent isn't a passive observer of all this. It's the prime mover. Every action it takes mutates state across that entire web of relationships. It needs to understand not just what's true now, but what its actions will make true next, and whether that matches what the business actually wants. So what does a solution look like? You need a persistent representation of your business domain that the agent can read from and write to. Entities, relationships, states, transition rules, and stakeholder context like past decisions all need to be first-class citizens, not scattered across a CRM, an ERP, and a pile of spreadsheets. The agent needs to be able to ask "what is true right now" and "what needs to be true before the next step" and get coherent answers. Most important, it needs to be able to evolve all of this as the business evolves. For manufacturers especially, this is the difference between an agent that can actually navigate a CPQ process and one that just generates text about it.

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