Lisa Murphy

Product-market fit genuinely feels different...and it'll show up in the data Demo to close rates are the easiest thing to look at for product-market fit right now. Vertical AI startups in our portfolio are seeing 50%+ demo to close rates, even with brand new account executives selling the product. It's happening in every market from AI takeoffs to AI CSR/Voice software to AI procurement solutions. When you see a demo to close rate over 50% chances are you have a jaw dropping customer experience and you should put your foot on the gas. If you're seeing something dramatically lower in mid-market or SMB ACV categories, it's worth revisiting your product and/or your pitch.

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Seattle VC panels are not exactly known for being spicy, which is why my AMA with Brooke and Rolanda at AI House last night was so refreshing. We got into the questions founders are too embarrassed to ask out loud. How do VCs actually decide behind closed doors? What counts as traction when you have zero revenue? Is enterprise SaaS dead? Do Seattle founders actually have a shot against the Bay Area? A few takeaways that stood out: ✅ Associates can't get to yes without a partner sponsor — but partners often can't reach deals without associate diligence. Arm them with the facts to fight for you internally. ✅ Expect 50-70 investor conversations before a term sheet. Send your deck a day early but assume nobody read it 😎 ✅ Enterprise SaaS isn't dead, but it's shifting from seat-based to usage and outcome-based pricing. Large orgs still need governed software. ✅ Traction isn't just revenue. How excited are your customers? Would they advocate for you? Paying pilots with automatic, KPI-specific conversion > free trials, every time. ✅ Learning slope > starting background. The strongest founders they've backed adapted fast — not started perfect. Brooke and Rolanda WILL take a second meeting even if you whiff the first one! ✅ Seattle has fantastic enterprise buyers and founders with sales relationships into them. But the equity-vs-cash culture gap is real, and hiring against big tech is still hard. What made it different was how candid Brooke and Rolanda were about what actually happens after your pitch ends, aka the internal deal dynamics most founders never see. Shoutout to the room full of 100+ early-stage founders who went against the Seattle grain and asked hard questions live to the VCs. That energy is what makes AI House work. Huge thanks to Brooke B. (FUSE) and Rolanda Fu (Madrona) for keeping it real! More AMAs like this coming. Tag a founder who we should invite for the next one! #AIHouse (photo credit to Jonathan G. Blanco 🛠)

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When most startups are still fumbling with pitch decks and half-baked MVPs, TrueMeter is already cashing checks for its customers. The San Francisco-based company just closed a $4 million seed round led by Ulu Ventures, with Pear VC, e2vc, RiverPark Ventures, Flex Capital, Sarah Smith Fund, Cyan Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Sand Hill Angels, and a lineup of seasoned investors all backing the play. Steve Reale, Partner at Ulu Ventures, joined the board, a signal that this is more than a financial transaction, it's a vote of confidence from someone who's seen the game before. Founded by Stanford University alums Ali Sarilgan and Dr. Ozge Islegen-Wojdyla, Ph.D., TrueMeter came together with a rare mix of practical experience and deep technical expertise. Sarilgan learned the ugly truth of utility spend firsthand while managing energy costs across 3,000 GameStop stores, and later at McKinsey, where inefficiency isn't a case study, it's a recurring nightmare. Dr. Islegen-Wojdyla brings the academic and technical weight, a Stanford PhD in energy markets, teaching at Northwestern, and hands-on data science at Instacart. Together they turned #EcoTrove, the early version of the business, into a streamlined AI platform now designed to hunt down and eliminate wasted dollars at scale. And scale matters. The U.S. #commercialenergy market is a $500 billion annual bill, with $75 billion evaporating from suboptimal rate plans and billing errors. Since its March 2024 launch, TrueMeter has already delivered more than $3 million in verified savings across 500+ business locations. Companies like Yoshinoya America, FreshDirect, Studio, Misfits Market, and Local Kitchens aren't testing a hypothesis, they're stacking real savings onto their bottom lines. The technology hits where others wave their hands. AI-driven #electricity rate optimization that switches instantly to better plans. Collective gas procurement that turns volume into leverage. Automated bill auditing that finds "errors" before they become monthly losses. Real-time monitoring that flags energy theft and equipment inefficiencies before they drain budgets. And it all lands in one consolidated bill, with guaranteed pricing and zero upfront cost. In other words, TrueMeter doesn't sell savings, it guarantees them. This seed round fuels what's next: scaling #engineering, pushing the AI stack further, and accelerating customer acquisition across #restaurants, #retail, and #hospitality. One million multi-location businesses are stuck overpaying for energy, and TrueMeter is cutting directly into that problem. The investors didn't buy into a story. They bought into proof. #Startups #StartupFunding #EarlyStage #VentureCapital #SeedRound #AI #Energy #EnergyTech #Utilities #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem #Hiring #TechHiring If software engineering peace of mind is what you crave, Vention is your zen.

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Seth Levine nailed it! The concentration problem isn't just a GP pain point... it's choking innovation. When capital pools around the same 20 funds, emerging managers and founders get shut out. Love that he's using his platform to call this out. Foundry has backed 50+ emerging managers. That's the diversification the ecosystem needs. This is exactly why Carta exists — making capital allocation visible and accessible. Capital Evolution hits at exactly the right moment. Thanks for having us Daniel Dart. Team Carta loves the community of FUTURE TITANS you have built 🚀

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Now that big tech companies are laying off tens of thousands of employees, which is sadly nothing to celebrate, the silver lining is that more talented young people will once again look to start or join earlier-stage startups. California and the world will benefit far more from fresh entrepreneurial energy and less “ex-Google, ex-Apple” employee energy that had taken over the past decade or so. We need more entrepreneurial mindset and less big-tech employee mindset. Gone are the “a day in the life at big company XYZ” Tik Tok videos and people will need to learn to build something again. Building is much harder than being an overly paid big-tech employee with a cushy non-impactful role, but it’s much more rewarding and a much better learning ground. If you are young, and really want to learn and grow, join a great startup or scaleup. Best advice I ever got when I was in my twenties.

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Too many SaaS companies are trying to manufacture a category right now. At seed stage, it feels audacious (and fundable). At Series B+, it still sounds good on a stage... But if your endgame is mid-market and enterprise, the reality can be harsh: ❌ Enterprise buyers don’t typically budget for nascent categories - and are typically quite slow to spend on and test newly established categories. 🫰They budget for problems they already know how to fund...the ones that have the leadership/procurement paths pre-carved out. That’s why category creation is almost always boom or bust. You’re not just selling software; you’re teaching buyers to name a problem, shift priorities, and convince slow moving enterprise bureaucracies to approve net-new budgets. Most companies don’t have the time or capital to push that uphill for prolonged periods of time. Slotting into a known category may sound less visionary, but in enterprise it often wins faster... ✅ Budgets already exist. ✅ Stakeholders already understand the space. 🤝 Your job is to show why you’re the obvious choice - clearer, faster, better, yada, yada... you get it Known budgets + defined buyers? Slot in, then differentiate ruthlessly. Unnamed problem + no budget line? You’re playing a long game. Make sure you have the war chest to survive it and the end outcome is worth it (tbf, typically with VC companies these go hand in hand). Snowflake and Gong pulled off category creation because they had capital, time, and undeniable customer impact. Snowflake's CMO, Denise Persson has talked about the extreme messaging consistency and endurance that was required to come out the other side. Most don’t have the time.⏳ Datadog, Zoom, and Okta won big without inventing a category. They just dominated one that mattered to enterprises. Category creation has become a crutch for founders and marketers. In enterprise, it should be the exception, not the default.

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Most B2B commerce and SaaS companies are sitting on mountains of customer data, but are still blindsided by churn and missed upsell opportunities. The solution: Reef.ai By leveraging AI to analyze customer health and behavior in real time, Reef.ai empowers teams to shift from reactive support to proactive revenue growth. It’s not just about keeping customers; it’s about identifying the exact moment they are ready to expand. Why SRV Invested: At Silicon Road, we know that in a tightening market, net retention is the most critical metric for any commerce-enabling platform. Reef.ai's ability to turn disparate data points into actionable revenue signals is a game-changer for the modern enterprise. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/eZc2wrVH If you're interested in discovering more companies at the leading edge of commerce, take a look at our portfolio: https://lnkd.in/ew2pqkB2 #PortfolioSpotlight #SaaS #CustomerData #AI #RevenueIntelligence #SiliconRoadVentures

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The Headline family is experiencing incredible momentum, and today our portfolio company DeepIP is announcing a $25M Series B, bringing total funding to $40M.  This is the kind of company that doesn’t just add AI to a workflow, but it sets the standard for an entire category. The momentum speaks for itself: 1️⃣ 10x ARR growth in < 18 months 2️⃣ Trusted by 400+ law firms and leading corporate IP teams globally 3️⃣ 2M+ chats on the DeepIP platform We’ve had the chance to back FX (Francois-Xavier) L. and Edouard D., leading their Seed round with Headline. Watching them take on a problem as complex and high-stakes as patent work has been genuinely impressive. And working with them has been an absolute pleasure: these 2 are coupling very high ambition and humility. Tech built in Europe, but opening the US office very early and FX starting a life in NYC with his family with 0 hesitation in order to build a global category leader in the IP industry. What convinced me early is still what stands out today: patent teams don’t need another standalone AI tool. They need something that fits the way the work actually happens: documents, long-running matters, multiple stakeholders, and zero room for sloppy context handoffs. Big congrats to the whole DeepIP team + Korelya Capital, Balderton & Serena Proud that we’re doubling down at Headline and continuing the support for what’s next!

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AI has already meaningfully changed the B2B GTM motion. Anecdotally, we're seeing the top performing startups have meaningful different org structures than those that are more mid. Our Beyond Benchmarks report puts some numbers around the shift:   1. SDR/BDR teams are shrinking   36% of companies reduced SDR/BDR headcount while only 19% increased—the steepest decline across all sales roles—while sales teams overall declined just 24%. This is very likely because companies are using tools like Unify to make their teams more efficient at generating a qualified pipeline.   2. Professional services teams are growing   34% increased PS headcount versus 17% who decreased. Why? AI solutions require deep customization. Non-deterministic, agentic software must be tuned to each customer's specific workflows. Getting this right demands hands-on expertise.   The implication? We're shifting from "sell the software, let them figure it out" to "sell the outcome, help them achieve it." It explains why Forward Deployed Engineer has become tech's hottest role—bridging AI's potential and customer reality.   Winning companies recognize that customer expansion generates higher ROI than new acquisition. They're trading top-of-funnel quantity for post-sale quality.   The companies still hiring SDRs like it's 2019, while their competitors build implementation armies, are about to learn an expensive lesson.   You can read more details in the full report—I'll add the link in the comments.

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We recently sat down with Front's CEO, Dan O'Connell, at our SCALE event in SF to talk all things 'sales.' While we covered a lot of ground, one thing he reminded us of is that "founders and CEOs must always be involved in sales. Not only is it crucial for aligning teams, but there is no better feedback than speaking directly to customers." And it extends much further than just learning. It is a strategic advantage in closing deals, building culture, and staying up to date with what is happening at the front of your business. For more on his talk, why founders should never fully step away, including actionable takeaways, click that button below. A big thank you to Vivek Gutheti and our partners at Pilot.com for their support in helping make these insights and our SCALE EF event happen, to Thomas Lee Young for helping pull it together, and the awesome team at Entrepreneurs First for co-hosting and allowing us to use their space! READ FULL POST HERE: https://lnkd.in/eEU-hz5T

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Super excited to announce that UserEvidence has acquired Zealot, and raised an additional $7M (bringing our total to $21M) to fuel our product development and help B2B enterprises deliver customer proof across the entire funnel - from customer evidence, to advocate engagement, and 1:1 references. When Ray Rhodes and I met Sam Farber, Srikar Chava, and Brandon Jakobson back in May - we were instantly stoked on the potential. Their product instincts, speed, creativity, AI-native approach to building, and the incredible traction they had made in a short amount of time blew us away. Big congrats to the Zealot team! Customer content, advocate engagement, and reference management are not inherently distinct concepts. In fact, they are inextricably related and supportive of each other. Yet - there were different technologies in each of these 3 pillars, and arms-length integrations often fell short of their potential. Bringing these 3 pillars together under the same platform creates a massive opportunity for #customermarketers to holistically engage and harness and organizations most important asset - their customers. In an age of increasing noise and complexity when it comes to choosing the right vendor - substantive, credible, specific proof - whether delivered as content or delivered through live connection with a reference - is going to be the key to inspiring buyer confidence. Customer Marketers will be at the center of the organization, and UE + Zealot will power the future of #customermarketing Read more about the news here - https://lnkd.in/gd5Dygu8

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Go-to-market deserves the same rigor as product development. We prototype products, we obsess over UX, we debate pixels…and then we run sales as a loose collection of decks, demos, and instincts. What Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO of Vercel) articulated so clearly in this clip from our podcast conversation is that sales is an experience. Being sold to is an experience. And if you don’t choreograph it, you’re still creating an experience (just accidentally). If you treat GTM like a product, the experience is deliberately created.

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