Stage 2 Capital begins its oversubscription $150M Fund III to continue its mission to support the next generation of entrepreneurs with both investment and go-to-market expertise.
SAN FRANCISCO, August 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The first venture capital fund specializing in helping founders with go-to-market, Stage 2 Capital combines early-stage investment expertise with a diverse community of 300+ go-to-markets who are limited partners. With this new capital, Stage 2 Capital will continue investing in early-stage B2B software and marketplaces, with a focus on bringing best-in-class go-to-market support as founders achieve product -market fit and preparing to measure profit.
Founded by Jay Po and Mark Robert in 2018, Stage 2 Capital expanded its LP network to over 300 CROs, CMOs, CCOs, and go-to-market leaders who have made the world’s best moves at companies like Atlassian, Zoom, Slack, Snowflake , ServiceNow, Twilio, GitHub, LinkedIn, GitLab, ZoomInfo, MongoDB, Workday, HubSpot, SmartSheet, Salesforce, Gong, Shopify, 6Sense, Asana, Drift, Toast, DataBricks, Airtable, etc.
Po explained, “We are humbled to have a talented network of LPs behind us. It is central to our model to bring go-to-market knowledge to entrepreneurs. Our network participates at every stage of deal process, from sourcing to referring talent to coaching founders.LP’s breadth of experience has helped our due diligence process to understand the nuances of different industries and buyer personas. ” Po continues, “After investment, we match the unique expertise of our LPs with the strategic and operational needs of our portfolio companies. We involve our network in 100% of our deals, which often involve joining a portfolio company as an executive, board of director, or advisor.” To help strengthen LP connections within the portfolio, the firm has developed a unique LP Relations division focused on indexing, matching, and building relationships with founders.
Stage 2 Capital’s go-to-market focus fills a needed gap in the startup ecosystem, one that Po saw from his experience as an investor at Bessemer, and Roberge saw from his experience operating as the founding CRO at HubSpot. “Startups fail unnecessarily because of fundamental go-to-market mistakes, such as deciding when to scale, what type of salesperson to hire, and which demand generation channels to pursue,” says Roberge. . “While the traditional venture capital ecosystem has great insight into strategy, finance, product, and culture, we believe a stronger voice on revenue best practices is needed in the boardroom.”
In addition to the LP base, Stage 2 Capital uses a dual lens when investing by using a two-person investment pod on each deal, with one partner from a traditional VC and the other partner being a former go-to -market executive. Po and Roberge served as the first investment pod in Fund I. They brought in their second pod last year, bringing together Silicon Valley sales veteran, Mandy Cole, along with Anu Maheshwari, former VC at Iconiq. In Fund III, the firm expanded into its third pod, matching Liz (Cain) Christoformer NetSuite GTM executive and VC at OpenView, including Dan Heck, former VC at OpenView. “Our founders tell us they feel like they’re getting two experts for the price of one, having two partners with different perspectives who understand their business on a deeper level,” says Roberge.
On top of the new funding, the firm recently launched the Stage 2 Capital Accelerator, the first go-to-market accelerator program that guides seed-stage founders in the design and implementation of their first go-to-market system. As part of the 11-week program, participating founders receive a $100,000 investment in addition to hands-on tactical guidance. Outside of capital, founders get instruction, workbooks and templates, and one-on-one coaching to develop their first hiring scorecards, first pricing model, first sales playbook, first marketing campaign, first sales compensation model, and other tactics that are essential to their revenue scaling success.
About Stage 2 Capital: The first go-to-market venture capital firm, Stage 2 Capital combines traditional venture investing and go-to-market execution expertise, leveraging its elite LP base of 300+ senior executives from unicorns and Fortune 500 firms to help portfolio companies scale revenue and accelerate growth. Co-founded in 2018 by Jay Poformer investor in Bessemer Venture Partners, and Mark Robertfounding CRO at HubSpot, Stage 2 Capital invests in B2B software and marketplaces between late seed stage and Series A. For more information, visit: http://www.stage2.capital
About the Stage 2 Capital Accelerator: As the first go-to-market accelerator, Stage 2 Capital Accelerator invests and trains seed-stage founders in go-to-market fundamentals to build a scaling engine to drive sustainable revenue growth.
SOURCE Stage 2 Capital
