Joyce Mackenzie Liu, Founder and CEO of Pegafund on: 3 Ingredients for a Successful Fundraise and Other Strategies for Predictable Growth

Joyce provides early-stage companies with strategic and operational CFO services to prepare the companies for predictable growth, fundraising, and global go-to-market success. Prior to Pegafund, Joyce was an advisor, investor, and board member of European and US B2B software companies including being an early growth investor at Columbia Lake Partners, a Bessemer-backed European debt fund. In this episode, I ask Joyce about what metrics are important to track at different stages of the company and how to use data and metrics to guide big decisions like global expansion. Joyce also shares the 3 ingredients for a successful fundraiser and the most common mistakes she sees founders make in that process.
  • [01:05] Your journey to starting Pegafund 
  • [06:27] What problems do you solve for startups and scale-ups?
  • [10:07] What are the key KPIs for SaaS companies in the early stages (zero to 1 million) and what does ‘good’ looks like at this stage. 
  • [18:07] What are some of the key metrics for the stage from two or five million to ten million? And also, what are some common mistakes that entrepreneurs make at this stage?
  • [23:20] What are the systems that should be in place for tracking from zero to five million - and further - for entrepreneurs and founders to make decisions on?
  • [25:46] When revenue operations should be brought in?
  • [27:50] Are there specific metrics that help determine when expansion is right? What advice do you have for expanding within Europe versus expanding to the US based on metrics or best practices?
  • [32:09] From a metrics perspective, how do VCs view European companies as opposed to US companies?
  • [38:31] What are some of the biggest mistakes that start-ups make when they’re preparing for fundraising?

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