My guest for Ep190 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Taryn Pieterse.

Taryn is a Partner of Rampersand VC, a dedicated seed fund that has invested over $100M across its funds, counting companies such as Sendle, Skedulo and Expert360 as part of its portfolio.

Prior to joining Rampersand, Taryn worked in Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs across Australia, the UK and Europe and at the family office of Radek Sali, the fomer CEO of Swisse Wellness.

In this episode we covered a range of topics including:

• Taryn’s journey from Investment Banking into Tech & VC
• Rampersand’s AAA approach in to investing in and supporting startups
• How to think about financial modeling as an early stage founder
• and much more!

Timestamps:

• 1:28 Taryn’s background and journey to VC
• 13:34 Building your reputation and personal brand
• 20:44 Early career, working on the Campaign Monitor deal
• 25:17 Things founders commonly overlook when pitching to investors
• 33:39 Giant Warm Intro program for founders and investors to connect
• 37:10 How to foster relationships with investors before you fundraise
• 42:48 When to start charging customers and how to figure out pricing
• 47:54 Rampersand’s AAA process for investing
• 52:38 How to think about financial modeling as an early stage founder
• 55:14 Advice to founders navigating a fundraise in this current challenging environment

Our partners

A big thank you to Paul Napthali and Chaz Heitner for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar 

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

Links mentioned

Taryn’s links

• Taryn’s LinkedIn
• Rampersand
• Giant Warm Intro

People mentioned

• Radek Sali
• George Calombaris
• Paul Naphtali
• Chanie Hyde
• Chaz Heitner

Companies mentioned:

• Goldman Sachs
• Campaign Monitor
• Light Warrior Group
• SABMiller
• AB InBev
• Swisse
• Wanderlust
• Made by cow
• Amazon
• Hatch
• The Iconic
• Sapia
• Expert360
• Cake

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Rohit@startupplaybook.co
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

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