Episode 378: David Henriquez & Sean Marshall, Copley

Episode 378 of The VentureFizz Podcast features two of the Co-Founders of Copley - David Henriquez, CEO and Sean Marshall, Chief Operating Officer. It is just a necessity for any thriving tech ecosystem. You need companies that scale and people from those companies take their learnings and go off to start their own company. HubSpot has been a big feeder of alumni who have gone off to start companies and you are starting to see the next wave with founders coming from Toast and now Klaviyo. What’s even better is when you see the founders of these anchor tech companies fund the next generation of entrepreneurs. David & Sean were part of the hypergrowth scale up years at Klaviyo that ultimately led to a pillar public tech company in the Boston tech area. David held a variety of engineering & sales engineering roles, whereas Sean led global sales. Now, they are building a new company with a third Co-Founder & CTO, Mike Torra called Copley. It is an AI-Powered Content Optimization Platform that allows marketers to quickly create, test & deploy content everywhere. Copley recently announced a $4.8M pre-seed round of funding led by Asymmetric and Underscore. And yes, the founders of Klaviyo - Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen are investors… plus Tom Ebling & Jeffrey Barnett of Demandware which was acquired by Salesforce. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Startup fundraising advice for first-time founders and the importance of building long term relationships with investors. * The background stories for both David and Sean. * The explosive growth years at Klaviyo. * The full story of Copley in terms of the problem they are solving and their unique approach to finding early adopter customers. * GTM advice for early stage startups and the importance of storytelling. * And so much more. Episode Sponsor: As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.