#123: How Practical Founders Are Winning Big with Growth Equity Funding – Growth Street Partners

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Dec 20, 2024

Steve Wolfe and Nate Grossman, co-founders of Growth Street Partners, discuss how growth equity funding enables SaaS founders to maintain control while securing investment. They share insights on the 'learn-it-all' mindset crucial for success, emphasizing adaptability and strategic partnerships. The duo explores how founders can achieve multiple exits while building strong teams for scale. Highlighting real-world examples, they differentiate growth equity from traditional investment routes and stress the importance of founder-investor alignment for sustainable success.

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INSIGHT

Founder Market Fit Is Key

Founders know their market better than investors, making partnership essential.
Investors bring execution support, while founders bring deep industry insight.

ADVICE

Partial Cash-Out Benefits Founders

Taking some money off the table de-risks founders and alleviates pressure.
This liquidity helps founders make better hiring and growth decisions.

ANECDOTE

Founder’s Wife Tests Investors

Chuck Gibbs’ wife grilled Growth Street’s partners over a dinner about their cars.
This reflected trust-building and cultural fit for founder-investor alignment.

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Steve Wolfe and Nate Grossman are co-founders at Growth Street Partners, a growth equity firm focused on investing in early-stage B2B SaaS companies between $2M-$6M in ARR. They discuss how growth equity funding works for SaaS founders and how it allows entrepreneurs to maintain control while still benefiting from investment and liquidity.

In this expert episode, Steve and Nate get specific and share real examples of how SaaS founders use growth equity to win bigger, when it can be a good fit for founders, and how founders scale their businesses and win with multiple exits. They also describe:

Why Growth Street Partners focuses on practical founders with growth equity.
How growth equity is different from traditional private equity and venture capital.
Why successful founders are “learn-it-alls” with a growth mindset.
How founders can achieve multiple exits through strategic partnerships.
Why building a strong team is essential for scale-up success.

Quote from Steve Wolfe, co-founder of Growth Street Partners

“We know that when entrepreneurs have fun, their companies do much better. When founders continue to feel real ownership in their business and in the success of their company, they do a lot better, too.

“So we set up our whole firm to enable that. We are investing to own just 20% to 50% of a business, so the founder still controls the company. We go to them with execution ideas and proven frameworks and approaches, but we are really just giving them the tools to make better decisions themselves.

“They know they make the decisions in the end, so they will make sure that it’s successful. There’s something beautiful about that relationship and about helping that founder get to where they want to go while still feeling like they did it.”

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Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale

This week’s podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io.

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