Recruiting the right team is the first step in ensuring any startup’s success. As a founder, it’s essential that you attract and retain top talent for long-term prosperity. However, that is easier said than done. Nearly half of all startups globally face difficulties finding qualified talent, and recruitment can be time-consuming and complex.

Here’s my take on what key considerations entrepreneurs should keep in mind when building a quality team.

Essential qualities to seek

In order to ensure the success of a startup venture, you need a team that possesses a diverse array of qualities, ranging from technical prowess to industry insight and creativity.

Everyone should be able to bring their own unique skills and viewpoints, contributing to the overall progress and innovation of the project. Developers drive software innovation, financial and legal experts navigate market intricacies, PR professionals shape brand messaging, and so on.

However, taking a step beyond individual expertise, having a shared vision is the truly paramount aspect.

It’s the glue that holds everything together. Members of your team should share a passion for creating something impactful that satisfies market needs. This shared enthusiasm fosters collaboration and resilience, essential for overcoming challenges inherent in any startup journey.

When everyone is committed to delivering real value to customers, it cultivates a culture of excellence in the company, opening doors for long-term growth.

Acquisition vs. budgetary constraints

When a startup is just getting off the ground, founders often find themselves constricted in terms of financial resources. Prioritizing recruitment expenses is, in my opinion, the right move to make here. The core team of developers is the cornerstone of driving the company’s initiatives forward, so they should be your main focus.

If you need to cut costs, relying on part-time freelance workers could be an option. However, as the founder, this places significant responsibility on you. It necessitates maintaining direct control and overseeing the processes across multiple departments at the same time. It’s a heavy burden to bear, and you need to give it proper consideration before deciding whether going down this road is worth it.

Personally, I would argue that securing individuals capable of consistently delivering high-quality results is more important than slimming down your expenses when you have that option available. Especially since it gives you the chance to focus on the more strategic aspects of managing your venture.

Employee engagement and satisfaction

I previously highlighted the importance of finding team members who share a genuine passion for their work. To further emphasize this point, creating an environment where that passion can be nurtured is crucial if you want to maintain their commitment to your team.

While founders may be willing to make personal sacrifices for their projects, it’s unrealistic to expect the same level of sacrifice from employees. For founders, the success of the company often hinges on its financial prosperity, leading them to take risks or endure stringent working conditions for growth. However, this expectation cannot be extended to all team members. They have different priorities, and it’s essential to acknowledge and respect that.

To foster a committed team, do not neglect their comfort and well-being. I recommend implementing transparent evaluation criteria and a reward system that gives employees a clear understanding of their value and contributions.

This can help create a positive work environment where workers feel supported and know their efforts mean something. By ensuring both material and emotional satisfaction in the workplace, founders can cultivate loyalty and motivation, driving success.

Alex Axelrod is founder and CEO of international payment platform Uluky and a serial tech entrepreneur who has led startups to successful exits. He has more than 12 years of experience in IT and fintech as well as extensive expertise in engineering, cybersecurity and software development.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Today’s social divisions are as palpable as ever, and on the receiving end are often people from marginalized communities, immigrants and refugees.

As investors, we know many founders who have recently arrived to the U.S. from countries suffering humanitarian crises, or whose teams are stuck in war zones. The challenges they face in everyday life — let alone finding success as an entrepreneur — are unimaginable to many.

VCs have disproportionate power in determining the fate of founders, and in times like these we should be using that power to create a community that’s bigger than a firm, company or capital.

Investors should use their privileged position to create strong communities and accompany isolated and underrepresented entrepreneurs through personal and professional challenges. This is how any VC can create more community for the benefit of founders, and themselves.

Create inclusiveness

Entrepreneurs entering, or considering entering, the startup world are often disillusioned by its exclusiveness.

VCs could be opening doors to those with historically less access to entrepreneurship by setting up an accelerator for marginalized communities, or running a training program with a local college. For example, VC firm Laconia has a Venture Cooperative aimed at increasing access to the investing community, and thus entrepreneurship.

At One Way Ventures, we also started a collective of successful entrepreneurs to support immigrant early-stage founders, who often face unique barriers to fundraising.

All you need is a willing community of people ready to offer their unique expertise and support for a larger goal. You don’t need to spend obscene amounts of money, just share knowledge and introductions with those who could most benefit.

Put your machinery to work for others

VCs should favor a partnership mindset where resources can be shared within their ecosystem and portfolio. This can offer significant accompaniment to entrepreneurs who come from an unfamiliar environment.

VCs have an array of services at their disposal that can easily be deployed to service startups. If your firm uses PR services, you can negotiate a deal with your agency to spend some of their time with your portfolio to increase their media-savviness and reach.

Other VCs are launching free products for startups to support the community with more accessible growth services. We’ve also been sharing the services of our graphic design agency with our portfolio — with the added benefit that the agency has a team in Ukraine.

Unite experts with shared experiences

Another step VCs can take is to unite people within a structured community — whether that’s a collective, community, safe space or association. Reach out to successful entrepreneurs, academics, stakeholders and other VCs who share your values and have something new to offer founders.

You should be looking to recruit people who reflect the experience and identity of the founders you’re trying to support, while also having a track record of success. For entrepreneurs, being able to lean on a group of people who are not expecting anything in return, and whose interest in you is purely to help from a place of shared hardship or ambition, can instill founders with a sense of optimism. We’ve found that it’s also rewarding for participants themselves. This is why you can’t create a collective based on quid pro quo, but rather on the very desire for community.

These initiatives may take time, but ideally they will grow organically. Of course, it would be naive to think that none of this community-building comes back in your favor, but this should be a bonus to the more widespread potential of your actions.

Semyon Dukach is founding partner of One Way Ventures, a VC firm funding exceptional immigrant founders. A Ukrainian-American, he came to the U.S. as a child refugee in 1979. He is the former managing director of Techstars (Boston), and an angel investor in over 100 companies.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Whether you’ve read the novel or not, you’ve likely heard the opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

In other words, there’s only one way to be happy, but there are infinite ways to be unhappy. It’s an idea that captures the truth of many relationships — and many startups. Who knew Tolstoy translates so well to tech.

In my career so far, I have invested across a variety of verticals, stages and geographies — from fintech to software infrastructure, incubation to IPO, and from the U.S. to Latin America and Asia. With every context switch comes a fresh set of considerations.

There are, however, a few fundamental drivers behind a company’s performance. Let’s discuss two of these all-important “happy family” factors.

A co-founder relationship with clearly defined roles

For startups with two or more founders, the fundamental building block of success is the co-founder relationship.

The single biggest killer of startups is interpersonal conflict. Research suggests that 65% of startups fail due to founder feuds. That is why most seed investors say their job can seem eerily similar to that of a marriage counselor.

An instant red flag for investors is sensing tension between the co-founders during a pitch meeting. I was in a meeting once where in the first five minutes of the call one of the co-founders introduced themself as CEO and the other immediately cut them off to say they hadn’t decided on titles yet. That brief interaction had more impact on our investment decision than the rest of the presentation.

Startups can crumble under the weight of founders’ egos.

There should be no ambiguity in the roles and responsibilities of the founders so the team can get on with the important work of building the business without distractions. The later in a company’s life such issues surface, the harder they become to untangle.

An exec team that covers the founder’s blindspots

After a certain stage, it’s not a flex if the founder knows every single fact about their business better than anyone else on the team — rather, it indicates a failure to hire and/or delegate. You can not and should not wear every hat in your company because that isn’t a scalable mode of operation.

FTX has become a cautionary tale of what such a failure of leadership can look like at a grand scale. At FTX, not only did senior leaders lack relevant experience for the roles they occupied (failure of hiring), none of them were empowered to challenge the CEO (failure of delegation).

On a more positive note, if we look back at the corporate history of Google, we see a founding team that recognized and accounted for the limits of its skill set. As Google grew, technical founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin saw the need to bring in external leadership to manage the growing company and hired Eric Schmidt as CEO in 2001. This decision was crucial in transitioning Google from a startup to a global tech leader.

In other words, the team that gets you to one stage isn’t necessarily the one that will take you to the next.

Ultimately, the story at the heart of technological progress is a very human one. The co-founder relationship, akin to a marital bond, requires trust, respect and a clear division of roles to thrive.

The executive team, much like a family unit, must complement each other, covering blind spots and building on each other’s strengths.

This human element is the real crucible where the fate of a startup is forged.

Saanya Ojha is a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, where she leads growth-stage investments in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity and the developer ecosystem. Previously, she was a partner at Coatue focused on growth investments after having started her career as a hedge fund analyst at Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, a long/short fundamental equity fund.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

The continuing surge in food delivery culture has not only transformed the way we enjoy our meals, it has also paved the way for groundbreaking advancements in restaurant operations technology.

As consumers and investors taking part in the delivery boom of recent years, we are enthusiastic about the novel technologies that help restaurants better serve and adapt to evolving consumer preferences.

In this current era of food and dining, where mobile-based food ordering and omnichannel food operations have become a standard, we, at Chingona Ventures, are hungry for more — more innovation, more efficiency and improved dining experiences for all. Here’s why:

Technology-enabled dining experiences

The pandemic accelerated a shift in how we dine, with food delivery becoming a staple of modern living and restaurant dining experiences shifted from primarily on-site to omnichannel.

Today, millennial and Gen Z diners seek technological advancements in restaurants, particularly for ordering and delivery. Consumers now expect their meals to be available via delivery and restaurants are adopting technology to implement additional service models such as curbside pickup, delivery, wholesale and catering.

The advent of major outsourced delivery services such as UberEats and DoorDash in the 2010s has allowed restaurants to quickly implement tech-enabled delivery solutions. Similarly, many tech-enabled features like mobile ordering applications, contactless payments, online reservation systems, cloud-based point-of-sale systems, and kitchen management software have now become ubiquitous across restaurants.

A new challenge for restaurants

However, the proliferation of single-point technologies has introduced a new challenge for restaurants.

While customer expectations for seamless, tech-driven solutions are rising, companies are struggling to manage multiple softwares with fragmented processes while simultaneously handling restaurant operations. This, in turn, impacts quality control and the customer experience, as evident in reviews highlighting delivery mishaps and service inconsistencies.

Looking only at delivery, restaurants may be managing several delivery models and fleet types: same hour, same-day and next-day-delivery; single fleet, multifleet, crowdsourced fleets and in-house fleets; delivery from the store, curbside pickup, delivery from robotic warehouses, and others. Coordination and oversight of various outsourced fleets can lead to inconsistencies and dissatisfaction in service quality following the loss of ownership over the customer experience.

Delivery or takeout guest satisfaction is up to 3x lower than that of a dine-in guest, creating a larger potential for a lost customer. On average, social ratings lose 1.5 stars when a third party is mentioned. A company’s social reputation can be negatively impacted when customers publicize poor third-party delivery experiences. And, with many diners admitting to dining choices being influenced by online reviews, online ordering experiences play a crucial role in attracting and retaining customers.

The addressable opportunity

The global food market represents a substantial one. In the U.S. alone, there are an estimated 750,000 restaurants and 15.5 million restaurant employees that together comprise about 4% of GDP.

This current challenge presents an opportunity for businesses seeking to streamline restaurant operations.

Innovations in fleet orchestration technologies, for example, offer restaurants the opportunity to improve deliveries through route optimization algorithms, real-time tracking and dynamic dispatch systems that streamline the delivery process.

Meanwhile, the U.S. online food delivery market reached $26.1 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10.1% through 2028.

By implementing efficiency-focused technologies, restaurants can reduce delivery times, improve order accuracy and enhance overall customer satisfaction. Moreover, it allows for better resource allocation, ensuring that deliveries are prompt and efficient even during peak hours.

Businesses that deploy these solutions will gain a competitive edge in an increasingly competitive market. With the ability to simplify operations, businesses can meet these new customer standards and technological preferences while focusing on food and the customer experience.

Dining on innovation in 2024 and beyond

Optimization technology will continue to redefine the landscape of the food and restaurant industries in 2024 and beyond. The paradigm shift toward omnichannel dining experiences, coupled with the ever-increasing expectations of tech-savvy consumers, signifies a pivotal moment for restaurants and businesses seeking to serve them.

As we look to the year ahead, we at Chingona are eager to embrace the exciting developments that will shape the restaurant technology landscape in the years to come.

Samara Mejía Hernandez is the founding partner of Chingona Ventures, a pre-seed and seed-stage venture firm investing in financial technology, food technology, the future of learning, and the future of work, including Cartwheel, PaerPay and Tendrel. She has more than 15 years of experience selling, advising and investing in the public and private markets. She holds an engineering degree from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Grisel Hernandez is an associate at Chingona supporting deal diligence, investment operations and portfolio support. Before joining the firm, she held roles in investment management, public policy and academic research. She holds a degree in economics and political science from Grinnell College.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias

Taking over as CEO from a founder is often a herculean task, especially when you’re succeeding founders who have invested their money, time, passion and life into the business.

Even if appointed, taking on this role comes with a set of inevitable challenges. Founders naturally have the highest percentage of ownership and sway over the business to date.

In many cases, the founder’s ownership also carries into the supporters of the business thus far, with the majority supporting the founders as they have typically developed a strong relationship with them.

In my experience, when an external CEO is brought into a company — a decision that can be driven either by shareholders and investors or by founders recognizing their limitations — there are three common threads that should be thoroughly reviewed.

Ask for a comprehensive overview of where the money came from and how much is actually available

This is crucial to set you up for success. Make sure to look at the bank account and speak to the previous investors. Understand investors’ motivation for investing in the business. It’s important to distinguish between those investing out of personal connections (friends and family) and those who make investments as part of their profession (angels, venture capitalists, etc.).

Taking time to schedule these meetings prior to accepting a CEO role should be at the top of your list. Getting a comprehensive overview of the finances to date will help you gain further insights into the opportunities and challenges ahead.

Make sure to clarify roles and responsibilities for the future, and establish clear expectations regarding exit plans, including timing and financial considerations.

Understand the founder’s stake in the business

Prior to taking over as CEO, it is imperative to predetermine what role the founder has going forward and their stake in the company. Ensure that the cap table allocates 20% for options, confirm all intellectual property is assigned to the company, and ensure that no founder holds more than 30% equity.

If one person has more than 30%, they could make decisions for the company without the CEO’s notification, threatening growth and the future. It’s also important to gain insight into the current and future-looking board roles.

Review the business and future outlook

Discuss the future company goals and what it will realistically take to achieve them based on the current state of the business. A big part of that is reviewing the envisioned direction of the company.

This means talking to founders, management and current board members to get a clear picture as to where they think the business is going versus where you might want to take it.

This can greatly differ and set you up for failure if you do not talk about this prior to taking on the role. It’s important to have an open dialogue from Day One, communicate differences and agree on a strategy moving forward before signing papers.

Discuss communication methods and styles and be clear on expectations for forward growth. It’s crucial to evaluate the company’s position in the market objectively, considering how the company and product fits in.

When you’re excited about taking on a CEO role and passionate about the company itself, it’s easy to overlook other critical focus areas.

To ensure alignment and the ability to effectively execute tasks when needed, it’s imperative to conduct thorough due diligence beforehand. This proactive approach ensures that you are adequately prepared for the next steps in your CEO journey.

Joining a company as CEO comes with many opportunities and challenges.

My best advice is to jump in with your eyes wide open, knowing the value you bring to the company and where you want to take it in the future. That is, after all, what they hired you for.

Marissa Fayer is a medtech executive, innovator, entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist. She is the CEO of DeepLook Medical and the CEO and founder of nonprofit HERhealthEQ. Fayer’s mission is to move innovation and the health of women forward throughout the world.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

The combination of overfishing and climactic upheaval have decimated populations of fish and other sea creatures worldwide. And while farm-raised seafood might look like a more sustainable alternative, there are big concerns around overcrowding and disease.

Cell-based seafood, meanwhile, still looks years away from mass-market readiness. And vegan alternatives — fishy-tasting, textured plant products — don’t carry the same nutritional punch or broad consumer appeal as the real thing.

The troubled state of the seafood industry today may help explain why we’ve seen quite a bit of capital flowing to startups aiming to improve on the status quo. Seafood-related startups funded in the past couple years have collectively raised nearly $3 billion to date, per Crunchbase data.

For an idea where capital is going, we curated a list of 39 funded companies in the space, listed below:

Fishicorns, farming and finance

The seafood farming sector has already anointed at least one unicorn (or “fishicorn,” we might say). Indonesian aquaculture startup eFishery picked up $200 million in Series D funding in July at a reported valuation of more than $1 billion.

The company pitches its smart-feeding technology as promoting sustainability as well as saving fisheries and shrimp farmers money. Its systems aim to reduce underfeeding as well as overfeeding, which can cause pollution from nutrient runoff.

Aquabyte, operating out of Norway, San Francisco and Chile, is also scaling technology it says can promote healthier fish-farming operations, largely through underwater data collection and associated analytics software. It closed on $25 million in Series B funding last summer.

In Chennai, India, Aquaconnect reeled in $15 million in December to build out a platform that applies AI and satellite remote sensing to aquaculture operations, helping farmers in tasks from doling out feed to finding customers.

Cell-based and alternative proteins

A large portion of investment is also going to startups developing seafood options that don’t involve fishing for or farming sea creatures.

San Francisco-based Wildtype, which is working on sushi-grade salmon made with fish cells, is among the more heavily funded. The 7-year-old company has netted more than $120 million to date, including a $100 million Series B last year.

A few miles away, Emeryville, California-based Finless Foods is starting with tuna. It’s already rolled out a plant-based product, but the company says its long-term aim is to bring to market cell-cultured seafood alternatives.

On the plant side, Current Foods, which makes vegetarian tuna and salmon bites, raised $18 million last year.  And Aqua Cultured Foods, which received $5.5 million in seed funding in April, recently unveiled taste tests of its products including spicy tuna rolls, salmon crudo and shrimp dumplings.

For now, It’s unclear to what extent these alternatives have room to grow. After major setbacks faced by the plant-based meat industry, seafood startups and the venture firms that fund them are charting a new course, with funding distributed among fewer companies.

As farming expands, not all ventures work out

Recent history also teaches us that hefty investment does not always translate into a scalable business.

A case in point here is Brooklyn-based Upward Farms, an upstart promoting aquaponics, a circular agriculture system in which fish are used to fertilize crops.The company announced this spring that it is shutting down, noting that as scalable businesses go, “vertical farming is almost infinitely complex.”

At the same time, however, aquaculture continues to demonstrate the curve of a classic growth market. Per the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, aquaculture production reached an all-time record high in 2020, with production more than 60% higher than the average in the 1990s. Humans are also eating more aquatic foods than ever — double the per-capita consumption rate of 50 years ago.

Going forward, the challenge will be finding ways to satiate our appetites in a manner that’s less harmful to sea creatures. Hopefully, startups will be able to play a role in bringing this to fruition.

Related Crunchbase Pro query

• Seafood-Related Startups Funded In The Past 2 Years

Further reading

• Forecast: Plant-Based Meat Is Starting To Sour With Consumers
• After Years Of Sinking Venture Funding, Plant-Based Seafood Charts A New Course

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Startups are on it. In the past couple years, developers of tools aimed at employers with hybrid workforces have raised hundreds of millions in venture and growth funding. And while funding to the broader human resources category is down sharply this year, we are seeing some investment activity around the hybrid theme.

For a sense of where capital is going, we curated a list of 23 venture-backed companies that have raised venture or seed funding in the past two years. Business models range from meal benefits to secure collaboration tools.

Largest and most recent funding recipients

Most of the largest funding rounds for companies on our list took place last year, when overall venture investment was much higher. This includes a $115 million Series E for Staffbase, provider of an internal communications platform it markets to companies with a combination of onsite, hybrid or remote workforces. With over $300 million in funding to date, the German company is by far the most heavily funded on our list.

San Francisco-based Envoy, developer of workspace management tools geared toward flexible and hybrid work environments, is the second-biggest fundraiser, with $170 million in investment to date. Sharebite, a meal benefit service that works with both onsite and remote workers, comes in third, with $62 million to date.

So far this year, investment has mostly taken place at the seed stage. This includes a $3 million financing for Offsite, a provider of retreat planning for remote and hybrid teams, and a $4.5 million investment for Cleary, which is reimagining the intranet for the remote and hybrid work age. The largest 2023 round on our list  — a $16 million Series A — went to Gable, a provider of flexible office space.

Hybrid on the rise

There are countless opinions on the pros and cons of remote versus onsite work. On the pro side, the benefits of in-person collaboration dominate. On the con side, few relish the commute or extra expenses that come with going to the office, and remote jobs attract a much wider applicant pool.

Hybrid work, meanwhile, represents a middle ground. Coworkers meet face-to-face when there’s a reason. But there’s also a recognition that not all desk work needs to be done in the immediate company of our coworkers.

It’s an increasingly common compromise. By the end of 2023, 39% of global knowledge workers will work hybrid, up from 37% in 2022, according to research firm Gartner. In the U.S., the hybrid work trend will be more pronounced than in the rest of the world with 51% of knowledge workers projected to work hybrid and 20% to work fully remote in 2023.

Moreover, once companies start offering the option of working remotely at least some of the time, it’s tough to reverse course. Per Gartner, for knowledge workers these days “hybrid is no longer just an employee perk but an employee expectation.”

Related Crunchbase Pro list

• Venture-Backed Hybrid Work Startups

Illustration: Dom Guzman

A Crunchbase survey of six venture-backed companies in the clothing and accessories industry that went public last year shows an average post-IPO decline of 74%.

The worst performer—subscription and rental outfit provider Rent the Runway—has seen its valuation slip 93% since making its market debut last October. Shares tanked a few weeks ago, after the company lowered revenue forecasts and announced a 24% cut in corporate staff.

The New York fashion industry disruptor is hardly the only venture-backed company in the space to face troubles lately. For perspective, below we lay out six that went public last year, and how they’re faring now:

Of course, the major market indices have seen steep declines since last year, with tech leading the way down. So newly public fashion players aren’t the only ones that headed lower.

Still, several on our list have had issues of their own beyond general market malaise. Examples include:

• ThredUp, which sells secondhand clothes online, missed earnings expectations for the past three reported quarters, and shares are currently trading near their all-time low. This summer, the Oakland-based company reportedly laid off 15% of corporate staff and announced the shuttering of a processing facility.
• Eyeglasses purveyor Warby Parker cut 15% of its corporate staff this summer and lowered its sales outlook amid expectations of softening consumer demand.
• Allbirds, a maker of comfy footwear sourced from merino wool and sustainable materials, also cut revenue guidance this summer, pushing shares down even after a better-than-expected quarter.

Additionally, one of last year’s better-known fashion debuts is already going private. Secondhand fashion and accessories marketplace Poshmark, announced earlier this month that it has agreed to a $1.2 billion acquisition by South Korea’s Naver.

Yes, VCs are still doing fashion, but not so much

Meanwhile, in startup land, fashion-focused founders are still managing to raise some funding. However, investment has dropped off, particularly in the last few months.

Per Crunchbase data, investors put approximately $1.5 billion into seed through growth-stage rounds for fashion-related startups so far this year. That’s on track to come in well below the $3.4 billion invested in 2021.

However, it should be noted that the biggest 2022 rounds were largely at the beginning of the year. The three largest funding rounds—Skims ($240 million Series B), Harry’s ($140 million Series F) and Savage X Fenty ($125 million Series C)—all closed in January.

In the last three months, fashion funding totaled just $184 million, indicating investment activity in the space is slowing down.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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The go-to image usually revolves around a lovely home. But of course, there are also lavish-yet-balanced family meals, and a lifestyle complete with vacations, birthday parties, extended family visits, soccer teams, music lessons … the list goes on, and on, and on.

While the so-called American Dream has its allure, maintaining it all tends to be exhausting. And although tech startups have long churned out productivity tools for the workforce, families don’t have a lot of dedicated offerings tailored to their needs.

Increasingly, startup entrepreneurs and investors are addressing this gap as part of a burgeoning sector that goes by the catchphrase famtech. Think digital tools to manage household responsibilities, track what the kids are doing, find care and even free up a little personal time.

Oftentimes, founders are building the kinds of tools and apps they wished they had.

“I feel that an impossible thing is being asked from the modern family these days,” said Yoky Matsuoka, founder and CEO of Yohana, a Panasonic-backed startup offering a service to help families outsource or streamline more of their routine tasks and projects.

As a parent of four and former Nest CTO, Matsuoka speaks from experience about the time-pressed lifestyle of juggling a full-schedule family life and a demanding career. Particularly for those who don’t have a large local support network, she believes dedicated tech can go a long way toward alleviating everyday stresses.

A big, wide-open space

Looking at recent funding tallies, famtech does look like a growing space. For a sense of where the money is going, we used Crunchbase data to put together a sample list of 25 U.S. companies that raised funding in roughly the past year.

It’s a varied lot, spanning from transportation to care-finding platforms to tools for keeping up with to-do lists. It’s also a pretty well-funded one, with list members collectively pulling in over $600 million to date.

Probably the most recognized brand in our sample is HopSkipDrive, a Los Angeles-based startup that provides vetted drivers to give kids rides to school and activities. The 8-year-old startup has raised around $124 million in funding to date, including a $37 million Series D in September.

Yumi, a provider of organic meals and snacks for babies and toddlers, was another top funding recipient, with $99 million in known funding since its founding a decade ago. While it’s a bit blurry whether Yumi qualifies as famtech, we included it because of the company’s focus on saving time with online meal planning and direct shipping.

Among earlier-stage companies, meanwhile, one climbing the funding ranks quickly is New York-based Otter. The 2-year-old startup, which matches parents who need child care with caregivers in their communities, has raised $30.8 million to date, with Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz as lead backers.

Startup investors are also carving out famtech as a focus area. Among them is Halogen Ventures, a Santa Monica firm that invests in women-led consumer technology startups and lists parenting tech as a key vertical. In a recent, famtech-focused survey, the firm concluded that “solving childcare” is the biggest untapped business opportunity in 2022 coming out of COVID.

It takes a tech-enabled village

Despite high demand from parents for life-simplifying options, building a market for family tech might entail changing some of our conceptions about how and where to get help.

Yohana’s Matsuoko points to the old proverb about how it takes a village to raise a child. While there’s truth to that, there’s also the stark reality that many working parents have little to no family support network nearby, let alone a village to share responsibilities for child care and chores.

For some families, Matsuoko said, a more feasible option is to pay for services to help tackle day-to-day duties, such as setting doctors appointments, hiring a plumber, or making birthday party arrangements. That’s the premise behind her startup, Yohana, which will launch nationwide later this year with a subscription service aimed at freeing up parents’ time.

Families may also need to adjust to the idea of adding another device or two to their lives. That’s the case Monica Plath, CEO and founder of Littlebird, is hoping to make for her connected device startup, which sells a wristband for toddlers that tracks location and wellness, as well as a paired app.

Her inspiration, Plath said, is the notion that even when parents aren’t with their children, they still spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about their well-being. “I was just trying to worry a little bit less,” she said.

At the end of the day, it seems what famtech entrepreneurs are selling more than anything else is a tech-centric path to what everyone wants: a little more free time and a lot less worrying.

As the market matures, we’ll get a better sense of the two great unknowns: Whether startup-driven technology can deliver those things and, if so, whether consumers will be willing to pay for them.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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Running a company can be stressful at the best of times. When challenging market conditions start throwing you curveballs, those stress levels can spike for both founders and their teams.

We launched Pipe right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. While there’s been no shortage of hurdles and challenges along the way, four key principles have helped us keep growing, protect our mental health, and build a company where our team loves to work.

Here’s what we’ve prioritized that can help you do the same:

Trust that your team will do their jobs well

Trusting your team can be difficult for startup founders, who often have to remind themselves that “their baby” is bigger than they are. But trusting others means you need to juggle less. It also improves morale and buy-in and opens doors for big thinking.

As a globally distributed company, Pipe offers equalized pay (rather than geo-based), which has helped us build a solid, collaborative team with a diversity of ideas and experience. This has been a major source of resilience, as it helps us find new solutions to problems as they arise.

With a great team in place, trusted and empowered to do their jobs, founders can focus on the high-impact, strategic work essential to their roles.

Keep headcount low relative to your valuation

We’ve worked hard to stay lean. That has meant ensuring our teams aren’t just efficient, collaborative executors, but well-resourced ones. When we hit a $2 billion valuation, our team was under 50 people; today we’re only around 100.

If recent changes in the economy have shown us anything, it’s that nothing is guaranteed. This week’s budget may not be next week’s. Rather than building big and having to cut back, keeping a lower headcount can give team members room to contribute meaningfully while maintaining margin in the staffing budget for unforeseen dips.

Fast growth may be enticing, but staying (strategically) lean gives you a tortoise-and-the-hare advantage.

Maintain a cash cushion in case the market slows

Running a business is a series of spikes and troughs, bull and bear markets. The ups and downs can eat away at your peace of mind, especially if the dips bring you close to the edge. Having a cash cushion is vital for building a strong, enduring company and lets you continue business as usual (more or less) with confidence.

Whether you’re looking to raise an equity round in the near future or not, keep runway in mind. How long could you operate without a cash infusion? What if your revenue dropped by x%? A cash cushion lengthens the runway so you can weather changes with less disruption.

Stay flexible and open to change

It may be a cliche that the only constant is change, but it’s true. The entrepreneurial journey is all about overcoming obstacles and finding resourceful solutions. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get entrenched in one way of thinking—a habit that turns changing conditions into stressful nightmares.

Companies that thrive in a challenging market are flexible and agile. While your goals may not change, be ready to change how you achieve them. As the market, the competitive landscape and the needs of your customers shift, it’s important to be able to roll with the punches.

Conclusion

Economic challenges can threaten your business’s survival—as well as your mental health. No amount of success is worth sacrificing the well-being of you and your team. We’ve found these four principles to be very helpful in building our company, and I’d encourage you to find what works best for your team and build those pillars into the culture of your company.

 Harry Hurst is co-founder and co-CEO of Miami-based Pipe, a recurring-revenue trading platform. Hurst sold his first company Skurt, a financial technology company in the mobility space to Fair in 2018. He is an angel investor and mentor to a number of early-stage and growth-stage companies.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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