By Yazan El-Baba, Associate, Emergence Capital

On the heels of another impressive HubSpot earnings release, we decided to dive into what is driving the team’s continued success six years post-IPO. Many people know HubSpot for the way they pioneered inbound selling, but their pricing strategy is equally as instructive. Their success at getting customers hooked on their feature-rich free tiers and then upselling into revenue-generating tiers offers powerful, if not counterintuitive, lessons to up the next generation of SaaS companies.

Early and growth-stage companies alike often struggle with the strategic decision of how to price their software. Pricing is an…

By The Partners of Emergence

At Emergence, we’ve always promoted investment professionals from within our firm. This allows us to teach the “Emergence Way” of practicing venture capital as folks come up the curve. Rather than bringing in more senior investors, we prefer to hire people earlier in their careers who we feel are a great match for how we work and who have the potential to grow into world-class investors, helping us and our founders win big in the long run.

We are proud to announce that Jake Saper has become the sixth General Partner of Emergence Capital and that Carlotta “Lotti” Siniscalco has been promoted to Principal.

A big part of that match revolves around shared values. Going back to our earliest interactions with Jake…

By Gordon Ritter, Founder & General Partner, Emergence

VC activity may have climbed back up to pre-pandemic levels, but that statistic masks an important development: COVID has changed the rules for startup funding.

On one hand, the pandemic has sparked some positive founder-friendly developments. For starters, it’s dramatically easier to get in front of VCs because they’re taking substantially more meetings than before. Before the pandemic, most early-stage investors sat down with entrepreneurs a few times each week, but right now, most investors are engaging in back-to-back 30-minute conversations all day, every day. …

By Doug Landis, Growth Partner, Emergence

It is an interesting, roller-coaster of a time to be a sales leader. When the pandemic first struck, budgets completely froze, and startups braced for the worst. As time has passed, the tech economy hasn’t been hit as strongly as many expected, but many startups are still operating in a “wait-and-see” environment in which they push ahead with their business needs — including necessary spend — while attempting to keep risks and costs tightly in check.

Below, I’ve rounded up the top tips I’ve been sharing with our companies on mastering a “Frugalnomics” sales…

By Joseph Floyd, Emergence General Partner

Today, I am proud to formally welcome Outlier.ai into the Emergence family. Earlier this year, we led their $22.1M Series B, and as our first investment of the new decade, Outlier holds a lot of meaning.

My relationship with Outlier’s CEO & Co-Founder Sean Byrnes goes back several years when he was kind enough to help me break down my research of the first generation of cloud-native BI applications. …

By Santi Subotovsky, Emergence General Partner

Today, we are excited to officially announce our partnership with Airkit, the world’s first low-code platform for customer engagement, as part of their coming-out-of-stealth announcement and our $21.6M Series A commitment.

Co-founders Stephen Ehikian, CEO, and Adam Evans, CTO, are on a mission to transform how companies connect with their customers. In today’s world, a personalized and proactive customer experience is critical to building a winning company, but the resources and complexities involved in building digital customer experiences present many barriers and often make it out of reach. But Airkit is changing the game…

By Tammy Han, Head of Talent, Emergence

We are in a very unique time for hiring. As the uncertainty of the pandemic continues, there remains a lot of uncertainty around long-term hiring plans as well.

Most companies are adapting their strategies to fit our new normal and determining what their office structure (such as 100% remote, a phased return to the office, or a hybrid model) will look like going forward. And while it has been amazing to see just how productive we’ve all been under the circumstances, there is still a lot of work to be done. …

By Gordon Ritter & Carlotta Siniscalco

It’s strange to think about how dramatically the nature of trust has changed in the midst of the pandemic. Investors have had to reimagine how we build relationships with entrepreneurs. Given the nature of just how closely the two sides of venture work together and the longevity of our relationships — which ideally last for the lifetimes of most companies and beyond for the founders — it’s imperative to enter into those partnerships with mutual trust and respect. For years, determining compatibility and building rapport has been dependent upon countless in-person meetings, dinners, coffees…