“Doubling Down” is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. We had a great one last time with Peter Specht, Partner at Creandum. Check that out here.
This week we’re focusing on Lucy Deland, Co-founder & General Partner at Inspired Capital!
#1. What’s your most recent disclosed investment? Why did you do the deal?
In a world consumed by software we believe that a tremendous amount of value will come from the connective tissue between the systems, sharing data proactively across apps to drive the most seamless and effective software stack. With over 25K SaaS tools out there, we believe that those with the best and most complete list of native integrations that make their users’ lives easier and more effective will be the ones that win.
Native integrations are key to customer acquisition and retention in the SaaS space, but not what makes your product special so we believe these integrations should and will be built utilizing tools, not writing custom code.
From that lens, we invested in Paragon (https://www.useparagon.com/) because of their orientation toward being the best possible tool for developers and allowing them to ship every native integration that their customers need. Paragon increases the velocity and number of integrations a team can deliver, while decreasing the investment of precious development team time.
#2. What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? And how big is your current fund?
We lead rounds at the early stage — from napkin through Series A and our check sizes range from $1-15M.
#3. What’s the #1 bit of advice you’d give to SaaS founders today?
Constantly talk to your customers about their “why” for using their product and obsessively focusing on the data about how their customers are using their product, it will be the best resource for driving your sales, marketing, product roadmap and focus.
#4. What’s your pulse check on the venture markets right now, today?
Seed remains frothy, however, the bar for what a “good company” looks like as you graduate to Series A and beyond are being reset to look more like 2018-2019. That is more and more true the higher up the stack you go where investors are assuming they’ll always have an opportunity to invest in the future if things go well.
2024 is also a year of truth. Over the previous two years, numerous companies have been extending their runway; a significant portion of these will need to approach the market for fundraising within this year.
#5. What’s different about your fund / how you invest and support founders?
We are former founders who have operated through hyper growth and at venture scale. We empathize and support from the perspective of having lived it, which both means we know when to get out of the way and how to support through the tougher moments (which every Company has)!
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Lucy is a General Partner at Inspired Capital. Prior to Inspired Capital, Lucy was on the founding team at Paperless Post, where she spent a decade as COO building the company to serve over 100M hosts and guests. Lucy is obsessed with designing and building great products — those that swallow complexity, create joy, foster creativity, drive productivity or give back to the user with insights, impact or saved time.
She loves working with founders who also derive joy from building differentiated products and delivering experiences that drive meaningful impact — across both consumer and B2B categories — and who win long-term on their commitment to exceptionalism. Lucy holds an A.B. in Psychology from Harvard College. She lives in New York City with her two children, Daphne and Bruns.
