Homebase
May 20, 2024
15-year COO veteran. My past ventures include a $250M raise, one IPO, and one up-list. I'm also a committed mentor, LP, and angel investor. I grew up between Israel and Miami, served in the military, played semi-pro football and I still ride motorcycles. 😁
Powered by AI, mrgn automates decision-making for the everyday business owner by evaluating the market factors that influence their P&L and giving them access to the information they need to run their business with confidence and clarity.
mrgn eases the entrepreneurial journey by helping businesses stay on top of market trends and manage their day-to-day operations at the same time.
When my CEO asked me to model a 15% reduction in burn rate overnight using just my spreadsheet-based financial model. Womp womp.
We started as a budget management tool, but when we realized the value that AI could bring by providing actionable business insights to all of our users, we never looked back. One closed beta, one open beta, and zero pivots in four years. The positive response to a tool that levels the business playing field has been overwhelming.
Our connections with local governments and large franchise businesses, like 7-Eleven.
My background in public markets did not serve me well when I initially began raising capital for an early-stage startup.
My experience managing strong relationships with offshore augmentation engineering teams led me to believe that using them for an MVP would work smoothly. It did not. I was the guy who expected an offshore team to understand my back-of-the-napkin sketch. I had a severe under-appreciation for product management.
Initially, we suffered at the hands of an offshore team that didn’t get much done, and all without a product management strategy or team. That has all been rectified now. We have formal internal engineering and product teams that work together seamlessly with the help of some basic processes and great people.
Budgeting is a core tenet of our platform so that one was easy. Fundraising, on the other hand, not so much. The pre-seed stage disappeared for the most part over the last few years and is now coming back to life. I can go on about this topic for days.
We intend on having mrgn replace traditional BI tools that are common today, like PowerBI and Tableau, to the point where every business owner in the world, big or small, makes decisions solely on the basis of insights surfaced by mrgn. We are targeting a >$1B acquisition within five years.
We’re currently looking for a CPO, as well as a Sr. Staff Fullstack Engineer.
I’ve learned three earth-shattering lessons that I can expand on over a call:
We are long past the days of an MVP being enough to raise capital
Avoid shiny, sparkly deals from offshore engineering firms
Product management is a must from day 1