At 1 to 100, we believe founders and operators want and deserve more than just capital – they want people that will be in the trenches with them. In that vein we provide two categories of support for our portfolio companies:
- Investment Support is provided for free as part of any investment that we do make in a company. With Investment Support you get access to all our reference materials and we work with you to develop a strategy, organization and hiring plan, and coach an execution framework into place (the way you go about accomplishing the strategy). Investment also includes a full license to Baseplate and access to the Baseplate team for support during implementation.
- Operations Support is provided on a cost-recovery basis when the situation requires that we take on operating roles in the portfolio company. We typically engage in Operations Support in two cases:
- When it is cheaper to share a person across multiple portfolio companies versus hire them into one or hire one off contractors. In this case we simply split out the cost amongst the portfolio companies rather than hire them in one. A principal example of this is operations. We plan to have a single DevOps team member that manages a standardized development and production environment across all companies. This is roughly 1/5 of the cost of any given company bringing that person on onboard.
- When a portfolio company is facing a resource or leadership gap including when the company is executing a project that the startup doesn’t yet have the in-house capability to handle. Our goal is to de-risk execution during these periods by plugging in experienced operators.
Broadly Investment Support gives you the playbook and coaching on how to run it. Operations Support means we jump in and start to run plays with you.
Investment Support
Investment Support provides access to our platform of resources and coaching on it’s application to your business. It gives you access to experienced operators and advisors that have a well defined way of working that can readily be adopting by a growing company. We equip you with proven strategies, technical frameworks, and a network of talent and experts so you can scale from 1 to 100 rapidly and confidently. As part of Investment Support we’ll typically provide:
- Strategy and Operating Frameworks: A well-defined system for planning strategy and implementing it in a company. Starting with the core 1 to 100 frameworks we work with your team to develop an overall corporate strategy, a go-to-market strategy and an operating cadence to track it all to effective implementation.
- Global Team Building: We help you build a globally distributed cost optimal team to enable rapid and cost effective scaling of your business. That spans the gamut of roles from early engineers to key executives. We’ll help you setup your Global Capability Center, source and test candidates and deeply interview finalists. The less time you spend struggling to find the right hires, the more time you can spend growing the business.
- Access to Vetted Service Providers: We connect you to a network of no BS, cost effective service providers for specialized needs. Whether you need a PR agency to get media coverage, a design studio to polish your UI, a legal firm to handle IP, or an accounting expert to set up your books, we have pre-vetted experts on call. Instead of scrambling to find reliable vendors, you can tap into providers we (and other founders) have already tested.
- Go-to-Market Strategy & Early Customer Acquisition: Crafting your strategy and landing those first key customers are critical in the early stages. We share proven strategy frameworks and GTM playbooks to help refine your business model, pricing, and positioning. Our team will work with you on everything from your product messaging to sales tactics for breaking into the market. We even leverage our own network to make customer introductions or pilot referrals when possible, so you can secure those pivotal first users and logos faster.
- Fundraising & Capital Raise Support: When it’s time to raise your next round, we’ll do it with you. That process includes developing a winning fundraising strategy, reviewing your pitch deck in detail, and practicing the tough questions you’ll get. We’ll ensure your story and metrics are presented in the best light. When your story is dialed in we open up our network of investors to you – making warm introductions to VCs and angels who are a fit for your stage and domain. Our team has deep relationships with downstream investors, and we leverage insights from this network to guide you. This means you get insider knowledge on how to pitch and what each investor is looking for, greatly improving your odds of success.
- Founder Coaching & Mentorship: As a founder, you’ll face personal and professional challenges – the personal often much tougher than the professional. We’re here as coaches and mentors. We regularly serve as a sounding board for your tough decisions and help you answer the most relevant of questions, “what the hell do I do now?” We’ve been in your shoes and provide seasoned mentorship to help you grow into your role as CEO. Whether it’s refining your leadership skills, managing founder stress, or just having an experienced perspective on call, we offer hands-on guidance across all facets of running a startup.
Investment Support is about amplifying your capabilities – you get the wisdom, connections, and efficiency that usually only much later-stage companies have. We do this as an integrated part of our investment because your success is our success.
Operations Support
At times you’ll need more than advice, you’ll need someone step in to directly operate parts of your company. This support is provided on a cost-recovery basis meaning we charge the cost of the people or services involved plus a standard 30% overhead to cover coordination, management, tools, and shared infrastructure. Our goal is not to make money with operations support – we make money from our investments and equity appreciation. Our goal with Operations Support is to not lose money. Here are some common scenarios when we get asked to help with operations:
- Interim Leadership Roles: You hit a point where you temporarily lack a key leader. Your CTO leaves unexpectedly, you need a seasoned interim-CEO to steer the ship through a transition, etc. In those cases we can provide an interim executive to step in. One of our experienced team members can take on the role of acting CTO, COO, CEO, or another C-suite position for a period of time to keep things on track. This is similar to what some firms do with Entrepreneurs-in-Residence or operating partners stepping into portfolio companies. The interim leader will run the day-to-day of that function (or the company) and execute on agreed-upon goals until a full-time hire is in place. This ensures your startup isn’t rudderless during critical moments – we bring leadership experience and stability precisely when needed. For you, it means peace of mind that an expert is at the helm during a gap, without the overhead of a permanent hire before you’re ready.
- Fractional Functional Leadership: Beyond full interim exec roles, we can embed fractional leaders on a part-time basis to own specific business functions. For example, we might provide a fractional VP of Product, Marketing, Sales, Engineering, or Finance who works with your team a few days a week. This person would be a seasoned operator, often an expert from our network, who can drive that function’s strategy, set up processes, and mentor your team members. Fractional executives are a cost-effective way to get high-level expertise; you get the benefit of a C-level skill set without paying for a full-time hire. These fractional leaders can fill the gap while you search for a permanent department head or help raise the bar in an area that’s under-resourced. For instance, we might act as a part-time CFO to help you build a finance model and manage cash, or a part-time CMO to launch your first demand-gen campaigns. It’s on-demand leadership to bolster the areas where you need extra muscle. Notably, fractional roles we or our network can cover include everything from the classic CFO/CMO to COO, CTO, Chief Sales Officer, or HR lead – whatever expertise your company needs to mature.
- Shared Services & Back-Office Support: As an early stage company the last thing you need to be spending time on is administrative tasks and operational overhead. To address that we provide a set of standard shared services that handle common back-office functions across our portfolio companies. This can include bookkeeping, payroll management, basic HR admin, compliance tracking, and other operational tasks that every company needs but that don’t differentiate your business. By centralizing these services, we achieve efficiency and consistency – you get professional-grade support in these areas without having to hire full-time staff immediately. Will it give you the same level of attention you’d get from integrated HR or finance? No. Do you want to spend your limited resources on that level of attention – decidedly not. Our strong point-of-view on supporting functions is they need to be “good enough” to get the job done but everything above “good enough” overshoots the need. Your limited attention shouldn’t be spent on building a perfect HR process or a deep finance function. It should be focused on product market fit and closing sales.
- Project Execution: In some situations, we’ll roll up our sleeves and execute projects on your behalf when your team is at capacity or lacking a specific skill set. We also assist in urgent hiring: if you need to hire 5 engineers in a crunch, we can temporarily take on the recruiting process – sourcing candidates, running initial screenings – acting almost as an internal recruiter. Because we’ve seen so many startups, we often know the right specialist or firm for the job and can integrate them quickly. We ensure that any vendor or temporary team member understands your vision and delivers quality work. By directly managing these efforts, we save you the headache of trial-and-error with outside contractors. Our involvement is strictly to get you through a hurdle – once the project is done or you’ve hired the permanent team, we step back. This flexible execution support, again billed at cost, means no project or opportunity has to stall just because your core team is maxed out.
In conclusion, whether it’s through Investment Support or Operations Support, we operate with a “we’re in this together” mentality. From providing playbooks and mentorship to actually running side by side in the trenches when necessary, 1 to 100 is built to help our founders succeed. We want you to feel supported in every dimension – strategically, tactically, emotionally – as you grow your startup. This founder-first approach, combining the best practices of startup studios, venture investors, and hands-on operators, is what makes our support comprehensive and unique.