The European Startup Show

In this episode, I sat down with Krishna Viswanathan, co-founder and partner at Crane Venture Partners to talk in-depth about go-to-market (GTM) considerations for early-stage companies that are pre-seed or seed. What are the key GTM areas to focus on? What are the common mistakes? When and what do you need to raise a successful series A funding? I also delved into the big areas of opportunity that Krishna is bullish about in Europe.

Crane Venture Partners is a London based VC firm investing and building seed and early-stage enterprise and deep tech businesses across Europe. Crane has made close to 37 investments including investments in Tessian, Onfido, H2O.ai, Forecast, Virtuoso, Harbr, Silverflow, and Gitpod amongst others.

Show Notes

On Crane
  • [1:12] - What was the gap in the VC market you were addressing when you started Crane Venture Partners?
  • [4:48] - Talk about a few of Crane’s portfolio of companies and why Crane invested in them.
GTM
  • [10:28] - How would you go about helping a company with their go-to-market strategy?
  • [15:30] - The 3 pillars of go-to-market: CS, Marketing and Product Marketing
  • [22:24] - What are some common mistakes you see founders make?
  • [26:33] - What is the difference between deep tech product vs non-deep-tech in terms of go-to-market strategy?
  • [29:12] - What are the key metrics you track in the pre-Series A stage to know that they are on track.
  • [31:25] - What key metrics do Series A investors look for?
  • [34:31] - What are the checklist of items you need to have ready before you go for Series A funding?
Trends in European Tech
  • [36:37] - What are the big trends you are seeing in Europe in enterprise tech?

What is The European Startup Show?

To inspire technology entrepreneurs in Europe with stories and practical strategies from other successful entrepreneurs.

If you are a CEO, founder, or work in sales or marketing, and your company is based in Europe or is looking to expand into Europe, then this podcast is for you.