For 14+ years, we’ve perfected investing in unicorns like Lyft, Wish, Gusto, and Scale at the earliest stages. Now, meet 5 of our current early-stage portfolio companies who pitched at the Outlander Spring Showcase!
From innovations in robotic automations in hospitality, fintech marketplaces for investing in VC funds, no-code productivity and compliance platform for field data, B2B manufacturing marketplaces, consumer health tech for care data tracking, these companies are building the future of everything:
Backbar
SaaS, automation, ecosystem
Backbar is automating the creation of complex beverages like cocktails, mocktails, coffees, superfood juices, and more. We’re solving for increasing cost pressures, labor shortages/turnover, and lacking guest experience by creating an end-to-end beverage platform. We’re going to make a 3-5% margin improvement in an industry where $70 billion is spent every month.
Based in San Diego, CA, co-founder and CEO Rishabh Kewalramani is laser-focused on optimizing hospitality’s highest-margin product, beverages, with the largest innovation in decades through BackBar.
📧 founders@backbar.com
Eskuad
SaaS, mobile-first, future of work
At Eskuad, it’s our mission to help natural resource squads save time and resources by providing access to our platform anywhere and anytime, regardless of internet connectivity. Eskuad’s platform makes it easy to digitize old-school paper forms as well as automate data collection like GPS information, direct upload photos, and automated reporting. Designed for field operators that operate in Natural Resources and Environmental related companies, Eskuad is connecting the disconnected and building the future of field work.
Based in Atlanta, GA, founder and CEO Max Echeverria is committed with simplifying and streamlining field work with no-code productivity and compliance technology through Eskuad.
📧 founders@eskuad.com
Made
SaaS, enterprise, manufacturing, marketplace
Made is a B2B marketplace platform that solves points of friction between aerospace and defense manufacturers and US-based suppliers. We focus on cutting down lead times with fast quoting, superior ERP tooling, and a robust marketplace of suppliers building the highest quality goods for the toughest environments.
Based in Boulder, CO, founder and CEO William Allen is obsessed with building a B2B marketplace platform for manufacturers to meet and work with suppliers through Made.
📧 w@mademfg.co
Talli
health tech, care economy, IoT, SaaS
Talli is a modular, configurable platform of software and hardware options designed to take the work out of capturing daily care and health information across the $648B care economy. We started with babies because that’s where the Talli story began. We’ve done $1.1M in revenue in the baby market with 16k MAU and 30M events logged. We grew our revenues by almost 400% from 2021 to 2022 and our SaaS revenue is growing an average of 36% per month since launch. Now, we’re expanding into senior care as well. After making our platform fully configurable in the summer of 2022, we started seeing customers buying our baby product and adapting it for care of their aging parents. Even before releasing a configuration marketed for elder care, we had more than 500 users in our database logging for someone over the age of 60. We’re releasing our Talli Care configuration for senior care and chronic conditions on March 22nd.
Based in Atlanta, GA, founder and CEO Lauren Longo is disrupting consumer health tech with a flexible, a la carte platform of software and hardware options for simple tracking of daily care and health information through Talli.
📧 hello@talli.me
Velvet
fintech, wealth management, marketplace, AI
Velvet makes it easy for institutional investors to discover, evaluate, and invest in private funds. The traditional process is tedious, difficult, and expensive. We’re here to make private funds simple and transparent. We save investors time by listing funds at scale, automating diligence, and simplifying the investment process. Velvet helps you easily discover funds, connect with managers, evaluate track records, and make investments on behalf of clients or yourself. Velvet curates hedge funds, venture capital, private credit, and private equity at scale. Our listing platform makes it easy to find pre-vetted funds based on mandates, categories, fund types, asset exposure, size, returns, and more.
Based in Salt Lake City, UT, co-founder and CEO Andrew Pignanelli is obsessed with building the future of private finance through Velvet.
📧 support@velvetfs.com
Watch the replay of the Outlander Spring Showcase to learn more about these game-changing startups! Meet the rest of our portfolio here.
Lucy Guo’s tech entrepreneurship began as an act of rebellion. After the confiscation of her (admittedly, black market) Pokemon card and pencil profits in second grade, she taught herself coding and marketing and took her talents online. Never one to waste time, Lucy has since cofounded two Outlander VC portfolio companies: Scale AI and Passes. In 2016, Scale AI launched to help companies train, hone, and grow artificial intelligence systems. Since leaving Scale AI, she cofounded venture capital firm Backend Capital and, most recently, launched Passes, a software startup revolutionizing the creator economy with an all-in-one suite of content monetization tools.
“[Creators] are entrepreneurs,” Guo said at this year’s Forbes Under 30 Summit on October 3 in Detroit. “Most creator salaries I’ve seen match those of tech entrepreneurs and engineers. But maybe 10% of the creators are making almost all the money, and everyone else is barely making a living. There needs to be a shift.”
Prior to Scale AI, Lucy was a product designer at Quora and Snapchat. She studied computer science and human computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon but dropped out to pursue the Thiel Fellowship. For fun, she works on random projects (that have been used by 10M+ people around the world), skydives, works out (too much) at Barry’s Bootcamp, and rides electric longboards.
At Outlander VC, we bet on brilliant founders at the earliest stages using our Founder Framework. Outstanding founders like Lucy exhibit strength across the vision, intelligence, character, and execution categories of this framework. We grabbed time on Lucy’s busy calendar to dig into her founder journey and revisit a few reasons we’ve been bullish on her from day 1.
What initially drew you to entrepreneurship?
I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart. When I was younger, I got suspended from kindergarten for selling everything from Pokemon cards to colored pencils at school. But when my parents started taking away those cold cash dollars, I turned to tech. I discovered PayPal and figured, “Okay, cool, this is how I can make money.” So, I taught myself how to code and started making bots and in-game items for gaming sites like RoomScape or NeoPets; then, I learned to build my own websites and make money through ads. So, My Pokemon cards and colored pencils became my virtual arcade game websites and internet marketing tools.
Then, I went to college for computer science and human-computer interactions, but I was actually going to a bunch of hackathons, where I discovered startups. Then, I received the Thiel Fellowship. So, with a few semesters left, I dropped out to start building.
Any formative experiences that equipped you for startup life? A history of entrepreneurship in your family?
No, my family is pretty risk-averse. My parents didn’t even want me to study engineering because “Women aren’t made for engineering,” so I should study to be a pharmacist instead because that’s what women are better at. All of which is funny because my mom was an electrical engineer! But she would say, “I was the only one in my class. It’s unusual for women to be good at it.” She didn’t believe I could do it because, statistically, it was less likely for women to excel in engineering or tech.
I, on the other hand, always wanted to prove myself. So, when my parents were pissed that I dropped out of college and told me I couldn’t do a startup, I wanted to prove them wrong. I had a chip on my shoulder. When people tell me I can’t do things, I like proving them wrong.
We bet on founders who act quickly and decisively as they advance into the unknown. Can you speak to your ability to be quick and decisive?
I’ve always been a quick decision-maker because I hate wasting time. Once I gather enough data, I act. You don’t need years of data for every decision. For example, you’ll never regret firing someone too early, but you always regret firing them too late if something’s not working.
This is also why I’ve always been a pivoter. If something’s not working, I take the original idea but change it slightly to test what gets a better product-market fit. Also, I always try to create a bare minimum MVP to ensure I don’t waste too much time in the initial engineering work without feedback from the target audience.
What motivates you?
The desire to impact the world and people’s lives is the #1 thing that drives me. A startup can only become valuable if you’ve made a significant impact on people’s lives. You won’t reach unicorn status without improving people’s lives; a startup is one of the best ways to do it.
In the long term, I’ve imagined impacting people’s lives directly by starting a nonprofit targeting human trafficking. But, for one thing, I don’t know how to run a nonprofit, right? On the other hand, I’m good at startups. I’m good at figuring out ideas, building teams, and executing. So I figure I’m better off making money and donating to the best nonprofits. So, by focusing on what I’m good at, I can create a really f*cking big impact on other people’s lives.
What led you to seek Outlander VC to invest in Scale AI and again for Passes?
An Uber driver mentioned how Paige Craig had coined the term “Silicon Beach” and said I should reach out to him. So, I did via Twitter!
I’ve always liked bouncing ideas off of Paige because he’s invested in so many companies that he’s knowledgeable in almost every space. He’s had his hands in a lot of different early-stage companies across a lot of different verticals. So, we’ve always kept in touch.
I like people who bet on me early and people who bet on me in general. So, when I started working on Passes, I wanted him to be part of the journey again.
Let’s talk about Passes. What is Passes trying to solve? What makes Passes’ solution different?
Yes! Passes is the best place for fans to connect with their favorite creators.
One of our differentiators is that even though Passes is a Web3 platform, we built it very Web2.5 because we want to be one of the first companies to onboard people onto Web3 easily. We’re one of the new products with good UX where all you have to do is sign up with an email, pay with your credit card, etc., and then the NFT mints into a wallet we create for you.
Passes allow creators to scale one-to-one intimate relationships. I can’t go into our secrets, but most creators make money through pay-to-view and customer-requested content (think: Cameo). Passes lets them take a piece of content and DM it directly to their target audience. So, for example, if I have a segment of CosPlay fans within my audience, Passes lets me send CosPlay-specific content directly to them as a locked, pay-to-view direct message. Direct messages gave a much higher purchase rate than platforms like Patreon, where all the content is available on one feed.
One of our creators was making $515/month on Patreon; on Passes, she is now making $40,000/month. Another creator was making $2.8k/month through Instagram subscriptions, and within 48 hours of using Passes, she’s already made $6,000. So, our tool is helping creators make life-changing money that scales with their fanbase.
Learn more about Passes here.
What are your short and long-term goals for Passes?
My short-term goal is to make all our competitors obsolete, and Passes already has more features and is built to be more scalable than most competitors.
Creators are the future. Every creator’s becoming an entrepreneur right now. We are seeing creators starting VC funds, brands, etc., and they’re realizing the value of being an entrepreneur instead of just relying on brand deals, especially with the influence they have over their fans. So, in the long term, Passes is building a suite of tools to help creators become entrepreneurs and build wealth, too. Think about Google’s suite of tools, right? We want to be that suite of tools for creators.
You are pretty active on Twitter (@lucy_guo). As a founder, how do you use it for your business goals?
Twitter is a great sales funnel. Generally, I am controversial because I know that’s what gets views and engagement. I think it’s better to be a little polarizing because, especially for hiring/recruiting for an early-stage startup, you can’t compete with the budgets of larger companies. The best engineers are getting paid $500,000 a year in cash. You can’t do that as a startup. People are going to work for you because they want to work for you, right? If you have super fans who are die-hard for you, they will take a huge pay cut to work for you because they believe in you. So, I think it’s much better to be polarizing in that sense. Elon Musk is an excellent example of this, actually. Even while Twitter is like paying pretty poorly, people are at Twitter because they just want to be next to Elon Musk.
Explore all of Outlander VC’s brilliant portfolio companies!
Remote-first startups have quickly become the ecosystem’s new normal. In A16z’s recent survey, 86% of early and late-stage founders said they’re opting for remote/hybrid teams, excited by the potential of a global talent pool and the added flexibility of working from anywhere. With input from some startup veterans and remote work experts, here’s what every founder needs to know to build a happy, high-performing virtual team.
Screen talent for remote-friendly skill sets. Remote work widens your talent pool to anyone, anywhere. However, your team’s happiness and performance rely on your ability to hire talent equipped to excel in a remote environment. Outside of job-related skills, experts suggest hiring talent with above-average communication and organizational skills, tech-savviness, and a self-starter mentality for the best remote team. Posting openings on remote-specific sites like FlexJobs, Remote.co, and Remote OK will also help you attract virtual-ready workers.
Be realistic about time differences. Leading a virtual team includes building trust and camaraderie between people in different time zones. Even though you can hire from anywhere in the world, time zones can get complicated fast. Keeping your team within ~6 time zones makes attending meetings, collaborating, and connecting with their teammates easier on remote-first teams.
Take onboarding seriously. Onboarding is much more than ensuring your new employee has all the necessary equipment to fulfill their role. To set new hires up for success on a virtual team, be sure to include the following in your onboarding process:
- Provide meaningful ways to kickstart relationships with new teammates.
- Share company values explicitly so they can quickly and thoroughly understand the culture.
- Set clear expectations on workflow procedures/norms, connecting the individual’s work to the broader organizational goals.
- Routinely check in to gauge how comfortable and confident they feel in their new role, ensuring they feel genuinely welcomed.
To keep your team engaged, create opportunities for impromptu connection. One of the biggest issues with remote-first teams is that it makes informal interactions more complex, resulting in increased social and professional isolation. To keep your team’s morale, collaboration, and creativity high, create virtual alternatives for impromptu, unstructured break room chats. These opportunities to connect can be as simple as adding buffer time to meetings for non-work conversation, adding apps like Donut to your Slack channel, or hosting regular coworking Zoom sessions.
Prioritize working “out loud.” An easy way to avoid siloed workers is to prioritize regular, company-wide updates from every team. To protect everyone’s time, make these updates brief and high-level. Experts suggest weekly highs/lows or holding daily check-ins covering topics like: What did you work on yesterday? What are you working on today? What is blocking your progress? Celebrating small and big wins in a group thread is another great way to keep motivation high!
From recruiting new talent to retaining longtime employees, virtual team management requires a focused and intentional approach to building culture and clear communication. With the right leadership, your remote-first team culture will translate into increased employee engagement and better organizational outcomes. Remember, remote work doesn’t mean working alone—connection matters even more in a virtual environment.
When challenges arise for early-stage startups, VCs often advise founders to hire or build their way out of trouble. But with limited funds, people and time, early-stage founders must be strategic in their problem-solving. So, while the weight of your neverending to-do list may make hiring and building seem appealing, we recommend reaching for a quicker, more efficient tool first: optimize, optimize, optimize!
Like a good Swiss army knife, optimizing should be every founder’s go-to tool. By optimizing what’s on hand first, founders can quickly cut deadweight and adapt to changing conditions on the go without wasting time or capital. Instead, try the 5 following optimizations before sinking time and money into more intensive solutions.
- Prioritize everything by impact. Before you add any new variables to the equation, take stock of your teams’ current goals, projects, and to-do list items. Rank all of your startup operations by how much they affect your North Star Metric’s growth rate. Once ranked, kill or delay low-impact projects to ensure every team member is working on an essential element of your startup’s growth.
- Assess team performance. Similarly, take stock of each team member. Is everyone carrying their weight and contributing to the growth of your NSM? We often find founders keep underperforming team members around for too long in the hopes that they’ll reach productivity and avoid a firing. But, as the founder, assembling an effective team is mission-critical to building a successful business and, ultimately, your responsibility.
- Get all hands on deck. In the early days, the entire team should be working toward your NSM whenever and wherever possible. Avoid any siloed team members by soliciting input from everyone while problem-solving and assessing team members for additional capabilities. For instance, your engineers may have insights on which features to spotlight in marketing campaigns, and your sales team may have insights on how to best streamline customer service. With everyone tackling problems together, you can quickly troubleshoot and resolve issues as they arise.
- Look for low-hanging fruit. To avoid overextending your team and limited resources, always ask yourself, “What’s the lowest-effort solution with the highest impact that will keep us on track?” Making a habit of looking for the low-hanging fruit first will force your team to get creative and avoid overcomplicated solutions that waste time and resources.
- Hack it with free or low-cost tools. The more free or low-cost tools your team can hack together, the better—especially in the early days! Before splurging on a new tool with all the bells and whistles, assess which features actually contribute to your NSM versus the nice-to-have features. Then, research low-cost or free alternatives for those must-have features to get the job done while keeping cash burn low.
Now, this is not to say that adding new team members is a bad move—it’s just not a quick one. Plus, after the months you spend on recruitment, interviews, and onboarding, there is no guarantee that your newest team member(s) will be the silver bullet you’d hoped for. Similarly, building new-and-improved versions of your solution will eventually be vital to scaling your company, but it’s all about timing. It’s a resource-intensive process that will quickly burn the finite funding and resources currently at your disposal. When it comes to choosing the right moment, be sure you feel confident that it’s feeding your NSM directly.
So, before you jump to hiring or building, reach for your optimization Swiss army knife. Founders who make a habit of optimizing what’s on hand first will stay agile and preserve resources to outlast the competition.
