P513 - Investing in product-led founders building rocketship businesses, with Itxaso Del Palacio, Notion Capital

Understanding a VC firm's investment strategy - focus, stage, thesis and so on - is critical as a founder develops their investment proposition, but so is understanding the individual strategy of each partner in a firm. This allows a founder to tailor their pitch but more importantly, get the right investor excited and committed as soon as possible.

Highlights:
- Good PLG businesses have a very short time to value, bringing users to the “aha” moment right from the moment they try the product
- Founders should think of fundraising strategically; it is important to define a strategy and a process to close a funding round successfully
- Lead with the excitement for your vision, backed by the metrics that bring that to life

For product-led founders, looking to raise a funding round, Itxaso Del Palacio is probably their best fit. Itxaso is a Partner at Notion Capital, which specialises in B2B SaaS and Enterprise Tech, investing across Europe at Series A. Itxaso was formerly with M12 (Microsoft’s venture arm) where she led investments in Beamery, Onfido and Unbabel. She has more than a decades experience working in the startup ecosystem building and investing in software companies. Additionally, Itxaso is a Senior Teaching Fellow in entrepreneurship at University College London (UCL) and she has taught entrepreneurship to more than 3,000 students in the last ten years.  

In this podcast, Itxaso describes herself to Stephen Millard and Paul Papadimitriou as a ‘product-led’ investor and lays out her thinking on what this means and why she thinks this is so important.

Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/investing-in-product-led-founders-building-rocketship-businesses/