Entries by Derek Pilling

Stage Expertise is as Important at Sector Expertise

The Workhorse Capital team believes that successful investors differentiate themselves by contributing to the value creation process at each portfolio company. In order to do so, we keep close to our roots – focusing our investments in technology-enabled service businesses which leverage recurring revenue business models. We believe in sector expertise. Likewise, we believe in stage […]

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Focusing on Upselling

The most successful Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies today rely heavily on their customer base for growth. They still have a maniacal focus on acquiring new customers, but they also understand their customer base is a gold mine. How much of your new Annual Contract Value (ACV) should come from current customers? A 2016 Pacific Crest survey of over 300 SaaS companies […]

The CEO I Am Today Will Not Be Successful Tomorrow

At our 1st annual Strategic Growth Summit, we had the privilege of hearing from three CEOs (John Becker, Former CEO of Sourcefire; Flint Lane, CEO of Billtrust; Bill Wagner, President & CEO of LogMeIn) that have grown companies to break the revenue barrier of $50M. While their growth journeys were unique, there was consensus around a particular sentiment: “The CEO I am today will not be successful tomorrow.” They each used different analogies to arrive at the conclusion (e.g. kids growing up, chapters in a book), but the message was the same.

My favorite advice from the panel was:

5 Key Reports to Measure Pipeline Health

A healthy sales pipeline is one of the best indicators of sales team performance, not to mention the lifeblood of a growing company. However, pipeline metrics are often misconstrued to suggest that the bigger the pipeline the better. When it comes to pipeline health, quality is much more important than quantity. According to research conducted by the Altify Group, the […]

Delta-v Capital Leads $19M Financing of 2nd Watch

Mar 03 2017 2nd Watch, a leading managed cloud company, has raised $19 million in Series D funding. The round was led by Delta-v Capital with participation from previous investors Madrona Venture Group, Columbia Capital and Top Tier Capital Partners. The new money will be used to meet customer demand for 2nd Watch’s managed cloud … Continue reading “Delta-v Capital Leads $19M Financing of 2nd Watch”

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Bregal Sagemount Announces Majority Investment in Single Digits

Bregal Sagemount, a leading private equity firm focused on growth-oriented investments in both control and non-control situations, today announced that it has made a majority investment in Single Digits, Inc., the leading global provider of High Speed Internet Access (“HSIA”) management software and managed services to the hospitality, healthcare, education, transportation, retail, and office verticals. […]

The Big 3 Growth Imperatives: Team Building Best Practices (Part I)

Bending the growth curve presents a new set of challenges for your expanding business. We recently touched on The Big 3 imperatives common to almost every growth-stage tech-enabled services (TES) business: Team: Building and developing your team from top to bottom Operational Scaling: Growing the operation and refactoring systems and processes to accomodate scale Demand Generation: Opening up […]

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Bregal Sagemount Closes Second Fund with $960 Million of Commitments

First Bregal Investments Fund to Open to Outside Investors — Bregal Sagemount, a leading private equity firm focused on growth-oriented investments in both control and non-control situations, today announced the first and final close of Bregal Sagemount II, LP (“Sagemount II”), at the hard cap with total commitments of $960 million. Sagemount II was oversubscribed […]

The Big 3: Company-Scaling Imperatives

If you’re the owner-operator of a tech-enabled services (TES) business that’s growing at over 20% and approaching profitability…..savor the ride because you’re flying in rarefied air. It’s not every day an entrepreneur “bootstraps” their way from the risk and uncertainty of the “fuzzy front-end” to demonstrating a strong value prop and product-market fit on little […]

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Don’t Die Trying… Be a Workhorse.

For those of you who have followed my personal blog, you know I don’t think the mythical Unicorn is a very good role-model for entrepreneurs. It isn’t that I’m anti-Unicorn. Quite the contrary, I’m a huge fan of building companies that are worth billions of dollars. My objection, rather, is to the tech-media inspired horn-envy that came along with the Unicorn phenomenon and the subsequent risk-taking craze that ensued. Left in the wake are Unicorn wannabes that died trying and some one-time Unicorns that ultimately fell from grace.

An alternative role-model to the Unicorn, is the sturdy Workhorse.

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