In the venture world, we often obsess about the importance of “scale,” but what about velocity? Velocity isn’t just speed; it’s speed with direction.
- Direction is the core company strategy. I know that where I’m steering the company is right.
- Speed is how fast you execute this strategy. I know I am leveraging the speed of software products and internet distribution.
In technology businesses that deal with innovation and that are poised to create new markets or transform old ones, velocity is crucial. Product velocity keeps your product one step ahead of the competition and delights your customers.
More importantly, velocity accelerates your moats and compounds them. First mover advantage, flagship customers endorsement, credibility, trust and brand, network effect, data learning effect, category leadership, talents follow the best, capital concentrates on the best. With velocity, the venture flywheel spins better and faster.
Many founders are ambitious and aim to build impactful, scalable companies. However, they frequently underestimate the importance of velocity as a crucial prerequisite for achieving substantial scale.
At Connect we have been investing in product founders for more than 12 years and back 100+ startups. We have learned that one key attribute of product founders is that they optimise for venture velocity. Product velocity, PMF velocity, sales velocity, hiring velocity. Every part of the company building, from the architecture to the product and the org, is designed with velocity at the centre.
Willem Delbare, Roeland Delrue and Felix Garriau, the co-founders of Aikido, are an excellent fit for the venture velocity mindset. They first defined the vision of the democratisation of cybersecurity for SMBs. Then designed the Aikido platform and its product primitives purposefully to maximise the value for the customers in the shortest time possible. Same for the go-to-market strategy and execution.
In less than 18 months Aikido Security went from the first line of code to $1m ARR. Today they announce the Series A funding led by Singular and Henri Tilloy. And only 6 months after the Seed that we co-led at Connect Ventures with Notion Capital.
Onwards and upwards — with venture velocity!