Backed by 300+ Senior Go-To-Market Executives, Stage 2 Capital Announces $150M Fund III

By PRNewswire On Aug 17, 2022

Stage 2 Capital kicks off its oversubscribed $150M Fund III to continue its mission of supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs with both capital and go-to-market expertise.

The first venture capital fund specialized in helping founders with go-to-market, Stage 2 Capital combines early-stage investing expertise with a diverse community of 300+ go-to-market limited partners. With this new capital, Stage 2 Capital will continue investing in early stage B2B software and marketplaces, with a focus on bringing best-in-class go-to-market support as founders achieve product-market fit and prepare to scale revenue.

Founded by Jay Po and Mark Roberge in 2018, Stage 2 Capital has expanded its LP network to over 300 CROs, CMOs, CCOs, and go-to-market leaders who have built the world’s most cutting-edge motions at companies like Atlassian, Zoom, Slack, Snowflake, ServiceNow, Twilio, GitHub, LinkedIn, GitLab, ZoomInfo, MongoDB, Workday, HubSpot, SmartSheet, Salesforce, Gong, Shopify, 6Sense, Asana, Drift, Toast, DataBricks, Airtable, etc.

Po elaborates, “We are humbled to have such a talented LP network behind us. It’s core to our model to bring go-to-market knowledge to entrepreneurs. Our network gets involved in every stage of the deal process, from sourcing to referring talent to coaching founders. The breadth of the LP experience is instrumental in our diligence process to understand the nuances of various industries and buyer personas.” Po continues, “Post investment, we match our LPs’ unique expertise with the strategic and operational needs of our portfolio companies. We involve our network in 100% of our deals, which often includes joining a portfolio company as an executive, board of director, or advisor.” To help strengthen LP connections within the portfolio, the firm has developed a unique LP Relations division dedicated to indexing, matching, and building relationships with founders.

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The go-to-market focus of Stage 2 Capital fills a much-needed gap in the startup ecosystem, one that Po saw from his experience as an investor at Bessemer, and Roberge saw from his operating experience as founding CRO at HubSpot. “Startups are failing unnecessarily due to basic go-to-market mistakes, such as deciding when to scale, what type of salesperson to hire, and which demand generation channels to pursue,” Roberge said. “While the traditional venture capital ecosystem has great insight on strategy, finance, product, and culture, we believe a stronger voice on revenue best practices is needed in the boardroom.”

In addition to the LP base, Stage 2 Capital leverages a dual lens when investing by using a two-person investment pod on each deal, with one partner from traditional VC and the other partner being a former go-to-market executive. Po and Roberge served as the first investment pod in Fund I. They brought on their second pod last year, teaming Silicon Valley sales veteran, Mandy Cole, with Anu Maheshwari, former VC at Iconiq. With Fund III, the firm expanded to its third pod, pairing Liz (Cain) Christo, former NetSuite GTM executive and VC at OpenView, with Dan Heck, former VC at OpenView. “Our founders tell us they feel like they get two experts for the price of one, having two partners with different perspectives who understand their business at a much deeper level,” says Roberge.

On top of the new fund, the firm recently launched the Stage 2 Capital Accelerator, the first go-to-market accelerator program guiding seed-stage founders on the design and execution of their first go-to-market system. As part of the 11-week program, participating founders receive a $100,000 investment in addition to hands-on tactical guidance. Outside of capital, founders get instruction, workbooks and templates, and one-on-one coaching to develop their first hiring scorecards, first pricing model, first sales playbook, first marketing campaign, first sales compensation model, and other tactics fundamental to their revenue scaling success.

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