Series Tea Mercury

This week we’re having tea with Nick Tommarello, founder and CEO at Wefunder, a crowdfunding platform that allows anyone—customers, users, fans—to invest as little as $100 in companies they love. Nick is an alumni of Y Combinator (W13) and Techstars (Boston '10).

In this episode, Nick and Immad discuss:

How the law changed on crowdfunding options
Why founders might choose to raise funds on Wefunder
The benefits of having distributed ownership
The future of Wefunder and crowdfunding

Join Immad Akhund with Pilot CEO and Co-founder, Waseem Daher, and Ramp's Chief Business Officer, Colin Kennedy, as they discuss the acquisition process for startups.

This week we’re having tea with Mike Miller and Michael Ma, Partners at Liquid 2 Ventures. Before joining Liquid 2, Mike founded Cloudant (now IBM’s Cloud Data Services) and raised $18M before getting acquired by IBM. Michael Ma was the COO & Founder of TalkBin, acquired by Google, and then served as a Product Manager for Google.

In this episode, Mike and Michael share:
- Areas they’re excited about investing in
- What Liquid 2 looks for in a great team
- The most common mistakes founders make when pitching

This week we’re having tea with Leo Polovets, co-founder and General Partner at Susa Ventures. Before joining Susa Ventures, Leo was the second engineering hire at LinkedIn and built the first versions of products like LinkedIn Jobs and LinkedIn Groups.

In this episode, Leo shares:

06:50: Tips for sending a cold intro
18:44: How founders can think about and pitch valuations
50:29: If seed-stage founders should pay themselves a salary

This week we’re having tea with Scott Orn, COO at Kruze Consulting, a startup CFO consulting firm. Prior to joining Kruze, where he runs the Venture Debt consulting practice, Scott was a Partner at Lighthouse Capital and has been part of deals like Upwork, Impossible Foods, and Freshbooks.

This week we’re having tea with Alex Bouaziz, Founder of Deel. Prior to founding Deel, Alex Bouaziz was Founding Partner at Sarona Ventures and Co-founder at Lifeslice, a mobile app for creating collaborative videos.

In this episode, Alex shares:
03:50: How to create serendipity between remote employees
14:20: Choosing between independent contractors vs. salaried employees
18:40: How to think about cost-of-living and salary adjustments

Want to hear more? Like the episode? Send us a note at seriestea@mercury.com.