Beckord: Paid Ads Are a Fallback Crutch Too Many Startups Rely On
Nathan Beckord · Mastering Startup Fundraising: Insights from FounderSuite CEO Nathan Beckford · May 12, 2025 · at 20:31
Nathan Beckord, CEO of FoundersSuite, evaluates different customer acquisition channels for early-stage software companies.
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“Paid ads to me are the fallback crutch that too many startups rely on”
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“In the last decade or so with the rise of online platforms and social networks and why Common Air has their private, I think it's called book phase, this internal network where people discuss and talk about investors. I think some of those bad actors in the ve…”
Beckord: Foundersuite received a long East Coast term sheet from lead investor FF
“Our situation was a little bit unique because our lead investor, FF, are based in New York, and so we actually got a New York or East Coast style term sheet, which was very long, a lot of terms, and you contrast that to maybe the West Coast term sheet, which i…”
Beckord: For 99% of startups, fundraising takes 3 to 8 months
“But for the other 99%, it still takes three to six, sometimes eight months to raise capital. Oftentimes that is almost a full-time job during that time.”
Beckord: Startup Founders Are Poor, Cheap, And Yield High Churn
“One of the challenges of my business is founders are pretty poor. They're cheap. They're poor. They go out of business. There's a higher churn rate.”
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“If you're doing outbound email marketing, I know how much it costs. It's your salary. It's the cost of all the systems and tools and things we're using. Are we generating a three to five X return on investment on that expense? If not, we need to cut this.”