Jun 22, 2021 · 37m · we-live-to-build
The $1.2B Yammer Exit That Funded an $80M Company
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the 'We Live to Build' podcast, host Sean Weisbrot interviews Mode Analytics co-founder Ben Stancil about raising over $80 million in venture funding. Stancil shares actionable insights on navigating funding milestones, mastering board governance, vetting value-aligned investors, and managing the intense pressures of scaling a high-growth startup.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Sean holds 20.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Sean as informed peer 3.1 Guest teaching 2.5 Guest disagreement 0.4 Sean pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is Sean, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 17:41 Dismantling the premise of founder selection choice
Ben immediately challenges Sean's idealistic premise about cherry-picking investors, pointing out that in reality founders often have only one term sheet and must work with the options they receive.
Hardest push from Sean ▶ 7:48 Sean contrasting Seed versus Series A diligenceSean interjects with his own perspective on investor behavior, contrasting the rigorous metrics demanded at Series A with the uncritical, gut-feel checks written by Seed investors.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 23:22 The inescapable math of institutional VC roundsBen delivers an educational breakdown of how institutional capital forces a company onto a fast-growth, hundred-million-dollar ARR roadmap where ratcheting down spending is structurally impossible.
Sean holds their own ▶ 14:30 Sean sharing his investor-adopted diligence templateSean demonstrates practical operational competence by describing how he and his COO created a structured Google Drive diligence spreadsheet that was subsequently adopted by their investor across portfolio startups.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Sean as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Sean pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Origins and Core Mission of Mode Analytics | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Sean opens the interview by asking Ben to explain what Mode Analytics does. Ben provides a clear, standard overview of creating collaborative workspaces for data analysts and business stakeholders. | |
| Transitioning from Idea to Business in Early Fundraising Rounds | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Sean asks which funding round was hardest, prompting Ben to detail the steep transition from Seed storytelling to Series A business metrics. Sean shares his own fundraising encounters, and Ben nuances how human psychology and narrative still override formulas for VCs. | |
| Refining Pitch Narratives and Standardizing the Data Room | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Ben details how establishing a standardized data room early streamlined their due diligence and let them define key metrics like ARR on their own terms. Sean contributes by sharing how he built a spreadsheet template that his own investor adopted for other portfolio companies. | |
| Selecting Aligned Investors and Conducting Diligence References | 4 | 3 | 2 | 0 | Sean asks how founders can vet investors to ensure they are not being sold a pipe dream. Ben gently corrects the premise by pointing out that most founders do not have the luxury of choosing among multiple offers, before outlining how to evaluate value alignment and conduct backchannel references. | |
| The Structural Pressures and Expectations of Venture Capital | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Sean asks about the biggest internal and strategic changes brought by taking institutional capital. Ben explains the venture treadmill mechanism, illustrating how raising institutional funding inherently locks a company into chasing a hundred-million-dollar ARR trajectory. | |
| Governing Startup Boards and Structuring Effective Meetings | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Sean asks about board formation and governance. Ben explains board seat distribution, negotiating protective terms, and treating board meetings not as subordinate reporting sessions to a boss, but as collaborative meetings run by the founders. | |
| Shared Adversity and Founding Team Bonding Through Fundraising | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Sean asks how fundraising pressure impacts co-founder relationships. Ben explains that while it generates high operational stress, the shared suffering of tough pitch runs and travel acts as a powerful team bonding mechanism. | |
| Founder Evolution and Developing Perspective on Meaningful Priorities | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Sean asks Ben to reflect on personal growth over eight years as a founder. Ben discusses navigating operational complexity, feeling paternal-like responsibility for employees, and learning to separate transient VC rejections from truly meaningful company priorities. |
Statements from this episode (13)
Stancil: Yammer's $1.2B exit matches current Series A valuations
“Yammer was bought for 1.2 billion dollars, I think which at the time seemed like a lot now is, you know, the valuations of companies in their A rounds.”
Mode Analytics raised $500k initial seed round from Yammer network
“So, so we basically raised a seed round of roughly like half a million dollars or so from folks that were coming out of that acquisition or people we had built connections to through that. And that was essentially on top of a pitch deck of saying, hey, these a…”
Stancil: Series A is hardest round due to idea-to-business shift
“In all of this, I think that the A was probably the hardest for a couple reasons. I think it is the transition from An idea to a business. That is the point at which you have to start showing, like you have customers that are happy, you are growing, your reven…”
Stancil: Investors consistently override investment formulas when sold
“There will be some formula to how they decide to invest, but they will consistently override it if they want to. Like they can be sold just the same as everybody else.”
Stancil: Upfront standardized metrics preserve narrative control in fundraising
“If we didn't give them stuff up front, what we would be concerned about was, well, they're going to come back and say, we care about
ARR computed in this way, compute it in a specific way for us, which one is bad because that's just a lot of extra work. If you…”
Stancil: Mode will sacrifice business growth to hire diverse teams
“And so hiring a more diverse team is more effort. It takes time. It is more expensive. But if you value that, then great. And like we do, and that is a thing that I'm willing to say Moog will sacrifice some growth as a business to be able to do that.”
Stancil: Founders should reference-check VCs on how they handle crises
“It's also very helpful to do references on investors. And that, that mostly goes from talking to other, other companies that have had those investors on their board and getting a sense of what happened. How did those investors treat those companies in certain …”
Stancil: Early-stage VC pitches require a path to $100M revenue
“In order to raise that money, you have to pitch a story of like, how are you going to get this thing to a hundred million dollars in revenues? Like kind of the generic, you go raise a C round, an A round. One of the things that people might ask is like, what's…”
Stancil: VC-backed growth creates a cycle forcing continuous fundraising
“Once those motions start to move in that direction, like it's a difficult train to stop because you start to hire people with that plan to hire those people. You have to hit revenue targets, you better hire more people from like sales and marketing. As you hav…”
Stancil: Founders should maintain board control as long as possible
“It's generally good to control the board as long as you can. So, you know, if you have, control it with either founders or friendlies.”
Stancil: Everything in investor term sheets is negotiable
“Anytime investors give you term sheets, sort of everything is negotiable. There are standard kind of boilerplate term sheets that are, you know, this is the types of shares they get. These are the voting rights they get. These are their pro rata rights, all th…”
Stancil: Founders should not treat their board as bosses needing permission
“It is worth in those times, like kind of remembering, this is still your company. You are still in charge. That just because someone came in and gave you some money and is your boss in the sense that the CEO reports to the board, they're not your boss in the s…”
Stancil: Shared fundraising adversity brings founding teams closer together
“There is something to that that I do not look back at fondly, but I look back and saying that it, like, probably brought a lot of the Team and particularly, I think the founding group more close together because you're going through these kinds of experiences …”