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Unusual Ventures is raising the bar for what founders should expect from their venture investors and enabling startups with the support they need to be successful.
Insights from the Unusual Ventures undefined Team
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures Operating Partner • February 6
I've always been in the product team, so that's the most natural interaction for me. For PM, we'd collaborate on how to position new products. We built a spreadsheet that had product pillars>concepts>key features>'feature rank'>feature flags, price. You may be asking, 'what's a feature rank' a......Read More
2126 Views
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures Operating Partner • February 6
Ah, a tricky one! There are a few things that you can do, starting with a core team that you trust to participate in the fluidity that is message development. Typically, this is a small group that can speak to all the core concepts that you need to discuss in detail. At Okta, this was our product......Read More
1261 Views
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures Operating Partner • February 6
Ah, a tricky one! There are a few things that you can do, starting with a core team that you trust to participate in the fluidity that is message development. Typically, this is a small group that can speak to all the core concepts that you need to discuss in detail. At Okta, this was our product......Read More
1130 Views
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures Operating Partner • February 6
Lots of ways to do this, but there are 'tactical' and 'strategic' ways to measure success. Tactically, setting up metrics-based feedback loops in the go-to-market is key. We used Outreach in our SDR efforts that offers a great, low-risk way to quickly test messaging, we measured content performan......Read More
1560 Views
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures Operating Partner • February 6
Posted this on another similar question, but on the competitive positioning point specifically, I think there's a 'turn' in the narrative toward the end of the story where existing solutions can't solve the problem completely and it's good to have specifics on how your solution is better. But you......Read More
4147 Views
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures Operating Partner • February 6
First thing, how are you segmenting the market and determining evolving customer needs/priorities? Great news - no product category stays fixed for very long. There’s always some new ’shift’ that the incumbent product category leaders don’t see coming that provides your company with a new busines......Read More
1168 Views
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures Operating Partner • February 6
Certainly when a new product has been defined, you want to get out and get a regular drumbeat of messaging feedback. When there are big new releases on features (eg: around the time of your annual keynote), it’s helpful to do a refresh. Or if a competitor has made a big move and you need to asses......Read More
1370 Views
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures Operating Partner • February 6
One of the biggest challenges we had in the early days was competing against Microsoft. They are the grand-daddy of identity in that they created Active Directory, which has been the authoritative directory for every enterprise for decades. As you can imagine, they wanted to hold on to this criti......Read More
893 Views
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures Operating Partner • February 6
I don’t think there are a lot of completely new categories created these days. In enterprise software, most new companies are improving on existing ways of solving the same problems we’ve had for a couple decades. So, the real question, I think, is how to align on a shared view of what the ‘new w......Read More
798 Views
Scott Schwarzhoff
Unusual Ventures Operating Partner • February 6
A couple to try out. Here’s a combined messaging source doc that I use every time I start working with one of our portfolio companies. Inherited from Citrix days and then adapted over time. Hope it’s helpful! The second one is one I've been working on for a year and am sharing with the Sharebi......Read More
5045 Views