Blog

Stage 2 Capital Kicks Off $150M Fund III to Continue Supporting Entrepreneurs with Capital and Go-To-Market Expertise

Stage 2 Capital Kicks Off $150M Fund III to Continue Supporting Entrepreneurs with Capital and Go-To-Market Expertise

The news is finally out!

We are thrilled to announce our $150 million Fund III, backed by over 300+ senior go-to-market professionals. This fund will allow us to continue our mission of investing in the next generation of entrepreneurs with capital and go-to-market expertise. Our focus is on B2B software and marketplaces across a variety of industries, that are in the early phases of scaling. To date, we’ve made over 30 investments and are actively looking to make even more!

Co-founded by Jay Po and Mark Roberge back in 2018, we now have an LP network of over 300 CROs, CMOs, CCOs, and go-to-market leaders who have built the world’s most cutting-edge go-to-market 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 thesis to bring go-to-market knowledge to entrepreneurs. Our network gets involved in every stage of the investing and portfolio support process, from sourcing deals, 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 may include joining a portfolio company as an executive, board of director, or advisor.” To help strengthen LP connections within the portfolio, we have developed a unique LP Relations division, dedicated to indexing, matching, and building relationships with founders. 

Our go-to-market focus 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, we leverage a dual lens in 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, we have expanded to a third pod, pairing Liz (Cain) Christo, former NetSuite go-to-market 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.

This past Spring, we launched the Stage 2 Capital Catalyst, 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. 

We’re excited to kick off our Fund III journey, and look forward to sharing more updates! Huge thank you to our incredible network of LPs, portfolio entrepreneurs, and fellow co-investors for making this fund possible. 

Check out the official Fund III press release here.