Stage 2 Capital launches $80M Fund II concentrating on B2B software program startups – TechCrunch

Boston go-to-market enterprise capital agency Stage 2 Capital kicks off its second fund with plans to speculate $80 million into B2B software program corporations.

The agency’s method combines enterprise capital experience with a various neighborhood of over 250 restricted companions and go-to-market specialists who work with portfolio corporations to speed up income development.

Agency co-founders Jay Po, a former investor at Bessemer Enterprise Companions, and Mark Roberge, former chief income officer at HubSpot, began Stage 2 Capital in 2018.

Whereas at Bessemer, Po informed TechCrunch he met startup founders who weren’t positive the way to scale income or construct a sustainable gross sales machine. He noticed how huge the abilities hole was in go-to-market (GtM), so on nights and weekends he took lessons on gross sales improvement to raised perceive what was happening.

On the similar time, Roberge was on school at Harvard Enterprise College and was consulting startups. He, too, noticed founders battle to construct out their GtM perform, a lot in order that gathered a bunch of information factors and put all of them collectively in a guide, “The Gross sales Acceleration System: Utilizing Information, Expertise and Inbound Promoting to go from $0 to $100 million.”

Po mentioned the agency “was digital earlier than it was cool,” which is the way it has been in a position to spend money on various geographies and set its personal tempo by way of curating its community and making introductions.

Their objective is to coach startups on the precise time to scale. Whereas startups needs to be rising 100{69439eabc38bbe67fb47fc503d1b0f790fcef507f9cafca8a4ef4fbfe163a7c5} or 200{69439eabc38bbe67fb47fc503d1b0f790fcef507f9cafca8a4ef4fbfe163a7c5}, many startups scale prematurely as a result of they see sure corporations expertise huge development all of sudden and assume that’s the solution to do it, Roberge mentioned.

“We discover corporations bounce into that set of objectives prematurely and should not prepared for it,” he added. “We assist them to know when and how briskly they will go. They’re usually that prior success, however should not appreciating the context, like who the opposite firm was promoting to and the surroundings at the moment.”

Po and Roberge launched their first fund in 2018, elevating $15 million, and ended up making 11 investments in late-seed stage to Collection A corporations and amassed a community of 97 LPs from corporations like Gong, Procore, Atlassian, Asana and Drift. The agency desires to help corporations in altering the world, however Roberge mentioned that may take some time, and that friends have been impressed with the early alerts of the funding thesis.

Investments from the primary fund embrace corporations hailing from throughout the US, together with Sendoso, Ocrolus, Gosite and Reibus.

“Stage 2 Capital stands out from all different VCs due to the experience and partnership Jay, Mark and the LPs carry,” mentioned Kris Rudeegraap, founder and CEO of Sendoso, in a written assertion. “They’ve exceeded expectations on delivering what they promised and we’ve elevated our income virtually 10 instances within the brief time since they invested.”

The agency’s second fund represents a five-time enhance in funding capital, Po mentioned. He expects to have the ability to spend money on one other 20 corporations with a median examine dimension of $250,000. The pair have already made seven investments up to now, together with DeepScribe, Arcade, QuotaPath and Gross sales Affect Academy.