Rob, Lee, Melody and I are all very pleased to announce that Nicole Sievers has joined the NextView team as Platform Associate.  Nicole most recently comes to us from SmartBear Software, where she was responsible for the launch and marketing for an entire product: overseeing activities like PR, creative, content creation, and social media engagement.

Nicole is not new to the NextView family… previously she had worked for a NextView portfolio company that for a while was even working out of our Boston offices!  So we’re glad to have her (back) on board.

A lot has changed since we first established a Platform role here at NextView back in 2014, both because our own firm has evolved and as the broader community has subsequently recognized its importance for entrepreneurs.  We strive for NextView’s Platform to multiply the impact of our investment dollars & the human capital of the firm for the benefit of our portfolio companies as well as the broader entrepreneurial community.  

We want to help founders both inside and outside of our portfolio with the things which we think matter most:

1. hiring a great team

2. building a product people love

3. getting customers and

4. not running out of money (i.e. raising capital).  For a startup, these are the lifeblood.

Consequently, we continually run a number of initiatives that support entrepreneurs with every one of these activities.  Many of these are public & external, as they’re part of our engagement with the broader community, like our extensive set of content focused on optimizing fundraising processes.  Some of these initiatives are focused solely on our portfolio which we’ve been public about, like our Operator Guilds – groups of product and go-to-market experts sharing their time & expertise to support our portfolio company founders and key operators.  And lastly, a smaller number of initiatives are exclusively internal to our portfolio, but entirely focused on the four areas enumerated above.

We’re particularly excited about Nicole joining NextView, as her broad marketing background & experience will give us the ability to continue running existing Platform functions, and additionally push us as a team to expand along these four vectors with new ideas.  So please join me in welcoming Nicole, and be sure to follow her at @NicoleSievs.