Venture Capital Outlook

👋 Hey - Egemen here.

Founders and early employees need stepping stones of liquidity to stay focused and avoid burnout.

While we often feel the pressure to expand as quickly as possible, but there are alternative pathways to pull this off.

Here's a snapshot of what's on the menu today:

💡 Spotlight

How Jennifer Anniston's LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads

For its first CTV campaign, Jennifer Aniston's DTC haircare brand LolaVie had a few non-negotiables. The campaign had to be simple. It had to demonstrate measurable impact. And it had to be full-funnel.

LolaVie used Roku Ads Manager to test and optimize creatives - reaching millions of potential customers at all stages of their purchase journeys. Roku Ads Manager helped the brand convey LolaVie's playful voice while helping drive omnichannel sales across both ecommerce and retail touchpoints.

The campaign included an Action Ad overlay that let viewers shop directly from their TVs by clicking OK on their Roku remote. This guided them to the website to buy LolaVie products.

Discover how Roku Ads Manager helped LolaVie drive big sales and customer growth with self-serve TV ads.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Anniston's brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more.

🧠 Deep-Dive: Venture Capital Outlook

For the longest time, the only way founders and early team members could see any real financial return was to wait for an acquisition or an IPO.

According to the latest venture outlook reports, secondary transactions ballooned to over $160 billion recently and are projected to exceed $210 billion this year.

This is no longer a niche mechanism for desperate sellers.
It is becoming a core liquidity tool for healthy private companies.

_{(Source: Wellington Management, "Venture capital outlook for 2026: 5 key trends", February 2026)}

This matters to you right now because building a startup takes a decade, and life does not pause while you build.

With only about two percent of unicorn market value currently traded on the secondary market, the runway for this to grow is massive. Investors are increasingly setting up dedicated secondary funds just to buy into high-quality companies that are staying private longer.

If your company is performing well but an exit is still years away, you should seriously consider structuring a secondary tender offer.

I would argue that offering your team a path to partial liquidity before an IPO might be the strongest retention tool you have this year. It aligns everyone's long-term interests while solving short-term realities.

👋 Become a SCALABLE member, gain an unfair advantage today.

🗺️ Method

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⚾️ Catch

The IT strategy every team needs for 2026

2026 will redefine IT as a strategic driver of global growth. Automation, AI-driven support, unified platforms, and zero-trust security are becoming standard, especially for distributed teams. This toolkit helps IT and HR leaders assess readiness, define goals, and build a scalable, audit-ready IT strategy for the year ahead. Learn what's changing and how to prepare.

Download the Toolkit

☝️ Scaled This Past Week: Basis

Basis has reached unicorn status after securing $100 million in a Series B funding round led by Accel and GV.

Basis is an AI-native software company that builds autonomous agents designed to automate the end-to-end workflows of accounting firms and enterprise finance departments.

Their platform goes beyond simple automation by handling complex tax, audit, and bookkeeping tasks, effectively multiplying the capacity of financial professionals through seamless digital collaboration.

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