Founder Spotlight: Shauna Sweeney (tendercare)

Meet Shauna Sweeney, Founder & CEO of tendercare.

After spending eight years as a full-time caregiver for her grandmother, Shauna emerged with a deep understanding of just how emotionally and logistically overwhelming caregiving can be, especially when you're doing it alone.

She founded tendercare to change that.

With over 50 million Americans acting as informal caregivers, tendercare is tackling a massive, underserved market. The platform is more than just a task app, it's an AI-powered care coordination tool that brings structure to fragmented, high-emotion workflows.

We invested in Shauna and tendercare because she lived the caregiving chaos firsthand and built a mission-critical solution to solve it. She brings the clarity, grit, and founder-market fit we look for, and the early traction spoke for itself.

Watch Sweeney’s Rock, a short documentary that shares Shauna’s story, her bond with her dad, and the mission driving tendercare forward.

Trends vs. Waves in Tech: Why It Matters for Founders and Investors

One of the hardest things in early-stage investing is learning to tell the difference between a trend and a wave.

Trends are exciting. They move fast, get headlines, and spark FOMO. But they often fade just as quickly as they arrived.

Waves, on the other hand, are slower to build—but they change industries. They create durable value. And if you catch the right one early, it can take you far.

The analogy I always come back to: Trends are like ripples on the surface—quick to appear, quick to fade. Waves run deeper. They take time to build, but when they do, they carry force. If you’re positioned right, they can take you somewhere truly meaningful.

We’ve all seen it:

Waves:

• Cloud infrastructure in the early 2010s

• The shift to mobile post-iPhone

• Vertical SaaS gaining traction in legacy industries

• Enterprise AI actually getting integrated into operations and workflows

Trends:

• Clubhouse

• The Web3 tokenization of everything moment

• Groupon-style daily deal clones

• “AI” slapped on slide 3 of a deck with no real use case

At Laconia, we’ve learned to pause and ask a few key questions:

• Is this a feature or a company?

• Is this solving a real pain point, or just riding a headline?

• Who’s the actual customer, and are they pulling for this—or is the founder pushing it?

Waves usually don’t come with buzzy packaging. They show up quietly—in behavior shifts, infrastructure development, regulatory tailwinds, or workflow changes. But once they start moving, they open up space to build something meaningful.

Founders: ask yourself—is what you’re building going to matter in five years, or just five minutes?

Chasing trends might get you early attention, but building on a wave gives you staying power. The companies that grow, compound, and reshape industries? They're built on waves.

Jeffrey Silverman

Reframing the Board Meeting: It’s Not a Performance Review

Too many founders walk into board meetings with anxiety levels through the roof, bracing for a grilling. And too many investors treat it like a quarterly performance review. That’s not what a board meeting is supposed to be—especially at the early stage.

Let’s reset the narrative.

A board meeting should be a working session, not a courtroom. Founders should see it as an opportunity to get guidance from people who have seen more cycles, more challenges, and more patterns than they have. If you’ve brought on thoughtful investors and advisors, use them. That’s the whole point.

Here’s how we think about it:

The Deck is the Setup, Not the Show. Send the board deck 72 hours in advance. That gives your board time to digest the numbers, think through the product roadmap, sales pipeline, hiring plans—whatever is relevant to the current phase of the business. The goal is to get everyone on the same page before the meeting starts.

Use the first third of the meeting to quickly walk through the highlights of the deck—financial health, sales traction, product progress, customer wins, and open hires. Don’t get bogged down in details. This part is about clarity and context.

The Real Value is in the Last Two-Thirds. The magic happens in the back half of the meeting. That’s where the founder gets to say: Here’s what I’m struggling with. Here’s where I want feedback. Here’s where I need help.

This is your time to tap into the experience and networks of your board. The best board members don’t use this time to criticize—they use it to help solve problems.

Some of the best board meetings I’ve seen are where the founder walks out with:

• A new sales comp plan idea

• A warm intro to a key customer

• A reframing of their go-to-market strategy

• A different way to think about pricing

• Or sometimes, just the confidence that they’re on the right track

Culture Comes from the Top - If you’re an investor reading this: you don’t win any points by beating up a founder. Your job is to challenge them with empathy and support them with intent. That’s how trust gets built—and trust is the foundation of any great board.

Founders: don’t dread your board meetings. Set the tone. Come in curious. Ask questions. Use your board.

This is your team, these are your partners. Treat and respect each of them like it.

Jeffrey Silverman

Don’t Feed a Newborn a Porterhouse ...and other thoughts on raising the right amount of capital at Seed

Lately, we’ve seen large funds coming down-market, playing in the seed stage. And while the attention might feel validating, the impact often isn’t.

These funds are used to writing $5M–$10M checks without blinking. But when they apply that same muscle at seed, it’s like handing a porterhouse steak to a newborn. Technically it’s food—but the baby doesn’t have teeth, can’t chew it, and definitely can’t digest it. That kind of “nourishment” can actually do more harm than good.

Seed is about learning. Testing. Tinkering. Finding product-market fit. Not scaling like you’ve already nailed it. A big check too early can kill the scrappiness, warp decision-making, and set expectations that aren’t aligned with where the company actually is.

And lately, it’s not just large funds anymore—it’s MEGA funds. (The kind that need a luggage cart just to move their capital stack from one term sheet to the next.)

At Laconia, one of the first things we dig into during due diligence—even at pre-seed—is the financial model. Not because we expect a crystal ball, but because it tells us how a founder thinks.

How they prioritize. Where they’re focused. Whether they understand their own levers. It gives us a lens into capital efficiency, customer acquisition strategy, burn, and—most importantly—what the real capital needs are.

That number should drive the raise. Not what a mega fund wants to deploy.

We’ve seen too many founders raise more than they need simply because someone offered. And while it feels great in the moment, it often leads to bloated burn, rushed hiring, distracted execution, and pressure to grow before the foundation is solid.

A great financial model isn’t about perfect projections—it’s about knowing what it’ll take to hit meaningful milestones. And using that to figure out how much you really need to raise.

And sometimes, those founder conversations get real. We’ll push back when a raise feels oversized and ask: what are you really trying to accomplish with this capital? Are you building a foundation or booking a growth plan the business isn’t ready to deliver on?

We’ve passed on deals where the cap table was already bloated and the expectations baked in from the last round made the next one nearly impossible to price. More money isn't always more runway. Sometimes it just means you burn through the wrong stage faster.

Founders: don’t let someone else’s fund size dictate your future. Raise what you need to prove what you can. That’s how real businesses get built.

Because at the end of the day—babies don’t need steak. They need the right nourishment to grow into something strong.

Jeffrey Silverman

Treat Your First Investor Meeting Like a First Date – 2024 Update

In 2015, as I was starting Laconia after five years of being an angel investor, I wrote this blog comparing a first pitch meeting with a VC to a first date. The parallels are uncanny—from the nervous anticipation to the delicate balance of making a great first impression without overdoing it. Now, as Laconia celebrates its 10th year, I pulled the blog back up, and it still holds true today. I decided to slightly update it and republish it—let me know if you disagree.

A warm introduction has been made. You’ve been wanting to meet this investor for a while, and now it’s finally happening. Thanks to the internet, you dive deep into your research. You check out their LinkedIn, scroll through their tweets, read their blog posts, listen to their podcast appearances, and see what deals they’ve done recently. The sheer amount of information can feel overwhelming, but being prepared is non-negotiable.

Everyone feels a little nervous before a first date—or in this case, a first investor meeting. It all starts with how you present yourself. You want to strike the right balance between professional and approachable. The last thing you want is to walk into the meeting feeling either over or underdressed. Read the room before you enter it.

On the way to the meeting, your mind is racing. How do you kick things off? Do you break the ice with small talk? What if they’re not a sports fan, or they don’t care about the latest tech trends? You remind yourself that both of you know why you’re here—the key is making that connection in an authentic way.

Then comes the chemistry test. Will they get you? Will they see the vision? Will they find you compelling or tune out after five minutes? You need to strike the right balance—confident but not cocky, passionate but not overwhelming, engaging but not dominating the conversation. This isn’t about a one-sided pitch; it’s a two-way street. You’re evaluating them just as much as they are evaluating you. Would they be a good long-term partner? Do they align with your values? Can they help you fill gaps where you need support?

Now, the conversation. You sit across from them with so much to say. You focus on making your points clearly and succinctly, avoiding rambling. You make eye contact, sit up straight, and try not to fidget. You know this isn’t their first pitch meeting, and it’s not yours either, but they hold the power of whether there will be a second meeting. You want to leave them with just enough intrigue that they want to continue the conversation, but not so much that you overwhelm them with every single detail about your business.

Then, just like a date, the meeting comes to an end. Did you make a strong enough impression? How do you follow up without coming off as too eager? Is a thank-you email enough? Should you send over a thoughtful note summarizing the conversation? Should you play it cool and wait for them to reach out? You remind yourself that if this doesn’t go anywhere, there are plenty of other investors in the sea.

Every meeting is an opportunity to refine your approach. Just like dating, you learn from each experience, adjust your strategy, and improve over time.

The analogy may make you laugh, but it holds true. A first meeting with a VC is just like a first date. Treat it that way—from how you dress to how you communicate and listen. Don’t push for a close; that’s not how venture investing works. Just like in dating, both sides need time to get to know each other, understand if there’s a real fit, and determine if this is the beginning of a long-term relationship or just a one-and-done meeting.

Jeffrey Silverman