Gordon Wintrob

Charter to the moon Key Takeaways if you don't listen: Modernizing the Space Industry is more than needed There's a critical need to update tools, processes, and risk management in the space industry, particularly in areas like software solutions and insurance, to drive innovation and efficiency. Interdisciplinary Problem-Solving drives innovation Success in addressing space industry challenges increasingly requires drawing insights from diverse fields, combining technical expertise with perspectives from areas like military logistics, law, and even science fiction. Space Technology is impactful but hidden There's a significant disconnect between the actual impact of space technology and public perception, highlighting the need for better communication about its importance and potential for future breakthroughs. #SpaceIndustry #Modernization #SpaceInnovation #TechForSpace #InterdisciplinaryInnovation #FutureOfSpace #AerospaceEngineering #SpaceTechnology #RiskManagement #SpaceInsurance #HiddenImpact #ScienceFictionToReality #SpaceTech #InnovationInSpace #SpaceExploration #CharterToTheMoon #ModernizingSpace #vibecap #vibecapital

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Ever since we launched SHAKTI, every quarter we write a letter to our LPs = Each letter includes an update on the portfolios, the GP's (our) view on the zeitgeist, an interview with a portfolio CEO and an interview with a TITAN = So far, we have 16 such letters = it's been on our "to do" list to share these publicly (i am lazy) = then Google comes along to save lazy people like me (thank you NotebookLLM) = here's a 10 min podcast summarizing our journey since Dec/2020 with the 16 LP letters as source = if you wanted to know what we are about, this is a pretty good place to start = https://lnkd.in/db7K2TrT cc SHAKTI

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Let's finally get rid off the "VC alphabet song" and redo the system to become more founder friendly. "The benchmarks set by funding stages are often arbitrary and not necessarily aligned with the actual development needs of individual startups." #vc #venturecapital #founder #fundraising #startups #fundingstages #funding #fundingrounds #pitchbook

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Hot take…it’s not like getting into YC is your automatic ticket to success. But there are a few things about it that made a huge difference. 1. It steps up your company’s pace. They push you to move fast, iterate quickly, and constantly validate your assumptions. This creates a sense of urgency that permeates the entire company. This is worth more than you’d think. 2. The advice is top notch. Double is my 2nd startup - I founded Jetfuel in 2016 which was eventually acquired. I wish I’d had all the YC advice the first time around. 3. Raising money is significantly easier. The brand of YC means it’s significantly easier to raise a round than without YC. It’s still hard and stressful, but it is undoubtedly one of the perks of YC. At the end of the day, you gotta do the work yourself. But YC gives you a big leg up.

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Founder <> founder convos are the biggest unlock for company building. I spent the last 2+ weeks in SF. Besides meeting with customers, I spent a ton of time with founders / early stage builders that I deeply respect (shoutout to Abhinav Asthana, Christina Cacioppo, Kevin Van Gundy, Akshay Kothari, Yuhki Yamashita, Tara Viswanathan, Celine Halioua, & Michelle Valentine). I’m extremely grateful to have the chance to spend time with these folks. Some reflections from these brilliant people. 1/ People > everything. A company is a collection of people. Company success comes down to hiring the best people. 2/ Startup problems aren’t *that* unique. Startups are HARD and even if you think your challenges are specific to your company, they’re likely not. Someone else has faced the same thing, and you likely don’t need to reinvent the wheel. 3/ Let some fires burn. Focus > trying to do everything. As a startup, you can’t fix everything at once with limited resources (even if you want to). You need to focus on the stuff that will move the needle the most. Pick the top 1 or 2 problems, fix them, then move onto the next. It’s okay if some fires need to burn for a little in the meantime. 4/ Company operating cadences are key. We’re redoing our cadences now, so it was super interesting to learn how others run their board meetings, leadership meetings, all hands, etc. A consistent theme for board & leadership meetings is to have everyone complete a prompt in written doc, share with each other, then use the time to have meatier discussions. 5/ Be competitor aware, customer obsessed. Competitors cause unnecessary noise. Build products and make decisions based on customer / market need and founder intuition, never based on competition. Are these learnings helpful? If so, can share more founder learning posts in the future!

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Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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Hot take on a lot of early-stage digital health companies out there: You're not a tech company. Most tech-enabled care companies I've seen over the past two years are only tech-enabled in the sense that they use telehealth as their delivery mechanism for care. There are exceptions to this, of course - companies who build computer vision and applied AI tools to better the doctor-patient experience, companies who build tooling around risk scoring and stratification to enable more personalized medicine, companies who build truly novel intakes to better route patients to the appropriate care, etc. These companies have real technology chops and, if they sell it right to the market, can get credit for this from investors. But if you're truly a telehealth provider, you need to realize now that the goal post has shifted dramatically from 2021 and you're going to be valued at maturity at something like 3x EBITDA. That's profit. Not revenue. Throw a revenue multiple out the window. That's not the world we live in if you're a virtual doctor's office. Think of how that impacts venture math. If you're raising a seed round at $15M post-money (or $12M pre-money), it means you'll have to generate something like $150-200M in annual EBITDA to be a fund returner for your seed investors. Maybe even more with dilution, since telehealth businesses are not traditionally capital efficient and will likely need to raise material additional capital to reach that scale. You need to be ridiculously profitable (probably on $800M-$1B in annual revenue since you're likely going to be a 40% gross margin business). Here's the good news: you can set yourself up well (and probably be a contrarian founder relative to your peers), by talking about EBITDA growth and how you can grow into a fund-returning outcome based on realistic mature market comps. This will stand out for the investors you're pitching, even at the early stage. This is how you can beat the malaise of the tech-enabled care market. Focus on the right metrics and the right type of growth. You don't have to have all the answers (no founder does), but you need to make sure the ship is headed in the right direction. A focus on profitability for "tech-enabled care" (*ahem* telehealth) businesses is a good first step.

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Couple of weeks ago had the pleasure of sharing my story to Alexander Benkendorf about starting CastPrint and later moving on to join Verge HealthTech Fund and the learning along the way. Some topics we discussed: 💡What does it take to bring innvation in healthcare 💡How did my startup background help me better prepare for VC work 💡How founders can better engage with VCs and what are the tips and tricks from the "other side" Thanks Alexander for having me!

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Super helpful article and accompanying doc with a #Startup #Equity Calculator to determine the equity for early hires, thanks to Pear VC head of talent Matt Birnbaum! Thanks for sharing Pejman Nozad! 🙏🏼 You can read more here How to structure startup equity for early hires: https://lnkd.in/ggmpT5-Y Google Doc: https://lnkd.in/gjsvths6

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Good morning, especially to #founders. Missed the buzz about Brian Chesky's "Founder Mode" speech? And #PaulGraham's essay distilling it? The Cliff Notes thoughts, extracts, and links follow. 🗨️Conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken... people advised him [Brian] to run the company in a certain way for it to scale..."hire good people and give them room to do their jobs." He followed this advice and the results were disastrous.💣💬 Enter #FounderMode. The thesis is that "Founder Mode is not Manager Mode". More from Paul: 🗨️Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs. Sounds great when it's described that way, doesn't it?... One theme I [PG] noticed both in Brian's talk and when talking to founders afterward was the idea of being gaslit. Founders feel like they're being gaslit from both sides — by people telling them they have to run their companies like managers, and by the people working for them when they do. VCs who haven't been founders themselves don't know how founders should run companies (❗), and C-level execs, as a class, include some of the most skillful liars in the world.💬 Sages and snarksters more experienced than I in dissecting management theory, founding startups, and writing viral essays have all boarded the Founder Mode buzz train. Catch some of the chatter in the comments. In the five years that I've been close to the #insurtech founder world, I've watched this play out: 😤the frustrations created when founders and investors don't have a Venn diagram on mission or financial expectation; ❎the bad advice given and taken & ✅the good guidance given and taken; 📈the focus on scaling, on return, on exit leading to 😕diversion from mission and purpose 🙄the stereotype around founders having "bright shiny object syndrome" 💟the community that founders are now creating around best practices, as collectively we enter the next phase of startups. Bobbie Shrivastav, MBA, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM Colby Tunick, PMP Zechari T. Michelle Bothe Judson Norton Sri Ramaswamy Jerry W Willis Chrysa Jones Cassandra "Cassie" Hand-Gallegos, AIC ​Amrit Santhirasenan Pat West Valkyrie Holmes Jamie Luce https://lnkd.in/eVYAFZkc

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DeepCast shipped a number of really cool new features recently in advance of a broad outreach push to podcast listeners. One new feature is our new Daily DeepDigest tool that sends you a concise daily email including any new episodes from the trailing 24 hours from any podcasts you Subscribe to (on DeepCast). Think daily podcast cliff notes or podcast news ticker tape, with a hint of Morning Brew various brews or PitchBook News—it's increasing information throughput when you're pressed for time. And this feature is rapidly evolving to distill other key extractions from shows you're already interested in, but also exposing you to other shows you might be unfamiliar with that also have nuggets to share—and thus increasing your aperture yet still conscious of your time. Want to go deeper on any given episode? Click the episode detail and you're off to an episode on DeepCast, where you can subsequently read a longer form distillation of that episode or go straight to the source and listen to the episode. (And podcaster friends, these pages are definitely increasing indexing and thus Google entry points to your shows!) I'm loving this feature as a user, personally. Can't wait to see what others think! #BuildingInPublic #Podcasts #AllTheWorldsInformation #HowYouWantIt

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Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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WE DID IT! After 2 years of pushing through the biggest downturn in VC in decades, Matthew Stotts 🌐 and I made it to the finish line with Fund I! We couldn't have done this without One Small Planet (Will Peterffy and Jack Wielebinski 🙏), Regen Network and Regen Foundation (Austin Wade Smith Gregory Landua and Will Szal), and a dozen other family offices and angels who believed that we can build a nature-positive economy utilizing our eye for software and our history as founders from day 1 A shout out goes to all of our founders (only four announced today, but watch this space - there are multitudes!) who trusted us enough to give us a spot on their cap table for this 10-15 year journey. This is the best job in the world, and it's because we get to work with people like you who have weird ideas in the best possible way. Using Bitcoin as anchor base load to decarbonize residential housing in America's most expensive energy market? Make every complex supply chain legible to machines so we can find and eliminate deforestation in commodity supply chains? Build deeply liquid environmental asset markets to price ecosystem services, on a blockchain, that no one needs to know is a blockchain? I'm so excited to get to work on this stuff for the next 10-15 years minimum, and to see what we can accelerate with our tiny fund in the next 5-6 years as we approach 2030 Onward! https://lnkd.in/gy3B-DFe

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Here are the Top 10 SaaS funding rounds of the past week (Seed to A) Starting at number 1... 🥇 Emergence, $97.2mm Seed 🤯 Emergence is developing an AI "agent-based" system that automates tasks typically performed by knowledge workers. Founded by Satya Nitta. 💸 Investors: Learn 🔗 https://bit.ly/3XSitTA 🟠🟠🟠 🥈 Formic, $27.4mm Series A Formic enables manufacturers to scale faster by making it easy to deploy robotic automations, like packing and palletizing. Founded by Misa Ilkhechi and Saman Farid. 💸 Investors: Blackhorn Ventures, FJ Labs, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/3XGzEYr 🟠🟠🟠 🥉 normai, $27mm Series A Norm Ai is automating compliance processes, making them more efficient, cost-effective, and accurate via (you guessed it) AI. Founded by John Nay. 💸 Investors: Coatue, Bain Capital Ventures, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/4ckpNft 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 4. ORA, $20mm Series A Ora is a blockchain project incorporating AI into dapps. Founded by Kartin Wong. 💸 Investors: Polychain Labs, HF0, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/3zpW7Ph 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 5. Payabli, $20mm Series A Payabli builds the infrastructure that allows companies, specifically software companies, to embed and facilitate payments through APIs. Founded by Joseph Elias Phillips and William Corbera. 💸 Investors: QED Investors, Bling Capital, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/4bwkGHE 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 6. Sift, $17.5mm Series A Sift develops tools to accelerate the development and ensure the reliability of complex machines (think Spacecrafts). Founded by Austin Spiegel and Karthik Gollapudi. 💸 Investors: GV (Google Ventures) 🔗 https://bit.ly/3L7zlyk 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 7. Ario, $16mm Seed Ario is an AI-powered assistant for parents that helps with daily tasks, from meal planning to scheduling playdates. Founded by Sumit Agarwal. 💸 Investors: Wing Venture Capital, Floodgate, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/4eEjeG9 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 8. MagicSchool AI, $15mm Series A MagicSchool provides lesson-planning solutions for teachers to fight burnout. Founded by Adeel Khan. 💸 Investors: Bain Capital Ventures, Adobe Ventures and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/3RQt5Pn 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 9. AuthZed, $12mm Series A Authzed makes it easier for developers to build permissions in their applications. Founded by Jacob Moshenko and Jimmy Zelinskie. 💸 Investors: General Catalyst, Work-Bench, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/4bqkh9B 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 10. SLUSHY.com, $10.2mm Seed SLUSHY is a creator monetization platform. Founded by David Gross and Fred Sprivock. 💸 Investors: Mantis Venture Capital, Jon Oringer, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/4eN9Boi ⚫⚫⚫ I'm Gyan, Head of Community at Venture House. I create tools, guides, and other free resources for Junior VCs and founders. If you found this helpful, check out the Venture House website for more 👇 https://venturehouse.xyz/ #startups #venturecapital #funding #saas

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Lesson for first time founders. "As much as they want to be your friends, the fund comes first (as it should)." As hard as it sounds the VC business evolves around a fight for survival first and being friends as a distant second. #openvc #investmentmanagers #assetmanagers #fundmanagers #venturecapital #assetallocation #limitedpartners #returnoninvestment #pitchdeck #fundraising #vc #vcrelationships

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🔥Tune In to the Latest Fireside Chat with a VC in Healthech🔥 What percentage of VCs are former founders? 30% maybe more? I'd think a fair amount, yet how *exactly* does that transition happen and what perspectives change *radically* afterwards? Sigvards Krongorns shared exactly that - his journey from PwC consultant to Healtech founder, to a VC shaping the future of Healthtech startups. What we talked about: ✨ Sigvards' transition from a PwC consultant to founder to a VC ✨ What steps are necessary to bring innovative medical devices from concept to market ✨ How being a founder can prepare you for a role in venture capital ✨ What strategies help navigate the regulatory landscape in healthtech startups ✨ The right way to engage with VCs for startup funding ✨ What future trends in venture capital and Healthtech look like #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation #StartupJourney #HealthcareInnovation #Entrepreneurship #FiresideChat #VentureCapitalInsights Full conversation can be found here:

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The only podcast you might not have to listen to at 1.5X speed 😂 . Thanks for having me, EXPLORE84! I appreciate you sharing the latest and greatest of what we have been up to!

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Appreciative of Tim De Chant's article on Crosscut Ventures' evolution. We've (Rick Smith and Brett Brewer) been building #SoCalTech for 16+ years and have naturally been drawn to the techno-manufacturing revolution of #ElSegundo driving innovation in #FrontierTech. Portfolio companies like Umbra, Aalo Atomics, Proteus Space, Carbon Ridge, Airloom Energy and many others yet to be announced have the potential to transform energy, advanced manufacturing, space and defense to push global decarbonization, secure America's borders and drive the continued commercialization of space. https://lnkd.in/gmy-Srgn #longLA #DeepTech #ClimateTech #SocalTech #Hawthorne #ElSegundo #Torrance #venturecapital #nuclearenergy #aerospace #defense #advancedmanufacturing

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Impactful Biz, Ops & Investment Roles at Early Startups & VCs: • Chief of Staff to Ex. Head of Product at Google • Founding GTM at the most YC product used by other YC companies in the past four years • Chief of Staff to a Partner at a Top-Tier VC Fund • Head of Platform of a NY State Backed Accelerator • Investment Associate at a Seed Stage Fund Investing in Category-Defining Companies • Partner at a Defense-Focused VC Fund • Chief Revenue Officer of a New Space Company in El Segundo • Venture Capital Analyst at a fund investing in overlooked geographies • Investment Associate at a Spirit-Focused Fund • Strategy & Ops Lead at a Company Focused on Helping Improve Autism • Senior Product Manager at a Company Focused on Building Shopify for Content Creators • Program Manager for a Space Security Company • Open-ended Investment Position at a Top-Tier Accelerator • Biz & Ops Lead for One of the Most Loved Digital Consumer Products 💸 All companies are well-funded and backed by top-tier investors. ⬇ You can find links to the roles above, plus many more, in the comments.

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