Kevin Hartz

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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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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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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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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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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A SAFE and convertible note had a baby and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati was the midwife- out popped the D-SAFE! 👶🏽🎉 A new #climatetech funding instrument was announced by Elemental Excelerator last week. One of the company’s main goals is to support smaller, up and coming companies during the awkward “Scale Gap” phase between #VC funding and natural growth. It’s called the #DSAFE (Development Simple Agreement for Future Equity) and it aims to aid the process by giving companies a small amount of cash to overcome initial risks and expenses during the developmental stages of a product launch or company. How does it work? D-SAFE has a redemption clause meaning companies can choose to have their payments offered as a loan or convert to equity at the investor’s discretion. Funders and companies will have clear communication and expectations about where the money is going and how it will be applied to either the company or the projects at hand. Financiers and companies will work together with more #transparency, and that’s a great boon for #startups and VC alike. As of this month, Elemental has already invested using D-SAFE in eight different companies, including Dimensional Energy and Origen — both companies investing in innovative and out-of-the-box solutions to environmental issues! Seems like a win-win on the surface. What do you all think about the D-SAFE? Alfredo Coppola Momoka Ueda Tim Wagner Stephen D. Torres Olya Irzak Natsuho Toyama Noriya Tarutani Shin Ogawa

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Go Gaurav Sharma and Capitalize! If you have a 401k from a previously employer, check out Capitalize.

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Great article from PitchBook on why domain expertise amongst VCs matters. TL;DR -- in verticals like healthcare, having investors with high amount of domain expertise can result in up to 40% higher odds of achieving an IPO, 20% higher chance of being acquired and 30% higher chance of an overall successful exit. Importantly, the marginal value of having investors with domain expertise varies by sector and stage, and is not uniform, so your mileage may vary, and generalist investors still have a very important role to play in the venture ecosystem. https://lnkd.in/dXpi8gzm Curious to hear from founders: Do you have examples of seeing specialist investors be helpful in unique ways that you can share? Or alternatively, do you have an experience with a generalist investor who has been more helpful than the specialists?

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Well-written and sourced article describing what's going in seed-stage venture market. At 9point8 Collective we tend to orbit the seed-stage (both ideating and developing companies to reach seed and helping post-seed companies refactor and scale in anticipation of A) and for many companies it's a critical inflection point which determines their long term success or failure. The main takeaways I was able to gather: 1️⃣ Many startups that raised seed rounds in 2021-2022 are struggling to secure Series A funding due to tighter market conditions and increased investor expectations. 2️⃣ Seed investors are becoming more cautious, leading to longer diligence processes and a preference for startups with strong traction or experienced founders. As a result, valuations have stayed relatively high even as deal flow reduces. 3️⃣ Startups are adopting various strategies to navigate this challenging environment, including cutting costs, raising bridge rounds or convertible notes, and M&A/acqui-hires. 4️⃣ Despite the challenges, there are opportunities for both startups and investors in this new landscape, particularly for those who can adapt to the changing market conditions. Investors are accumulating dry powder -- and with rates on the decline -- will be looking to deploy into companies with stronger fundamentals than their 2021-2022 counterparts.

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One of my proudest moments as an investor occurred today as Alaffia Health announced its series A because it shows how the Aperture® Venture Capital vision of multi-level, multi-generational #impactinvesting is succeeding in the marketplace. Here’s the model in its most basic form : ✅As diverse fund managers with meaningful capital to allocate, we are changing the VC landscape every day just by doing our day jobs. ✅As Black/Brown investors with ~40 years experience collectively, Aperture GPs have access to talent /excellence that others do not, so our portfolio *organically* is more inclusive by race, gender and geography even while optimizing for financial outcomes (all about the alpha). ✅Our most successful portco’s are using financial #innovation to solve market problems that impact underrepresented demographics and underserved communities. Alaffia Health is a shining example of the impact portion of our overall fund thesis, and we couldn’t be prouder of TJ Ademiluyi and Adun Akanni, MPH, PMP - the dynamic brother-sister founder duo whose vision we have steadfastly supported on their journey. Congratulations to TJ and Adun from William Crowder and myself, as well as the whole Aperture team- Marjorie King Philip McKenzie Yves Louis-Jacques Tanvi Lal Michelle Dhansinghani Lisha Bell Katie Kelly Amy Chung Cindy Chong, CFA Brian Fernandes-Halloran Monroe France Jayden Pantel Darren Herman Evan Wladis Neal Triplett Thomas Scriven Peter Ammon Irina Bit-Babik Tim Milanich Rob Rahbari

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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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Interesting concept to rename rounds by milestones. But "Series Client Expansion Extension" just doesn't have the same ring to it 😋 . Maybe we can start incorporating it into a descriptor to add context, "Series Seed Extension: client expansion." #startups #venturecapital

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⛳ Emerging fund managers pulse check. PitchBook tracks over 10,000 funds that are raising money, with 45% being emerging fund managers (defined as firms with less than 3 funds). Despite a dip in available capital—down to 16% from the pre-pandemic 23%—these managers are finding creative ways to stay competitive, like partnering with larger firms. 💼 Joanna Drake (founder turned investor) shared how "wildly different" it is raising a fund versus for a startup. One key datapoint she shared on the fund side was how little feedback you get along the way (and the years you can wait for it). The “long-winded and challenging process to raise capital” inspired Drake and Ben Black to create RAISE Global, a community for emerging fund managers and the “forward-thinking LPs” who back them. (A decade later, several hundred emerging managers with AUM under $200m are on the platform) They've found the newest emerging managers are more diverse and geographically dispersed than Silicon valley, and more were able to crack the ceiling and raise larger $100m funds (although this is still a small % of the market, requiring partnership with larger funds at the late stage). ▶ And not a hugely surprising datapoint: A lot of action is in the sub $49 million range, where roughly 50% of emerging managers are raising. Theresa Sorrentino Hajer, Head of U.S. venture capital research at Cambridge Associates warns that past success isn't actually a strong indicator on it's own to assess emerging managers. We've had a valuation reset. And newer managers with investments during the 2019-2021 "party days", need to build relevant track record and play to their strengths. A lot of emerging managers are specializing (70% who applied for Raise had a thematic focus), and betting on getting in as early as possible in the startup's lifecycle (Raise: 31% at accelerator/ pre-seed stages, and 47% at seed stage). “Emerging managers have to compete on a different dimension,” Nick Moran from New Stack Ventures. You're no longer just dealing with capital. Emerging VC's need to be as innovative and nimble as the startups they invest in, having a unique thesis and insights. They also play a role at the top of the deal-flow funnel: helping larger firms find promising companies, so finding a thesis, sector or philosophy aligned partner at a larger firm is helpful. Onwards! #EmergingManager #Startups #VC

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Some VC investors believe that brick and mortar - referring to a physical presence of some kind - should be avoided at all costs. Yet, the track record of clinic and hybrid care businesses in health care indicates otherwise. ==> One Medical (sold for $3.9 billion to Amazon), Oak Street (bought by CVS for $10.6 billion), Lifestance (IPO at $7.5 billion market cap), and PE-backed Premise Health (acquired by OMERS Private Equity for $1.1 billion) If a clinic is indicated as the optimal way to deliver care for that patient population, there are creative ways to build and operate them. Full article below with advice and strategies on how to build and operate hybrid clinics from my teammate Anarghya Vardhana from Maveron, Amir Dan Rubin from OneMedical Group, Steven Eidelman from Modern Animal and more!

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I’m excited to share this one! Redactive has raised a $11.5M seed round -- their mission is to become the trusted GenAI engineer for enterprise teams. Blackbird co-led this round alongside Felicis with participation from Atlassian Ventures and Zapier. Andrew, Alexander and Lucas are working to solve an urgent problem hidden in plain sight – empowering GenAI applications to meet their promise of "magic" in an enterprise setting. GenAI applications are only as useful as the data that they have access to, and for most enterprises, the most valuable data is sensitive and permissioned. We all want a chatbot (“ChatGPT for…”) at work that can search the data that we share in private Slack conversations or store in private folders on Sharepoint but first, we need to trust that our data will be kept safe – from prying eyes and accidental disclosure to others in the organisation who should not see it. Redactive keeps your sensitive data safe, giving developers the trust to connect it to GenAI applications and build products that you will love. Here's to the next decade. https://lnkd.in/gPuEAFvW

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I am beyond excited to unveil Rerail I, which is a labor of love and a vehicle for making my life’s passion a reality. Rerail I, is an angel fund, backed and supported by founders and operators. I invest $200-500k checks at pre-seed/seed into founders looking to utilize fintech as a strategic advantage, with a skew to Europe, but globally! Focused on people & networks I have always been people first. I have cultivated one of the deeper networks of founders and operators in Fintech (& beyond), which become an extension of my team to the founders I back. The power of being collaborative I only realised the power of being collaborative, when I started angel investing back in 2020. I was captured by the transparent, trusted conversations I could have with founders, and the collaboration with the rest of the investors, many of which I have grown up with. I formalized that with the first fund I co-founded, Cocoa, and look forward to amplify that further with Rerail Everything is Fintech  I believe that fintech is a horizontal, not a vertical; the support function of any market. From climate to healthcare and logistics, fintech supports every market. Fintech can also be a revenue model (e.g. vertical SaaS, marketplaces), a target customer, or just a business component. Rerail seeks to invest in founders that can utilize fintech not in fintech companies only With quality talent density at its highest, technological waves like AI, there’s never been a better time to start Rerail. To any entrepreneur out there starting something new where you think Rerail could be a fit, do not hesitate to reach out to anthony@rerail.vc Can’t wait for the journey ahead 💥 🚀 -> https://rerail.vc -> https://lnkd.in/dn2uSfg7 P.S. A big thank you to Romain Dillet for the awesome TechCrunch coverage!

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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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Looking forward to discussing how changing demographics and culture norms are affecting investment opportunities in longevity, health and well-being at The Care Summit today Alongside Cake Ventures' Monique Woodard, Ziegler's Dan Hermann, Oak HC/FT's Billy Deitch and JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Jennifer Edwards, we’ll dive into the trends shaping how we are investing in the space: - Last year marked one of the most significant social and economic moments in modern times: The number of older adults—those aged 50 and over- surpassed the number of children under the age of 15 for the first time. - In 2020 the 50 plus population contributed $45 trillion to global GDP, or 34% of the total. That equates to about 3x the revenue of the world’s 100 highest- earning companies in 2020. - The U.S. population grew by 24.5 million from 2010 to 2022, and Hispanics accounted for 53% of this increase – a greater share than any other racial or ethnic group. - Women around the world and across all ages drive 64% of consumer spending

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We believe in extreme vetting of our founders. You can't build a unicorn if you spend time on silly stuff, like seeing family and friends. Grow up, and focus on investor returns. #vc #startups #investment

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