Eckart Walther

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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Had fun conversation with Sean Li 🎙about entrepreneurship and building products.

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Global startup funding surged to $79 billion in Q2, up 16% from Q1 and 12% from Q2 2023, with mega-rounds driving much of this increase. AI companies saw funding more than double to $24 billion, making up 30% of all investments and marking the largest AI funding quarter in recent years. Larger M&A deals provided much-needed liquidity to venture capital markets. Experts caution that this surge is not necessarily indicative of a market comeback, given funding fluctuations since 2023. With the looming election, the question arises: can this increase in venture funding persist for the rest of 2024? https://lnkd.in/gGbHMzva

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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'm excited to be leading my third YC demo day fund for the S24 batch! I've been involved with YC since 2015, first going through YC myself, staying closely involved with the community for 7+ years, and culminating in working there as a Visiting Partner, where I invested in over 120 companies and helped them raise over $200M in capital. Over all this time, one thing is clear to me: YC founders are only getting better and better, and YC companies remain the cream of the crop for early stage founders. And it's not because companies come out of YC "fully baked" -- many of the best companies went through Demo Day with no revenue, or even pivoting just a few months afterwards. Yet, over 5% of this batch will likely become unicorns. This batch is appears to be the biggest one since 2021, which will make for the most interesting (and more competitive) cycle in a long time. I have opened this fund up to friends and connections who would like to join me. If you are interested in participating, click the link below for special friends-only terms! https://lnkd.in/eSKEbqQJ

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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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A little late, even though this process started in July.... Excited to share our latest investment in Heads Together Health!! We met Steve DeVrieze in October last year, and we think they are poised for impressive growth! Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ecYcqqkn #earlystagestartup #earlystageinvesting #VCinvestment #ncstartups #nctechstartups

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What do you do when a radical new technology puts your main product right in the crosshairs of disruption? Listen to David Okuniev — co-founder of Typeform | Ask awesomely — discuss the challenges of innovation within existing structures. David shared a game-changing insight: Radical innovation is really, really difficult to do inside your own product. He emphasized the need to break free from the constraints of familiarity and embrace change from outside the box. Henrik Werdelin and I have both seen our fair share of this in our respective careers. What struck us most was how David leveraged structure to overcome the innovator’s dilemma. By creating a culture of experimentation and providing space for bold ideas, he propelled Typeform beyond incremental improvements. What other hacks have you seen or employed to help your organization overcome the innovator’s dilemma? Share your stories below! 👇 And if you want to dive deeper into our conversation, click the link in the comments to catch the full podcast episode!

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Since early 2021, VC quarterly exit values have plummeted to $50B or below, a stark contrast to the six consecutive quarters of $100B+ exits before then. With IPOs dwindling and M&A activity slow, the future of venture industry exits appears uncertain. Will we see a surge in private venture-backed company acquisitions? This could be a crucial and innovative strategy to boost VC exits. Increased private acquisitions might offer a much-needed lifeline, providing a creative solution to the current exit drought in the venture capital market. #venturecapital #inspireglobalventures

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"Editors note: Welcome to issue #2 of Transcriptions. Today, we’d like to present a conversation between Qasar Younis of Applied Intuition, and Bilal Zuberi of Lux Capital. We discovered Qasar recently, and find his focus and clarity of thinking to be admirable. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their talk, first held at the Paklaunch forum." Link to transcipt: https://lnkd.in/gH4uBmPE

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Many people have asked that I share the keynote presentation from Coatue’s East Meets West conference from this past June. This gives a great perspective on both public and private markets and how we see the impact on investing. #coatue #venturecapital

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Introducing the Alinia AI Alignment Platform. From their announcement: "Alinia AI enables companies to evaluate the performance of their GenAI applications and obtain evidence on how aligned these are to their values, policies, and business preferences. Following the performance assessment, Alinia AI recommends the best next actions to further guide and control LLM output and improve alignment."

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It's been a whirlwind of learning since we started digging into the Venture Studio model. First when we started our previous company, Roam, it was "do some consulting so we can launch games & products" and in fact we did launch a couple of products and even released a couple of games. But it was always a constant tension between the siren call of instant revenue with consulting vs the long term return of equity. We sometimes joke that Ryft is the outcome of 10+ years of bootstrapping to get to a place where we can focus as a pure-play Venture Studio. Learn more below.

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At Inspired Capital, we love entrepreneurs who are deeply and personally infected by a problem. "Infected" is the right word because they can't stop thinking about it. They live, dream it, and breathe it every day. They exist in a future we cannot yet see and are immensely confident in their vision. This certainty in their solution gives them the conviction to will their vision into existence—no matter what it takes. To learn more about the founders we back and the businesses we help build at Inspired Capital, tune in to my recent conversation with Nick Moran on The Full Ratchet podcast:

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As we dive into 2024, the Series A fundraising landscape is becoming increasingly daunting. Investment standards are soaring, and fewer startups are making the cut. Series A investors are finding many seed stage companies too premature. The median valuation jump from seed to Series A skyrocketed from $19.5 million in Q1 2022 to $28.7 million in Q1 2024. Investors now demand stronger revenue performance, targeting $2 million to $3 million in ARR, up from $1 million to $2 million. Alarmingly, only 12% of Q1 2022 seed startups secured Series A funding within two years, down from 31.8% in Q1 2020. #venture #earlystage #seedtoseriesa #seed #seriesa #inspireglobalventures https://lnkd.in/gW4bkcNy

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GPTZero has skyrocketed to profitability within 18 months, raking in millions. With 500% ARR growth in six months and user growth from 1 million to 4 million in a year. While many AI-detection companies struggle with accuracy, GPTZero excels, leveraging vast data and advanced LLM models using the latest open-source tools. Initially celebrated for helping teachers spot AI-generated student work, GPTZero's clientele now includes government agencies, grant writers, hiring managers, and AI training data labelers. One founder noted, "We have a big data advantage with millions of examples of human versus AI-generated text," proving the quality of data fed into AI models is crucial. https://lnkd.in/gREnQ2ps #ai #sustainabledevelopmenttechnology #emergingtechnology

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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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