Aniq Rahman

Open-source models can be a strong lever for increasing gross margins at AI companies, especially those that have hefty cost structures (e.g., enterprise sales orgs that require significant customer success or implementation resources, as well forward-deployed AI services models common in healthcare and life sciences). One of many reasons to maintain a modular and flexible stack with minimal dependencies when building an AI company. More on the importance of flexibility in the AI stack: https://lnkd.in/eA2XATRk h/t Delip Rao #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #healthcare

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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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Hot off the pre-print server – an important publication authored by the Atropos Health team exploring the performance of LLMs in answering real-world clinical questions. LLMs excel at summarizing and contextualizing existing literature, but cannot generate de novo medical evidence today. The results of the study highlight performance gains attributable to injecting novel, relevant, and up-to-date medical evidence into LLM-powered clinical decision support systems. Brigham Hyde Nigam Shah Saurabh Gombar Read the study here: https://lnkd.in/ecuU25Pq

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Another quarter in the books! Here are the Boston startups we covered at MGMT Boston in Q2 '24... Q2 Startups Highlighted (Sequentially): Starburst, Neurable, Software Defined Automation, airSlate, Ayble Health, Occupier - We ❤️ Leases!, Blink - The Frontline Experts,  Arcee.ai, Lendbuzz, Lightmatter, VODA.ai, Day.ai Native AI: Arcee.ai, Day.ai Vertical & Horizontal SaaS: airSlate, Blink - The Frontline Experts, Occupier - We ❤️ Leases!, Starburst, Software Defined Automation, VODA.ai FinTech: Lendbuzz Hardware: Lightmatter Robotics: Neurable HealthTech: Ayble Health Seed Stage: Arcee.ai, Ayble Health, Day.ai, Software Defined Automation, VODA.ai Growth Stage (A-C): airSlate, Blink - The Frontline Experts, Neurable, Occupier - We ❤️ Leases! Late Stage (>C): Lendbuzz, Lightmatter, Starbust Starburst - an end to end cloud software analytics platform for cloud and on-premise workloads, with industry leading price-performance Neurable - building state-of-the-art brain-computer interface neuroscientific technology and packaging it into wearables, beginning with headphones Software Defined Automation - building an industrial DevOps platform so that manufacturers and capitalism can move faster. They might even help save industrial engineering airSlate - a no-code workflow automation, electronic signature, and document management SaaS platform with 100+ million users and 900k+ customers Ayble Health - an end-to-end care platform for digestive health, utilizing technology like predictive AI to increase access to nutrition and behavioral therapy for more than 70M Americans who live with gut discomfort and make that care better, faster, and more personalized Occupier - building software to help commercial tenants make better real estate decisions to drive the operational needs and growth of their businesses Blink - building a “super app” for frontline organizations to make working lives easier, uplevel their internal cultural experience, and help employers better understand how their disparate workers are thinking & feeling Arcee.ai - an AI startup building Small Language Models (SLMs) so companies can deploy their own proprietary models quickly & cheaply without hallucinations or purchasing GPUs Lendbuzz - an AI-powered auto finance platform using technology to broaden access to credit Lightmatter - building a photonic supercomputer company, reinventing how chips interact using optics instead of electrical transistors to power the GPU led AI revolution VODA.ai - this team is helping analyze our nation’s water infrastructure at a local level to deliver better service for utilities and local populations across the country Day.ai - an AI native CRM platform for the next generation of startups and businesses, bringing the voice of the customer into the center of growth 🚀 ...see you tomorrow for Q3 🚀

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🚀 𝐔𝐧𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐔𝐫𝐢 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐞’𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬! 🚀 Uri Levine, co-founder of Waze and Moovit, shares invaluable lessons in his book “𝘍𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮, 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.” Key takeaways include the importance of passionately embracing the problem you’re solving, the necessity of customer retention as a marker of product-market fit, and the strategic use of pitch deck slides. He also emphasises the significance of hiring and firing correctly and observing user behaviour to refine your product. These principles can transform your startup journey, ensuring resilience and growth. 🌟 #StartupSuccess #Entrepreneurship #ProductMarketFit #Innovation

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Just over a year ago, Imran Mahmud, MD introduced to me what was then called, Co:Helm. I was taken by the backgrounds and stories of Abdel Mahmoud, MD, Zahid Mahmood & Tahseen Omar and moreso their grit and determination to forge ahead with their mission of reducing the cost of healthcare. They soon got into the Sequoia Arc program with the backing of another friend, George Robson. And have been staying low and building ever since. Inbetween rebrandng to Anterior (formerly Co:Helm). And even more recently announced a new round to add more fuel. https://lnkd.in/e3V4qrRz Happy to be a supporter alongside Annelie Ajami, Dorothy Chou, Adil Mohammed, Andy Young, Caroline Mogford, Christian Arno, Felix Leuschner, Freddy Kelly, Leonard Picardo, Mandeep Singh, Michael Steel, Omid Ashtari, Noor Shaker, Sultan Murad Saidov, Yuelin Li and others in the ecosystem... [Anterior is giving clinicians a second set of hands—and fixing one of the biggest pain points for patients. It is a LLM-powered co-pilot for administration, handling all the work that comes before the clinical decision-making. Where it might take a nurse several hours to track down, organize and summarize hundreds of pages of records they need, Anterior can do it in seconds, allowing clinicians to increase their output tenfold and focus on what matters most: helping patients.] #healthcare

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VC funding in healthcare has been more resilient than in other industries. Here are some key takeaways from recent Carta data: 👉 At the priced seed, Series A, and Series B stages, dilution for health startups has noticeably decreased, while dilution for SaaS startups has stayed flat or increased slightly. 👉 In priced seed rounds, median dilution for healthcare companies dipped to 14.2%, compared to 20% for SaaS.  👉 The frequency of bridge rounds surged in the health sector in Q1, jumping to 44.3% from 36.9% in Q4 2023. This is the first significant increase in bridge rounds in healthcare over SaaS since early 2022. 👉 More founder-friendly terms for health startups may result from enduring VC interest since COVID. Healthcare has remained strong through economic turmoil, enabling higher valuations with smaller round sizes. What are the implications? The healthcare sector might see a rise in new ventures due to favorable investment conditions and lower dilution rates. The surge in bridge rounds suggests that certain sectors within healthcare face unique challenges that require interim financing solutions. Founders and investors in the healthcare space- what are your thoughts on this? I’d love to hear from you. If you know a founder innovating in healthcare, tag them in the comments! The Artemis Fund is especially interested in groundbreaking care tech companies. You can check out Carta’s full blog linked in the comments. If you haven’t read our latest blog on care tech, you’ll find that there too. #healthcare #caretech #fundraising

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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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Have you heard of #CapVC? It’s an application platform designed specifically for the use of #VC firms. Essentially, it’s a robust #AI-powered tool made to simplify the daily operations of managing a #fund. Isn’t that something, a VC funded start-up designed to help improve the productivity of VC funding! According to this article from TechCrunch, Cap VC is looking to become much more than just an ‘operating system’ — the company aims to be a simplified and extremely efficient way to run a VC firm: reducing digital clutter by turning PDF files, income statements and balance sheets into readable data, automating company suggestions based on the context of a VC’s portfolio, and more. Cap VC is currently developing native apps on Mac and Windows, alongside releasing an API so that developers can build on top of their foundations. So, are any of my fellow VCs interested in using this software? If not Cap VC, is there any interest for similar software to be created down the line? Are there downsides to using a third-party application like this? I want to know what you all think.

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Suppose you are a VC, Early investor, or CIO trying to keep your eye on the industry trends. In that case, you’ve probably heard already about hallucinations, context shifts, and accuracy measurement problems in LLMs. These scary concepts kill motivation to invest in LLM-based projects and build RnD departments. Are they really so scary? Yes, but just for now, you have a good strategy to cope with them. Is this strategy already known? Yes, old but still one of the most effective approaches- knowledge graphs in combination with fresh new RAGs will allow you to keep your models free of hallucinations, stable in accuracy, and easily adaptable for context change. Btw, do you know that knowledge graphs are seeing as one of the most impactful AI enables during this year?🙌🏻 How big companies like Deutsche Telekom and Microsoft are seeing the future of LLMs adoption you can find here https://lnkd.in/d4B3t56z

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It was a real honor to interview Brad Burnham co-founder of Union Square Ventures and partner Placeholder on the history of hype cycles in technology and the value they bring to capital and market formation. Brad has had tremendous success across decades investing at the frontier - when it was the frontier/ before it was obvious. Crypto is still the underdog and his views on the opportunity and its nuances are prescient. Specifically it is both a technical and financial innovation which can lead to excess volatility and a unique muscle as it relates to being a venture manager. But the returns are real. And the innovation is real despite some of the the common narratives. No one debates the breakthrough applications in AI at M13 we have been very active. It is also very clear that incumbents have massive data and distribution advantages which can make it challenging to find the right pockets to invest. AI is on its own hype cycle and as always the best teams (typically with contrarian takes) win. Very exciting times to be a venture investor.

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Here’s a question investors are often asked: When evaluating early stage companies, how much time do you spend on due diligence around future exits? It’s not surprising we hear this question a lot. Also not surprising: it’s got a wide range of answers depending on the firm. Some don’t spend much time here at all. Others make it a point to put meaningful time in as part of their process. Our current thinking: take the time to do the work on public market comps. At Alpaca VC, we spend significant time understanding how public market investors will  realistically value a business based on margin profile, product, business model & TAM. In short, we want to know: how will this company be valued at scale when we get taken out? Yes, we can acknowledge that the journey toward exit is a windy road and that there may be pivots along the way, but there are still public market companies that have a business model similar to the early stage company you're evaluating. And you can always look at gross profit multiples if you think the margin profile will change over time. So we still do the work on the comps. Quantitative metrics we look at when making the comparison to public market comps include EBITDA multiple, revenue multiple, Gross Profit multiple or all of the above. As part of this process, it’s also important to factor in the public market company’s year-over-year revenue growth as this will also significantly impact the multiple it trades at. Simple example: if you have two public market companies with similar business models and similar margin profiles, but one's growing 100% year over year, and one's growing 50% year over year, then obviously the DCF (discounted cash flow) analysis is going to spit out a very different valuation for the one that's growing faster. Why this matters: When you take all of that information into account as you evaluate an early stage business, you can begin to create a realistic picture of how this company will be valued in the public markets at exit - or how an acquirer will value the company for an acquisition. Strategic acquirers may, of course, pay a premium, but we won’t underwrite for that. This allows us, for example, to form conviction around valuation based on revenue and gross profit predictions. If we think they can do $100M of revenue five years from now, we use this diligence process to form a thesis about whether the characteristics above (product, margin, business model, etc.) will cause the company to be valued at $200M vs. $500M vs. $1B at exit. Curious how other early stage investors think about underwriting an exit and how much time they’re spending on public market comps even though these companies are in their infancy.

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Someone broke down the estimated costs of a $15 Sweetgreen salad. We need these cost graphics for digital health to help future founders. Especially for tech enabled cos, the greatest cost is labor. Much of the "value created" is in curation and matching, which means the gross margins are reliant on labor arbitrage. Pay someone $X, but get paid $X+Y% per visit. The challenge with healthcare is that you often have to pick one of two business models: 1. specialized, low volume, high cost, low gross margin % 2. generalized, high volume, low cost, high gross margin % I'd argue founders should focus on gross dollars over the lifetime of the customer (like Jeff Bezos said) instead of gross margin %'s, but we'll leave that for another time. The challenge is that many tech enabled digital health cos have high cost of goods sold (labor) and moderately high product, design, and engineering budgets. We must build differentiated solutions for patients, clinicians, and clients to be out incumbents, however, we're realizing that companies are ultimately valued on the discounted value of future cash flows. And the high SG&A costs at most organizations might be inbalanced to the unit economics of the business. I'm not sure the math pencils out for everyone unfortunately. But I'm just a guy on the internet, would love to hear the thoughts from those smarter than I (you!). Comment below. --- p.s. I have no idea the accuracy of the graphic and not an investor in Sweetgreen. Cheers. Credit: David Crowther

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A new era of deep tech has emerged. First time funds will raise “unheard of” amounts of capital to fuel next gen deep tech startups - producing outsized, superior returns for LP’s compared to the rest. Prudent investors will act on this data and shift investment strategy as LP’s or risk being left behind savvy wealth managers and CIO’s / FO’s who saw this trend begin 4 years ago.

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Just finished an interview with CNBC at SuperReturn in Berlin, where we discussed opportunities in enterprise software and how GenAI will revolutionize the software sector. At Thoma Bravo, we see AI as an opportunity, not a threat, and software incumbents are in a great position to benefit from this technology. Over the years, we've seen enterprise #software evolve from the limitations of on-premise to the flexibility of SaaS, and now, GenAI is set to redefine business operations. We're actively embracing #GenAI's transformative power and are already seeing products emerge within our portfolio companies. Focusing on #AI is more important than ever, and we're excited and optimistic about what this means for the future of enterprise software. https://lnkd.in/ePHUTjNe

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The power of three! There are three YC companies that have absolute dream teams consisting of three founders each who happened to announce their existence to the world on the same day. They are working on some of the biggest issues impacting humanity: the creation and education of healthcare providers, agtech/climate, and women’s health. I honestly could not have dreamed up better teams to tackle these massive problems. Synaptiq (YC 23) was started by three friends who have known one another since elementary school: a UCSF-trained physician, an engineer from Square, and an all-star designer. The physician dropped out of Stanford neurosurgery, the hardest residency program to get into in the country, after scoring in the 100th percentile on the board exam and realizing he could use AI to bring his studying methods to other physicians and healthcare workers. Now they have growing revenue and are on track to launch at almost every medical school in the country. Feanix Biotech (YC 23) was initially started by two geneticists who grew up on dairy farms. They came up with new genetic tests for cows and had skyrocketing revenue but realized that the farmers they were working with could make even better breeding decisions. That’s when they met their third co-founder, an MIT/Google ML engineer who was already working on agtech software of her own. Together, they’re now developing the world’s first software + diagnostic platform for agriculture. Simbie Health (YC 23) was started by a Fulbright fellow physician out of uChicago, an operations leader from Carrot Fertility, and a software engineer from Princeton. They’re working on women’s health, creating software that enables women’s health practitioners to start their own, virtual-first practices. Yes, more women’s health, please! Congratulations on your launch! Ryan Phelps, MD, Jacob Caccamo, Kevin Bastoul; Mitchell Angove, Tom Bishop, Meia Alsup;  Natalia Neha Khosla, MD, Rachel O'Driscoll, and Natalia Perina.

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Next one up, Glide! In an attempt to demystify some of the non-obvious elements we found when we first met the founders of our fastest growing portfolio companies at 186 Ventures, here is the third edition of the "idiosyncratic phenomenon". This highlight will be on Gautam A., Sameer Kapur, and Vishnu Chakroborty and their journey building Glide to bring world class, unparalleled enterprise grade infrastructure to the much overlooked market of credit unions and community banks-- some of the most important financial institutions across virtually every community in the US. Since we invested in their Winter, 2021 seed round, the company has built an incredible technology stack and has outpaced revenue projections by multiple orders of magnitude. This story is a *fantastic* reminder that it takes time to build incredible product and technology; the Glide story is a quintessential example of this startup proverb, in almost every regard. https://lnkd.in/e8b32CR2

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Yesterday, Sword Health announced a new funding round at a $3B valuation and introduced Phoenix, their new AI care specialist. On our latest Vital Signs, Nikhil Krishnan and I sat down with Virgílio (“V”) Bento, the Founder and CEO of Sword, to learn more about Phoenix, the evolution and key decisions behind Sword’s success, keys to employer sales and more. Some highlights: ⚡ An overview of Phoenix V explains that the number one problem in healthcare is patient engagement, which is why Sword aimed to make its AI solution as human-like as possible, enabling it to converse with and adapt to each patient. During a session, it can measure the patient’s movements, identify errors, and suggest areas of improvement. V emphasizes Phoenix as a co-pilot – while the AI supports human experts and helps scale their capabilities, it still follows care plans and requires human approval for clinical decisions. Sword plans to release this solution in a staged fashion, and V expects that every care model eventually should be disrupted with this approach. ⚡ Structuring an organization for growth When Sword plans to expand into another condition, it hires a strong generalist and provides them with $1 million to put together a team and reach product-market fit (PMF) in 12 months. V aims to replicate the scarcity mindset of launching a new startup. After 12 months, solutions that reach PMF receive more funding for expansion, while those that don’t are stopped. ⚡ Breaking in & building trust with customers When selling to employers and health plans, V highlights that there are only two types of solutions that can scale: those that allow customers to save money, and those that enable them to make more money. Sword focuses on the former through improving the quality of care. V also discusses how within the past 2-3 years, the benefits ecosystem has increasingly focused on driving cost efficiencies, meaning solutions have to prove ROI. Sword takes two approaches to do so: 1) contractually guaranteeing savings, and 2) having independent 3rd parties evaluate their ROI. ⚡ An early, game-changing decision When Sword first started, their vision was to develop technology for PT teams to use in their clinics. But, when they began running pilots, a lot of clinicians complained. These results raised a concern: if our product wasn’t working well in controlled environments such as clinics, then how would it work in uncontrolled environments such as homes? However, V recognized that offering the solution direct to patients at home would work. Even with its imperfections, it was still a better alternative than having patients travel to clinics, leading the company to bet on an entirely new focus. A really great conversation to learn more about Sword’s exciting trajectory! Listen to our full episode below: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3X9txM0 Apple: https://apple.co/4c8blGC

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Exciting news from Monica Chopra, Jeffrey De Flavio, MD, Samantha Adelberg, and the rest of the Auxa Health team as they officially announce their $5.2M Seed round. The team's deep industry expertise and drive for change have led them to solve critical infrastructural friction to providing quality healthcare and adoption of value-based care. Auxa's AI benefit navigation platform is simplifying the complexities of healthcare by streamlining all of the fragmented and siloed data and information to make it actionable in real-time for healthcare organizations. For the 70% of Americans who aren't getting access to the health and social care benefits they deserve, Auxa's solution will be pivotal in enabling equitable care. We're thrilled to partner with co-investors Zeal Capital Partners, AlleyCorp, Laconia, and Chaac Ventures on this journey and look to share many more milestones ahead. Cc K50 Ventures, Ryan Bloomer, Daniel Vásquez, Nick Talwar, Stefanie Ng https://lnkd.in/dPDY7-Db

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