Brennan M. Woodruff

The state of venture capital is wild right now. We are witnessing a surge of innovation across the spectrum: - Funds merging - VC doing PE - PE doing VC - Secondary funds - Buyout funds - Spin-out funds - Debt funds - Continuation funds - Infrastructure funds - GP turnover - Hard Tech surging - Family Office uptick

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Summary: Andreessen Horowitz's American Dynamism fund has established a fellowship program to introduce top engineers and technologists to venture investing, with the potential for them to join the firm, a portfolio company, or start their own venture. Key takeaways: The American Dynamism fund was launched with the goal of supporting companies in hard tech sectors and has earmarked $600 million from a larger fund for this purpose. The 12-month fellowship program will give technologists a crash course in venture investing, allowing them to explore a career transition. The American Dynamism team aims to run the program annually and is looking for candidates with some commercial work experience and expertise in both hardware and software. Counterarguments: The program may not attract the type of candidates they are looking for, as the traditional route for top talent in venture capital tends to be through finance and banking. The program may overlook potentially qualified candidates who do not have commercial work experience but have pursued advanced degrees and personal projects. #a16z #venturecapital #startups

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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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New Episode: Pressure can can burst pipes or it can create diamond. Justis Mendez (Managing Partner, OneSixOne Ventures) shares his story, moving from the streets of Cleveland to a high impact VC investor. (Link below) We discuss topics such as: - Building a tech ecosystem: The genesis of OneSixOne Ventures - Launching a virtual accelerator during the pandemic - Launching a fund: Realizing the need for monetization - Focus on enterprise software and AI - Investing in pre-seed and seed stages with small checks - Current state of the VC space and capital deployment - Advice for founders: Authenticity and technical expertise - Considerations when outsourcing technical development for AI Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eXwCFfgE Apple: https://lnkd.in/ejRF5KBi

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Summary: Lacey Hunter, founder of TechAid, went through the Newchip accelerator in 2022 and was blindsided when the organization filed for bankruptcy in May 2023. The bankruptcy court is auctioning off the warrants held by Newchip in over 1,000 startups, causing outrage and forcing some companies to shut down. Newchip had a tumultuous history, facing criticism for its CEO's leadership style and ultimately filing for Chapter 11 and 7. Key takeaways: Many startups paid thousands of dollars to go through the Newchip accelerator, giving the organization the right to buy shares in their company at a future date. Now, the bankruptcy court is auctioning off these warrants, causing distress and in some cases, leading to the closure of startups. Newchip's founder and CEO, Andrew Ryan, faced criticism for his leadership style and reportedly fired a manager in front of the entire company as a "test" of loyalty. The bankruptcy revealed that Newchip had missed keeping track of some companies that had exited or raised money, potentially causing the organization to miss out on millions of dollars in potential upside. Counter arguments: Newchip may argue that their bankruptcy was due to unforeseen circumstances and was not a #vc #startups #accelerators

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Here’s HBR’s take on some of the ways VC and PE firms are deploying an alternative data strategy to gain a competitive edge for their brand and portfolio: 1. Algorithmic sourcing - distilling the novel from the noisy: detecting patterns, trends, anomalies. 2. Due diligence - the old school way is often constrained by time and resources: VCs are deep diving, deploying LLMs to do a full analysis (see pharma example in article). 3. Portfolio company value creation: VCs and talent sourcing, Eg; one VC aggregated Google Scholar, GitHub, Quora, Kaggle, and LinkedIn to identify specialized talent to help assemble strong teams for their port cos to kick (and reach) their goals. Even with AI, effectively harnessing the vast amounts of external data is no small feat. Info is highly fragmented and uneven in quality, and demands dedicated resources and expertise to assess what’s most likely be useful, and navigating the thousands of products on the market. Onwards! #AI #Investing #PrivateMarketInvesting

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"Industrial software trades with less volatility and at a premium multiple to broader SaaS comparables" 🏭 🤖 As industrial tech investors, Onur Canlitepe and I are observing that our early-stage investments have >90% survival rate (over 7 years, despite investing in the earliest stages) with 2/3rds receiving follow on investments. We think industrial tech investments offer higher stickiness, more steady but perhaps less explosive growth (e.g. compared to some consumer-facing software/apps). As Atlas Ventures, we believe that industrial tech investments can offer a different risk-reward profile to LPs within the VC asset class. Perhaps this is the reason why industrial tech companies are trading at a higher multiple in public markets compared to general SaaS.

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"Rebellion looks beyond conventional AI systems." This is a well-written article by Venture Capital Journal (by David Bogoslaw) about our Rebellion Ventures announcement last week. It reviews artificial super capability (ASC) and our debut fund focused on autonomous operations and AI agents, leveraging a community of 70+ unicorn founders, operators, and industry experts in AI and automation. Check out VCJ's article below - worth taking a look. https://lnkd.in/g6HDmZ8P

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Summary: The article discusses the current challenges faced by VC firms in attracting new capital, but highlights how established firms like Kleiner Perkins are still able to raise large funds. It also touches on the potential impact of AI on investment strategies. Key takeaways: Many VC firms are struggling to secure new capital in a tepid IPO environment. Established, brand-name firms like Kleiner Perkins are still able to raise significant funds. AI is emerging as a potential game-changer in the investment landscape. Counter arguments: It may be premature to attribute Kleiner Perkins' fundraising success solely to AI; other factors could also be at play. The article may overlook smaller VC firms that are also finding success in fundraising. #venturecapital #vc #venture #startups #artificialintelligence

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At Costanoa Ventures, we pride ourselves on identifying and supporting exceptional founders poised to create impactful, lasting change. Hona is a shining example, driven by a trio of extremely talented founders: Manny Griffiths, Joshua Christensen, and Matt McClellan. They each bring unique, differentiated expertise to the table, and Amy Cheetham and I are extremely excited to partner with them. There are approximately 450,000 law firms in the United States, with half of those firms being B2C - think personal injury, mass tort, or immigration law as opposed to BigLaw. One of the reasons we love how Hona is tackling this market is their focus on B2C law firms and product excellence - B2B firms are historically difficult to sell brand new software products into, but B2C firms are completely different buyers. Oftentimes there's just a handful of lawyers and paralegals in a partnership, and any piece of technology they can use to give them an edge would be valuable. 44% of negative Google reviews on law firms directly reference poor communication as the reason for a negative experience, and the number 1 reason for Attorney Bar complaints in the U.S. is "lack of communication". On the lawyer's side, attorneys, paralegals and legal assistants spend an average of 7.4 hours per week on unnecessary updates, redundant communication, and activities that aren't directly contributing towards getting a client's case solved. Manny and the team at Hona are working to change all of that. Hona delivers a tightly-integrated communications platform to help facilitate better communication between law firms and their clients. During legal proceedings, client communications tend to be a large resource-stressor for law firms. Clients will frequently call firms for case updates, legal explanations, or general administrative questions that tend to eat away at firm resources without providing any additional progress toward case resolution. Hona exists to ease that burden - it’s a platform that allows law firms to efficiently communicate with their clients over text, easily build customizable web pages and embed videos, and share information on case status and basic legal process education. This crucial communication processes allow attorneys to focus on their job – moving cases forward, while keeping their clients informed and educated. If you're a lawyer dealing with these problems - don't hesitate to reach out to us or the Hona team! It's a privilege to work with Hona on this journey. The company has been growing at a rapid pace, and they're delivering meaningful technology to help people get through legal proceedings in a much more fluid, transparent, and easy process. Manny, Joshua, and Matt are exceptional founders whose combined skills and dedication to continuous learning position them perfectly to lead Hona to success. They're just getting started, and we can't wait to see what they'll achieve.

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What makes a top VC firm like FirstMark thrive in the ever-evolving tech landscape? I recently had the pleasure of hosting Rick Heitzmann on our latest episode. Rick is a trailblazer in the VC world, with an impressive portfolio that includes household names like Pinterest, Riot Games, DraftKings, Airbnb, StubHub, and Discord. In this episode, Rick shares his incredible journey from Wall Street to launching FirstMark in NYC almost 20 years ago. We dive deep into his unique investment strategies, the rise of New York as a tech hub, and his thoughts on the future of consumer tech and AI. We also explore the evolution of consumer investing and why FirstMark still believes in it, the impact of AI on SaaS development and deployment, the potential of GLP-1s versus AI in creating economic value and improving quality of life, and the importance of founder grit and resilience in building successful companies. This conversation is packed with insights and wisdom from one of the top VCs in the world. Don’t miss out on Episode 440 of The Full Ratchet.

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Pervasive AI Disruption Knows No Bounds Emerging technologies are now built almost exclusively around the diverse cognitive capabilities of Integrated AI (what I call Multiple Intelligences for Machines). This is creating a world of Pervasive AI, spanning across and uniting the world of both physical and digital. in this world, constantly emerging new products, processes, experiences and ventures create massive increases in productivity, democratization and speed / adaptability / agility. This is how emerging technology can be used to create the kinds of game-changing asymmetries that overturn markets. And those that transform history. https://lnkd.in/dwSbuzwF

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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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#fundingalert 💼Company: Lamini 💰Funding: $25Million ⚡Round: Seed and Series A 👥Investors: AMD VENTURES, LLC, Andrew Ng, Andrej Karpathy, Bernard Arnault, Pierre Lamond, Sarah Guo, Dylan Field, Lip-Bu Tan, Drew Houston, and Amplify Partners, Lamini, the Enterprise AI platform, makes it possible for software teams within enterprises to develop new LLM capabilities that reduce hallucinations on proprietary data, run their LLMs securely from cloud VPCs to on premise, and scale their infrastructure with model evaluatioins that prioritize ROI and business outcomes over hype. With the additional investment, the team will grow faster and pursue deeper technological optimisations, providing corporations with the large-scale strategic assistance they require. Sharon Zhou, PhD, Gregory Diamos, Saksham Consul, Tamir Kedmi, Sharon Zhou, PhD, Collin Weitzman, James W., Nina W. Read more - https://lnkd.in/gVsR3dRi To share your startup story write us on - contact@startuprise.io #Lamini #AI #hallucinations #infrastructure #corporations #optimisations #technological #funding #fundingnews #news #startupnews #startuprise

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The hidden years of inception stage. Founders & LP’s rarely understand that the journey of building a great company can involve up to three years of work before an early stage VC will get involved. h/t Peter Walker for the years from incorporation data from Carta https://lnkd.in/e5fFkvDt #vc #founders #investing Antler

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The conversations around #AI, growing a SaaS business, work, and #VC are complex. Each topic has controversial origins and personal implications about the future. We covered a lot of ground in this podcast, thank you Dan Turchin for spearheading these conversations with an emphasis on ethics!

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Highly recommend this San Francisco study group on the guts of GPT. Run by my friend Paul Steven Conyngham, who's over from Sydney from the duration. Lots of hands-on knowledge to share. Should be a blast! https://lu.ma/yzzespyu "The GPT phenomenon is largely responsible for putting AI on the map. However many Developers & Data Scientists largely do not understand how the technology works on a deep level. ​100% free, for ~2 hours in the evening, every Wednesday at 6pm, over the course of 4 weeks we will be working through Andrej Karpathy's build your own GPT course from scratch as a group. ​The Youtube materials shall act as the “textbook” content that students have to follow. The GPT Study group will however provide the missing techniques used by educational institutions to motivate students to the end of a syllabus including collaboration, tutors!, Guest speakers and many other methods to keep students motivated towards the end of the course material. ​For those looking for a refresh or beginners, we will be going over the fundamentals all the way through to building out your own GPT from first principles."

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Andreessen Horowitz is partnering with NVIDIA to stash more than 20,000 GPUs in order to win more AI startup deals. In other words - A VC is partnering with a vendor to strengthen their deal flow and eventual exits. - A vendor is establishing, through a partner, early relationships with what they hope will be massive customers of the future. This is a classic example of Investor GTM. What I'm most curious to see here is what happens as these companies mature and eventually establish their own relationship with NVIDIA. When will that transition happen? Why? How will it be managed so that it is minimally disruptive? Who of the three teams will manage the transition? Partnerships are a long game. In a way, Investor GTM partnerships can be refreshing since they're also typically thinking on a 5-10 year timeline as they return the fund and beyond. These two are both playing their game, and along the way have found a way to play together. #saas #sales #partnerships #gtm https://lnkd.in/eHu2RBJ2

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🌱 For pre-seed/seed founders 🌱 The early stage vc markets have changed drastically -- but many founders don't truly understand how or how much things have shifted until its too late or they are deep into the fundraising process already. This recent Allocate pod lifts the veil on the pre-seed/seed 2024 markets. SO MANY GEMS are packed 💎 into the first 20 min, I had to listen twice. Key takeaways from pre-seed VCs I'm a big fan of Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures, Kirby Winfield at Ascend (PNW represent!) & Nate Williams. 💎 The market in one word: 'turbulent' 💎 Fundraising bi-furcation; 2X founder building in AI (rounds take weeks) vs All Others (rounds take up to 6 months). 💎 "Leading VCs" (ie. first check in) are putting in a TON of work - building conviction & then helping founders fill the round. 💎 Up to 5 rounds pre-A; need lower early valuations to enable step ups 💎 Pre-seed entry valuations have corrected to $5-8M 💎 Round sizes have increased at pre-seed & seed for extended runway Many more insights in the full pod here: https://lnkd.in/gYf-DMr6 #venturecapital #preseed

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