Brittany Kay Eden

Let the wave begin! Pioneer Fund company Recall.ai *grew their revenue 10x* in the past year, has 300 enterprise customers, and just raised a $10M Series A led by Ridge Ventures. David Gu and Amanda Zhu dropped out of college at age 19 to start the company. They've grown it exponentially with a tiny team. They make it easy to build meeting bots that are cross-platform. They're aggregating all these different APIs into one unified API, the way Twilio did with cell phones. At first it "sounds" easy to build a meeting bot -- just integrate with the Zoom API. But in fact there's a huge long tail of things you need to build, security and privacy pitfalls, automations, transcription complexities, integrations, the calendar invites where someone is using Google Meet or Teams, staying up-to-date with the libraries, etc etc. Recall takes care of all of that. It's WAY easier to build on top of Recall.ai and focus on the features that make you unique. Congratulations to the Recall team!

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What I appreciate most about how we designed the SMArtX Advisory Solutions platform is that we provide software to Turnkey Asset Management Programs as a FinTech, but we prove out every piece of our technology platform by using it to run a TAMP and servicing advisors ourselves. In tech this is called "Eating your own dogfood" or simply "dogfooding". Wikipedia says: "Eating your own dog food or "dogfooding" is the practice of using one's own products or services. Hence dogfooding can act as quality control, and eventually a kind of testimonial advertising. Once in the market, dogfooding can demonstrate developers' confidence in their own products." No matter how you cut it, whether we are servicing them directly or through our enterprise clients; the end consumer is the advisor. And servicing them through an "out-of-the-box" TAMP gives us the unique opportunity to hear the clients needs directly and hone our product and make it a better experience for everyone using it. So let's be both a TAMP and a FinTech while we sing along with Dierks Bentley and agree that SMArtX is "little bit of holy water, but still a little bit burning man"

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Earlier this month, PitchBook reported that "13 percent of venture GPs don't plan to raise another fund as the LP pullback spoils fundraising efforts, according to PitchBook's semiannual VC Tech Survey. That's double the rate in H1 2023, when 6 percent said they had no plans to raise another fund. Ultimately, this is good for startups in the long term, because it ends a 10-to-20-year cycle of cheap money propping up a system that hasn't placed innovation at the forefront of its thesis in a long time." https://lnkd.in/ekYdEJYe #inc #entreprenuership #venture #venturecapital #techinnovation #technology #startups #startup

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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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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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🗞️ The biggest DAP solution just got acquired for $1.5 Billion in cash 💰 Here's the full breakdown and implications: WalkMe, founded 13 years ago in Israel, coined the term "Digital Adoption Platforms" 🫣 and helped create the category that Chameleon operates in. The original problem WalkMe was looking to solve: more efficient employee training for internal applications/tools (such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, SuccessFactors etc.) WalkMe focussed on serving the enterprise, and customers include Nestle, IBM, US DoD. In 2021 WalkMe went public (WKME on Nasdaq) raising $300M and peaking in the public markets at a $2.8B valuation. Most recently it's market cap was ~$900M. SAP is a massive German-based software company with a market cap of $220B that acquired WalkMe. It offers both software and services (e.g. to help enterprises undertake digital transformations). It's CEO said: "By acquiring WalkMe, we are doubling down on the support we provide our end users, helping them to quickly adopt new solutions and features to get the maximum value out of their IT investments." 📌 What does all this mean for Chameleon? 🧳 It's another milestone in the development of the category; seeing one of the biggest software companies (SAP) dive into this raises awareness of the whole category 💸 Although it was trading at a ~4x multiple (value:revenue) the acquisition is at 6x, demonstrating that the market perceives great value (and future value) in this technology ⚔️ Cements WalkMe's use case: employee training for internal applications. The new breed of DAP solutions (like Chameleon) typically focus on end-user engagement... the acquisition should mean a clearer divergence between these use cases and more clarity on the best solution for each. 🚤 We can continue to innovate at speed while competitors (WalkMe, and also Userflow) have to invest time/energy being absorbed into their acquirers, and shift strategy and focus to better align with their parent companies 👌

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Three lessons from building and launching a P2P payments app without doing the proper customer validation first (despite knowing better): 1) Building something you need is a great starting point - but not enough to validate an idea. As someone drawn to building solutions, I’m an early tech adopter. This led me to overestimate consumers’ willingness to onboard, especially with a P2P payments app that requires KYC/KYB compliance and relies on a network effect to be useful. 2) Manual solutions are often best to start with It’s good business to be in business - transitioning from ideating to operating as early as possible is the BEST way to learn effectively. While the move fast and break things mindset has attracted well-deserved skepticism, getting stuck in a multi-year build trap distracted me from critical real-world validation. 3) Consumer appetite shifts quickly In my case, the proliferation of free and instant P2P payment options like Zelle added additional pricing pressure that I couldn’t compete with. This disincentivized the consumer event/payment collection market, turning my bottom-up go-to-market strategy upside down. Pitch (https://www.pitch.fun) is currently on the back burner as I’ve begun building custom solutions in various industries to sharpen my skills, solve specific problems, gain a hands-on understanding of operations, pain points, and workflows, and build a network of experts to lean on as I keep my eyes peeled for high-impact opportunities.

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Rob's goals and progress on contactout and athena.vc 22nd July 2024 Last week: Monday - meetings Tuesday: QA pricing plans, admin,sign and mail company docs, pay capital call community moderation. Wednesday - Talk with deeptech founders, connect with influencers from alex brogan interviewRead about fusion, longevity and sam altman, peter theil investments Thursday - Read about helion, world coin, other sam altman investments. read btc and eth whitepapers, rain ai , lob, cocorobotics, running tide, hermes, boom Friday - Read fcp docs, eth whitepapers, sam altman peter thiel investments. What did I learn: https://lnkd.in/g3D8__Q2 what are the highest impact industries and technologies? study what top investors like sam altman and peter thiel have invested in: https://lnkd.in/gFeutEcM https://lnkd.in/g_ErBh7k lots of stuff from nuclear fusion, to longevity, to a better GPU than nvidia, universal basic income, growing seaweed to capture carbon, building the next google. https://lnkd.in/gYGjbEF2 should we start on researching how to build a better google especially google scholar for scientists: study futurehouse.org and similar and lots of scientists and deeptech founders about problems they face Jessicia Livingston's started a new podcast "Social Radar" interviewing YC founders. Her old book founders at work is really good too. The old YC content from PG, Sam, Jessica is way better than the current YC content. Going through all the startup school interviews from 2012, 2014, 2016 way better speakers. Next week: continue reading YC content write up founders curriculum

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Did you know that 68% of small businesses report having cash flow problems, and many small businesses rely on the owner's personal funds to stay afloat? Relay exists to solve this and the best part is it's actually working! Which makes this announcement even sweeter: We raised a USD $32.2 million Series B round. What does this mean? - More spend management tools to improve financial visibility - More products to give small business owners flexibility - More integrations to streamline operations - And ultimately more businesses making better and smarter financial decisions Exciting times ahead! PS We're hiring: https://lnkd.in/gMT2mN25

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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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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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Winning early GTM via founder led sales is an essential step in building a consequential start up. 🎯 But, while there are countless conferences focused on scaling GTM once you've hit a couple million in revenue, to date there hasn't been a conference focused on FOUNDER LED SALES and nailing the earliest days of GTM. 👀 😅 That ends now. 🙌 Pear VC has helped 100+ founders learn how to sell, how to build their 0-to-1 sales engine, how to get from $0 ARR to $1M ARR -- and now we're introducing the first ever GTM CONFERENCE for EARLY STAGE FOUNDERS. ⭐ "Zero to $1M: Winning Early GTM" will be held in San Francisco, CA this September 5th! ⭐ If you're at the idea 💡, pre-seed 🌰 , or seed stage 🌱 , this is the GTM conference for YOU. Come hear from Pear veterans, industry leaders, and successful repeat founders like Sanjit Biswas (Samsara and Cisco Meraki Co-founder and CEO), and leave with actionable guidance to supercharge your startup’s revenue from day 1. ​ ➡ APPLY NOW! Space is limited, and the early application deadline is July 15th. Pepe Agell and I will review applications on a rolling basis. 🚀 CANNOT WAIT TO SEE YOU THERE! 🚀 #earlystageGTM #zeroto1M #founderledsales

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Last week at Stripe Sessions, we at OMERS Ventures, in partnership with Recall Capital and Gusto Embedded, hosted a few founders, builders and investors to chat about current and future trends in embedded fintech and vertical software. A few of my big takeaways from the evening: 🤖 A lot of us on the media and content side see AI as an existential threat, but many of those on the SMB and entrepreneur side actually view it as a solution to the 'cold-start' problem of 'wtf do I actually put on my website?' when they sign up for a Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, whatever and have to actually populate a customer-facing surface for the first time 🥞 Point solutions are increasingly losing out to full-stack offerings, even in vertical markets where requirements up and down the stack are unique. Everyone building a point solution is looking at how and when to expand. I think the differentiator will be in what the starting line was and how that cascades through the company's DNA as it adds additional features and capabilities. 👩‍💻 Technical integration of embedded solutions remains a complex and frictionful process, even for so-called 'two lines of code' 'simple' plug-ins (they end up not being this when they encounter complicated, aging legacy codebases). Is this a place for AI to excel – can agents handle heavy lift codebase stitch-ins without the time and effort it takes devs on either or both sides now? All in all a fantastic evening with great discussions and a terrific panel hosted by Somrat Niyogi! Thanks to Fred (Fady) Helou, Elizabeth Olveda, Charity Hudnall, Jackson Reynolds, Jeremy Butteriss, Lucy Wang, Isabelle Cole, Sarah Tierney Niyogi, Matt Bocci, Yi Liu, Yanett Burgueño and many more for provoking the above thoughts and many more!

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One of the most significant programs I am honored to take part of as Head of Emerging Markets is our EMEA Black Founders Fund. At Google for Startups, our mission is to level the playing field for founders from all walks of life. Established in 2020, the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund has awarded more than $38 million of non-dilutive funding to help Black-led startups, in addition to support across Google orgs. Following three successful years of the Black Founders Fund in Europe and Africa, we conducted a comprehensive data-driven analysis of the program's impact, in partnership with Notion Capital. Our report examines the broader landscape of Black entrepreneurship in these regions and compares the performance of Black Founders Fund startups to their non-participating peers. Key results: 🏆 Follow-on funding from African Cohorts reached 262 M from an initial $9m. This represents a 29x increase. 🏆4,000 employees, increased from 1,050 in 2021 - nearly 4x since the fund commenced. 🏆 Black Founders Fund companies are outperforming non-Google-backed startups by 61%, growing faster over a three-year period than peers at the same growth stage. What else we learned: 👉 Significant Growth The African tech ecosystem is now valued at $482.7B, while Europe’s tech ecosystem stands at an impressive $20.7T. 👉 Investment Gaps Shockingly, only 0.51% of tech investment in Europe and Africa since 2000 has gone to Black-led businesses. 👉 BFF Impact Our fund has supported 220 startups in Africa and Europe with non-dilutive cash awards and mentorship, creating a vibrant and supportive community. So what’s next? ✅ Policy Advocacy We’re working with policymakers to promote diversity and dismantle systemic barriers. ✅ Investor Education By educating investors about the unique challenges faced by underrepresented founders, we can foster a more inclusive investment landscape. ✅ Community Building Strengthening mentorship programs helps create a collaborative ecosystem where Black founders can thrive. ✅ Data Transparency Enhancing data collection on diversity metrics ensures informed decision-making and greater transparency. We’re committed to driving change and building an inclusive tech landscape. The journey continues, and with your support, we can create a world where every founder has an equal opportunity to succeed. Thank you to Mariama Boumanjal, Marta Mozes, Doriel Shilo, and Benjamin N'gonga for your hard work on this project 🙌 To get the full report, see the link in the comments below. What do you think about these results? #BFF #GoogleforStartups Matt Brittin | Noah Samuels | Eileen Mannion | Doron Avni |

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As a B2B SaaS VC 👩‍💻 and a huge data nerd 🤓, fewer things bring me more joy than a truly statistically significant analysis (600+ companies surveyed) of B2B SaaS metrics across early stage companies. Great work by our team at Emergence Capital! See comments for full report, and please let us know how we can make this better in the future!

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Bessemer Venture Partners General Partner Jeremy Levine is your favorite VCs, favorite VC.. one of the most respected and successful venture capitalists over the last 2 decades. Jeremy has thrived through many eras, taking risks on now-iconic companies like LinkedIn, Shopify, Yelp, Pinterest, and more. In our discussion, Jeremy shared stories behind these investments and the mindsets he’s developed along the way. The conversation turned out to be one of my longest and most in-depth to date on the venture industry, an ultimate discussion for anyone that wants to nerd out on venture capital with us. A few takeaways: → Does price actually matter? Jeremy’s POV: “The idea price doesn't matter and that it's binary is just wildly flawed and lazy thinking. I think it's just dead wrong.” Jeremy avoids feeling FOMO, and instead convinces himself he has JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out), as we all love to avoid wasting time on things that you weren’t actually going to follow through with. → Why Jeremy hates investment memo templates Using templates for investment memos stifles deep, first-principle thinking. Instead of crafting a unique investment story, you’re doing busy work completing a form. While most of the memo can follow a structure, the first page should always be written from scratch. Templates can standardize discussions unfairly, emphasizing the same aspects for every company, regardless if their stand out value is their tech/market/product/etc. Instead, ask yourself “what is the most important thing?” and start from there. → Bessemer’s voting system for investment decisions For every investment decision, team member’s vote on how confident they feel in an investment from 1-10. It serves 2 purposes… Team feedback: as the lead partner on a decision, getting feedback can help you make a better decision (of which you will be celebrated or blamed for). Numeric ratings help clarify the discussion, as a 10 indicates more concrete approval than just saying "I love it," while a 6 provides grounds to discuss specific pros and cons. Keeps you honest: The voting process helps minimize hindsight bias by documenting your true confidence level at the time, allowing for a more objective review of your decision later on. Funny enough, some of Jeremy’s best investments got very weak votes, and we talk through these in the full episode. We also explored how the VC landscape has evolved over the last 20 years and where the industry may head next. Plus, lots of insights from Jeremy’s journey into VC, along with foundational advice and principles that anyone aspiring to succeed in the industry may find valuable: https://lnkd.in/d5kNFtKc

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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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🚨 Startup friends - If you bank with Evolve through one of their fintech partners (such as Mercury or Stripe Treasury), take some steps now to try to protect your identity. If you aren't sure if you bank with Evolve, you can confirm by looking at your wire details in your account. I recommend: 1. Setting up credit freezes with each of the major bureaus 2. Signing up for an identity protection and credit monitoring service, such as Lifelock (especially if you aren't able or willing to do #1) 3. Be hyper vigilant for phishing attacks 4. Change your passwords with the fintech partners (while allegedly credentials were not leaked, I say better safe than sorry) Lastly, consider diversifying your financial stack (happy to chat about this with folks, just DM me). From SVB last spring, to Synapse's collapse, to this - there's always something.

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