Nico Christie

Nic Poulos and I wrote an essay for Euclid Ventures, "An Era for Vertical Software." The TL;DR is that vertical SaaS is a distinct, enduring discipline that we believe is poised to dominate the software landscape over the next decade.   "2024 will represent a turning point, perhaps even a new era for venture capital. While the fog feels like it’s lifting, the path forward isn’t yet clear. One includes a soft landing for the US economy and the continuing recovery of software multiples, with ZIRP-era behaviors continuing around hot themes. Another sees a recessionary period in which VC capital inflows remain stagnant and startup funding the year dips below $100B. Either way, a more measured VC market in 2024 is a certainty. For many investors, that will come with a rude awakening as their strategy becomes more difficult to execute or their thesis of choice is negatively impacted by tightening markets.    We see this reversion of the venture ecosystem to its mean as a strong tailwind for Euclid and vertical software. As a category, Vertical SaaS is uniquely well suited to thrive in volatile market conditions and produce fund-returning outcomes. The sections below aim to answer the question: why is vertical software different? Our answer discusses the factors driving the natural market resilience we see in vertical software as a category–resilience that will help them thrive in 2024 and beyond."

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We've mapped the 250 most relevant early-stage startups within the European data ecosystem! 🚀 Our coverage spans categories like Data Collection, Storage, Integration, Security & Privacy, and Platform. Discover how these startups are leveraging AI 🧠, the most active sectors 👩‍💻👨‍💻, and key funding trends 🏦. Don't miss the simple table listing all the companies! 😀 #AI #Europeanstartups #MMCresearch #vcfunding Advika Jalan

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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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Join us! Many thanks to Aptible (and as always to Primary Venture Partners and Engineer Access) for sponsoring our monthly Startup CTOs event series. Tomorrow night we have over 50 series A+ venture backed CTOs and VPEs connecting with and learning from their peers. ​​This month we have a fireside chat with Ariel Pérez, VP Engineering, Measurement and Learning at Split. We'll be discussing how he runs a single large team of 25 with a total of three managers where the team dynamically self organizes around the work to be done and the managers are not necessarily working with their reports on any given project. ​In addition we have a special lightening video interview with Heidi Helfand, author of Dynamic Reteaming who shares a little bit about her experiences and the patterns that can be used to make engineering orgs more resilient to change. We only have a couple of slots left, but if you'd like to attend tomorrow night, apply ASAP - link in the first comment! Or ping me (or comment below) if you'd like to be notified of future events!

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This week on the Mobile Dev Memo podcast: I speak with Mike Taylor about his new book, Prompt Engineering for Generative AI: Future-Proof Inputs for Reliable AI Outputs, as well as the skill gap in performance marketing. Find the episode by searching for "Mobile Dev Memo" wherever you consume podcasts.

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I'm looking forward to speaking at this conference on the confluence of law, tech, advocacy and policy and how new innovation centers like the Berkeley Space Center can reinvent the way we tackle hard problems. Berkeley Center for Law and Business, #gobears

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In this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with notable X personality Trung Phan about the evolving social media landscape, and how to tame the mayhem and pandemonium of X. https://lnkd.in/dVHMzbui

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For NY Tech Week we'll be demo-ing Substrate at the South Park Commons Science Faire on Thursday: https://lnkd.in/e5JwDKKX There are so many incubator-shaped things out there these days, but there's nothing quite like SPC. It's like a chill, small-batch, locally-sourced alternative to YC, where you can either hang out as a member forever - or choose the VC-funded adventure. The -1 to 0 phase [0] they talk about at SPC is real, and it made a real difference for us to have a home at SPC. It takes a lot to quit your job and do something new, especially when it isn't entirely clear what you're doing. (1) Do it – take the leap! and (2) consider joining SPC. Though the core vision has remained the same, many of the important turns in our squiggle at Substrate (including the graph framework) came from those early days at SPC. If you're here for tech week and can't catch us at SPC on Thursday, DM me if you want to meet up! [0] https://lnkd.in/e6KEMr9V

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Wonderful article about Emily Knight and the whole The Engine Accelerator team on the amazing work their doing changing the world with #ToughTech!

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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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Building and supporting companies within the #VentureStudio model puts our team in direct communication with a lot of #founders. This is among my favorite things about working at the 9point8 Collective. After a handful of calls with early-stage founders today, I began to think about the things I appreciate about them. The list includes more than the three qualities I’ve listed below, but these ones really stand out to me: ↗ Optimism. It's a hard world, y'all. Founders see challenges as opportunity. What an awesome quality in a human being. It makes me want to be around them. 💪 Grit. Nothing worth accomplishing comes easily. Founders get this. They accept that failure is on the critical path to success and they push through it. 🏃‍♀️ Hustle. With scarce resources, founders create lasting value, fast. They put superhuman effort forward to make that happen, building a vision into reality. It’s inspiring. Venture Studios celebrate all of the above and provide critical support to #startups and their leaders - when they need it the absolute most. This is a big part of why I love the model - and my job - so much. What qualities do you admire in founders and #entrepreneurs? Neal Ghosh Blair Merlino Evan Allen

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Nice overview of how we're using data to inform how we invest in early-stage founders. We'll be announcing more this summer but we're seeing some really interesting early data. https://lnkd.in/exU_Juf5

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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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Once you’re in it, you’re in it. #Startup #founders don’t just take financial risk - they invest years of their lives. For many, it’s absolutely worth it. To me, the first task is the most important one: to define your target and make absolutely sure it’s one worth that level of investment.

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To build a multi-agent system, start simple, validate your design, then gradually scale. When I spoke to Chi Wang, the creator of AutoGen, he explained why. Deploying one or two agents at first allows builders to evaluate and refine the core design and interaction patterns before introducing additional complexity. This method also streamlines debugging and optimization because it makes it easier to trace issues back to specific agents. Our full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gEKmExu4

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Non-Engineering Roles at Early-Stage Startups Offering $120K+ Base Salary with Meaningful Bonus and Equity: Chief of Staff @ Milo (Consumer), Remote Biz Ops Lead @ Fractal Agriculture (FinTech), Remote; Backed by Virta Ventures Chief of Staff @ CakeAI (AI SaaS), NY; Backed by Primary Venture Partners Demand Generation Specialist @ Rootly (Consumer), Remote; Backed by YC, 8VC, Gradient Ventures Account Executive @ CommandBar (Enterprise SaaS), Remote; Backed by Soma Capital, YC, Insight Partners Product Marketing @ Slope (Enterprise), Remote; Backed by YC, Union Square Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures Supply Planning Manager @ PROVEN Skincare (Consumer), Remote; Backed by YC, FJ Labs, Soma Capital, Social Capital Account Executive @ Accrue Savings (Consumer), NY; Backed by Ground Up Ventures, Tiger Global Chief of Staff @ UNIGRID Battery (Climate), CA; Backed by Union Square Ventures, LiquidMetal Ventures Job details and the full list (40+ opportunities) are in the comments below. If you're interested in non-tech jobs focused on specific industries like HardTech, HealthTech, Climate, etc., then DM me or let me know in the comments.

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Super helpful #Startup #Equity Calculator to determine the equity for early hires, thanks to Pear VC head of talent Matt Birnbaum! Thanks for sharing Pejman! 🙏🏼 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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Excited to share our 0-1 #DevGTM Playbook for early-stage technical founders building developer tools and infrastructure! We at Speciale Invest had the privilege of working closely with many brilliant technical founders and evaluating many Devtools/Infra Cos. During our in-depth discussions, we discovered a recurring obstacle that many of these technical founders face: despite identifying problem statements and developing cutting-edge technology but crafting a clear and effective GTM strategy often proves to be a significant challenge. Recognizing this gap, we set out to create a comprehensive playbook tailored for early-stage technical builder/founders in their 0-1 journey. My colleague Aryan Pareek and I have spoken to over 50+ #DevTool founders, GTM experts, and #developers from companies like Amnic, Appsmith, DhiWise, Dyte, Esper,Hashnode,Hivel,Keploy 🐰, LambdaTest, Neverinstall, Portkey, Reo.Dev, Requestly (YC W22), ToolJet, Tailcall, Typo, Unstract , videosdk.live, Zenduty and many more. And we consolidated the best examples and learnings into our playbook. We dive deep into various aspects of #developer GTM, including defining your ICP, buyer journeys, messaging for developers, #SEO, content strategy, and more - all tailored for dev founders. Check out the playbook here: https://lnkd.in/g425vuqy Huge thanks to all the #devfounders and #GTMExperts who shared their invaluable insights and experiences with us. Special shoutout to Dev founders and all the amazing developers and GTM experts who gave us their valuable time. 🙏 📣 Special Creds to the devfounders who helped us with this: Sachin Jain Achintya Gupta Navaneeth Padanna Kalathil Vishal Virani Anirudh Murali Shiv Sundar Kshitij Mohan Sudheer Bandaru Venkatesh Radhakrishnan Harini Janakiraman Arjun Kava Narendran Hariparanthaman Sidhant Goyal Madhukar Kumar and many more.... (lol - I've exceeded the maximum mention limit) Special thanks to Freshboost for assisting us with SEO strategies. *Please tag technical founders/builders who would find this useful, and feel free to share your feedback with us over DM* P.S.: It's still a work in progress, and we'd love to hear from more technical founders about your experiences and challenges about your GTM journey. Your feedback will be invaluable in making this resource even better for the broader dev ecosystem. Arjun Rao Vishesh Rajaram #TheDeepTechVC — Build from India for the World

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