Raymond Zhuang

Couple of weeks ago had the pleasure of sharing my story to Alexander Benkendorf about starting CastPrint and later moving on to join Verge HealthTech Fund and the learning along the way. Some topics we discussed: 💡What does it take to bring innvation in healthcare 💡How did my startup background help me better prepare for VC work 💡How founders can better engage with VCs and what are the tips and tricks from the "other side" Thanks Alexander for having me!

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🤝 Iterative Cofounder Matching - What to look for in a co-founder? In the 2 weeks since we launched the co-founder matching platform, we've matched 40 people. After seeing what people are looking for in their co-founders, I have 3 observations. 💡You Don’t Need An Idea to Meet Co-Founders I noticed 90% of users on the platform already have some sort of start up idea. This made me wonder whether aspiring founders without an idea are hesitant to meet co-founders. I think this could be because many people attach too much importance to the idea. In my opinion, you should meet potential co-founders even if you don't have any ideas because 1) You'll meet other people with ideas. (90% of our user base, for example) 2) The idea will change, almost always. The problem and co-founder fit, are more important. 💪 Value Compatibility As Much As Skills 70% of first time founders were looking for specific expertise or skills in their co-founder. On the other hand, 100% of second time founders equally prioritised motivations (and a sense of humour). As an ex-founder, I understand why. More often than not, co-founder breakups happen because of motivation misalignment, lack of communication or misaligned working styles. It’s easier to stay resilient with a co-founder who has a sense of humour - and laugh through the extremely tough times. 👨‍🔧 Non-Technical vs Technical Co-founders 85% of the non-technical folks prefer a technical founder. More interestingly, 30% of technical founders also prefer a technical cofounder. I think people might be placing too much value on technical experience at the idea stage. For non-technical people, my suggestion is to build a basic MVP to validate your idea first. Learn no-code tools like Bubble/Flutterflow if you have to. Once you validate - you’ll also have a clearer, more convincing pitch to your potential co-founder. For technical people, my advise is to prioritise co-founders who are obsessed about the problem, rather than the solution. Want to learn more about how to choose co-founders? We’re hosting an event tomorrow, where Hsu Ken Ooi will talk about what to look for in a co-founder (and what to avoid). 📅 Date: Tuesday 14 May 2024 🕒 Time: 6:30-9:00pm 📍 Singapore – Register for location details. Look for the 📌 in the comments to register

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If I was to do a monthly podcast epiosde segment called This Month in VC 1) Who should I invite as a guest for this segment? 2) Any VC's who would be down to come on and share their stories + insights on this? Basically recapping what happened in that month in VC - It would be an under 30 minute discussion - Recorded remotely using Zoom, Riverside DM me or reply to this if interested Inspired by Harry Stebbings This Week in SaaS to try out a different format

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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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The above is all true, and I'd like to add a really important point. In the Bay Area, I observed that startups collaborate, partner, meet, etc - all in the spirit of the best possible user experience as an end in itself. The startups work together more. It's easy to get a meeting, you can basically show up to someone's office, just walk in, and you're welcomed. Founders work on "cool" experiences or tech first, and worry about financials second. In NYC I found the reverse to be true. It's harder to get a meeting with a founder. When you get one, it's like going to the dentist; the EA schedules a meeting with you 6 weeks in advance, upon arriving you sit in lobby and you wait until you are called. The meeting is transactional, a "novel" user experience or excitement around a technical breakthrough is rarely a main topic. It's much more transactional. This isn't a criticism in any way, it's just an observation that I believe explains why there are less household tech names coming out of NYC. Because if you look at the household tech names in the world - they always put the user first.

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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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So much of VC recruiting is just about being seen. Let’s get aspiring VCs noticed 🌟 Along with posting open VC roles every Wednesday, I like to have posts where aspiring VCs make themselves known to VCs looking to hire. I’ve done this a handful of times and IT WORKS! Many aspiring VCs have been contacted by firms just from commenting their info. Lets do it again! Leave a comment: 👤 Name 📍 Location 💼 Desired role 📊 Stage focus 🔍 Industry focus #venturecapital #startup #recruiting #hiring

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Seed VCs are turning to new ‘pro rata’ funds that help them compete with the big firms Alpha Partners, SignalRank and now SaaS Ventures help seed VCs pay for shares when big VCs try to price — or push — them out Lee Edwards, partner at Root VC, has a saying at his firm that “pro rata rights are earned, not given.” That may be a bit of a stretch since pro rata refers to a term that VCs put in their term sheets that gives them the right to buy more shares in a portfolio company during consequent funding rounds to maintain an ownership percentage and avoid dilution. Still, while these rights are not exactly “earned,” they can be expensive. One of the latest trends in VC investing these days are funds dedicated to helping seed VCs exercise their pro rata rights. https://lnkd.in/dRM3RvdA By Christine Hall

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One of the things that worries me the most about 2021-era AI startups is precisely this: early-stage burn rate. Burn rate applies not only to dollar amounts but equity as well. Raises ultimately have to tie to revenue at the very least, so even if the first stage VC went starry-eyed, it doesn't mean the second stage will. I suppose it's just the Great Filter of AI, but here's to the prudent leaders!

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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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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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Messy cap tables could cause problems for fundraising. Sometimes we meet founders who gave up 50-80% of the company during pre-seed and seed rounds. This typically signals to VCs that the team has a lower motivation to run a startup and may prefer to exit earlier. This in turn will result in lower returns on investment. Of course, it’s not the end of the world and there are ways to fix that, but VCs and founders will need to put efforts and time to renegotiate with current investors. Many external VCs will prefer to pass on the investment opportunity. Keep this in mind when you raise your early-stage funding. For more details, please refer to the article by Haje Kamps: https://lnkd.in/dxSPdtft

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Interesting new surrvey about the VC industry by PitchBook: 13% of VC firms are not planning to raise a new fund and 27% of VC firms have been pushed further thier plans to raise a new fund. That means a 40% decline. No wonder that startups are haveing tough time to raise funds. See article below. https://lnkd.in/exYYyCPu

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Congratulations to Roland Reynolds and the team at Industry Ventures on the raise of its latest $900M hybrid fund (split three ways, 40% backing VC funds, 40% directly investing in promising Series B startups from their existing partnerships, and 20% acquiring stakes in emerging investment firms from other LPs looking to exit). Read more from Marina Temkin, CFA at TechCrunch below. #VC #venturecapital #fundraising #startups #investing #news #technews #startupnews

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Founders raising for the first time? This is an awesome guide. 👀⤵️ All credits to Brian Ortiz 👏🏽 #firstdegree #founders #investors
#alwaysbelearning #sharingiscaring #changethewaywework

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Impactful Biz, Ops & Investment Roles at Early Startups & VCs: • Chief of Staff to Ex. Head of Product at Google • Founding GTM at the most YC product used by other YC companies in the past four years • Chief of Staff to a Partner at a Top-Tier VC Fund • Head of Platform of a NY State Backed Accelerator • Investment Associate at a Seed Stage Fund Investing in Category-Defining Companies • Partner at a Defense-Focused VC Fund • Chief Revenue Officer of a New Space Company in El Segundo • Venture Capital Analyst at a fund investing in overlooked geographies • Investment Associate at a Spirit-Focused Fund • Strategy & Ops Lead at a Company Focused on Helping Improve Autism • Senior Product Manager at a Company Focused on Building Shopify for Content Creators • Program Manager for a Space Security Company • Open-ended Investment Position at a Top-Tier Accelerator • Biz & Ops Lead for One of the Most Loved Digital Consumer Products 💸 All companies are well-funded and backed by top-tier investors. ⬇ You can find links to the roles above, plus many more, in the comments.

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On this week's Andreessen Horowitz Raising Health podcast, Vijay Pande, PhD and I interviewed Tom Hale, CEO of ŌURA. Our conversation spans lots of fun topics, including: -- Our love for our Oura rings, despite them being literal “buzz kills” in revealing the ruinous effect of alcohol on sleep  -- How the worlds of consumer and healthcare are merging, as consumers essentially now have access to clinical-grade wearable devices  -- How AI algorithms are deployed in wearable devices & what wearables might look like 20 years from now (implanted into our bodies and clothes)  -- How the sexiest people sleep in earplugs and eye masks Check it out! https://lnkd.in/eTAsX_sY

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To all the founders in my network, I highly recommend applying to @Focal’s S24 demo day. It's a great way to get in front of VCs if you are raising a Seed-Series A round. The SidebySide Partnership has invested in two great companies from the last two demo days, Honest Mobile & Slip. ---- 📣 @Focal powered by @HSBC Innovation Banking*, is back!* 🚨 Applications for @Focal’s S24 demo day are open to startups raising in the next 6 months. It takes 7 minutes to apply at gofocal.vc, and even those who don’t make it to demo day can get introductions to over 250 leading VC fund partners, including The SidebySide Partnership. Last demo day alone, applicants received over 1600 introductions from investors; it's one of the highest leverage activities you can do for your fundraise. #focal #startup #fundraising #vc #demoday

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