Ronke Oyekunle

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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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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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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Small investors like family offices and high-net-worth individuals are finding creative ways to get exposure to coveted AI startups, like Anthropic, Groq, OpenAI, and Elon Musk's xAI, by investing through special purpose vehicles (SPVs). SPVs allow investors to pool capital from multiple backers and buy shares being sold by existing VC backers. SPVs often come with high fees and limited transparency, with sponsors typically charging up to 2% upfront fees and 20% carried interest on profits for recent AI startup deals. There are even cases of SPVs being formed on top of other SPVs, with additional fees layered on. The FTX bankruptcy triggered a flood of Anthropic shares that brokers scooped up and resold via SPVs. With buzzy startups like xAI keeping funding rounds open for weeks, more SPV investors piled in as valuations climbed from initial targets. Per a Business Insider report, small investors participating in xAI’s recent $6B funding round had to contend with a 5% upfront fee in addition to management fees and carried interest. xAI initially planned to raise $3B on a pre-money valuation of $15B, but increased the round size to $6B at a pre-money valuation of $18B to account for the higher demand from investors.

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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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We believe in extreme vetting of our founders. You can't build a unicorn if you spend time on silly stuff, like seeing family and friends. Grow up, and focus on investor returns. #vc #startups #investment

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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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The Council's first SPV of 2024 is down in the books and oversubscribed. Running SPVs where we have pro rata or extra allocation in fund deals is a muscle we are building pretty late in the game as a firm. As a solo GP with a tiny team, it's crippling to think of the extra work required and risk of not meeting platform minimums to run an SPV. But 7 of our port co's have recently raised follow on funding where we had pro rata. These are awesome deals for our LPs, angel members, and syndicate community. We simply can't afford to let them slip through the cracks. These allocations are only becoming more valuable as our firm grows, so we must start NOW! Proud to say this one went off without a hitch and our syndicate community is small but THRIVING. Wish us luck as we keep building. Note our SPVs are now on Sydecar. The best way to get access is to know someone on The Council Fund team and be on our SPV email list. **What's an SPV?** An SPV is a Special Purpose Vehicle. It allows multiple angel investors to pool together into one larger investment into a company. This helps the founder keep paperwork and investor relations to a minimum (less names on the cap table = simplicity!). When people say they're investing with a "syndicate" or they are "syndicating a deal," SPV is the entity and process by which they do that. A "syndicate" is like a community of people that invest via SPVs together.

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I get asked a couple of the same questions over and over again ("how do I break into VC?", "what start-ups should I target with my job search?", "how do I make the transition from consulting into tech/product management"). Here's my attempt to summarize my answers (and I'm quite happy to add other people's thoughts to these answers as well). https://lnkd.in/e2qysZrB

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As we dive into 2024, the Series A fundraising landscape is becoming increasingly daunting. Investment standards are soaring, and fewer startups are making the cut. Series A investors are finding many seed stage companies too premature. The median valuation jump from seed to Series A skyrocketed from $19.5 million in Q1 2022 to $28.7 million in Q1 2024. Investors now demand stronger revenue performance, targeting $2 million to $3 million in ARR, up from $1 million to $2 million. Alarmingly, only 12% of Q1 2022 seed startups secured Series A funding within two years, down from 31.8% in Q1 2020. #venture #earlystage #seedtoseriesa #seed #seriesa #inspireglobalventures https://lnkd.in/gW4bkcNy

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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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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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We announced the NYU Tandon Future Labs Catalyst NYC 2024 cohort! 15 pre-seed startups will join the program after intensive 2 weeks of interviewing over 50 companies. A few things that I've learned during the interviewing process: 👉 In-person makes the difference - we conducted most of the interviews in person. Seeing the team dynamic, being able to show the space, and having those small talks that will not always happen on Zoom, really makes the difference.  👉 Is it all about money? As I don’t think that money should be the first motivation to build a startup, not caring about money is a red flag. Building a successful for-profit company that will financially benefit the founders should be a goal to be motivated by.  👉 It takes a village - I appreciate founders who know the limitations of their skills, know what help they need, and appreciate learning about help that they don’t know that they need. I can not wait to start the program and work with so many great founders!

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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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Being a VC comes with myriad challenges, but it’s a privilege to be able to partner with promising entrepreneurs and deploy significant capital that can materially help their businesses grow. With that privilege, it’s imperative that we don’t lose the plot. We must stay grounded and seek to use capital to elevate companies that will make our world better. We must be patient. We must reevaluate what success looks like and consider whether every investment needs a 10x return. And to be true stewards of our beautiful home, we must balance planet and profits. Read more of my reflections in our May newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eNB34ujT

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I’ve aggregated a list of 50+ VC roles in one spreadsheet. It’s updated weekly and can be filtered by location, position, firm, etc. Check out the latest list here (as of June 24th) 👇 https://lnkd.in/dRC3XtjS Tag someone who needs this in the comments 💭 — Want a quick snapshot? Here are a few of my favorite postings: Associate, M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund Link: https://lnkd.in/eNFaaSBy Associate & Principal, Wischoff Ventures Link: https://lnkd.in/gu6Mun7p Consumer Investor, Stripes Link: https://lnkd.in/eZdRk6jV Venture Lead, Struck Studio Link: https://lnkd.in/exGcNHJ5 New Ventures Associate, Live Nation Entertainment Link: https://lnkd.in/e3mBYGCt — I’m creating more tools, guides, and other free resources for Junior VCs to (1) 2x their network and (2) carve their path to partner. If you found this helpful, check out the Venture House website for more 👇 https://venturehouse.xyz/ #venturecapital #startup #recruiting #hiring

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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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Preqin shared a great primer on VC & PE funds raising over the past decade (a different perspective vs 'dollars deployed' Download here (must be a preqin subscriber): https://lnkd.in/g26sHH5q

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Starting to feel that the Series A/B markets are warming up. Over the past year+, most founders preferred to avoid a distracting and lengthy Series A process in a slow market. Instead, they often raised a quick seed+ round, and focused on building and growing past the usual Series A metrics. Recently, we've seen some startups close quick/oversubscribed Series A/B rounds, and more founders are considering raising now. It's still closer to anecdotal than robust data, but we'd be among the first to notice at Pioneer Fund, with our large portfolio of strong YC startups. I plan to post here again if the trend continues or not.

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