Fredrik Bergenlid

🔥Hot topic - is AI good or bad for climate change? Great convo at Sifted Summit today with Andreas Brenner at Jua.ai, Raphael Güller at SWEEP , Zoe Balmforth at Pivotal Future and Dominic Vergine at Monumo The answer is…both. Lots of concern around the near term consumption spikes. But lots of optimism around how AI can unlock step change solutions across material design, weather forecasting and risk, biodiversity conservation and more. Ultimately AI increases the urgency to increase renewable and clean energy capacity. Demand isn’t going away…we need more energy to unblock the generational breakthroughs.

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The latest update from the research team at Primal Capital explains the importance of wallets in the Web3 ecosystem and highlights the evolution of solutions in the market today. These solutions provide greater utility compared to the original Web3 wallets, which was simply to safeguard assets from centralized platforms.

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I rarely write about one particular token, but given the volume of requests for our thesis on Stacks STX, especially after the recent announcement https://lnkd.in/gWpkm-iu, I’m consolidating my thoughts here in one place. Hope this is helpful to those seeking to understand the STX ecosystem and the reasons behind our conviction. Full thesis here: https://lnkd.in/g2JGahpZ TLDR 1. It's the OG blue-chip crypto project. 2. It's the first compliant token: a key driver for institutional adoption is to use STX as the de facto BTC staking provider. 3. The most optimal return on risk for real “whales” to generate yield on BTC with peace of mind. 4. The undisputed forerunner in bitcoin L2 with 10 years of first-mover advantage. 5. It has a rare token standard moat. 6. Its ecosystem moat: 155 monthly actively developers + 60+ projects adopting its token standard 7. It's vastly being undervalued at the moment based on comparables in ethereum. 8. Tokenomics and token maturity: 100% vested. 9. Upcoming catalysts

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āltitude: 𝐑𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐞-𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐝 We're excited to learn more about remote work from co-founder Matteo Benedetti from our portfolio company Debtist in our SME Tech Leaders webinar "Scaling your Startup Remotely" 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲: https://lu.ma/mqgwi5p0 When Marc, Ingo, and I started āltitude last year, we did it remotely from Berlin, London, and Zurich, meeting monthly in person. Our team has since expanded to include Torge, our Chief of Staff, and Fernanda, our visiting analyst, currently based in Luxembourg and Munich. Post-pandemic, we believed against the consensus that building a firm apart was possible—we just had to prove it. Remote work naturally sharpens our focus on priorities, which is crucial for any business but also comes with challenges. Here’s how we’ve approached remote work: 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆: We utilise tools like Notion, Asana, Google Docs, Shared Google Calendars and Folk. We also streamline our financial operations by using our own portfolio company cleverlohn for payroll. 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: We hold daily check-ins—morning for strategic decisions and afternoons for operational priorities. If needed, we schedule dedicated calls for deeper discussions on strategic topics. Regular in-person meetings in different cities keep us connected without the overhead of a permanent office. 𝗖𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗧𝗮𝘀𝗸𝘀, 𝗥𝗼𝗹𝗲𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁: Remote work demands trust as you cannot see what people are doing, which we build through clearly defined tasks, deadlines and roles. This clarity ensures that everyone is aligned. 𝗗𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗞𝗣𝗜𝘀: Understanding what outcomes need to be achieved every quarter is key. Especially as we continue fundraising and deploying capital. 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲: Our culture is built on radical candor and transparency, ensuring everyone is working towards the same goals. Open discussions and quick feedback loops allow us to address issues openly. This environment encourages accountability and continuous improvement. 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲: We meticulously discuss and document our processes via Loom recordings, google docs or notion so everyone understands how things are done. Regular iteration on these processes helps us stay disciplined and efficient. This is particularly important in a remote setup where discipline is key to consistency. 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴: We anticipate predictable workload:, such as attending events (booking travel/meetings) and LP updates, by planning and working ahead of time. This allows us to be proactive rather than reactive, a necessity in remote work where spontaneous problem-solving isn’t as easy. These strategies have enabled us to build and scale our venture capital firm remotely, proving that it’s possible. #scaleup #venturecapital #remotework

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Great to see what Jan Thomas and his team at Startup Insider did with the new Investors Report 2024 for the DACH region! Anyone who wants to learn more about the German #venturecapital ecosystem and its investors, go get the report: https://lnkd.in/ehiVqmX6

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Honored that Alex Rattray and the team at Stainless chose to partner with The General Partnership to build this company. APIs are the backbone of the digital world, powering transformative AI breakthroughs, seamless app experiences, and secure financial transactions. Yet, for developers, integrating with APIs remains an inconsistent and often frustrating experience. Alex Rattray saw this challenge firsthand at Stripe, leading efforts on API documentation and SDK tooling. Even at resource-rich companies, delivering world-class developer experiences proved elusive—tools were missing, tradeoffs were steep, and code often felt automated, not crafted. Stainless is changing that. By automating SDK generation while maintaining a handcrafted feel, Alex and his team are redefining what developers can expect from APIs. Today, Stainless powers the world’s most influential platforms—OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta’s Llama Stack, Cloudflare, LangChain, Writer and more. And they’re just getting started. That’s why we’re thrilled to see Jennifer Li at Andreessen Horowitz and Felicis join the journey to redefine API developer experiences. And one more thing: Stainless is hiring in NYC! If you’re passionate about reshaping developer experiences and working at the edge of innovation, now’s the time to join this incredible team. 🚀

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We started what became OpenCover back in 2021 🌱 🪴 🌳 Keeping users safe onchain is one of the pillars of opening up blockchain as a credible extension to traditional infrastructure and finance. Here's to the next three 🎉

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What I'm reading this week... **SignalRank’s Rob Hodgkinson wrote a really interesting piece on reserve strategies across different fund styles and unicorn efficiency of follow-on** **There were three big takeaways from Google’s announcement of Willow** (1) Willow effectively reduces error rates as the number of qubits increases, overcoming a major hurdle in quantum computing and paving the way for practical, large-scale quantum machines. (2) Willow, can perform in under five minutes computations that would take today's fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years, showcasing unprecedented processing power. (3) The founder of Google Quantum AI, Hartmut Neven, wrote that that Willow’s performance was so powerful that it “had to have 'borrowed' the computation from parallel universes.” The chip is so powerful that it implies the existence of the multiverse. **Pitchbook: 9 VC firms collected half of all money raised by US Funds in 2024** (1) Rise of Mega-Funds: By 2022, the number of US VC funds raising over $1 billion grew from 10 in 2019 to 35, with large firms like Thrive Capital and General Catalyst leading the charge (2) Emerging Managers Shrinking: Emerging VC firms outside the top 30 raised just $9.1 billion in 2024, representing only 14% of US VC commitments, as institutional LPs cut support for first-time funds (3) AI Drives Capital Demand: The AI boom has increased pressure on mega-funds to secure vast LP commitments, as seen in 2024’s heavy reliance on sovereign wealth funds and public pensions like CalPERS and Sanabil Investments

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Currently, rollups are fragmented, leading to poor UX and disjointed liquidity. Here the first demo of Javelin by our portco NodeKit With Javelin, users can synchronously send messages and move funds across #rollups on NodeKit within a single 2s block.

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New Blog Post: If you're worried about the impact of AI on your portfolio companies and specifically their product design and development teams, check my new blog post: "Index.html & AI Building Blocks" https://lnkd.in/d9zZ95j3 "There's a global AI race with trillions earmarked over the coming years to create astonishingly powerful AI infrastructure and services. Applications stretch as far as human intelligence does permeating global security, finance, and trade. For the world of digital product discovery and development, the next decade is going to look very different than the last. Low complexity and medium complexity products now have a range of solutions to speed up discovery and development which will have widespread implications for product discovery and development across thousands of small, medium, and large Private Equity and Venture Capital portfolio companies. For product design Canva, Figma, Midjourney, and Photoshop are already lowering the bar for new generations of aspiring designers. And while the line between design and development is becoming increasingly blurred, when it comes to execution itself, tools like Builder.io, Vercel, Retool, Fastgen (YC W23), and Webflow are already enabling teams without technical chops to ship and market low to medium complexity eCommerce and SaaS products at scale." Thanks to Staale Nerboe and 🟣 Elias Schneider for validating some of my assumptions. Read the full article: https://lnkd.in/d9zZ95j3

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When a seed stage company hits $2M in ARR, they control their destiny: (a) default alive (b) default a Series A target Either choice is great and it’s all in your control. $2M in ARR should be the default goal at seed.

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Three biggest learnings from a fundraising journey. Shared by Rainer Märkle, General Partner at HV Capital at EUVC 1/ Have a time box with a deadline attached. Have a defined horizon & create a clear plan. Have some urgency to get things done at some point. Execute very transparently and reliably. 2/ Stick to your narrative. But don't do it blindly. Tweak it when necessary. Adapt it. Don't let yourself be surprised by major changes. Keep focusing on delivering according to your strategy & plan. 3/ Fundraising is a marathon with many sprints. There are moments when you'll ask yourself - Why do I do this? Is it gonna work out? But don't get too negative during the down phases. Adapting and pivoting is part of our job. As it is for the founder of a company. How about you? What fundraising lessons have you learned? Join the conversation. 🔽 #venturecapital #angelinvesting #startupfunding #europe

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An Explosive Thesis: Why We Led Uranium Digital This investment falls under our current thematic focus of “Crypto Rails for Latent Markets” to improve market efficiency and unlock financial innovations on top of dormant markets—in this case, uranium. The timing is impeccable: nuclear energy is experiencing an unprecedented tailwind from the geopolitical race, AI-driven demand, regulatory catalysts, and major supply shocks. As the dominant fuel, Uranium "yellowcake" is poised to become one of the most valuable commodities of the next century. In many ways, uranium is the "bitcoin" for regular people: volatile price, finite, high growth potential, and non-mainstream. But here's the shocking part: uranium has no liquid market or infrastructure for any financial innovations to build on top of—no spot, no oracle, no derivatives. If you want uranium exposure, either go licensed and buy on OTC, or buy ETF/mining stocks. What?! So much money is being left on the table: it's a well-known fact that most trading volume of commodities comes from derivatives/non-physically settled trades. Here are some stats on other common commodities: The ratio of Total Notional $ of Derivative / Physically Settled Trades: Coal: 7:1 Natural gas: 23:1 Uranium: 0:1 In this thesis, you'll find: 1. A primer on nuclear energy and why it's the most misunderstood and promising energy source 2. Why the time is now to pay attention to uranium 3. The opportunity we see: the least efficient market for the most important commodity of the future 4. How Uranium Digital is creating a new "pie" at the intersection of nuclear energy and crypto 🔗 Full thesis link: https://lnkd.in/ghZabvvy Fundraise Announcement: https://lnkd.in/gB_7mekd Coindesk Coverage: https://lnkd.in/g_BdFjtW

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Excited to share what I learned from Sandro Stark, founding partner at Vanagon Ventures backing FrontierTech from Munich/DACH 🚀 to the World at the YUVC video podcast (links in comments) 💡 Above all, Sandro is a super nice person to get along with and has a great NPS from founders 👋 Here 3 Core Takeaways ✨ 1. Vanagon’s approach to startup evaluation 👀 - Distribution capability is now the key differentiator, not just technical innovation - Customer "stickiness" and deep industry understanding - The solution must demonstrate both climate impact and profit potential 2. Why is Munich's ecosystem strategic? 🇩🇪 - Part of DACH region - third-largest market globally after China and US - Rich concentration of technical talent and corporate headquarters - Untapped potential in Mittelstand venture engagement 3. What's the philosophy behind sustainable success? 😉 - Don't postpone happiness for future achievements - True leadership creates more leaders, not followers - Consistent effort matters more than breakthrough moments Now listen in for more insights! ❤ Kudos to his great co-founders/GPs @Vanagon: Susanne Fromm Axel Roitzsch Shoutout to their amazing portfolios: Senken Particula Renoster youba The Landbanking Group LoopID heartstocks Learn.xyz ExoMatter and more

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Pretty excited about this one - a team with a remarkable track record across top DeFi protocols, propelled by a clear & effective go to market strategy. The result? Over $300 million in TVL and $2 billion in trading volume within just a few short months. ___________________________ As Blast was gearing up for its launch, the market was flooded with over a dozen different spot and perpetual DEXes seeking funding. At the time, Blast had already achieved over $2 billion in TVL and we anticipated they would launch various mainnet incentives to maintain liquidity within the protocol. Our aim was to identify the team most capable of capturing the majority of mindshare and swap volume from the $2 billion+ of captive liquidity in the ~3 months leading up to the Blast token generation event (TGE). Consequently, we engaged in several discussions and reviewed numerous pitches to better understand how the DEX competition might unfold. We were particularly impressed by the Thruster team and their strategy to attract early attention and liquidity through focused partnerships and integrations. ___________________________ At Futureproof, we invest our own capital, which can sometimes be seen as a limitation in the venture capital space. We do not write overly large checks and cannot invest in all the deals that come our way. However, this constraint sharpens our investment focus. Ultimately, it leads us to invest in those we believe are best positioned to dominate their respective niches, rather than just securing a competitive position. High conviction, high hit rate... betting on the fastest horse. Thruster is exactly that - winning, growing and showing zero signs of slowing down. We can't wait to support them as they staff up and double down on their winning formula to integrate Thruster products and liquidity into other top protocols across DeFi, NFTFi and beyond.

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Today at Predibase we've added fine-tuned GPT-4o-mini to our Fine Tuning Leaderboard, to quantify how it compares against top open source SLMs like Llama-3.1-8B and Solar Pro across 31 diverse tasks. To our surprise, while 4o-mini had the strongest out-of-the-box performance of any base SLM before fine-tuning, the lift from fine-tuning was pretty minimal, ultimately landing in the middle of the pack after fine-tuning. This is consistent with what we've heard from our customers, who very often benchmark against 4o-mini and find it to be worse performing than the best open source SLMs, in addition to being significantly slower and more expensive over time. What should we conclude from this? For me, the takeaway is: don't over-index on out of the box base model performance. Most of the value will come from your data, and using a model + fine-tuning platform like Predibase that can get the most from it. Check out the complete results here: https://lnkd.in/gBPGY6_k

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✨ Breaking: Founderful Fund II Announces New Fund.- Founderful Fund II Founderful's second fund at $140 million invests in Swiss early-stage tech ventures aiming to scale globally, backed by seasoned investors. https://lnkd.in/d8Csq4fi Please share to let other #Founders know For the ❤️ of Startups #Fusion42 #Startups#Venturecapital

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New from me at OMERS Ventures: Once AI becomes omnipresent – and maybe our primary work surface – what might our working lives look like? 💭 Lower latency and less lossy translation of thought into action 🧠 A refactoring of how and where knowledge work happens 📝 Less opportunity to hide inefficiencies in the 'pre-work' stages ➡ Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/gtx-2uFn

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We were recently featured by CoinDesk on the rise of private transactions -- which recent Blocknative data has shown have crossed the 50% threshold when measured by Gas Used. To quote from our research, "By shifting focus to the amount of gas used by private transactions, we can develop a more accurate understanding of the current network dynamics. In particular: Base Fee: The gas used in the current block determines the Base Fee for the next block, a critical UX component for dapps and their end users. Resource Utilization: Gas consumption reflects the computational resources required to process transactions. A single complex transaction can use significantly more resources than multiple simple transactions. Private Order Flow Disparity: Despite ongoing outreach efforts, not all Ethereum users know how to transmit a transaction privately, why they might want to do so, or what tools and applications they can use to enable this. This disparity has significant implications for user experience, network participation, fairness, and more. Economic Value: Finally, gas used directly correlates with the economic value of block space. Each unit of gas represents a fraction of the block's capacity and, by extension, its economic worth." https://lnkd.in/g4fhxwst

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