Operator Collective 🔆

No one does it alone, and Operator Collective is designed to bring people together who know how to succeed and want to help each other. Hear from a few of our founders to get a feel for what's it like to be a part of OpCo, and the magic that can happen when we put the Collective Venture Model to work ⬇️ Caitlin Colgrove, Co-Founder & CTO, Hex Melanie Fellay 🐙, CEO & Co-Founder, Spekit 🐙  Deon Nicholas, CEO & Co-Founder, Forethought  Shannon Goggin, CEO & Co-Founder, Noyo  Pouyan Salehi, CEO & Co-Founder, Scratchpad 🎥 https://lnkd.in/gfjT4wtb #CollectiveVenture #VentureCapital

Jeanne DeWitt Grosser is... simply one of the best. In our latest Operator Spotlight, Jeanne breaks down her incredible trajectory at Stripe, from joining the sales team when it had about 10 people and growing it to more than 400 with a non-traditional approach, to her move from sales to running global partnerships and corporate strategy as Chief Business Officer. Here’s a masterclass from Jeanne on avoiding “roadmap schizophrenia” and selling functionality that engineers don't want to build, the “platinum rule” of managing direct reports, and how answering countless Gmail support tickets unlocked a key insight on the value of understanding your product and customers better than anyone. 

Every day, tens of millions of Mac developers depend on #Homebrew to install and update the tools they need to do their jobs. It's become the de facto gateway to the developer toolkit on macOS. But there's a catch. While developers love Homebrew's simplicity for personal use, enterprise IT and security teams face a constant struggle managing and securing it across thousands of corporate laptops. Enter Workbrew, the startup bridging this critical gap between developer productivity and enterprise security - today out of beta and generally available! More from OpCo Partner Haley Daiber Brannan and Co-Founder and CEO John Britton below, and see the $5M funding announcement in TechCrunch in the comments. Congratulations to John, Mike McQuaid, Vanessa Gennarelli and the whole team at Workbrew! Proud to be on this journey with you + Heavybit & Essence Venture Capital

78% of employees are bringing their own AI tools to work. It’s no surprise then that shadow AI is the # 1 cybersecurity concern among security professionals. Today, SurePath AI announced its $5.2M seed round to tackle this challenge head-on by addressing the governance gaps to securely adopt GenAI across the enterprise. More about SurePath in our interview with OpCo Partner Haley Daiber Brannan and SurePath Co-Founder and CEO Casey Bleeker - congratulations to Casey, Randy Birdsall and the entire team! 🔆

We brought together two OpCo portfolio founders for a candid conversation about what it takes to build an AI-native company. They’re at different stages of their company-building journeys - Kieran Snyder (Co-Founder, Chief Scientist Emeritus, and former CEO of Textio) has been building with AI for nearly a decade, and Jerry Zhou (Co-Founder and CEO of Supio) is fresh off raising a $25M Series A - so there was a lot to unpack. One thing they have in common? Telling it like it is. Here are their spiciest takes and most valuable insights. Special thanks to our friends at Bonfire Ventures 🔥, Ascend, and Fenwick & West!

I couldn’t be more excited to share that Thomson Reuters Ventures is investing in and partnering with Propense.ai! Thomson Reuters is THE leading software and service provider for accounting and law firms and their experience, expertise, and market access will allow us to better serve our clients and accelerate our product innovation 🔥 🔥 🔥 This partnership marks a major milestone for Propense and serves as strong validation of our solution and how we’re addressing firms’ client service challenges. Propense’s mission is to help firms evolve how they serve their clients in the age of AI. Thomson Reuters recognizes AI’s potential for professional services firms and we’re excited to partner with them to help firms realize that potential. Thanks to everyone at Thomson Reuters Ventures, but especially to Tamara Steffens and Joseph Dormani - I can’t wait to see what we’ll accomplish together! Read Andrew Rocco's article for Zacks Investment Research for all the details https://lnkd.in/e3mUtq2M

Congratulations Toshit Panigrahi, Olivia Joslin, and the TollBit team on your $24M Series A! 🔆 We're excited to see TollBit takeoff - the marketplace is officially out of beta, allowing AI companies to manage relationships with publishers based on demand and publishers to monitor AI bot traffic and monetize their content when scraped. More from Sara Fischer in Axios: https://lnkd.in/g7-P87cY

Co-chairing Fortune Most Powerful Women again was a true joy. So many elements align to Operator Collective 🔆 - from the people and what feels like a reunion (plus meeting new friends) to tackling the biggest issues of the future. Too many highlights this year to cover in one post - but founder/former CEO Rachel Romer speaking for the first time on stage about her stroke along with current CEO Bijal Shah, both Operator LPs from our portfolio company Guild, Joanna Strober from OpCo portco Midi Health’s session on thriving in midlife (and having a number of women come up to me to say how life-changing and lifesaving Midi has been for them) to interviewing Fei-Fei Li, the Godmother of AI and World Labs founder/CEO, and Campbell Brown, OpCo portco TollBit senior advisor, on the mainstage about the future of AI rank among my top. OK, getting a high five from Halle Berry after chatting about changing the world was fun too. It’s an honor to be part of this iconic institution alongside those who work tirelessly to make it such a great experience. Congratulations and thank you to Maryam Banikarim 🗽🚕 ❤️ Emma Hinchliffe Ellie Austin Michal Lev-Ram Allie Garfinkle Lisa Clucas Michelle Berg Mona Nair Anastasia Nyrkovskaya and the rest of the awesome Fortune team. And of course Pattie Sellers for starting this all so many years ago. Erica Ruliffson Schultz Lara Caimi Astha Malik Christina Crawford Kosmowski Alice Steinglass Gina Boswell Elena Gomez Shannon Nash, Esq., CPA Reshma Saujani Victoria Treyger Alka Tandan Arrie Park Karen King

Congratulations to Vasek Mlejnsky, Tomas Valenta and team E2B! We're excited to see E2B out in the wild - it's the code-interpreting layer for AI apps and agents, providing companies with open-source sandboxes that allow them to run LLM-generated actions in a secure and isolated cloud environment. Equipping AI agents with code execution capabilities helps solve problems like hallucinations and unreliability, and E2B’s new Code Interpreter SDK allows developers to add code interpreting to any AI app. Want to see E2B in action? Here's how Perplexity implemented advanced data analysis for Pro users in one week: https://lnkd.in/gP7askVX Go team! 🔆

As you may have seen in nerd processor and in Fortune's Most Powerful Women update today, I started as Operator Collective 🔆's first-ever Founder in Residence this month! 🎉 In 2024, I've spent time with more than 200 different startup founders. I've worked with them as coaching clients or helped them tell data stories. I've gotten to know them in introductory conversations, at events, and in their search for customers and investors. These conversations have informed a lot of the writing I've done about startups this year, especially in AI. Founding is a difficult and lonely road, and much of what founders have shared resonates with me. When Mallun Yen pitched me on joining Operator Collective as their first Founder in Residence, specifically to better support founders both in and outside the portfolio, I saw an opportunity to systematize and scale the work I've been doing with founders this year. Before I got started, I spent 6 weeks talking to 100 startup founders I hadn't worked with previously to find out what they wanted. I wrote about what they said in this week's nerd processor, and about the projects I'm focusing on based on their feedback. * Top of the list: Connections to legit customer opportunities * Bottom of the list: Drive-by product and marketing ideas Let's gooooooo! Link to full piece below. https://lnkd.in/gF_hZcAg