Mike Ahn

Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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In October, we announced our $1.8 billion Series C financing and take-private of SP+ (SP Plus). Today, I couldn’t be prouder to share that we have officially closed our transformational acquisition of SP+. This acquisition and Growth Buyout (GBO) is creating a paradigm shift in how technology companies scale and represents the largest venture-backed M&A deal and the third largest AI fundraise (just behind OpenAI) in the past year. We’ve created a once-in-a-generation opportunity -- allowing us to deploy our proprietary, artificial intelligence technology to more than 50 million consumers, across 4,000+ locations, and processing over $4 billion in payments a year -- enabling checkout-free experiences with a speed, ease, and convenience that is unparalleled, even online. While re-envisioning parking is our focus and priority today, the opportunities for growth beyond parking are limitless. In the future, we’ll use our artificial intelligence platform to power checkout-free transactions in new verticals – making the everyday experience of living, working and playing remarkable – giving us back our most valuable asset, time. From the outside, an entrepreneur’s journey can seem linear and academic – identify a problem, develop solutions, raise capital, deploy, scale – and repeat. In reality, it’s entropic and riddled with roadblocks. We’ve been repeatedly told our ambitions are impossible. But – our team comes back each day with strength, tenacity, determination and conviction. We’ve learned from every failure, every denial, every slammed door, and we’ve gotten stronger, smarter and faster. Today we closed our $1.8B financing and take-private of SP+ – creating a company that’s stronger together. The last six years have been a remarkable journey. I couldn’t be more thankful for our investors, advisors and most importantly, the entire Metropolis Technologies team that helped get us here. Special thanks to my co-founders and executive team Peter Fisher, Travis Kell, Courtney Fukuda, Ryan Hunt, Eddie Thomas and John-Paul Sukkar. I’d also like to thank the newest members of our executive team Chris Sherman, Ritu Vig, Kris Roy and Wenyu Blanchard. Our Series C was comprised of a best-in-class syndicate, led by Eldridge Industries with significant investment from BDT & MSD Partners’ affiliated credit funds, Vista Equity Partners, and Temasek as well as strong support from Metropolis’ existing shareholder group led by 3L. Thank you to all our exceptional partners, investors and advisors who thought outside the box and believed in our vision, every step of the way -- including Tony Minella, Todd Boehly and Lisa Ohlmeyer at Eldridge, Anton Zietsman and Dave Leyrer at 3L, Goldman Sachs and BDT & MSD Partners. We’ll celebrate today but know, we’re just getting started.

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Big announcement below! 👇 Let's talk about the current state of GP-LP affairs: 🤯Emerging VC managers have absolutely exploded over the past 5 years. 📈 At the same time, more and more data has surfaced that shows that emerging VC firms tend to outperform larger, established firms. 🤔 All of this has made it intriguing but tough for LPs to know where to direct their attention. 🛍 GPs frequently meet LPs at conferences who are window shopping but not committed to the asset class or emerging managers. 🧾 And both crews get overwhelmed by transactional convos. So Sydney Paige Thomas and I created Abundance. Abundance is a private, nomination-based retreat for active LPs and top emerging GPs to form new experiences together and build lasting relationships. Why Abundance? Abundance is knowing that there is more than enough for more than one to succeed. And a single win within a community is a win for the community itself. The journey of an emerging VC manager from 1st close to final close or Fund 1 to Fund 2 is (1) communal and (2) requires an abundant mindset. LPs look for structure and confidence to feel comfortable investing in early VC firms. Yet many of the feeds we scroll and conferences we attend reinforce inherent power dynamics and transactional thinking, which allows scarcity mindset to creep in for emerging GPs. Some of the best events I’ve attended have been intentionally non-transactional, e.g. Camp Hustle, Recast Summit, and other GPs’ AGMs. The fundraising success stories we see usually involve a community (usually of other GPs & LPs) coming together to support and open doors for the emerging GP. We designed Abundance to be an immersive gathering that fosters these connections. Starting tonight, ~100 GPs and LPs are descending upon Seattle for the inaugural Abundance retreat. This has been under wraps for months and I can’t wait to see it come to life! Thanks in advance to our awesome sponsors who were the earliest believers in this vision: Sydecar, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Gunderson Dettmer, & Zelda Ventures. And shoutout to my dad Ed Illig for logo design & Halle Kaplan-Allen being the first sponsor to say yes 🤩 Presented by The Council Capital & Symphonic Capital.

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Today, GTMfund’s is excited to announce to launch of Operator, its first incubated company. Max Altschuler (founder of GTMfund) teamed up with co-founder Adam M. (design engineer and 0-1 builder) and co-founder Mark Kosoglow (Outreach employee #1 and former SVP of Global Sales) to create Operator.ai alongside an insanely talented team Pleasant Middelhof, Jeremy Jonas, Carl Gunderson. We've entered a period called “The Great Ignore”. Spam and irrelevant, poorly-automated outbound campaigns are running rampant.   Operator gives you an easy-to-use Growth Engineer that allows you to build and enrich lists with accurate data, and run experiments and queries using AI to generate highly targeted outreach.    Check out their website to get updates, early access, and see how they are taking the world back to 2 touches meant to attract buyers into conversations that convert, instead of 20 touches meant to make sure you hit your activity number: https://www.operator.ai/

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Stripe held Sessions 2024, its yearly annual conference in San Francisco last week. Yes, there were a ton of announcements, including the return of crypto to Stripe, but the one that caught my eye was Stripe de-coupling payments from its software stack. This is HUGE, so let me explain. Historically, Stripe required its clients to use its payment services as a gateway to access its software stack such as billing, invoicing, and fraud prevention. However, this requirement has been removed to allow businesses to utilize Stripe's suite of services more modularly. This strategic pivot is intended to reduce friction for existing and potential customers who may only need specific components of Stripe's offerings, and not necessarily the payment processing solutions. Ok, so this means that you can use Adyen, Checkout.com or Worldpay as your payments processor and use Stripe as your Billing Engine! I distinctly remember how much of a hot button issue this used to be at Stripe and it's interesting how Stripe has come around to this outcome. At Xflow, we've architected our payments and product infrastructure very similarly to what Stripe used to do, which is that product and payments are tightly coupled. Maybe it's time to rethink this? For more details, check out the link to the TechCrunch article in the comments section. #paymentsinfrastructure #stripe #paymentsystems

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Eat the customer!? Rinky Jain, Head of TA and HR at Jupiter, shares the most inappropriate interview response she’s ever gotten! If you're hiring for your startup and want to find the right talent, try Weekday. We've worked with >500 seed funded startups to help hire their core teams across Engineering, Product, and Design. Link in comments if you want to explore (get 5 free resumes within 24 hours).

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I love YC Demo Day season. It’s an insane concentration of driven founders building something they deeply believe in at the frontier of tech. I know it's more trendy for VCs to complain about YC. But I believe Garry Tan when he says 5-10% of companies become worth a billion dollars. Maven’s hit rate from YC is even higher: 16% have had $B+ exits, and we’re trending toward a 40% graduation rate from Seed to Unicorn with investments we’ve made alongside YC. Since Maven’s founding in 2013, we’ve funded 12 YC startups out of the 66 companies we’ve invested in. Here are a few: Cruise: acquired by GM for $1B+ Embark: $4B SPAC, acquired by Applied Intuition Chariot: acquired by Ford before Series A May Mobility: raised $300M+ in follow on funding, including from Toyota Carrot Fertility: raised $100M+ in follow on funding, including from CRV and USVP Daybreak Health: Series A from Lightspeed, Series B from USV Moment Robotics: acquired by Cruise founder Kyle Vogt’s new company, The Bot Co (Maven is an investor) Our strategy differs from other YC investors. Many funds build a YC “index fund”, investing in many startups per batch. It’s not a bad move. But we focus on concentration, meeting all the companies in our thesis area and investing in one or two. Gratefully, I think every company from the list above can point to Maven as one of their most trusted partners that made a difference: intros to customers, closing follow-on funding from top VCs, connecting key hires, and offering genuine care and advice in both the best and toughest of moments. What are we looking for in a YC investment? 1) Team - a technical product team with startup DNA and hustle that can achieve a bold vision. Brilliant, determined founders no one would bet against who are ambitious enough to build an iconic company. 2) Vision worth fighting for - what are you bringing into the world that is worth all the time, effort and money required for success? Why aren’t existing solutions good enough? Are we proud to help bring this idea to the world? 3) Massive market - because of the valuation premium YC demands, even a $B outcome may not return today’s average Seed fund. Honestly, that math sucks. In order to pay the premium, we have to believe that if we’re right, we’ll be wildly successful. 4) Consumer trend - Maven invests in tech companies addressing emerging consumer trends. Even if some investments are B2B or B2B2C, they are always grounded in a consumer insight: autonomous vehicles in 2014, fertility care in 2017, mental health in 2020. Today, we’re looking at consumer applications of AI and frontier consumer health. Many successful companies we fund are outside of YC as well – like Zoom, Hello Heart, Epic!, Class, Wildtype. So we match YC’s Unicorn % across the rest of our portfolio, too 💪 YC founders in consumer tech and digital health: if you want to build an iconic company that delivers a positive impact for millions of consumers - I can’t wait to talk to you!

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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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We had Linear event for founders in SF last night, and as part of that I had a fireside chat with Patrick Collison from Stripe. We covered some topics like the importance of craft, product management, good leaders, etc. Some highlights: The importance of craft: At Linear we see the craft as the requirement for quality. People who care about their craft, almost automatically produce quality. Patrick: "We want to employ really good people. Really good people just don't like working on kind of sloppy things. There's just a deep spiritual aspect to that." Power of small teams: In my experience in companies, some of the best work was always done by a small, focused team, most features at Linear are built by 2-4 team members. Patrick: "The original iPhone software team was 20 people. The kernel, the apps, the browser, the touch interface, like the whole thing. So when people are telling you that they need 40 people for some project, you can explain to them how the iPhone was built with 20 people. So how big would you consider your project in multiples of the iPhone?" How Stripe still builds products in a startup way: Patrick: "There is an internal recipe for this which first guides you to figure out the right user for the product, then the team should go talk to some of those people. Then you should get some of these people into the Slack channel or some other channel where you can get them to try it, get more feedback or try the product. Once you have 5 excited users for something, you can scale it to 100. Then you can start looking at some metrics, but again you look at things like is it actually solving their problems etc."

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I've seen as many founder breakups as failures to reach product market fit. We’ve talked a lot on First Funders about product-market fit. Still, in my conversation with Julie Lein and Clara Brenner of the Urban Innovation Fund, they reminded me of the importance of a cohesive team. Is there a fit between the co-founders? I've started calling this cofounder-to-cofounder fit. As early-stage investors, we often only meet the CEO Founder during our process and not the rest of the team. It's a delicate balance not to take too much of a team's time, but it's also critical to understand working dynamics. Think about the last time you evaluated visit cofounders of a company together. How did they interact? Did they agree on the big things? Did they seem to actually … like each other?! These are all key observations investors need to make so they can choose founders with rock-solid relationships – not just ones who have opposite skills. I've hosted founder dinners to allow me to get to know teams. Julie and Clara take the time to go to the startups' offices, which is a great option! What else are investors doing to understand team dynamics better while respecting the team's time? #founders #cofounders #investors #vc

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I’m thrilled to be announcing that Notion Capital is leading the $15m Series A investment in Cogna today. In the industry, we like to think that software has been eating the world. But when you look at the data a better description would be more of a nibble. Depending on what source you look at the software industry represents between 5-8% of global GDP. Contrast that with the services industry that represents between 60-70% of GDP and worth around $25 trillion on a global basis. Most services have been out of reach for the software industry. They have either been too complex or too specialized for off the shelf software to access in any economically viable way. But that’s beginnning to change with GenAI leading to the emergence of ‘service as a software.’ Cogna is at the forefront of this opportunity - building precision software at scale and delivering huge productivity gains for traditional industries. We know Ben Peters & Lars Mennen well having backed their previous company Five AI that was acquired by Bosch in 2022. And we’re very excited to be backing them again together with Hoxton Ventures & Chalfen Ventures Read my full blog post on why we invested here. Radu Bozga Ben Peters Lars Mennen Bryan G. Mike Chalfen Hussein Kanji Kirsten Connell https://lnkd.in/eh8mhcJb

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I attended a small dinner in DC last night hosted by one of the major West Coast VC firms. Here's what I found encouraging: - The dinner was all about relationship building, and conversations were almost exclusively about "what's your vision" and "what problem can I help solve" rather than about "how do I win a government contract." - The major VC firms are beginning to take positioning in DC very seriously, but not to lobby extensively or directly shape outcomes for their portfolio companies (portcos) through government contracts. Rather, they are being extremely intentional, thoughtful, and cautious for several good reasons. 1. While the defense tech world is a hot topic in DC circles, the hundreds of portfolio companies that are part of the major VC firms extend well beyond the confines of the government market. Only a fraction will bring much-needed technologies into government, but many will be impacted by government actions regarding AI, public health, consumerism, etc. 2. Because they have hundreds of portfolio companies, direct lobbying would be inefficient and likely serve at cross-purposes anyway. However, the firms and the DC ecosystem are poised to mutually benefit from greater, more intentional discourse between tech and government. There is already discourse in abundance in the defense world about emerging tech, but I think true investment of presence by these $10B+ AUM firms in the DC market will simply expand the dialogue and the intellectual capital at the top rungs of policymaking — to the average citizen's benefit. 3. Big Tech's presence in DC no longer suffices or represents the rest of Silicon Valley and the tech community. There are simply many more diverse interests now. I'm excited to see where things go. I don't believe every problem can be solved by VC dollars and a startup, but I do believe every problem, over time, can be solved with good relationships and open discourse.

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Check out three M13 portfolio companies currently hiring - Bento (gobento.com) & Lifeforce are making strides in the future of health, while the team at Rho is building the future of fintech. Scroll through to learn more about each and how you can fuel their missions 🚀 #hiring #brightertogether #m13 #bento #lifeforce

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How do we get to mass AI adoption? First, we need a better understanding of what enterprise customers need. Eugene Lee and I did a deep dive on this, and held a number of calls with C-Suite execs at leading tech firms to hear their thoughts. We break down the key hurdles they're facing in our latest post: (i) ease of implementation (ii) trust and data privacy (iii) tangible proof of value (ROI) One overarching question also stood out -- should companies build or buy new solutions? Most advocate for building in-house if they think it will give them a long-term competitive advantage, and buying if the tech feels commoditized. Check it out - we'd love to know your thoughts below! https://lnkd.in/e5hDHwKX

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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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🧑‍🍳 Work with Cathy Guo (and me!) on Iterative We're hiring a Senior Associate to help evaluate the startups that apply to Iterative. We receive 1K+ applications roughly every 3 months and invest in roughly 1.8% of those applications. Maybe somewhat counter-intuitively, we want to increase that % and take more risk. The trick is figuring out what areas (founder, market, country, etc.) that we should be taking more risk in. You'll be an active participant in how we evaluate companies. See the job description for the typical stuff but here's 2 things we DON'T do as part of our investment process. 🤔 Invest Based on Who Else Is Investing We don't care who else is in the round. Most of the time, we make our decision before everyone else does. That means you'll have to do the work of building your own conviction. 🤓 Invest on School, Previous Work Experience, etc. We don't have any filters around what school a founder went to, what company they used to work at, etc. We evaluate all founders based on our interactions with them. Why settle for a proxy of whether someone is good (that's what all of these are) when you can talk to them directly? If you can't tell whether a founder is good by talking to them.. well.. Instead.. you'll have to think for yourself and argue from first principles. Mostly with me :). If that's how you want to invest or want to learn how we do that, you should apply. For more details about the role, look for the 📌 in the comments.

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Next week, our 2024 Summer Analyst class starts. It’s always a special time for me as I joined Insight as a Summer Analyst over two decades ago. It’s a good moment to resurface the outstanding work of Allie Garfinkle that was published recently. I also had the chance to share these career learnings with Insight’s investment analysts at our recent Sourcing Summit, a day of workshops and hands-on learning sessions specially curated to help our analysts (aka our Sourcing Engine) build relationships inside and outside the firm. Here’s a quick overview of what I shared: 1. Prioritize people to enjoy the work: Focus on finding a workplace where you genuinely enjoy the people and connecting with colleagues. 2. Find your passion: We can equip you with everything you need reach out and connect with founders, but it’s up to the individual to find what drives them. 3. Be able (and willing) to be adaptable: Success in VC isn’t about following a prescribed path or list of to-dos. It’s about navigating unpredictable situations with grace and maximum impact. 4. Embrace rejection through passion: Whether your phone call goes unreturned and/or you lose a deal narrowly that you thought you had won, you will face rejection. And you’ll face it often. This is why it’s critical to find your passion for the work, to help you persevere through the not-so-great times. 5. Leverage your unique strengths: Find what you uniquely bring to the table and embrace it. The importance of diverse skillsets cannot be overstated in today’s ever-evolving tech ecosystem. Allie Garfinkle at Fortune—she captured these well and painted a picture of our firm’s culture that I am especially proud of. My biggest piece of advice no matter where you are is to find a workplace where you like the people and can make an impact. At Insight, the bonds you will form manifest themselves in a variety of ways: the ability to persevere through hard-fought wins and tough losses, getting asked to work on another team’s deal because you are more familiar with the market, participating in book clubs (Team Hinkle just read Everyday Business Storytelling)...and these are just a few examples. Interpersonal bonds are the cornerstone of Insight’s culture, and they make possible all of the other qualities you need to be successful in VC. Welcome Insight Summer Analyst Class of 2024. I look forward to watching you thrive.

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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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💼 Dive into the world of venture capital with our curated list of **270 VC firms in #SanFrancisco**! From firm details to portfolio links, we’ve got you covered. Explore the possibilities: https://lnkd.in/dqizhN92 #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #managementconsulting

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