Amit Rathore

Want to know what metrics venture capitalists really care about? Aumni's latest analysis dives into 10,000+ data points from portfolio companies at all stages. Here's what we uncovered: 1️⃣ Revenue, net burn rate, FT headcount, and gross margin are the hottest metrics. 2️⃣ Most VCs request 6-9 specific metrics per quarter from each portfolio company. 3️⃣ Cash is king in the early stages but loses its throne as companies grow. 4️⃣ Operational metrics dominate at Series D+, taking up half of the top ten. Key insights: - Cash-on-hand and cash runway plummet in importance from a combined ranking of 3.5 in the seed stage to barely making the top ten by Series D+. - Metrics spotlighting operational efficiency, like gross margin, total OpEx, EBIT, bookings, and debt balance, become crucial as startups scale. PS. check out 🔔 for a winning pitch deck the template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel https://lnkd.in/ejp-Bhnu

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Sharing a sanitized version of the mu ventures Q2 q'ly LP update. Included musings: 👉 SEOs shrinking impact, and the rise of LLMO (large language model optimization) 👉 examples of the Commerce AI application layer coming to life 👉 a modern fund strategy that accepts companies require less capital, time, and people to trigger the power law 👉 Mu's guide to investing in AI 👉 all 30 companies in the Mu-niverse (and several others we admire) Founders, VCs, LPs - if you like how we think and suspect we can partner, hit us up! https://lnkd.in/dTJ2zjav

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AI memory is fundamental for conversational AI and AI agents. It is critical for building personalized experiences and improving reasoning. Check out Letta’s course to understand how to use AI memory to enhance the customization and quality of your AI app.

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📣 Announcing Velocity, our new program built specifically for pre-seed founders. 👇 We back you with checks up to $1M, a peer cohort, AI resources, and the flexibility of being fully remote. We’re also teaming up with Microsoft and OpenAI for an AI specific track. Who is right for Velocity? 🌉 Exceptional founders seeking greater Silicon Valley connectivity, whether in SF or  elsewhere 🏗️ Experienced operators starting a company for the first time and seek a strong community  🤖 AI founders who want to learn from brilliant AI luminaries 💸Founders who want an edge when raising an epic seed round What do you get? 💰Capital – Up to a $1M investment from us and our close network of angels and funds 🤝Peer Community – Join like minded founders in masterminds for accountability and peer support 🌐The Village Network – Find customers, experts, and your next investors 💽Microsoft and OpenAI Credits and Resources – Up to $350k in credits from Microsoft for Startups, $10k from OpenAI, and more Ready to build the future? Apply now. 💡 https://lnkd.in/gQn7kP4S

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How Due Diligence Works in VC The post-2021 corrections that started in 2022 taught VCs an important lesson: there is a need to slow down and be more thorough before wiring money to startups. Since then, due diligence has been taking weeks (generative AI startups being an exception, of course lol), leaving many wondering what goes on during those long waits. I will try to break things down quickly. From the time a deal comes in, an initial screening is performed to gauge interest along the lines of fit, unique selling proposition, market opportunity, and team. If interest is established, further conversations are held with founders before opening more detailed due diligence, where each aspect is reviewed meticulously. This exercise culminates in an investment memorandum that gets sent to an investment committee, which has the final say in which investments to pursue. The IC comprises both partners and external experts, aiming to remove emotions from the deal—though that’s not to say IC members are mean peoples. Once the IC approves, all the necessary agreements will be signed and the wire completed. However, completing this cycle may take 4 - 6 weeks or even more. How competitive an investment opportunity is may shorten the timeline. A big announcement is coming soon, and I can't wait to share it 😀 !

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Founder-Turned-VC Investor Raised $150 Million for Her New Fund💰 Masha Bucher, ex-entrepreneur and founder of Day One Ventures, has raised $150M for her new VC fund. Founded in 2018, Day One Ventures focuses on early-stage startups, offering initial investments ranging from $1M to $2M. Notable companies in the firm’s portfolio include Worldcoin, legal services company DoNotPay Inc., and AI assistant You.com. 📝Diverse Investments and Real-World Impact Day One Ventures supports startups across various industries, with Bucher particularly drawn to founders tackling real-world challenges. “From profound wealth disparities to the urgent threat of climate change and the growing sense of social isolation, tech founders will be our lifeline toward a more abundant, diverse, and sustainable future,” Bucher stated regarding the new fund. 🏆The firm’s track record is impressive, with six of its investments achieving billion-dollar valuations and 22 companies either being sold or going public. This success highlights Day One's knack for identifying high-potential startups. 🎯PR Expertise and Strategic Growth Before transitioning to VC, Bucher founded a PR firm that managed communications for numerous tech companies. She has leveraged her PR expertise to coach startups on media strategies. “If you look at any business problem you want to solve and any business goal you want to solve, 90% of the business problems are communications problems,” Bucher explained on Bloomberg Television. “I think this is something we train founders on and something that we help them to do.” 📈Growth of Day One Ventures The new fund is Day One’s third and largest to date. Fund I, closed in 2019, was nearly $20 million, while the second fund in 2020 totaled $52.5 million. This latest fundraising effort saw contributions from US and European institutional LPs, as well as 14 of Bucher’s own portfolio company founders.💰 “When you are building a firm with value add and staying close to founders, you can attract a lot of capital from your own network,” Bucher said. Notably, she made a concerted effort to include female investors, securing backing from 9 female LPs. Significant in the male-dominated VC industry, where female founders received just 2% of the total capital invested in US startups in 2023, according to PitchBook.🤷‍♀️ 🤝New Investments and Future Focus Day One has already made 5 investments from its Fund III: Cradle, an AI startup focused on human longevity; Rainmaker, a Los Angeles-based company working on cloud-seeding technology; Affiniti; Astroforge; and Layer N.  🚀🌍 ✅ Looking to raise capital for your #VCfund and increase the international pool of your LPs?   🤝 Need warm #LP introductions?   📝 Selling #secondaries to increase liquidity?   🧐 Looking for co-investments (Series A/Series B)?   ▶ G+QUANT's link for inquiries and fund decks: https://lnkd.in/gjC_EuTE #VentureCapital #TechInvesting #FemaleFounders #StartupFunding #Innovation

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💲The Founders Weekly BOOST - the 12 Rules to 10x your Business, All the New Minted Ca$h from VCs for you to Pitch for, AI 🤖 Lots on AI & so much more 🔥 💲 Another Jam Packed edition from Rubén & I to help you Raise Capital and Grow Revenues 📈 💲Gen AI - Whats Coming Next According to Sequoia 🤔 💲or lack of 💲- Whats happening in a World With No Exits as we're still 90% (😱) off of Peak! There are green shoots 🌱 💲You Founders in Pro Services - Convert to an AI Business 🤖 It's All in Here 💙 💲Dig in, share with friends & colleagues BUT also ask questions too - we have loads of experts who can join the conversation 📣 🎯 Don't Forget To Subscribe so you Never Miss A Single 💲of Value 💙 "The Founders Corner"

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Instacart is a market leader when it comes to leveraging AI tools to boost productivity at work. I had an amazing conversation with JJ Zhuang, Instacart’s Chief Architect, who has shepherded over 50 AI-driven initiatives to market across the org. We explored what catapulted Instacart to the forefront of AI integration, supporting radically diverse use cases across various functional areas. One striking insight (echoed by Ethan Mollick and others elsewhere) is that you often don't need specialized tools for specialized work. Frontier models like GPT-4 can seamlessly adapt to a wide range of functions and use cases. They're not just for engineers; they're incredibly versatile tools used by marketing, comms, and legal teams. From generating code to proofreading and ideation, GPT-4 empowers every department to leverage AI for enhanced productivity and innovation. By integrating LLM’s like GPT-4 into their workflows, teams can streamline processes, automate repetitive tasks, and unlock bandwidth for new creative possibilities. How can you harness the power of AI in your own work to boost productivity? Share your thoughts below 👇 Want to hear more insights from JJ? Check out the full podcast episode by clicking the link in the comments.

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The Art of the VC Pitch: A Brief Guide to Maximizing Your Chances With Venture Capital Through Giving Better Pitches Pitching to a Venture Capital firm is different from any other kind of pitch. It's not like a sales pitch, a product pitch, or any other kind of presentation. This guide is a road map to the nuts and bolts of maximizing your opportunity when you manage to get in front of VCs

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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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Seems the cat is out of the bag ... and a16z is only confirmation over at The Information, where the plan to roll out GPU time across their portfolio is being touted as "oxygen." "Andreessen Horowitz joins a small number of other VC firms that have also acquired access to GPUs on behalf of startups. Investing duo Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross last year acquired 2,512 Nvidia H100 server chips, estimated to be worth about $100 million, though the pair ran into the supply crunch and did not immediately get all the GPUs up and running. Index Ventures last year struck a deal with Oracle to rent GPU servers for some of its startups." True tale that although the GPU shortage has lessened as of late, how you manage the cost center is critical for launching a viable, if not profitable business and is a key requirement to a pipeline of portfolio companies that are at the leading edge of Still see VCs looking to secure GPUs or GPU time as part of the venture funding deal. Not all are straight up charging time on the GPU farm as a16z is overheard to be using as a model. Kate Clark writes, "Andreessen’s gamble on GPUs coincides with a restructuring and $7.2 billion in new funds, including one dedicated to just backing AI infrastructure startups, companies that provide the technology to support generative AI." Check out her piece.

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This “venture fractal” will blow your mind: After selling ExactTarget for $2.5B, four partners launched a venture studio, High Alpha (layer 1), which has launched 40+ startups since 2015. One of the companies it started became a venture studio called High Alpha Innovation (layer 2), creating not only startups with corporations and universities but also corporate venture studios (layer 3), which in turn launch startups (layer 4). This is a must-read story about one of the world's top venture studios. Before diving in, please like this post and comment “+” to receive the “Co-founder Support” doc from High Alpha Innovation. It includes a list of the 6 stages of launching startups, covering 29 processes, and details about the 8-week “Founder Bootcamp” program, which consists of 17 modules. Elliott Parker, CEO of High Alpha Innovation, shared key insights: 1. High Alpha Innovation tries to answer what it looks like to scale a venture studio model, for example, to launch 100+ startups a year. You’re playing with the power law asset class, and you must have a very broad & diversified portfolio to find those 1-2 outliers that will make the most returns. “It’s hard to do when you’re only launching 4-5 companies a year.” 2. They aim to become the world's most valuable venture portfolio, with plans to launch 500+ startups in the next 10 years. 3. High Alpha and its portfolio companies have raised $500M+. 4. High Alpha Innovation (HAI) launched 20 companies during the first 3 years, raising $50M+. HAI plans to launch 20 new companies in the next 18 months. 5. HAI started with 3 people on the team in 2020 and grew to 50 employees in 2024. 6. The business model is taking 20-25% equity in startups as a studio, getting $1-2M in capital from corporate or university partners to launch a company (for ~20-29% of equity), and allocating at least 51% of equity to startup co-founders: CEO & other partners. 7. After launching some companies with a corporate or a university partner, HAI pulls a VC fund of $25-50M and becomes the GP managing the underlying studio. Now, they have 4 underlying studios. 8. Co-founder profiles they attract to each company are ~45-year-old successful founders or early executives in startups with experience in creating products, fundraising, & building teams. 9. The process starts with generating 200-300 business ideas, which are then assessed and narrowed down to about 30 through rapid testing, and further refined through extensive validation and customer research to 5-10 viable concepts, from which 2-3 are selected for the sprint week leading to a launch decision. Watch the full podcast to learn about the studio model, the cons & pros of partnering with corporations, and reasons why studios fail: https://bit.ly/EllPar 📔 Elliott recently published a book, "The Illusion of Innovation," which discusses why corporations have a harder time producing breakthrough change and what they can do about it: https://bit.ly/HAIbook

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Insightful look into bioplatform strategy, and what it takes to raise a Series A from my partner, Omri Amirav-Drory: https://lnkd.in/dFv7GbF6

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We're launching the inaugural edition of Beyond Benchmarks, a deep dive into the metrics and trends observed across the early-stage enterprise cloud market. This is the first look at some of the business data around GenAI in SaaS. Some initial observations: 1) 60% of SaaS companies have already integrated GenAI into their offerings (60% of these as part of their current product and 40% as a new product), and an additional 20% are planning to do so this year. Almost half aren't monetizing these features. Those that are are primarily experimenting with both usage-based and flat fee pricing models. 2) Most companies are utilizing OpenAI as their primary LLM, but many are experimenting with multiple models - and we are noticing an early trend towards intelligently routing GenAI inference requests to different models based on cost, performance, and security. 3) Though we are in the initial innings of GenAI, we are seeing some positive signals - companies that implemented GenAI had 7% higher NDR than those that did not. Still early days, but we'll be doing this benchmarking report regularly to track and share how things progress in this new era. Link to report in comments.

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Omg this video is literal GOLD for early stage founders like me and it’s SO GOOD to know that a lot of my startup’s & founding team’s principles strongly align with what’s been discussed here. I did learn 2 major things where we have to make changes to our existing strategies, there’s always room to learn and grow… well shamelessly honestly tho (with all the real scopes of not-being-able-to cz come on, top 1% ain’t a joke!), I don’t know if we will be able to get through Y Combinator but oh boy, is it a dream? HELL F-ING YEAH! The biggest dream of our lives right now, we are such crazy fan-folks about it that we got on a call and screamed while jumping up and down when we hit the “submit” button for our application. Fingers crossed, and here’s to working hard + smart in the right direction with all these learnings consistently and persistently for as long as we possibly & realistically can. Y Com might or might not be a dream that comes to reality for us, but it would be a shame if we don’t try our level best after quitting our incredible jobs for this dream. Wish us luck, fam. And if you pray with whichever faith is filled in your heart, please do include my team in your next prayer, I’ll be eternally grateful. I’ve NEVER felt this level of excitement and “oh this would be SUCH a dream come true” vibes before (not to THIS EXTENT even while applying to grad school and praying for Ivy Leagues, yep) 😍😍 This is a raw, emotional post. And I hope you’ll find some grace in your heart to give, cause I know this ain’t the most refined piece of content you’ve read on LinkedIn today. Thank you so much for hearing me/us out and for being a part of my/our journey! Will keep ya posted, as usual. Sending love. #Entrepreneurship

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There's a new breed of CEO in town. The AI-Native CEO. These people are either rebuilding archaic companies or building in "adjacent possibilities," they're creating truly durable businesses with real customer value, and importantly, they're building their companies in an AI-native way; more efficient than ever, stitching together technologies that once required high-overhead, and focusing their hiring on people who are autodidacts, the ones who are inhaling knowledge on how to improve their own functions leveraging the newest tooling for the future of their jobs. A few of my favorite examples... Valley, backed by General Catalyst, getting 30-50% response rates for salespeople using conversational selling instead of archaic and annoying drip campaigns. AminoChain, backed by a16z, turning biobanks into to shoppable specimen centers so that healthcare institutions and researchers can purchase biomaterial like blood an stem cells and so donors can earn and track their participation in science. HIFI, backed by Blockchain Founders Fund, using stablecoin for B2B payments, creating instant settlement times and eliminating fee extortion. Dune Security, backed by Craft, using AI to test, identify, and train employees on their own risky actions, automatically reducing the biggest risk any business has--the behavior of its own employees. https://lnkd.in/eJUnuM4z #venturecapital #ai #artificialintelligence Antler

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Team San Diego! I though you may find this as surprising as I did...we are not alone. Read this quick article from Jon Prentice's (Silicon Valley Bank) interview with with James Newell (Voyager Capital), published in GeekWire on Seattle's innovation ecosystem....they lament the SAME issues as we do in San Diego: * Lack of angel investors, (Especially, it calls out, given the local giant tech co's) * "We need low-conviction check writers." * Lack of "cachet associated with being an angel investor" - We have similar efforts (as described in the article) to drum up angel activity: NuFund Venture Group and, Interlock Capital (read the article and you'll see why the Interlock effort is tops as relates to "paying back into the ecosystem") Connect.org strives to 'connect' innovative companies with investors of all types (angel, VC, PE...) - just see "Innovation Day". Their Springboard program provides another great way for experienced entrepreneurs to give back through mentorship...as for the companies going through Springboard: "Ask for advice, and you often get $$" Your thoughts on the article or San Diego innovation ecosystem? https://lnkd.in/gfwq6mfq

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An observation distilled from numerous VC conversations on the scale-up funding market - A clear "tri-furcation" has emerged: 1) ultra well-funded LLM and other AI companies where VCs see immense use case driven consumer and enterprise adoption. Such immensity of capital has propelled what is perhaps a 20% GM business model to eschew profitability and pursue manic scaling laws, ever hungry for compute and mind-boggling training parameters, forever letting cloud and compute incumbents drive margins lower (and benefit themselves in return as both sellers to and investors in these scale-ups). 🤖 2) big shining stars in other sectors, many of who had benefited from the 2020-21 funding boom, came up against a high bar to match prior terms. These managed to slow growth, slash costs, activate profitable revenue streams and operating leverage to turn things. Think Vinted (e-commerce), Kry (healthtech), Personio (HR tech), Bolt (mobility), Lydia, GoCardless, Checkout.com (payments), OnlyFans, TripleDot (entertainment), Revolut, Starling, Oaknorth, Atom, Allica Bank (neobanking), Octopus Energy (energy) who are all profitable or at the cusp. Most of them have been on some sort of a path to IPO, but playing cards close to the chest, often going the pre-IPO private funding route. 📈 3) the laggards (or even former leaders in some challenging sectors with high capex, FOAK tech, D2C / B2C, or high burn network-reliant models that went for growth at all costs post fundraising success in 2020-21) have borne the brunt of the slow down the worst. 😵 Now, Wall Street has always had and continues to have its eyes set on what they can effectively trade - what's profitable and will scale efficiently. This pressure has, for most parts, led companies beyond a certain scale to pivot to efficiency and deliver numbers that would make sense to relatively less savvy public investors. Category 1’s fall far from this and won’t IPO. As strategic investors and mega-funds with large cash coffers have decided to fund category #1 till kingdom come, it is #2 and 3 that have had to contend with a crunch of growth capital (combined with a dearth of exits) for anyone but the best of performers. In my opinion, the #2's have come out as the true cream sieved out of the great valuation and fundability reset. As public market activity is all but done for the year (or so it seems), and as I build my own pipeline of 2025 IPOs and interesting scale-ups to watch... ✅ I am following companies in category 2 closely to see how well they execute on the current strategy ✅ Keen also on the cusp-y ones in category 3 who might just pull a neat trick. Pivoting hard this late in the game is not an option for most, and hence, in category 3, I am excitedly following formerly well-capitalized companies that have not raised funds in some years, but are innovative, niche-y, and led by good teams in growth markets.

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