Austin Lo

Very proud moment as Parcl Labs Real-Time Rental Price Feeds are now available to trade on Parcl. 3 rental markets are now live on Parcl: 🌆 Chicago 🏔️ Denver 🗽 USA Why does this matter? It unlocks powerful new use cases: 🔓 if you rent: hedge against annual rent increases. Recent FBI raids 👀 highlight how powerless renters are to fight back against this dynamic. Not anymore. 🔓 If you charge rent: manage cash flow risk from vacancies, delinquencies, and unexpected price market changes in real-time. The foundation of all this is trusted, representative, and daily updated rental feeds. At Parcl Labs, we’ve built this using millions of daily data points, publishing a transparent methodology, and making them freely available to anyone in the world via our API. In addition to rental pricing, we provide sophisticated analytics like rental supply, gross yield, and competitive investor insights. These are the metrics that top rental operators have identified as critical for running their businesses. Now, anyone can access these powerful tools to gain a competitive edge and make informed decisions when trading, renting, or running a rental business. Real estate is for everyone. Real estate data is for everyone. Brick by Brick.

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Great analysis of recent #vc trends. Thank you Kaela Roeder and Technical.ly for including my thoughts in the piece. My "expanded" two cents below for anyone curious... It is easy to get excited by what is happening in venture capital these days given the advent of AI. However, for early-stage startups, the numbers tell a more nuanced story. Early-stage deal volume in Q4-2023 was down 66% from the peak (Q4-2021) and a quarter of the deals were down rounds. In 2024, volumes stayed fairly flat relative to 2023 levels (signalizing a normalization to pre-pandemic VC activity) and 32% of deals were down rounds in Q1 (a worsening since year end). Early-stage valuations have spiked back up this year – a pleasant boon for some founders. But, this inflation is largely driven by the excitement around AI and strong demand for capital-efficient, high-growth companies. Many startups have tried to become “dot AI” businesses overnight; however, such tactics are not the “silver bullet” to fundraising challenges and growth. With limited time and capital, funds are on the hunt for companies with bulletproof fundamentals or those with exponential growth potential. If you don’t check one of these two boxes, the VC world looks fundamentally different for you. Locally, there are some positive tailwinds. The D.C. area has outpaced other metro areas in adding AI jobs due in large part to the defense industry and an increasing number of tech companies opening-up federal outposts. Over the long-term, this will be very positive for D.C. startup growth and talent.

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This is quite interesting advice and also quite a non-consensus view in the B2B software world. Cross-border founders who are considering the US vs International incorporation question should consider this as valuable input.

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Survey results: Would you invest in an emerging VC's fund 1 who's already wealthy but no VC experience or someone who is fiscally stable and experienced in the VC industry but is a fund 1 rookie? 90% Rookie with experience 41 people surveyed. I thought it would be the reverse because the wealthy person already has capital and can just go hire people with experience and build the firm around that talent. Very interesting 🤔

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Halle Kaplan-Allen and I will be chatting with Ali Hamed tomorrow about sourcing LPs. You can RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/edYZhKrA Ali wrote this excellent tactical piece on networking that is well worth a read for anyone networking their way to capital: https://lnkd.in/eZ_2f_4x This event is presented by Sydecar, a frictionless deal execution platform for venture capitalists. By pioneering a standardized approach to private investing, they enable capital allocators to identify and back entrepreneurs who are changing the world. Their platform reliably handles back-office operations, automating banking, compliance, contracts, tax, and reporting so that customers can focus on making deals and building relationships.

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Trigger warning. UK founders to VCs: "you (generally) suck". I was taken aback by the intensity of comments made during an exit fireside chat organised by our friends at ARGO, Jeff and Aneesh. Room full of founders, we're talking about the importance of starting exit planning very early (say 3 years+ prior to exit) and the message is: "I would never feel comfortable bringing this topic up to my board, I just would not trust them to handle any of it well". Ensued a discussion about Tier II board vs. Tier III boards, how much VC boards suck, how VC's just do not know how to interact with founders and how a number of key topics are best actively avoided. Nods across the room. The Tier I Board, the kind of place where you could actually bring up strategic topics like, you know, "who might actually want to buy us some day and how do we start building the right kind of relationships today" seemed to be a sort of faraway land, as if sitting with the Knights of the Round Table or the Jedi High Council would actually be easier to achieve. Damn. So we can say all we want about founder-friendly blah blah but if this is still the prevalent reality for UK and European founders, what the heck are we doing and when do we start the topic of "being a great board member" seriously? We need to collectively get out shit together and start training investors to be better board members.

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Dan Primack had some pointed criticism for #VC yesterday in his Axios Pro Rata newsletter (a daily must read IMO 😤). In short, the model doesn't work if it can't produce exits for LPs. Don't blame public markets (which are at all-time highs) for the lack of liquidity either. 📈 💸 Instead, this is a "liquidity drought of your making" where "...swinging for the fences on every pitch, rather than taking the single or double that's available" is the only way out when you invest at "sky high valuations." 😰 "A whopping 37% of "unicorns" are being held for at least nine years by VC funds, including 13% that are past the 12-year mark." 😳 ⌛ Is he right? Is VC at a dire inflection point? Or is Primack prematurely hitting the panic button? 🚨 https://lnkd.in/dts92pXr

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About to go live... Startup Studio portfolio VC fund. $8.5 mil. with room to oversubscribe. All deals warehoused and ready to allocate. Built in equity on day 1. Low 1 time management fee. $35k minimum investment. 506c so accredited investors only. GP's are personally invested. Multi tiered exit strategy in place. Liquidity options available at year 2. *** This presentation of Sidecar Portfolio Fund (the “Company”) is for information only and shall not constitute an offer to buy, sell, issue or subscribe for, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, sell or issue, or subscribe for any securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.***

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Did you know that YC founders get a secret weapon… and it’s not what you think. “Bookface” is YC’s internal social network. It was needed because YC had funded larger batches and the hardest part of a community is knowing who is in it and who you can trust and ask for help. On the platform, founders share real methods and advice that would break if it were shared widely It’s secret knowledge shared with a trust-first community - answering 80% of the questions a founder can have about building and selling a product, be it to clients, candidates or investors. Before the platform, if you had a B2B startup, you had to reach out cold to potential customers. Now there are over 1000 YC companies you can sell your service to and all of their contact information is in Bookface. As a result, YC alumni companies are often over 50% of your new sales during YC. It’s superpowers like this that make YC deals so attractive compared to the norm. You are investing in a founder with a 10x network already!

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Call for help! Trying to compile a list of labor marketplaces that have reached $1B in valuation and/or had a large exit ($100m+). Please share any you know in the comments! 🙏

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Most early-stage investors value founder-market fit more than PMF. We’re constantly analyzing if the founder has the necessary skills and knowledge to identify the customer's pain points and enter the relevant market. Without this understanding, most founders get stuck with basics like product development, pricing, GTM, etc. What tops the list, though, is the intention behind building the startup. How sincerely does the founder care about the problem? How committed are they to serving customers? What is their end goal in building this product? Until the founder addresses these questions, even the most aligned PMF may not hit the mark.

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EtA and Search funds (self-funded and traditional) will be consistently rivaling LMM PE funds and strategic buyers as the buyer of choice within 3-5 years. These acquirer types aren’t acquiring “below the PE radar” businesses anymore. That’s simply an outdated narrative. They are regularly buying $10-$40M lower middle market businesses. Here are 3 fresh data points that are giving me this glimpse into the future of small business acquisitions and ownership: Example 1: IT Services MSP serving regulated entities ~$8M revenue in ‘23 $1.9M EBIT in ‘23 ~$9M revenue in ‘24 ~$2.6M EBIT in ‘24 Sold to a searcher (MBA grad on his second lap as a search fund CEO). Sourced via Axial. The search fund outmaneuvered 30+ independent sponsors, 20+ committed capital PE funds, 10+ family offices and 4 strategics on this deal. See image below breaking down buyside demand by buyer type for this acquisition (data source: Axial platform) Example 2: Retail Health SaaS for patient acquisition ~$8M revenue ~$3M EBIT 90% 3-yr EBIT CAGR Sold to a traditional search fund for <6X EBIT (mid-career MBA, 1st time CEO). Directly sourced off market. Example 3: Distributor of Police, Fire, and Ambulance products $15M+ revenue in ‘22 $2.8M EBITDA in ‘22 $16.4M revenue LTM $3M EBITDA LTM Sold to a self-funded searcher. Sourced via Axial. Competition on this deal included 15+ individual sponsors, 6 PE funds, 6 family offices, and 2 strategic buyers. Historically, PE and Strategics maintained a “symbiotic” relationship with EtA and Search. EtA would buy sub-$2M EBITDA businesses, grow them to “LMM PE worthy” status, and then PE/Strategics would take them out. It's not such a black and white dynamic anymore. Brokers and M&A Advisors need to take this buyer category seriously, and PE and strategics need to continue to advance their differentiation strategies. EtA is maturing, the number of impressive operator acquirers is increasing, and LP capital is flowing. More data on closed deals can be found via the link in the comments.

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How did a YC founder scale from $0 to $4M+ ARR in 6 months? What I learned surprised me: Getting to $200k ARR is possible through just hacking something together. But to break past the $1M ARR mark and keep scaling? To sign enterprise contracts with name brand companies? That's a different milestone. The fact that a technical founding did this and handled it all through founder-led sales is even more astounding. Surely, there must be some kind of secret sauce, some kind of unexplained context, I wondered. How did 2 technical founders who graduated college recently build something so robust, so performant and scalable, that they had enterprise companies lining up left and right? But no -- the founder let me know they did this through great engineering and sheer force of will. No proprietary edge. No silver spoon. No past domain experience. And in that moment, that simple answer made sense. We've also been speaking with amazing product engineers, many of them former founders, for whom things are just easy. Sometimes they cite great engineering mentorship as the key to their success. But more often than not, they simply "get it." And my team and I have over time honed our ability to naturally spot what makes a certain candidate special. It's a unique combination of high horsepower, high grit, incredibly sharp slope growth, and an ability to parachute into any problem and just figure things out. What seems like a quarter-long epic to some folks is a one-week project to others. New domains are never daunting. Never learned GPU inference optimization? No problem. I'll figure it out. This is the kind of talent that all startups need -- but understandably is truly rare to secure. This is the truly great, truly unique product engineer. And startups are rapidly learning how this kind of talent changes their own growth trajectory.

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📈🏢 Aby Rosen's RFR Holding is facing a staggering $2.5B debt bill as defaults pile up! 💥 🔎 According to a recent Bisnow article, RFR Holding, a prominent NYC real estate firm, is grappling with mounting debt and defaults. The company, led by billionaire Aby Rosen, has a portfolio of high-profile properties, including the iconic Seagram Building and Lever House. 🏢🏦 📊 The firm's debt load has surged to a whopping $2.5B, with $1.1B in loans maturing this year alone. 💸 The pandemic has hit the commercial real estate market hard, causing defaults to skyrocket. RFR Holding is no exception, with defaults on several properties, including the $200M mortgage on the Seagram Building. 📉 🗣️ "The pandemic has created a perfect storm for commercial real estate," said one industry expert. "Companies like RFR Holding are facing unprecedented challenges as they navigate this difficult time." 🌪️ 🔜 So, what's next for RFR Holding? The company is reportedly exploring options to refinance its debt and avoid further defaults. 💡 With the commercial real estate market showing signs of recovery, there's hope that RFR Holding can weather this storm. 🌞 Stay tuned for more updates on this developing story! 📰🔔 #RFRHolding #CommercialRealEstate #Debt #Defaults #NYCRealEstate

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The state of venture capital is wild right now. We are witnessing a surge of innovation across the spectrum: - Funds merging - VC doing PE - PE doing VC - Secondary funds - Buyout funds - Spin-out funds - Debt funds - Continuation funds - Infrastructure funds - GP turnover - Hard Tech surging - Family Office uptick

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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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Silicon Valley built venture capital. But New York's new guard is reinventing it. Just reviewed TechCrunch's Top New York VCs Under 30 List. The paradigm is shifting from the traditional Sand Hill Road model to something more diverse and dynamic, marked by: +Founders-turned-investors have hands-on startup experience +A deeper focus on overlooked markets and underserved founders +Cross-pollination between tech and NYC's legacy industries +An emphasis on sustainable growth over growth-at-all-costs As this generation steps into decision-making roles, they’re bringing a fresh take on community-driven investing, alternative funding structures, and an emphasis on long-term value creation. Congratulations to all the honorees. Young talent is reshaping VC but remember – great investors come at every age. (Fun fact: the average GP is 43!) Want to meet the next wave of NYC's venture talent? Follow along as TechCrunch updates their Under 30 list: https://bit.ly/4hiw4ef Thoughts on the approach of younger VCs? Would love to hear your perspective. #VentureCapital #StartupNYC #Innovation #TechNews" Data Sources: TechCrunch and SaaStr PS 🔔 Unlock a better way to raise capital with: 💸https://fundingstack.com/ for VCs and investors

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NYC, the capital of fintech. Over the last year, VC investment in NYC Fintech companies outpaced SF by 135%. This is not surprising for industry insiders. In fact, I expect the gap to become even wider as NYC early stage Fintech companies mature and raise large growth rounds in the coming years. SF is still the place to be if you’re in Hardware, Deep Tech, and many other industries. But if you’re building a US fintech company, NYC is the place to be. At Gilgamesh Ventures we’ve invested in a dozen NYC Fintechs and we’re looking to back a few more in 2024. We’d love to meet you if you’re getting started! Fintech Leaders Peter Walker

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