Don Butler

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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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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💰Sharing a List of 80 Black-led VC funds (US based): About this list: I realized that I couldn’t find a current list of Black-led funds as of 2024 when a lot of new funds have launched over the last couple of years including GPs Sydney Paige Thomas, Terri Burns and more. I have been gathering a list of these funds in my network, and that I could find publicly over time so wanted to share with the ecosystem. Only 2% of VC funds are Black-led: I found 80 funds (maybe there’s more!). There are 3,417 VC firms in the US (according to NVCA). Founders - These funds invest from pre-seed through growth, some with a focus on diverse founders, others more broadly. ⅔ of them have OPEN funding applications that I’ve linked in the sheet. LPs - As mentioned, a number of these funds might not be in the databases used for tracking, so hope to get some more Black-led funds on your radar! VCs - maybe there are some funds you should get to know for deal sharing, etc 👉🏾Link to full list here: https://lnkd.in/gktBhY-W

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LP Tip #8 of #50: Your LP base should match your fund size. We are back with our regular programming. ➡️ Opinions are always my own and based on my experience.  ➡️ My focus for this post is on sub $200.0M funds. ➡️ The $ amounts I state below are guideposts never absolute rules.  ➡️ Some LPs want to have a certain % of the fund and size their investments in this way; others have set check sizes irrespective of fund size. I continue to be surprised at how much time new GPs waste with LPs that are unlikely to invest. I urge managers to better qualify LP leads and be extremely judicious with how they manage their time. In my experience there are 6 LP types that I consistently come across. See below. ▶️ Non- Institutional LPs:  1️⃣ High net worth individuals (HNWI) - There are different tiers of HNWI but assume that this is someone with at least $1.0M in net worth in liquid assets. In my experience they are the fastest to close and conduct limited diligence. I often see them investing $100K - $500K checks in funds. It is possible for a fund manager to close a $5.0M fund on entirely HNWIs. 2️⃣ Family Office - There are different types of family offices. For simplicity sake let us assume that this is a single-family office with an investment team and a set venture allocation. Keep in mind that family offices are hard to find because they do not want to be found. Typically, you find these via referrals from other GPs or your current LPs. I often see <=$50.0M funds composed of HNWI and family office LPs. I have seen a range of investment checks form family offices. 3️⃣ Corporate - I include banks in this category. Due to the market downturn these entities either halted or slowed pacing. In my experience I have seen corporates invest anywhere from $500K - $10.0M checks. This type of LP is often present in sub < $100M funds. ▶️ Institutional LPs:   4️⃣ Fund of Funds (FoFs) - Unlike the other LP types, FoFs need to raise from LPs. I have seen FoFs invest in fund sizes across the spectrum. Depending on the FoF they can invest in funds as small as $15.0M. 5️⃣ Foundations -  These are often investing to align with their mission. I would spend time understanding how you complement their programmatic work. I have seen foundations invest in $45.0M funds and above.  6️⃣ University Endowments - Endowments is where most new GPs waste time. It is important to ask if the university has an emerging manager program upfront. I have seen emerging manager programs invest in small funds ($25.0M - $65.0M). It also helps if the GP was an active alum of the university or had some unique relationship to the university.  If there is no emerging manager program I am often told that there should be a fund target on the low-end of anywhere b/w $150.0M - $200.0M to be considered.

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Worth reading: Situationsl Awareness by Leopold Aschenbrenner PDF : https://lnkd.in/gkxQ3yMD Web site: https://lnkd.in/gyJUCBhb Interesting perspective, time of course will tell.

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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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👀 Looking at our recent investments at Draper Associates, here’s what standout founders nailed, making our decision to invest much easier (and faster): 💥 Visionary Tech with a Bold Vision – These founders are not here for incremental wins; they’re reimagining what’s possible in across tech - biotech, robotics, aerospace, and beyond. Their vision is big and audacious, tackling complex problems that demand breakthrough solutions, others have not been willing to try. 👊 Clear Passion & Purpose – The drive in these founders is undeniable. They’re committed to their mission with a depth of purpose that shapes every choice. One founder, for example, took two years completely off to learn and meet everyone in longevity biotech. This level of grit and dedication is rare but essential for the most impactful founders. 🌟 Assembling All-Star Teams – They bring together top-tier talent from diverse disciplines: experienced business leaders with successful exits or industry experience at top companies, technical co-founders with deep expertise, often PhDs or industry pioneers, and even published authors. It’s a complementary team, unified by a shared vision. They make the: "Why this team?" obvious - at a glance. 💻 Data-Driven to the Core – These founders present data insights that show why their approach is unique, especially against a competitive field of companies. This data is delivered with clarity and they make the complex simple. Many are published in top journals, adding depth and credibility to their approach, and reinforcing that they know their tech inside out. ⚡️ Memorable, Clear Vision – They don’t just pitch; they make the future feel tangible, with a vision that’s both compelling and concise. If I can relay their pitch in under 30 seconds to my team, they’ve killed it. 📣 Transparent & Proactive Communication – The best founders don’t wait for questions. They come prepared, often with a comprehensive FAQ doc, give timely updates to our questions, and are candid about challenges. This level of openness builds trust and strengthens our partnership. 💸 Milestone-Driven Funding Strategy – Each funding stage aligns clearly with already achieved or upcoming achievable milestones. They’ve mapped out a roadmap that minimizes risk at every step, giving us confidence in their journey. 💰 Revenue Milestones Along the Way – Even if it'll take a decade to hit revenue on their big vision, these founders find revenue generation stops along the way to profitability. They share a trajectory that connects early wins to revenue, showing how every step is a building block toward their bigger vision. Overall, the best founders are incredibly thoughtful, prepared, and fantastic verbal / written communicators. #founders #startups #fundraising #VC

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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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Origins is a good podcast series for us venture nerds to dig into. This one featuring Wesley Chan in convo with Elizabeth "Beezer" Clarkson + Nicholas Chirls had the following 3 takeaways for me: 1/ For the great founders, Steve Jobs, Page + Brin etc., it is not a as much about priving someone wrong so much as proving you are right! "Larry and Sergey never felt they had to go fight the man, even though a lot of people doubted them at the beginning. They felt they had to go change the world, right? And like prove themselves that there was something better if Google existed than if it didn't, right?" 2/ Timing / why now is an important aspect to their evaluation process. Wesley: “we ask the question, why now? Or why does this make sense now? Why not start it at 10 years from now? And usually, the founders who understand why now, they thought about their whole lives or like, no, this is the one moment in time. They have a really wonderful answer for it, which is these are the things, these are the tailwinds that are blowing." This resonated with me, because in my writings on PMF, the first part of PMF is getting 'the pick' or problem space right, and one of the three elements of 'the pick' is why now (others are founder problem fit or why you) and large attackable market). Increasingly I am incorporating 'why now' into my evaluation process of startup pitches as well. 3/ Doesnt believe in platform; says the best founders dont need recruiting help. Wesley: “A lot of people mistake Venture Capital for being some sort of tuition check for like training and helping founder learn on the job, and while we're willing to help them learn, in fact, we provide a lot of help with coaching, especially through our coach and founders network, but the best founders don't need their VCs to do the work for them.”

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Today is an inflection point for Breakout with the announcement of our $4.5m venture growth round led by the experienced team at RockawayX with participation from Mechanism, Round13, CSquared, IOBC, and Mentat Group. Operationally, we’ve accomplished one of the hardest feats — going zero to one. We currently have over 5,000 traders that have collectively traded over $12B in notional volume and we’re growing exponentially. It’s now time to take things to the next level with a stacked treasury that we can leverage to improve our product even further and get Breakout into the hands of tens of thousands of new traders across the globe. I often get asked what it’s like to run a startup and many times I don’t even know where to begin. Startups are HARD. I won’t get into the minutiae but after 4 startups and 16 years, the biggest takeaway for me has been that in order to succeed, you have to mentally overcome the fact that successful startups need to fall forward and constantly navigate unique obstacles without allowing any one of those obstacles to paralyze the company. This is a constant battle that is unachievable without a resilient team that all share the same mindset and entrepreneurial drive. Our team at Breakout is the best I’ve ever been a part of and our growth in such a short period of time could not have been achieved so far without each and every person involved. You know who you are, thank you. We’re going to continue to push the envelope and will have some really exciting news to share in the coming weeks on the product front. Stay tuned. https://lnkd.in/ezPs8pdE

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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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Having a Cars and Capital event tomorrow in Southern California with Oren Klaff. If you want to join message me. https://lnkd.in/gDQ4D39u Oren Klaff Bridger Pennington #InvestorEvent #FamilyOffice #InvestmentOpportunity #CarlsbadEvent #PrivateEquity #WealthManagement #InvestmentConference #CapitalRaising #NetworkingEvent #IndustryLeaders #FinancialGrowth #InvestorsMeetup #WealthBuilding #BusinessGrowth #InvestmentForum

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Hosted a curated group of NYC AI builders for dinner tonight, including product / research / eng / design / GTM leaders from Runway, LangChain, Hume AI, Norm Ai, Galileo 🔭, Spring Health, NVIDIA, Scale AI, and Haize Labs (a Visible Ventures portco!) as well as early-stage AI founders Building in AI by day, two musically gifted guests have performed at the Grammys & Obama's inauguration - as marginal cost of software creation trends towards zero, I'm a big believer in NYC's future in the AI ecosystem for the multidimensionality of talents it attracts and empowers - VCs bearish on NYC are simply blinded by their own lack of imagination 🌆 🎶 I noted some of my favorite POVs from the night - some I strongly agree with, some not so much - but welcome any reaction: - OpenAI may be the Waymo in AI where its edge comes from its head start, not from any 'secret sauce.' OpenAI can keep scaling and improving its model quality, but will eventually flatten out due to fundamental limitations of the transformer architecture - that said, similar to Microsoft's bundling strategy, OpenAI has done an amazing job packaging a variety of features and products to create commercial value 📦 - AI research has been boring last year as no new technique has been introduced 💤 - Anthropic will one day face the pressure of pivoting away from its safety / research core and following OpenAI's commercial footsteps, except it will be years later ... ⛑ - Advanced AGI cannot be accomplished as human intelligence is passed down and enriched generationally - there's no way for AI models to 'learn' how to recreate humanity's collective abstract intelligence 👵 - VCs have mistakenly funded many seemingly technical founders who actually ... are not 🥷🏻 - Humans are lazy by default, and no one likes typing - AI products should prioritize reducing the work it takes for end users to interact with and benefit from AI 🐨 - Open source is over-hyped due to lack of means to sustainably access GPU clusters. While Meta can fund its own AGI play, the entire open source community relies on Zuck. Meta also isn’t truly open source as they’ve built a custom license where Azure / AWS would have to pay royalties past certain usage thresholds, which will help fund Meta's model development 🔓 - Crafting a scalable implementation strategy is key to selling to enterprises as adoption is almost always delayed by legal roadblock and organizational grunt work 🚧 - Healthcare AI today lacks creativity - workflow automation for providers / payers may be the first wave, and the next wave should be focused on truly improving care outcomes with AI models 💉 Thank you for John Bryson (Banc of California)'s partnership, and if you are building impactful AI products our doors are always open at Visible Ventures !

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During yesterday's LibreQoS APNIC webinar, I posed the question: won't more bandwidth solve these problems? As Herbert Wolverson said, yes, more bandwidth is good, but, still these problems remain if queueing is done incorrectly. Here's my take on why bandwidth alone is not as good as bandwidth + good queueing policies: Generally it was believed that 'data is important, so don't throw it away; hang on to it and send it later'. In practice, this has proven to be suboptimal as two issues may emerge: 1) latency increases for some flows due to heavy demand from other flows using the same bottleneck link, 2) even a single flow can have excessive latency due to aspects of typical TCP behavior (referred to bufferbloat) when the buffers grew large enough that the data being buffered was retransmitted anyway. It turns out that not all data is equally important. Active Queue Management is the art of deciding priorities, both in deciding what data to throw away, but also in allowing some later arriving data to be transmitted ahead of data in another connection that arrived before it. These problems have been studied, and good solutions have been found by using certain queueing policies in routers and switches, referred to as “fq_codel’ and “cake”. These track the different flows not by classifying the data, but by watching the behavior. Flows that send relatively little data (DNS lookups), or at a measured pace (video chat) have priority over flows that send a lot of data as quickly as possible (App and System updates, Video and ISO downloads).

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Seed VCs are turning to new ‘pro rata’ funds that help them compete with the big firms Alpha Partners, SignalRank and now SaaS Ventures help seed VCs pay for shares when big VCs try to price — or push — them out Lee Edwards, partner at Root VC, has a saying at his firm that “pro rata rights are earned, not given.” That may be a bit of a stretch since pro rata refers to a term that VCs put in their term sheets that gives them the right to buy more shares in a portfolio company during consequent funding rounds to maintain an ownership percentage and avoid dilution. Still, while these rights are not exactly “earned,” they can be expensive. One of the latest trends in VC investing these days are funds dedicated to helping seed VCs exercise their pro rata rights. https://lnkd.in/dRM3RvdA By Christine Hall

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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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Since early 2021, VC quarterly exit values have plummeted to $50B or below, a stark contrast to the six consecutive quarters of $100B+ exits before then. With IPOs dwindling and M&A activity slow, the future of venture industry exits appears uncertain. Will we see a surge in private venture-backed company acquisitions? This could be a crucial and innovative strategy to boost VC exits. Increased private acquisitions might offer a much-needed lifeline, providing a creative solution to the current exit drought in the venture capital market. #venturecapital #inspireglobalventures

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