Nadav Eylath

🌟Innovative VC Firm Overcomes Exits Drought with Secondary Sales🌟 ⛵Navigating a challenging landscape where exits are scarce, Santa Barbara Venture Partners (SBVP) has pioneered a novel approach to sustain its growth and attract investors for its second fund: secondary sales. Instead of waiting for traditional exits like IPOs or acquisitions, SBVP opted to sell shares of its portfolio companies, demonstrating its ability to generate returns for investors and stand out in a competitive market. 🎤According to Dan Engel, founder and managing partner of SBVP, these secondary transactions have been a game-changer, sparking investor interest and bolstering the firm's credibility. By leveraging its recent successes, including a lucrative stake in sports-betting company DraftKings Inc.' acquisition of digital lottery app Jackpocket, SBVP seized the opportunity to return profits to its limited partners (LPs) and pave the way for its second fund. 💡Engel highlighted the challenges faced by young VC firms in raising subsequent funds, particularly amid a downturn in exit activity and heightened investor scrutiny. With traditional exit routes becoming increasingly elusive, the pressure is on for firms to demonstrate tangible returns and establish a track record of success. ✨"For us, secondary sales have been a game-changer. They've helped us return profits to our LPs and attract investors for our second fund," said Dan Engel. 💰For SBVP, the decision to pursue secondary sales was driven by the need to provide liquidity to LPs and validate its investment thesis in the eyes of prospective investors. By strategically offloading portions of its holdings in high-performing portfolio companies like Bark Technologies and Rad AI, SBVP not only generated substantial returns but also bolstered investor confidence in its ability to deliver results. ⚠Despite the complexities and potential stigma associated with early share sales, Engel emphasized the importance of prioritizing investor returns and seizing opportunities to unlock value for stakeholders. With a focus on profitability and transparency, SBVP remains committed to its mission of delivering sustainable growth and maximizing returns for its LPs. 🔍 "Returning profits to our investors is our top priority. By strategically selling shares, we're proving our commitment to delivering results and driving value for our stakeholders," added Engel. As SBVP continues to explore secondary transactions and expand its investor base, the firm stands as a testament to innovation and resilience in the face of market challenges. 🚀 ✅ Looking to raise capital for your #fund and increase the international pool of your LP #investors?   🤝 Need warm #LP introductions?   📝 Selling #secondaries to increase liquidity?   🧐 Looking for co-investments?   ▶ G+QUANT's link for inquiries and fund decks: https://lnkd.in/gjC_EuTE #VCInnovation #SecondarySalesSuccess #InvestorReturns #ValueCreation 

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Orb (#uncorrelated) raised $25M to continue building their pricing and billing platform that lets companies automate a range of different billing modes e.g., usage-based, subscriptions, or a mix, marry analytics and billing, collect and meter product usage data, invoice customers, generate revenue reports, draw on product usage insights to find revenue opportunities, model out alternative pricing plans (thus enabling experimentation), orchestrate changes in real time, schedule future price changes for certain customer cohorts or contract renewals, directly embed draft invoices into product billing portals, surface past-due invoices, and recover failed payments automatically. "Orb gives companies a single source of truth that can connect every unit of product usage to revenue. We’ve found a particularly strong fit in AI, cloud infrastructure, fintech, and dev tools, and have seen most of our growth come from those verticals.” Orb’s revenue grew 5x in the past year, and the customer base tripled to include brands such as Vercel, Replit, Pinecone, and Perplexity. https://lnkd.in/gYh4y2tg

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What Dave McClure is building resonates well what we are doing with our Siena Secondary Fund. Although one focuses on fund stakes and the other company positions, the journey is the same - need to educate the market about what is #VC #secondary and how to benefit from it...

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Great time on the Embracing Erosion podcast w/Devon O'Rourke! We talked about: 🚀 How to scale a company from concept to 9-figure exit 🔄 How to break away from the traditional consulting model and apply product approaches ⏩ Why it’s important to iterate quickly and often with messaging 💸📈What signals are important to pay attention to when investing in startups and much more!

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Our revamped newsletter, The Angle by Angular Ventures, officially launched today! We hope this new format will make it easier to read, share, and subscribe. Back to it, in this week's column, Gil Dibner covered the spirit of risk-taking that inspired Angular to venture into unusual spaces. While, of course, we invest in AI and SaaS, as of late, we have been investing in more and more contrarian spaces - from quantum, to spacetech, to energy, etc. in search of the supposedly impossible - the truly contrarian. Read the full column via the link.

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Rolling into another day of the Primary Summit. Hit me up if we should connect onsite. Kudos to the Primary Ventures team so far, as yesterday’s Pre-Seed Summit was on point. Mar Hershenson, Benjamin Sun, Chris Douvos, Zach Weinberg, and Graham Pingree all dropping helpful nuggets for fund managers. Some paraphrased highlights: - Chris Douvos (AHOY Capital) - Most fund decks are terrible. Start with your people (not your strategy) and know you have about 6 slides of his attention. - Zach Weinberg (Curie.Bio ) - beleives SF’s AI talent is a significant advantage over NY, wouldn’t build AI in NY. Also questions if VC exits can keep up with VC expansion (generally hilarious and smart Twitter follow) - Mar Hershenson (Pear VC) - VC is so much more competitive now. It’s not enough to be an ex-founder with a great network and domain expertise. Have a better “why you are different” or do something else! - Benjamin Sun (Primary Venture Partners)- still sees arbitrage in going long NY venture (vs. SF). Do the work to keep various influential networking nodes aware of what you’re doing and how you think.

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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 Gartner Mike Chalfen Hussein Kanji Kirsten Connell https://lnkd.in/eh8mhcJb

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What do you do when a radical new technology puts your main product right in the crosshairs of disruption? Listen to David Okuniev — co-founder of Typeform | Ask awesomely — discuss the challenges of innovation within existing structures. David shared a game-changing insight: Radical innovation is really, really difficult to do inside your own product. He emphasized the need to break free from the constraints of familiarity and embrace change from outside the box. Henrik Werdelin and I have both seen our fair share of this in our respective careers. What struck us most was how David leveraged structure to overcome the innovator’s dilemma. By creating a culture of experimentation and providing space for bold ideas, he propelled Typeform beyond incremental improvements. What other hacks have you seen or employed to help your organization overcome the innovator’s dilemma? Share your stories below! 👇 And if you want to dive deeper into our conversation, click the link in the comments to catch the full podcast episode!

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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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How companies purchase software is rapidly evolving, with cloud marketplaces expected to reach $100B in 2026, up from $15B in 2023. Simply put, if you are building and selling cloud software today, it's imperative that you can sell through a cloud marketplace. The journey, however, can be a little confusing, and management can be even harder. With 3x growth last year and 3/4th of our business now flowing through a cloud marketplace, CloudZero switched to Clazar earlier this year to handle our rapid growth, and I couldn't be more thrilled. Trunal B. and Aayush Bahuguna have a big vision for how cloud marketplaces will evolve and how software will be bought and sold in the future. No matter where you are on your journey, learning from them what's coming next is worth your time.

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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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One of my proudest moments as an investor occurred today as Alaffia Health announced its series A because it shows how the Aperture® Venture Capital vision of multi-level, multi-generational #impactinvesting is succeeding in the marketplace. Here’s the model in its most basic form : ✅As diverse fund managers with meaningful capital to allocate, we are changing the VC landscape every day just by doing our day jobs. ✅As Black/Brown investors with ~40 years experience collectively, Aperture GPs have access to talent /excellence that others do not, so our portfolio *organically* is more inclusive by race, gender and geography even while optimizing for financial outcomes (all about the alpha). ✅Our most successful portco’s are using financial #innovation to solve market problems that impact underrepresented demographics and underserved communities. Alaffia Health is a shining example of the impact portion of our overall fund thesis, and we couldn’t be prouder of TJ Ademiluyi and Adun Akanni, MPH, PMP - the dynamic brother-sister founder duo whose vision we have steadfastly supported on their journey. Congratulations to TJ and Adun from William Crowder and myself, as well as the whole Aperture team- Marjorie King Philip McKenzie Yves Louis-Jacques Tanvi Lal Michelle Dhansinghani Lisha Bell Katie Kelly Amy Chung Cindy Chong, CFA Brian Fernandes-Halloran Monroe France Jayden Pantel Darren Herman Evan Wladis Neal Triplett Thomas Scriven Peter Ammon Irina Bit-Babik Tim Milanich Rob Rahbari

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Learn a bit more about our DNA and how we operate at Acurio Ventures from Kate Cornell

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The secret—if it ever was one—is out on private equity fondness for vertical software. While PE-backed acquisitions were down 50%+ from a peak in 2021, vertical buyouts have continued to grow, and the fervor seems to be gaining steam. In today’s essay, we will pose an answer to one question: is PE a viable path to exit for a venture-backed startup?

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Coming soon on Aug 1: "Transformation to a Fresh Tomorrow." This is theme of our 3rd Annual Web3 Investor Day, as we welcome the innovators and investors convening in Chicago for these discussions around the next generation Internet. Our theme reflects the optimism, determination and commitment investors and innovators have solidified off the depths of the bear markets to drive success in the bull markets. Broader investor optimism suggests that fresh institutional funds into Web3 across both tokens and equity may endure.  Across adoption metrics, customer interest and developer activity, Web3 seems to have normalized. It’s refreshing to see the transformation and next evolution of Web3 and it’s refreshing to meet many of you on August 1.  And yet, even with the improved optimism from last year, there still remain open questions in the development and adoption of our next generation Internet:  1. the balance of speculative versus productive investor capital in this current cycle 2. the productive role of liquid trading capital in fostering Web3 innovation 3. the attractiveness of venture investments in follow on financings 4. the role of policy and regulation that may enhance innovation 5. the continued developer activity to improve the underlying infrastructure 6. other Web3 recovery characteristics in target customer use cases. We remain committed to navigating regulatory shifts, fostering investor optimism, and building the customer use cases for Web3.  Physical spaces enhance our innovation conversations.  In person relationships foster our collaboration.  Relationships drive breakthrough innovations.  Reach out to Rizza Torres at Decasonic if you would like to join us! #web3investorday #web3 #venturecapital

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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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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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Nice overview of how we're using data to inform how we invest in early-stage founders. We'll be announcing more this summer but we're seeing some really interesting early data. https://lnkd.in/exU_Juf5

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