Fidji Simo

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 thrilled to announce that MedScout has closed a $15M Series A funding round led by Fulcrum Equity Partners, with continued support from our existing investors, Stage 2 Capital and LiveOak Ventures. After three and a half years of working closely with over 100 companies, we couldn't be more excited about reaching this milestone. From day one, our vision has been clear. If we built the platform that every medical device sales rep in the field NEEDED to have, everything else would fall into place. This new capital allows us to bring this vision to life in ways we've only dreamed of until now. In our search for the right partner, we wanted to work with a team that deeply understands both healthcare and vertical B2B SaaS. Fulcrum fits the bill perfectly. Having Philip Lewis and Jason Moore in our corner, with their invaluable experience from Stratasan, Florence Healthcare, and other ventures, changes the trajectory for our next phase of growth. Reflecting on the journey so far, I'm so damn grateful. I'm thankful for each of the talented individuals building their careers with MedScout. I fundamentally believe startups are a team sport, and I'm proud of how this team supports each other and our customers every single day. I appreciate all of the companies trusting us with their sales enablement needs and every rep who's taken the time to give us feedback. They've taught us invaluable lessons about commercializing medical devices and what it takes to make an impact within healthcare. The guidance from our board members - Mike Marcantonio, Venu Shamapant, Mandy Cole, and Anubhav Maheshwari - has been incredibly instrumental as we've navigated building a venture-backed company. Finally, I'd be remiss not to acknowledge Parker Chase-Corwin, Mike Boyden, Mike Moore, Lisa Bichsel, Paul M. Edwards, Charlie Whelan, J. Scott Heinzelman, and everyone else who has lent their time and expertise along the way. As we embark on this next chapter, we're committed to pushing the boundaries of what it means to commercialize medical technology. Every advancement we make in our ability to turn complex data into clear insights and powerful tools not only improves sales processes but also helps ensure that life-changing medical innovations reach patients more efficiently and effectively. I'm more excited than ever about this mission and can't wait to see what the future has in store for MedScout. https://lnkd.in/g8xUYzA7

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💼 Ready to take your startup to the next level? Explore our extensive list of 220 #VCfirms in New York! Get all the details you need to connect with potential investors. Dive in: https://lnkd.in/d_mb-2n9 #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #managementconsulting

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Robust #PreSeed VC Contact Compilation. Explore a database of 250+ VC firms and 1,000+ professionals (partners and principals), complete with 900 email addresses for outreach. https://payhip.com/b/1bm6W #startup #startups #vc #venturecapital #investmentbanking #privateequity #managementconsulting #b2b #founders #entrepreneurs

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Explore our #NewYork VC contact list, featuring 220+ venture capital firms, over 1,600 VC professionals (including partners and principals), and 1,350 email addresses. Link to purchase https://payhip.com/b/DwY7F #startup #startups #vc #venturecapital #investmentbanking #privateequity #managementconsulting #b2b #founders #entrepreneurs

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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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After working with over 200 employees, 10 joint-ventures and 5 exits, here’s my simple framework to set-up any collaboration for success: 1. Why: Clarify the reason why we’re working together. What is the project? And why are we doing it? 2. Value: What is each party contributing to the project? What are each party’s responsibilities? 3. Success: Clarify how success looks like in 3, 6, 12, 24, 48 months from now for the overall project and how we measure success of each party involved. I like the traffic light system (green for great, yellow for ok, and red for bad outcomes) 4. Compensation: How is each party winning based on the project and our contribution? 5. Termination: Agree ahead of time how lack of success looks like in each scenario (green we’re all happy, yellow we explore / analyse how to get to green, red we stop) and how it works when we stop working together. These are not exchaustive but just a list with the essentials in my opinion. This works in a lot of different types of relationships, could be an employee, a contractor, or even other partnerships and even M&A contexts. Wondering about the key elements you’ve seen are important to set-up any collaboration for success?

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How do you build for Gen Z? 🏃‍♂️ Immediacy 🎨 Flexibility 👀 Authenticity These are the principles you need to ground your product in. Gen Z are the first digitally native generation. They've grown up in a world of hyper-connectivity, hyper-stimulation, and hyper-personalization. One where everything not only auto-saves and auto-updates, but auto-optimizes too. And while they trust in technology to anticipate their needs, they're much less trusting of the platforms where they spend their time. So what does this mean for how you build, hire, and market? Excited to share my #Config2024 talk, where I explored exactly this 👇 Grateful to the folks whose stories added to these insights: Yuhki Yamashita, Dabney Dayes, Adam Polselli, Peter Yang, Helena Jaramillo, Ceci Mourkogiannis, David Hoang, Colin Dunn, Andy Chung Figma 🙌 Most of all, thanks to my Gen Z co-creator, Maddie Johnston, for pairing with me to bring this to life 🙏 https://lnkd.in/gx833AuF

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Pie is LIVE in San Francisco. This is not a city that is dumb to new startups. There is e large and growing graveyard of companies and apps that have tried to solve the problem of making friends IRL. Having worked on this for five years, here is why we think Pie is right on time: 1. Our Pie Creator Fund is creating a gig economy of people building IRL communities. Loving people is one thing. Being able to afford the time and treasure to bring them together is another. Apply here: piecreatorfund.com 2. Most Pie plans are free. The internet is littered with paid opportunities to buy tickets. But what if you don't know what to expect? What if you don't know what is worth paying for? Believe in free: getpie.app (and click San Francisco). 3. We have secrets about the future. Not all of them are in our product yet. We hope that you give us a shot and maybe later we can tell you our secrets. Maybe you don't have to figure out who to hang out with, maybe we can do that for you.

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Today we can finally announce our participation in Buddy.ai's $11m Seed Round led by my old friend Jasper Brand at BITKRAFT Ventures! So proud to team up with Ivan Crewkov, Dima Plotnikov and the rest of the Buddy.ai team, as they continue to build out their incredible AI platform for language learning. Their journey so far has already led to 20M MAU, but I believe that this is just the beginning. After all, we are dealing with a combination of: - proprietary tech: we're talking best kid speech recognition by a mile and COPPA-compliance - clever use of IP: starting with our favorite tutor, Buddy, but with the potential to bring all sorts of characters on board, and - personal drive to democratize language tutoring: after all Ivan started building the product for his kids and their friends Best to hear directly from Ivan. Here's his techcrunch interview: https://lnkd.in/gDgUT3_Y Congrats, Ivan. Can't wait to keep finding ways to help you along this journey!

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Great session James Newell and thanks for hosting Jon Prentice and SVB! In terms of the answers and perspective shared from Voyager Capital and James…. The Good (for Seattle investing and VCs) —— * the opportunity in Seattle (and the wider PNW / Cascadia region) that Voyager is still capitalizing on, is that there is a ton of potential in Seed to Series A investing that isn’t as accessible elsewhere. * SF and other markets are saturated and less engaged as investors at this stage. * talent pool here is massive, especially on the engineering and product side. What would be a “Game Changer” for Seattle —— * there is a talent shortage especially in terms of sales and marketers locally. * Few sales and marketers want to do $0 - $1M journey again if prior successful. * Angels are more private here, and may not feel the need to give back to the start up community if that isn’t how they made their wealth Outside of Seattle specific feedback: —— * Founders need to be doers, not “leaders of leaders” (an issue with those coming from big tech); talent need to meet the stage and act accordingly. * AI as a tool and business foundation is only important in terms of delivering business value. * AI powered firms need to show they have an ability to access proprietary data or be linked intimately to workflows or both to be a sound investment [this is established consensus among investors] * Investing, especially very early stage, should be run as a process. Be your own best BDR for fundraising. And finally …. The top 2 pieces of advice most often given to founders…. 1) Try to avoid VC capital to the degree you can [which means you have a capital efficient business]. 2) find a co-founder to complement your skills vs doing it all on your own.

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Thrilled to announce our team at Andreessen Horowitz is leading the Series A in HappyRobot! (CC Olivia Moore, Seema Amble) Happyrobot is reinventing communication for logistics - starting with AI phone agents that can handle load updates, check calls, negotiations, and more. Freight is a massive market, which today runs on calls, faxes, and emails. AI can handle this back-and-forth at much lower cost than humans and with 24/7 uptime, enabling brokers and carriers to pick up every call. This unlocks better margins, and frees up employee time to build deeper relationships. Over the last year, Happyrobot has completed more than 1M calls for some of the largest players in freight. Customers use Happyrobot to trigger custom workflows during and after each call, connected to their data systems...and, even transfer to a live human if needed. The last gen of freight software cos got it wrong by trying to disrupt the broker. We (+ the HappyRobot team!) believe brokers are the experts, and the right approach is empowering them. We're excited to partner with logistics leaders on this round - including Ryder System, Inc. Ventures, Andrew Berberick, Tobenna Arodiogbu, Jin Shieh, Jett McCandless, Dan Lewis, and George Ezenna - and work with angel investors Carles Reina, Bram Sugarman, Christopher Coleman, Nicholas Hinrichsen, Andrew Berman, and Gokul Rajaram. We're joining Y Combinator and @Array Ventures who led Happyrobot's seed round. We couldn't be more excited to work with co-founders Pablo Palafox, Javi Palafox, and Luis Paarup as they build software to solve big problems for freight. They're growing quickly - and hiring engineers! Read more about the company and our investment here: https://lnkd.in/g4ZdHnGb

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life update + hiring announcement: if you haven't seen me around the past few months, it’s because i’ve been building Seekeasy with Erick Hachenburg, Bryan Hart - two serial founders with multiple successful exits and whom i had the privilege working with at google and Tenor (acquired by google) - and Andrew Greenstein, ceo of the developer agency for the initial tenor app. now, we’re reinventing the recommendations space with genai and we're starting with restaurant recs (think google maps x ig, demo here: https://lnkd.in/gJpGpS3A). building for consumer is hard, messy, and maybe kind of crazy with all the existing incumbents. but we believe how people discover places, products, and content is ripe for disruption especially with what genai unlocks today. so if you’re an engineer looking for your next challenge, come join us!!

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📊 Looking to invest in the future of FoodTech? 🍽️ Our curated list of #fundedstartups includes essential info like HQ locations, funding rounds, and LinkedIn profiles. Get all the insights here: https://lnkd.in/dCUtbYBm #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #managementconsulting

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🌱 Ready to take your startup to the next level? Access our extensive list of 950+ #SeedVC firms! Get all the essential details like stages, markets, and social media links. Your funding journey starts here! 🚀 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/dEnwYePU #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #managementconsulting

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The Care Summit was an incredible conference, made up of world class speakers, mission driven founders and top tier VC’s. To top it off- it was hosted in San Francisco (don’t bet against SF!). I feel really fortunate I was invited to attend. Most people don’t realize the care economy is now a 6 trillion dollar industry, and only growing. Every opportunistic industry gets a lot of attention when capitalist are at work, but oddly Care- something that will impact every human- gets a fraction of the attention it deserves. Why is this? Why at a conference that’s focused on caregiving, longevity, child care and human health was there only a handful of men? On one discussion, one of the moderators asked the panelist in 5 words what they want to see happen between now and next year. If I was given the opportunity to answer, I would have said, “more male participation”. I think it’s critical more women lead, enter venture, build companies and hold executive roles- we need more voices not few- but I am baffled by the absence of men, and the lack of effort on the huge problems at home, at work and in our policies. We must participate and create positive impact, and not sit silent because you feel you are not impacted (news flash: you are). I am leaving San Francisco inspired by conversations I had. I am eager to dig in deeper at Maple as a founder in this space, and at home as a husband, brother, son and father. A big thank you to FamTech.org , Magnify Ventures , Pivotal Ventures , The Holding Co. And every person involved. I look forward to attending next year, and hope more men join in.

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In my 4+ years in the dYdX ecosystem, I’ve consistently admired the team's ability to innovate on emerging technologies and scale billion+ (and in one case, trillion+) dollar products—while strategically sunsetting old versions to focus on 10x larger opportunities. Solo - L1 Spot & Margin Trading: https://lnkd.in/e36dudcx L1 Perps: https://lnkd.in/eUUQPQrt V3 - L2 Perps: https://lnkd.in/eWudVbW7 “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”—and this requires a strong product vision and technical prowess to embrace tech that improves exponentially. The dYdX Chain, launched 1 year ago, has already generated $250B in volume, $50M in USDC protocol fees distributed to stakers and validators, and onboarded 20K traders. Still not the biggest exchange yet, but it's getting there. And if anything, it's a major step toward achieving the goal of democratizing access to financial opportunities. dYdX Unlimited launched this week which unlocked the next stage of growth with Instant Market Listings, Megavault, an affiliate program, and much more. All code is fully open-sourced and run by 60 independent validators, running the network in a permissionless manner.

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This is one of the most impactful articles I've read about how to grow companies and some of the pitfalls in transitioning too quickly away from founders. Worth a read. #svpg

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