Jill Klinvex

📈🏢 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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Thanks for inviting me TEN Capital Network and Hall T. Martin to talk about some of my favorite topics - climate tech investing and how we are building an energy transition economy in New Mexico.

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🧬 This week's Austin Bio & Health Roundup features nearly $200M in funding & new capital, M&A, more infrastructure coming, & hopefully an opening of the Texas Bio & Health IPO window🧬 💰 Funding Function Health has closed its Series A, securing $53M in total funding. Function’s platform offers 100+ tests for $499 per year, focusing on prevention and empowerment. The round was led by a16z Bio + Health and includes several celebrity investors. Congrats to Mark Hyman, MD, Pranitha Patil, Jonathan Swerdlin, Mike Nemke, Seth Weisfeld, and Dan Swerdlin. Sensi.AI raised a $31M Series B led by Insight Partners and Zeev Ventures to enhance its 24/7 monitoring technology for seniors and home care. Way to go Romi Gubes and the entire team! Ironspring Ventures raised $100M for their second fund, focusing on “manufacturing, construction, transportation, and energy.” Exciting times for Ty Findley, Adam Bridgman, Peter J. Holt, and the expanding Ironspring team! Now, why include this in a Bio & Health newsletter? I believe there will be a value migration from drugs, devices, and diagnostics to the bio innovation tech stack itself. One key area of that stack is biomanufacturing. As new modalities like cell and gene therapy rise, the challenge of scaling these therapies presents a significant opportunity for innovation. While as far as I know Ironspring hasn't invested in this subsector yet, I look forward to seeing what they do with Fund 2. 🤝 M&A and Partnerships Significo, a software development that builds healthcare apps and solutions, acquired Bunch, an AI leadership coach app. Congrats to Rick McCartney and team! 🚀Launches, Expansions, and Milestones BrainCheck, a cognitive assessment software platform, announced their adoption by the Physicians Hearing Network (PHN), bringing insights to 270 members across 12 states.  Keep up the momentum Kim Rodriguez and team! 🏗️ Infrastructure Texas State University is partnering with Concept Companies to build a life sciences incubator at their round rock campus. The incubator will have labs, offices, admin support, and collaboration spaces. The teams hope to complete construction by the end of 2025. DES Architects + Engineers opened a new office in Austin, aiming to bring their expertise to the city’s burgeoning life science market. Welcome Kevin D. Norman, Tracy Wong, and the rest of the DES team! 🚩 Texas Bio Triangle Fort Worth-based biopharma company Actuate Therapeutics, Inc. is preparing for an IPO, targeting a raise of about $50M. What’s Next? #AustinNext #LifeSciences #Healthcare #Biotechnology

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The next instalment in the Cultivating Advising Success series by Melinda Roy is now live on the Plaid Analytics blog. In this post, we look at the different types of advisors and advisee types. Just as different plants require different approaches in the garden, different students need different types of advising approaches and interventions. Matching your approach and advisor roles to student needs is core to a successful advising program. From confident-independent students who rarely visit advisors, to insecure-dependent students who rely on advisors for decision-making, we explore the types of students who visit (or don't) advisors, and discuss their needs, attitudes, and expectations for advising services. Read the full post here: https://lnkd.in/gVf8FznC As advising success is key to the success of many SEM plans, it is a crucial to design a tailored approach that not only upholds institution mission and values but one that is responsive to changing student needs. Leveraging institutional data to understand your student body, and building a diverse advising team with the skills and lived experiences that reflect the student body is core to having a trusted advising program. Whether they are generalists, faculty advisors, career counselors, or peer liaisons, advisors are essential in helping students achieve personal and academic success. When advisors are empowered and informed, students will be too. If you're restructuring your advising approach, be sure to invest in your advising team to create an environment where every advisor and advisee can thrive. 🌿

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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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🚀 New Episode Alert: Investor Connect with Gary Forni, Chairman of CTAN 🚀 Join host Hall T. Martin for an insightful conversation with Gary Forni, the visionary Chairman of the Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN). With a storied career in technology and venture capital, Gary has been instrumental in shaping the startup ecosystem in Central Texas. 📅 Listen now: https://ow.ly/Po6Q50RBUJt 🔹 What to Expect: Gary's journey from Intel Corp to leading one of the most active angel groups in the U.S. An inside look at CTAN's investment strategy and how they're nurturing the next wave of disruptive tech startups. Expert advice on overcoming challenges in angel investing and adapting to economic changes. 📈 Under Gary's leadership, CTAN has invested over $129 million in 215 companies, driving innovation and economic growth. Learn how this network supports entrepreneurs with capital, mentoring, and more. 🎧 Tune in to "Investor Connect" for more expert insights into the investment landscape. Don’t miss it! #InvestorConnect #AngelInvesting #Startups #Innovation

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🧬 This week's Austin Bio + Health Roundup highlights significant data trends, my stance on covering funding announcements, new partnerships, and action across the Texas Bio Triangle. 🧬 💰 Funding: The Way I Plan to Cover Funding Announcements You may have seen reports of a local Bio & Health startup’s funding round through an SEC report filing. While some outlets have covered this, my position is not to. I prefer to support our builders directly rather than trolling the filings for scoops. There is plenty of real investigative journalism that our city would be well served by if that is where they focused. Remember I am not a journalist and I am not the media. When the company is ready to announce their round officially, I’ll gladly shout it to the rooftops. 📊 Data Peter Walker at Carta reports that in 2017, Biopharma and Medical Devices captured just under 10% of all VC dollars. By 2023, this figure rose to 17.7%, and in Q1 2024, it reached 24%. The overarching tailwinds favor our sector and region with trends towards Bio & Health and the physical & digital intersection. Energy and hardware, two other sector blossoming in Central Texas, also saw similar share gains. 🤝 M&A and Partnerships Sensi.AI, a 24/7 senior care intelligence agent, is partnering with Caring Senior Service to deploy SensiAI’s platform in Caring’s 50 locations across the US. This partnership allows seniors a better opportunity to age gracefully in their homes. 🚩 Texas Bio Triangle BioMedSA is hosting an event called Women in Bioscience, Thursday June 20th. It’s designed to connect and empower women in the bioscience industry across Central Texas, and features Randi Brosterman Hutchens discussing "Building your Personal Board." Find the link to the event in the comments. Houston-based Lokum, a staffing solution to connect clinicians and clinical staff to health care facilities, has raised a $700K pre-seed round. Congrats Ayoade (Joy) Ademuyewo on the raise. What’s Next? #AustinNext #LifeSciences #Healthcare #Biotechnology

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Throughout the year, Buyouts gathers intel about the most talked about emerging funds in the market from our networks of LPs and fundraisers. Emerging managers, including first-timers, remain of interest even in the tough fundraising markets. In a Probitas Partners survey last year, 75% of 69 institutional investor respondents said they were interested in exploring new firm spin-outs. Only 2% of respondents had no interest in first-time funds. The updated list includes around 45 names of funds in market that have gotten the attention of investors, including Otro Capital, Iron Path Capital, 5th Line Capital Century House Partners, Dynasty Equity, Citation Capital, Broad Sky Partners, Allied Industrial Partners, and Highland Rim Capital. #Venturecapitalists #Emergingfunds #EmergingManagers #Limitedpartners #Generalpartners #Investments #fundraising #Newfunds #Buyouts #LPs #GPs #VCs #Funds

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Some great insights from Jason Calacanis at yesterday's Austin Tech Week regarding venture investing; ' Surface area (broad diversification) is important early (seed stage), concentration is important in later rounds.' Couldn't agree more. Read the piece below to see why...and how.

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"Simply put, there is too much capital seeking too few opportunities, particularly at the seed stage. Multi-stage firms have eliminated pricing discipline at seed stage and the proliferation of seed firms has made the task of investing at this stage as competitive as it’s ever been, leading me to believe that indexed seed investing in today’s environment will produce poor returns. What does this mean for today’s environment? It’s never been more important to break away from median performance. While there is risk in breaking away from the pack, the risk (at least performance wise) of staying part of the herd is simply far worse. Median returns for the recent vintages are simply terrible. One could argue that funds are still in their j-curve phases, but I suspect this doesn’t explain the divergence we’re seeing between GOOD performers and GREAT performers. More than ever before, it’s clear to me that playing the same game as everyone else will not work, so fund managers should question whether they are really capable of being in the top 5% of whatever strategy they are employing. From a LP perspective, allocators should likely ask the same of their managers and consider whether allocating to indexed mega funds or indexing across too broad of a portfolio of managers is tenable in achieving their return targets." https://lnkd.in/g8GqHY-P

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There are funding resources out there for climate startups besides equity. If you want to understand the capital stack and have a capital strategy, understand what’s above equity in the capital structure, and what the options are for non-dilutive funding, here’s a great resource. Daniel Kriozere

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As we approach year-end, here's a helpful guide for General Partners and Limited Partners explaining: - What gets taxed? - What isn't taxed? - Scheduling K-1s - How venture fund earnings are taxed - VC fund write-offs - How Carta can help Check it out below (it's a quick read)!

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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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Big things on the horizon, we are motivated and blessed to be at the dawn of a new age for the internet. Read more about our journey below or listen to the podcast: https://lnkd.in/eJeNhvVa

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Hot takes🔥 from fundraising/vc landscape breakfast this morning… - seed/pre seed vals & check sizes evolving $10-12M post-money SAFEs; $150k is the new 50K pre seed check. - angels writing $100k writing checks in non traditional founders focused on building real business w/ cashflow vs hype-scaling - Forget pie charts—tell us how the funds will actually drive growth. What is the next milestone we are funding? - stay focused on CAC to LTV… then move the dials - metrics being tracked by early stage investors: strength of a founding team that face challenges together; Market Fit: Speed of execution matters, but so does market size and adaptability. Can your company evolve over time? Early pilots and traction / market validation How VC Has Changed… “The 2021 bubble—lofty valuations and fast, easy fundraising—taught us a lot. The current VC environment has tested both founders and VCs. It’s shown us who the true players are. Expect to see a consolidation of funds as the “VC tourists” who entered during the cheap-money era fall off… Raising capital now takes grit, and harvesting returns takes patience. Gone are the days of misunderstanding how long this game really is.” Thank you Iynna Halilou Partner at The MBA Fund & Ruben A. Austin, Founder & CEO at all in all !! Artesian (Alternative Investments) #founder #Investing #VentureCapital

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Another HUGE opportunity to meet a new set of #investors https://lnkd.in/esJYQW4J I hope you are reading Hypepotamus to find what is happening in the South's innovation ecosystem

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I've participated in 100+ conversations with venture fund LPs this year. The most frequently discussed topics include: Team dynamics Sourcing differentiation Decision-making and selection process Portfolio support Sector thesis Track record Model and deployment strategy Network Long-term vision Timing (why now) References Fund infrastructure and reporting

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