Joshua March

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

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

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Founders, what would you want to hear from a VC who loves your idea but is at capacity? It's a good problem to have, but right now at Developer Capital we have a full pipeline to diligence of incredible Founders and innovative ideas. Deal memos take him, talking to customers takes him, helping existing Portco's takes time. Time is our gating factor. But we keep meeting with Founders who's ideas we think are worth doing the work on. My current approach is to meet with these founders, but be transparent about our backlog. If they dont hear back from us for a couple weeks they shouldnt freak out. Is this the right approach? What would you want to hear from the VC in that spot? #VentureCapital #Founders #Startups #VCAdvice #Entrepreneurship #InvestorInsights #StartupJourney #Funding #Transparency #DeveloperCapital

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Highlighting: "The market for a bespoke solution like Holoride may be narrower than its founders once hoped." "No shit, Sherlock." This was a niche of a niche of a niche that I honestly never understood. Imagine starting with the people who are VR enthusiasts, and then reducing by the people who want VR in cars, and then the people who have recent year Audis, and then people in Germany (the USA was added later), and then the people who will buy a $700 semi-enterprise package that comes with access to only a dozen games, but also a $20 a month subscription. This is like 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of 1%. The shocking thing is not that they ran out of funding. The shocking thing is that they EVER got any funding. Oh and keep in mind, all that fun stuff about VR being 6DoF, roomscale, body movements, arm movements, hand tracking? All gone. This is semi-3DOF locked in your seat holding a console style knock off bluetooth controller. The VR headset? HTC Vive Flow. The gamepad? 8BitDo Pro 2 Gamepad. The cars supported? Only the Audi A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, Q5, Q7, Q7, Q8, Audi e-tron, Audi e-tron Sportback, Audi e-tron GT* Nothing else. No other makes and models. Just a few Audis. Who does this?! Seriously? Its like developing a PC Game that can only be played by people in Madison, Wisconsin running Mac Pro towers built between 2009-2015, and they can play that game on Wednesday on odd dates of the month. Who does this?! This isn't a business. It's a boutique artisanal popup shop selling handcrafted farts to people who can't smell. It's just confusing. ----- UploadVR: "Holoride Insolvent As Investment Falls Through: 'Pioneering Is Painful'" (IAN HAMILTON) (10 MAY 2024) Holoride's founders say they've filed "for insolvency" after an investment round fell apart. The startup built a platform to present VR headset as in-car entertainment with demos offered at trade shows like CES showing off the concept and a partnership with Audi to sell it to for use in cars in Germany. Holoride CEO and co-founder Nils Wollny acknowledged making mistakes in a post on LinkedIn, that “pioneering is painful” and they "missed our first shot." Responding to questions from UploadVR, Wollny explained over direct message that some employees had been laid off “in February this year based on a new strategic direction. Our team's right-sizing was also based on terms we had agreed on with our planned lead investor.” “While our business operations continue, we are working with the provisional insolvency administrator to find a solution by the end of June to ensure the continued existence of holoride GmbH and conclude our strategic repositioning, which we have intensively worked on.” UploadVR: https://lnkd.in/g32pFPrA #vr #xr #holoride #puzzling

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And my second investment at defy is in 🐶 zeroETL puppies 🐶... I mean PuppyGraph, which is all the beauty of a graph database, none of the data migration or continuous upkeep of a graph database. Sounds like magic? So are puppies 🐶 . Puppygraph is NOT a graph or a database. It is graph analytics engine that answers graph questions on your existing data warehouses, whether that is a Databricks datalake, Google BigQuery or postgres. Compared to SQL, it's faster, handles way more complexity, scales and has almost no upkeep. How did I get to conviction? 1. Tailwinds - 🌊 Lakehouses 🌊 have helped enterprises put all their data in one place, enabling Puppygraph to unlock insights previously unavailable. - 📚 LLMs! 📚AI and RAG cannot easily traverse fragmented data. Puppygraph's Graph RAG unlocks insights with their Knowledge Graph and spoonfeeds to the LLMs. 2. 👯 Team 👯 We have graph experts from Google, LinkedIn, Databricks, Tigergraph, and Instacart who are uniquely able to build this solution. 3. 💸 Customers 💸 . My alma mater Coinbase is a proud user. The feedback from my former colleagues was off the charts! A blockchain is very much a graph database and Puppygraph tracks down fraudulent transactions that go through mixers and helps identify patterns. Huge congrats to Weimo Liu Danfeng Xu Lei Huang Zhenni Wu Gary Hagmueller, defy.vc is proud to be an investor!!

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In a startup's early days, founders often skip detailed compensation planning, instead choosing round numbers and moving on. This is an admirable sentiment. But over the long term, founder compensation design can matter a lot to the company, so it's worth taking some time to think this through. Here are some benchmarks and suggestions for founder compensation across: 1. Salary 2. Equity Split 3. Vesting https://lnkd.in/gcDXehXx

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I enjoyed going on Nick Telson-Sillett’s podcast, Pitch Deck by Forward Pursuit. Nick is a serial founder and investor (founded and exited DesignMyNight) so knows both sides of the table which always makes for an enriching chat. Some things we discussed: - The perceived power dynamic between VCs and founders can hinder productive conversations. - A compelling product demo can significantly influence investor interest. - Founders must focus on solving real customer problems to succeed. - Hiring standards are crucial for building a successful startup team. - Behavioural roadblocks can prevent the adoption of new solutions. - Validation from potential customers is key for pre-revenue startups. - The early-stage funding landscape has become more efficient and selective. - Pace of execution is a critical factor in attracting investment.

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If you haven't subscribed to our newsletter yet, you might have missed out on some amazing funding opportunities for August—but it’s not too late! In this month’s edition of The Funding Feed, we dive into various types of non-dilutive capital and share inspiring success stories from founders who are mastering the non-dilutive funding journey. Plus, we’ve curated fantastic funding opportunities for founders at every stage and in any industry. Don’t miss out—subscribe today to The Funding Feed and gain exclusive insights and access to a community dedicated to saving equity and securing the best non-dilutive capital opportunities! #nondilutivecapital #nondilutivefunding #StartupFunding #Entrepreneurship #EquitySaver #FundingOpportunities #FounderSupport

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Just shipped this week's Diaspora.nz podcast with Paul Copplestone, founder & CEO at Supabase. We talk about: ⚡️why open source is an unfair advantage — as a product development strategy, supercharging recruiting, and helping build customer community. ⚡️how they are building the end-to-end tech stack for AI startups — seeing many customers grow into the millions of users in just weeks, growing to be one of the most tagged products by makers on Product Hunt + most redeemed Y Combinator “perks.” ⚡️raising $116M, and scaling to ~80 people in 30+ countries over the past 4.5 years, operating as a distributed + asynchronous team. ⚡️building three startups over nearly a decade living in South East Asia. Subscribe + listen links in comments below👇 Subscribe at diaspora.nz for weekly episodes 🎧👈

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Such a treat to talk to the Startup Health community about one of my favorite topics: How to talk about what you do, particularly as companies face competing priorities (raising capital, growing the team, building a sustainable business). I’ve got a book coming out on this very topic in 2025. Our conversation in full: https://lnkd.in/esSNHSMa

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👋 We’re building tech for founders to help founders attract, engage, and nurture investors and advisors as effectively as possible. We’ve been building it with founders as an angel and expert community for the last 12mths with over 40 founders at different stages and we’re seeing them generate and convert potential advisor and investor signal really well. If you are a founder that wants to see what we’re shipping to keep in the loop - DM me and I’ll put you on our update mailing list 🚢 #startup #community

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Congrats to Eniac Ventures seeded Nirvana on their big A! 🚀 "Nirvana, a startup aiming to give health care providers and consumers the price of treatment before an appointment, raised $24.2 million in Series A funding, it tells Axios exclusively. Why it matters: The raise comes amid a push for greater transparency in health care bills, with one new government rule put into effect in 2021 and more being considered today. What they're saying: "In some weird behavioral way, people were used to the fact that you would sit in a waiting room for six hours and get the bill six weeks later," says Nirvana CPO Kelvin K Chan. "Looking back, that's incredibly strange and archaic, but I think that mentality is starting to shift." How it works: Embedded into health care providers' websites, the software reduces the chances that an insurance claim will be denied after the fact. It does so by using the patient's name, date of birth, and ZIP code to verify a consumer's coverage, Nirvana says. Traditionally, providers required the insurance ID card, which the company's executives say is susceptible to human error. Combining that with information from the provider about the consumer's condition, Nirvana offers an estimate of the appointment cost at the time of booking. Northzone led this round, joined by Inspired Capital, Eniac Ventures and Surface Ventures." Akshay Venkitasubramanian https://lnkd.in/ewznnP3y https://lnkd.in/ey4DPNBE

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Thanks Kai Nicol-Schwarz for including my thoughts in this piece on areas investors are looking for health startups in!

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I am on the hunt for startups for our Fall Cohort for Techstars! If you are an early stage founder interested in an accelerator, get in touch with me at [email protected] - I'd love to tell you more about the work we do to support founders ⭐ 🚀 #venturecapital #startup #accelerator #founders #techstars

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Episode 340 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Steph Johnson, Co-Founder & CEO at Multiplayer. Steph is an inspiration. As discussed in this interview, her background might not be the prototypical tech CEO profile for a few reasons. First, she came up through the agency world and then ran comms in-house for major tech companies like DigitalOcean and MongoDB. Second, she is a female founder of a dev tools platform startup and yes, we need more female founders. And third, she has a neurological condition called Tourette Syndrome. All of these factors have ultimately given her unique skills to thrive in her current role. Multiplayer is a visual collaborative platform that makes it easy for engineering teams to design, develop, and manage distributed software. The company is backed by Bowery Capital, Okapi Venture Capital, Armory Square Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Mitch Wainer, & Edith Harbaugh. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Steph’s background story and how she got her career started with agencies in NYC. * Her decision to move in-house to run comms at DigitalOcean and MongoDB, plus what she learned at each company like the importance of a developer community. * Advice for making the shift from agency to in-house roles. * Founding Multiplayer with Tom Johnson, her Co-Founder, CTO, and husband… and why being married was a strategic advantage when they raised capital. * The details on the Mutliplayer platform and its beta release. * Advice on the storytelling element for a company building technical products. * And so much more. #entrepreneurship #startups #devtools #venturecapital

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We've profiled almost 200 promising super-early-stage startups over the past two years at PreSeed Now. That's included at least one that is now a unicorn (ElevenLabs) and plenty that have gone on to raise their first or additional investment after being featured. We're filling a gap in tech media by not waiting for investors to provide a signal that a startup is interesting. Why wait for that? When I'm choosing startups to feature, I think like an investor and pick the ones that I think have true potential based on 15 years of writing about, talking to, and assessing startups. Those that we feature are usually those that could well be heading for big things, or occasionally founders that are really promising even if their current idea is likely to be heading for a pivot. Every three months, we take a look at the past year's worth of startups and see which ones are getting the most attention in our analytics and pull together a list. This time we feature: Honu MOMO Biotech Cambridge Future Tech Arro 🎯 PhytoMines GambitBio ClioBooks.ai Ask Silver Juno AI NeuWave Technologies Want to find out more about them all? Look no further! 👉 https://lnkd.in/ef26tdVZ 👈

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This may be anti-narrative given the buzz in the market. Paul Graham’s Founder Mode essay (link in comments) glorifies the relentless hands-on approach, suggesting founders must stay deeply involved in every facet of their business. I have a different POV—clinging to every detail may choke your company’s potential and prevent your team from evolving into capable decision-makers. In the early days of Magento, I was committed to ensuring the product met my vision. While I wasn’t coding, I was heavily involved in refining and guiding the direction. As we grew, it became clear that holding onto every detail was slowing us down. When I trusted my team to lead, make decisions, and solve problems creatively, everything changed. Stepping back allowed the team to thrive and the product to excel. Graham implies that only founders are invested enough to make the right decisions. But here’s the thing: founders who micromanage because they don’t trust their team are bottlenecks. Many great decisions at Magento didn’t come from me—they came from empowering our engineers and product leaders to solve problems and be creative. In many cases, I got out of the way, and it worked. Yes, founders must be hands-on early on. Their vision, passion, and deep understanding of the problem they’re solving are invaluable in shaping the direction. But if you’re still overseeing every detail years later, you’re not fostering growth—you’re bottlenecking progress and holding back your team’s ability to step up. True scale happens when you trust your team to carry the vision forward and make decisions independently. (in the photo, the empowered core development team, ~2006) Do you think founders should empower teams as the company scales, or stay hands-on?

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118 VCs (one hundred eighteen!) are gathering in San Diego next week - to meet with 30 SD startups. But it's so MUCH bigger than just those 30 co's. It brings VCs back - when they see quality companies. It helps those who are next-in-line and adjacent. It enables us to send deal flow all year 'round. It attracts talent and other companies. It inspires entrepreneurship. Connect is working for SD. Together, we're building the best damn innovation ecosystem on the planet. Year over year. Five.Ten.Thirty.

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