Kevin Lehtiniitty

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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I rarely write about one particular token, but given the volume of requests for our thesis on Stacks STX, especially after the recent announcement https://lnkd.in/gWpkm-iu, I’m consolidating my thoughts here in one place. Hope this is helpful to those seeking to understand the STX ecosystem and the reasons behind our conviction. Full thesis here: https://lnkd.in/g2JGahpZ TLDR 1. It's the OG blue-chip crypto project. 2. It's the first compliant token: a key driver for institutional adoption is to use STX as the de facto BTC staking provider. 3. The most optimal return on risk for real “whales” to generate yield on BTC with peace of mind. 4. The undisputed forerunner in bitcoin L2 with 10 years of first-mover advantage. 5. It has a rare token standard moat. 6. Its ecosystem moat: 155 monthly actively developers + 60+ projects adopting its token standard 7. It's vastly being undervalued at the moment based on comparables in ethereum. 8. Tokenomics and token maturity: 100% vested. 9. Upcoming catalysts

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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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What if you want more details about funding rounds (e.g. for comparisons)? See the original source of funding news on shipshape.vc We aggregate data from the web to save you time, and we've just released a feature that lets you read the original news story. #capitalraising #startups #fundraising #founders #venturecapital #investors #vc #vcfunding #technology #startup #tech

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🥁 Drum-rolls Please🥁 Introducing our first shiny new Micro-SaaS from Raissd Labs ✨ 𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 ✨ 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 (𝗔𝗧𝗙)? ATF, is an all-in-one fundraising tool to, 🥸 Identify the right investors in less than 5 mins 📈 Get pitch ready in less than 30 mins 😎 Capture investor attention and make impactful first impressions 💸 Get funding ready with comprehensive guidance and resources. ⚡ Boost your fundraising chances by 10X Sounds too good to be true? Why don’t you try it for yourself? 𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗕𝗲𝘁𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗧𝗙 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹! 𝗪𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝘁𝘀! Here is a secret 🤫- All our Beta users get 6 months of free access to the ATF tool Join our waitlist now! Link in the first comment #Fundraising #StartupIndia #Entrepreneurship #EarlyStageStartups #StartupFunding#Waitlist #ProductLaunch #EarlyAccess

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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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Last night, we brought together 20 technical co-founders and leaders in the Agentic AI and Dev space for an industry dinner. There were so many great discussions–I walked away with a few key takeaways: - Agents need new infrastructure: models, evals, browsing, permissioning, agentic purpose built APIs - SWE agents need ACI (agent computer interface) - Everything stateful should have branches: browsers, databases, eval runtimes and an API service across libraries.  - Every stateful component needs copy on write branching - noted by Cursor team, Replit built a custom storage system and Neon delivers branching for the database. The energy and interest were off the charts—we’ll need a bigger venue and more time for the next one! Big thanks to the leaders from Anthropic, Vercel, Wordware (YC S24), Harvey, Cleric, 11x and everyone else who joined. Special shoutout to our co-hosts, Glenn Solomon from Notable Capital and Amjad Masad from Replit. If you're building in the space and want to join the next dinner, reach out. More to come!

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Breaking down our latest newsletter section by section, starting with our expanded focus in Deep Tech: --- We have built expertise in the robotics sector, and will continue to double (and triple) down on investing in this category, but we have been increasingly finding that robotics is naturally steering us into two exploding adjacent areas: Aerospace, and Advanced Manufacturing (which we define as industrials, semiconductors, materials science, and energy production). Stepping back, this expansion makes perfect sense. Robotics is an inherently horizontal platform - meaning it can be applied productively across multiple industries. This quality, paired with the fact that robotics has long shown the highest TRLs of any deep tech technology, makes it a kind of “gateway” to other sectors in the hard sciences. Now with the recent breakthroughs in AI for robotics, growing semiconductor demand, and the resurgence of aerospace and defense tech, we are seeing a dramatic uptake of robotics and relevant technologies in both advanced manufacturing and aerospace. As an added bonus of the expansion, many of the founder (and funder) networks across these landscapes have natural overlaps and linkages. For AlleyCorp Deep Tech this means that we can be extremely helpful, knowledgeable, and engaged across all three sectors right away, and continue to be the best-in-class investing team across these categories.  --- More in our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/ewiTuYq6

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YC is usually considered one of the tastemakers for downstream investors. They de-risk companies at the earliest stages so that seed funds can pour more into the companies that find true PMF later. Having invested in 75+ YC companies and now focusing on Lobster Capital, I've seen this repeatedly - their batch composition often signals where markets are heading 6-12 months time. When YC starts funding a category, pay attention. But don't follow blindly. If you're looking for an idea on where future capital, talent, and business goes, follow the tastemakers, then decide for yourself what's real or not.

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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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Have you heard of #CapVC? It’s an application platform designed specifically for the use of #VC firms. Essentially, it’s a robust #AI-powered tool made to simplify the daily operations of managing a #fund. Isn’t that something, a VC funded start-up designed to help improve the productivity of VC funding! According to this article from TechCrunch, Cap VC is looking to become much more than just an ‘operating system’ — the company aims to be a simplified and extremely efficient way to run a VC firm: reducing digital clutter by turning PDF files, income statements and balance sheets into readable data, automating company suggestions based on the context of a VC’s portfolio, and more. Cap VC is currently developing native apps on Mac and Windows, alongside releasing an API so that developers can build on top of their foundations. So, are any of my fellow VCs interested in using this software? If not Cap VC, is there any interest for similar software to be created down the line? Are there downsides to using a third-party application like this? I want to know what you all think.

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Congratulations to Roland Reynolds and the team at Industry Ventures on the raise of its latest $900M hybrid fund (split three ways, 40% backing VC funds, 40% directly investing in promising Series B startups from their existing partnerships, and 20% acquiring stakes in emerging investment firms from other LPs looking to exit). Read more from Marina Temkin, CFA at TechCrunch below. #VC #venturecapital #fundraising #startups #investing #news #technews #startupnews

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Q3 funding data doesn't really clear up where Austin's innovation ecosystem stands post-bubble. The US is down, Austin is up, but then that's after a slow 1H 2024 for ATX. 🤷 Austin's Startup Funding Q3 2024: ● Q3: $1B (6th in US) ● YTD: $2.6B (7th in US), following sluggish Q1 & Q2 ($0.8B each) ● 2024 projection: $3.4B-$3.6B vs $4.2B in 2023 Q3 2024 Top Funding Rounds: ● Saronic Technologies $175M Series B (Austin's newest unicorn) ● webAI $43M Series A ● Infinitum $35M Series E ● Gymdesk $33M Growth Round ● Setpoint $31M Series B Sources: Pitchbook & CB Insights Austin pace is slower than the 2021-2023 boom and may be one of the few major metro areas to see a decrease from 2023.  My guess, we do not have the volume or scale of AI rounds driving many other metros. At the same time, we're still trending up compared to pre-bubble levels (2019: $3.2B, 2020: $2.7B). So, what’s going on? Is this just a temporary dip in the first half, a return to pre-2020 growth trajectory, or the start of a new trend?

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Building early stage startup momentum? Make sure your speed-to-help is measured in minutes. In today’s environment, you can’t wait days for help. You have to get unstuck fast. With timely advice, execution quickens. Thats the power of a safe-space community that’s built on ‘giving’. It’s our foundational value. You should give what we are building a try.  Zero risk.   DM me to learn more. We’re happy to tee up a call. Happy Wednesday, ya’ll. ———— Please consider ♻️ with founders in your network. As early stage founders, we at times, are a problem away from sinking or propelling forward.

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Once you’re in it, you’re in it. #Startup #founders don’t just take financial risk - they invest years of their lives. For many, it’s absolutely worth it. To me, the first task is the most important one: to define your target and make absolutely sure it’s one worth that level of investment.

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Excited about some upcoming product updates coming to Thunder.vc next week (stay tuned), so I thought I'd spotlight one of our existing ones before we go live. So here's a little data from the platform this week, where we track investor velocity. Quick definition: Investor velocity is a simple calculation of how many new investments a firm made during a specific time period. In our case, we calculated it quarterly and the Q2 2024 number includes the 6.8k+ investors currently on our platform. The higher the number, the more net new investments a firm is making. Most deals get done in Q1 & Q3 of the year, but we’ve seen things trend up in Q2 this year. Also noted that pre-seed deals are in decline while Series C are on the rise. Stay tuned for the Q3 analysis at the end of this month. Check out more stats here: https://app.thunder.vc/ #investors #startups #VC

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#ObsessivelyEnthusiasticInvestor #UnreasonablyEnthusiasticInvestor #IrrationallyEnthusiasticInvestor at REFASHIOND Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund. We look for the people we believe are doing the best work in Industrial Transformation & Supply Chain Technology; Attempting the impossible. Then we go all-in on them. With obsessive and unreasonable enthusiasm. Join us. #IndustrialTransformation #SupplyChain #Innovation #Technology #Startups #VentureCapital #DemandTheImpossible #UnreasonableEnthusiasm #ObsessiveEnthusiasm #IrrationalEnthusiasm 

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