Michael Zhang

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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Dan Primack had some pointed criticism for #VC yesterday in his Axios Pro Rata newsletter (a daily must read IMO 😤). In short, the model doesn't work if it can't produce exits for LPs. Don't blame public markets (which are at all-time highs) for the lack of liquidity either. 📈 💸 Instead, this is a "liquidity drought of your making" where "...swinging for the fences on every pitch, rather than taking the single or double that's available" is the only way out when you invest at "sky high valuations." 😰 "A whopping 37% of "unicorns" are being held for at least nine years by VC funds, including 13% that are past the 12-year mark." 😳 ⌛ Is he right? Is VC at a dire inflection point? Or is Primack prematurely hitting the panic button? 🚨 https://lnkd.in/dts92pXr

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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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**In-person SWE roles at top NYC startups** Things are heating up at July, and we’re on the hunt for a fresh face to join our new office and take the last open desk (for now)! As a company, we’ve always kept things lean, operating with a “hire slow” philosophy to make sure we only bring on absolute KILLERS — and every one of them have been found through LinkedIn. If you’re looking for a new opportunity and want to play at the highest level, I would challenge you to apply. What we're looking for: 1️⃣ Side project junkies (people who love to build) 2️⃣ People who obsess over the details 3️⃣ Founder mentality 4️⃣ Those that love to hustle and want to level-up in all areas If not with us, a few of my good friends are also on the hunt for similar candidates. Daniel Andrews (Playground), Benjamin Döpfner (Vesto), Avante Price (Posh), Keyan K. (222), and Steven Schwartz (Whop), are also on the prowl for talented NYC based engineers that fit the above description. Comment your email down below and someone from our team will reach out with more information about the role! If you don't want your current employer to see you're interested in joining the dark side, DM me! I hope to chat soon 😉 #nyc #startups #growth

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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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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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Inspired by what we’re building at Build Momentum. We realized tech recruiting is broken—non-technical recruiters struggle to find and attract the best talent. That’s why we’ve flipped the script and developed a community-based recruiting approach: a trusted network of elite engineers, embedded within Latam’s top tech communities. The best engineers know the best engineers, and we tap into these deep, authentic connections to deliver top talent faster and with better fit. Want to see how we’re doing it differently? Check out our post

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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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Should ZipRecruiter reassess leadership? -->> https://lnkd.in/eHf6wemw In this episode, we dive deep into: - Paradox Innovation Day - VONQ's US Departure - CV Wallet / Resume Wallet's Triumph - Vangst, acquisition and its implications for the #cannabis #job market - Veritone Hire's Road Ahead - A critical view on ZipRecruiter, Nike, and Bayer's leadership mishaps. - Who'd You Rather? with Take2 AI and Paraform Expect a snarky blend of analysis, insight, and entertainment as we dissect brand consolidation, #AI's growing role in #recruitment, and the nuances of navigating the cannabis market. -->> https://lnkd.in/eHf6wemw #ChadCheese #RecruitmentPodcast #FutureOfWork #InnovationInRecruitment #Leadership #AIRecruitment

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Did you know that YC founders get a secret weapon… and it’s not what you think. “Bookface” is YC’s internal social network. It was needed because YC had funded larger batches and the hardest part of a community is knowing who is in it and who you can trust and ask for help. On the platform, founders share real methods and advice that would break if it were shared widely It’s secret knowledge shared with a trust-first community - answering 80% of the questions a founder can have about building and selling a product, be it to clients, candidates or investors. Before the platform, if you had a B2B startup, you had to reach out cold to potential customers. Now there are over 1000 YC companies you can sell your service to and all of their contact information is in Bookface. As a result, YC alumni companies are often over 50% of your new sales during YC. It’s superpowers like this that make YC deals so attractive compared to the norm. You are investing in a founder with a 10x network already!

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Let the wave begin! Pioneer Fund company Recall.ai *grew their revenue 10x* in the past year, has 300 enterprise customers, and just raised a $10M Series A led by Ridge Ventures. David Gu and Amanda Zhu dropped out of college at age 19 to start the company. They've grown it exponentially with a tiny team. They make it easy to build meeting bots that are cross-platform. They're aggregating all these different APIs into one unified API, the way Twilio did with cell phones. At first it "sounds" easy to build a meeting bot -- just integrate with the Zoom API. But in fact there's a huge long tail of things you need to build, security and privacy pitfalls, automations, transcription complexities, integrations, the calendar invites where someone is using Google Meet or Teams, staying up-to-date with the libraries, etc etc. Recall takes care of all of that. It's WAY easier to build on top of Recall.ai and focus on the features that make you unique. Congratulations to the Recall team!

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Starting a new fun project with Victor Lee - an AMA series with early stage founders. There are many podcast shows featuring successful, famous entrepreneurs. But what about those who are still relatively early in their journey, perhaps just one step ahead? The zero-to-one founders who have recently cracked the product-market fit and raised Seed or Series A capital. They may not have figured out everything yet, but they have fresh, relatable tips and advice to share. We’ll invite early-stage founders for a one-hour AMA session. Afterwards, we’ll create a public webpage featuring each Q&A session with media clips and transcriptions. This will be 100% free and open to the public. Our first AMA (June 11 1pm PST) will feature Will Drewery, whose company (Diagon) recently raised $5.1 million in Seed funding. We’ll get to know Will better and cover topics such as tips on raising funding in this tough environment. It will be a fun AMA, and you can register for free using the link below. RSVP now!

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Are you better off being an angel investor or an S/EIS fund investor? When you’re thinking about making early-stage investments for the first time, you have a choice of two main options: Invest directly into startups or invest into funds that invest a portfolio of startups for you. * Direct (Angel) Investing: You select and invest in individual startups, taking on the tasks of sourcing, decision-making, and managing your investment. * Fund Investing: You invest in a fund that invests and manages a portfolio of startups for you, handling the sourcing, investing, and management on your behalf. There’s a romantic notion attached to the idea of investing in startups - we can play Dragon’s Den and discover the next Reggae Reggae Sauce. For every Reggae Reggae Sauce, though, there are 100 other startups that fail along the way. The first rule of startup investing, whether you do it directly or through funds, is that you need to build a portfolio of companies to cope with inevitable losses. Investing directly into startups as an angel investor suits those with access to credible, high-potential startups. It’s a hands-on role that requires active involvement to source the startups. Further, most of the best startups have minimum investment amounts of £10k or £20k, which means direct investors often need a lot of available capital to properly manage risk by investing in a portfolio of companies. This doesn’t need to be done all at once, but that is the mindset every good angel investor should have when setting out on the journey. Fund investing, on the other hand, suits those who prefer to invest indirectly, relying on the access, experience, and skill of the Fund Manager to invest and manage the investments for you. It’s a hands-off approach, with investors not involved in management and simply kept updated on a regular basis. Because funds pool your money with others to invest in a portfolio of startups in one go, this can be a more effective way of managing risk while investing smaller amounts. Most SEIS and EIS funds have £10k minimums for investors, meaning you could build a portfolio of 10-20 companies for just £10k, rather than needing to invest £10k into 10-20 separate companies as a direct angel investor. Whichever approach you choose should depend on your resources, access, interests, and time. Regardless, though, a key principle to follow is to not be reliant on the success of just one or two companies; instead, build a portfolio of startups to manage risk and cope with inevitable losses along the way. Which one is best for you? Let me know if you’d like to chat. Capital at risk. For professional investors only.

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I recently listened to Zach Perret, founder of Plaid, on the 20VC podcast discussing his evolution in recruiting. His mindset shift resonated with me. Here are three key takeaways: ▶ Be yourself and do it. Cold emails and genuine curiosity unlock unrecruitable people. People love to talk about things they're passionate about. ▶ Embrace the hunt. The best founders love to compete for talent. They understand the value each person can bring and don't like losing. This skill will also translate into founder-led sales. ▶ Hire for "Spike". This is essential when building an early team. I often think of it as the shape of a "T"—someone with deep expertise in one area but is open and curious to learn and contribute in other areas outside their core strength.

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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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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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As we dive into 2024, the Series A fundraising landscape is becoming increasingly daunting. Investment standards are soaring, and fewer startups are making the cut. Series A investors are finding many seed stage companies too premature. The median valuation jump from seed to Series A skyrocketed from $19.5 million in Q1 2022 to $28.7 million in Q1 2024. Investors now demand stronger revenue performance, targeting $2 million to $3 million in ARR, up from $1 million to $2 million. Alarmingly, only 12% of Q1 2022 seed startups secured Series A funding within two years, down from 31.8% in Q1 2020. #venture #earlystage #seedtoseriesa #seed #seriesa #inspireglobalventures https://lnkd.in/gW4bkcNy

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This is a great example of what you're facing when you're trying to break into VC. You can't just win someone over with your "thesis" about "the next big thing", because you're going to be competing with someone who *has been doing the next big thing* for the last 18-24 months. Note their job requirement: • 2 to 5 years of operational experience at a high-growth technology business • Deep familiarity with LLMs and their use in product development • Ideally worked as a Product Manager defining a LLM-based product ChatGPT launched two years ago next month. That means that their ideal person took a professional leap into LLMs *at the very beginning of their commercialization*. Your best shot at getting a great VC job is to stop trying to get a VC job and to start being the person who has two years experience in the thing they're going to really care about two years from now. It's something I just told one of my VC coaching clients today. DM me if you're in VC or trying to break in and you'd like to know more about how I put my 20 years of VC experience to work for my clients. (https://lnkd.in/ePYGGEyg)

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