Suzanne Andrews

Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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San Francisco's political landscape is taking an innovative turn as mayor-elect Dan Lurie appoints OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to his transition team. This strategic move signals a fresh approach to bridging the gap between city government and the tech sector at a crucial time for San Francisco. What makes this particularly noteworthy is how it represents a shift in how cities might leverage tech leadership to address urban challenges - from public safety to economic revitalization. The inclusion of both Altman and former Twitter CFO Ned Segal suggests a deliberate strategy to reconnect with the tech community while maintaining the city's position as a global innovation hub. Key developments to watch: ▶️ How this tech-government partnership influences public safety initiatives ▶️ Impact on downtown revitalization efforts ▶️ Response from other tech leaders and companies ▶️ Potential new policies to attract and retain tech talent ▶️ Balance between innovation and traditional urban governance https://lnkd.in/gMJ3yvk9

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Looking forward to discussing how changing demographics and culture norms are affecting investment opportunities in longevity, health and well-being at The Care Summit today Alongside Cake Ventures' Monique Woodard, Ziegler's Dan Hermann, Oak HC/FT's Billy Deitch and JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Jennifer Edwards, we’ll dive into the trends shaping how we are investing in the space: - Last year marked one of the most significant social and economic moments in modern times: The number of older adults—those aged 50 and over- surpassed the number of children under the age of 15 for the first time. - In 2020 the 50 plus population contributed $45 trillion to global GDP, or 34% of the total. That equates to about 3x the revenue of the world’s 100 highest- earning companies in 2020. - The U.S. population grew by 24.5 million from 2010 to 2022, and Hispanics accounted for 53% of this increase – a greater share than any other racial or ethnic group. - Women around the world and across all ages drive 64% of consumer spending

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In the past 10 years I’ve managed four communities: The first, OneTable, a nonprofit helping people across the country build community around the dinner table Second, Grand Central Tech, a tech accelerator in NYC for pre-seed startups Third, K50 Ventures, a VC as Head of Platform. The fourth and most recent: Hampton. Its a 1,000+ person paid community for CEOs Because of this, I think I know a bit about building communities (a topic many want to know about but is full of buzzwords.) What topics related to community building & event planning are you intersted in learning about?

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🌏 📊 Erica Kangas is an engineering leader, voracious learner, and feminist builder who seeks out the biggest levers to move the world. 📊🌏 It's W6 / Q2 / 2024 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Annie Erica, part of a small but mighty team as the Head of Engineering at hyper curated investment connection & fundraising guidance platform Scroobious. Erica joined Scroobious as their Head of Engineering to help lead the technical efforts of this very early stage team shaping up capital markets culture for underrepresented founders. Erica is responsible for the entirety of their technical infrastructure. She is working every day to build out their marketplace product, making sure Scroobious Founders are having a smooth experience so they can effectively onboard their pitches onto the marketplace and connect with investors. Erica continues to spend time answering tough questions about the business and communicating effectively to equip founders with the resources they need to be successful. Scroobious’ founder community grew 75% in 2023 and is made up of 63% female founders. ✍ Cataloging Skills & Connecting the Dots 🔄 From nonprofits to startups, Erica has always cataloged her experiences. She keeps references & resources on hand from prior experiences to keep memorable frameworks from the earliest days of her career. Every time she embarks on a meaty project, the first question she asks is “what are our goals”? Then, what are we looking to accomplish? By having something to ground herself in, she can begin to move forward. That work has paid off in building a portfolio of experiences and an archive of resources. At Scroobious, she wants to understand the different attributes of founders and successful pitches to effectively connect founders with angels. For example, investors look for coachability as an attribute & trait, so she has thought back to her nonprofit days when they measured grit and growth in students and volunteers. It’s obviously a bit different but there are always overlapping threads to pull on. Problems Not Yet Solved Erica offered up three unsolved problems that drive her work as an invitation to think about and join in tackling these issues. Because learning never ends and we have a lot more to do in these areas! 🤖 How do we build AI that won’t just repeat the mistakes and mirror the worst facets of our past? 🤝 How do we continue to develop the field of software engineering such that it is sustainable, equitable, and accessible? 🤲 How do we effectively combat exclusionary systems when many of our institutions no longer have the appetite or have their hands tied from doing so? If you’d like to learn more about Erica’s career, the full post is linked in the comments. Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter to see the operator learnings we bring you in the weeks ahead too, will ya? #bostontech #operators #engineering

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This news is definitely disturbing. Time to figure out why and what we can do to better level the playing field for entrepreneurs and founders. Is this mostly due to the "anti-DEI" environment? Something else that is being overlooked? Eager to hear reactions and solutions. Thanks to Crunchbase for highlighting this. #dei #investing #impact #fairness #bias #equity #gapclosing

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Over the years, we at GFR Fund have solidified our investment thesis, which is that we invest in "emerging digitally native communities." These communities can be built around games, social media, and any consumer applications. Now, founders have many easy-to-use tools to build user communities, such as Discord, X/twitter, Instagram, etc, and we believe the founders should start building communities even before they launch a product. The communities can help founders: - reach PMF faster - acquire users cheaper - retain and engage users longer - build better UX/UI, and - hire early employees Below, you can see how RTFKT and Omeda Studios built the community and then worked with them to create a product the users really wanted. We would love to talk to the founders who think the community is essential in building a product!

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True partnerships are transformative catalysts for change. They transcend mere funding, embracing deep listening, dynamic collaboration, and vibrant community-building. Recent experiences at the MARGULF FOUNDATION Grantee Convening, Culture Shifting Summit, EdLoC, and Google Impact Summit have reignited my passion for reimagining how funders can evolve to genuinely empower social impact leaders. In my latest Camelback Ventures blog, I dive into the heart of this crucial conversation: ➡️ How can we build partnerships that fuel innovation? ➡️ What does holistic support for entrepreneurs of color and women really look like? ➡️ How might we create an ecosystem where visionary ideas thrive? Join me in exploring how we can reshape the landscape of social impact. Together, we can craft a future where diverse voices lead the charge in solving our most pressing challenges. Read the full article and let's continue this vital dialogue. How are you reimagining partnerships in your work? 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eW7UrGXu #SocialImpact #EquitablePartnerships #InnovationInFunding #DiversityInEntrepreneurship #SystemicChange

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Participating in Cohort 14 of the VC Lab has been an energizing experience so far. I am learning so much about the ins and outs of being an emerging fund manager and how to succeed in this space. Today they hosted a panel for Women in VC that provided some real world advice from some fantastic panelists. The curriculum is rigorous for sure, but rewarding. If you are curious about why this is such an exciting area check out this article. #venturecapital #vc #investing https://lnkd.in/gMMM_mwp

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Today marks a groundbreaking moment for BLCK VC and our fellow collaborators—Diversity VC, All Raise, 2Gether-International, SomosVC, StartOut, and VetsinTech—as we proudly announce the launch of the Diversity Data Alliance. This important alliance underscores our unwavering commitment to nurturing a venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem abundant in equity and inclusiveness. By standardizing and linking our data, we empower ourselves with the essential tools to track deeper trends that have, until now, eluded us to identify and fill funding gaps for historically excluded investors, founders, and operators. We can’t change what we do not measure, and now with the Diversity Data Alliance, we're now equipped to do both. Join us in this mission. Learn more and get involved: https://lnkd.in/eEZKdrac #DiversityDataAlliance #BLCKVC #VentureCapital #MeasureToChange

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Fundraising decks are important but only within the context of a well-orchestrated fundraising process. A deck itself is unlikely to directly lead to a term sheet. Rather, it is important to understand how you want to use the deck (or any collateral for that matter) as part of your fundraise process. For example: - Is it to secure the first meeting with a VC? A teaser deck is important. But so is the email snippet and warm referral! - Is it part of a deeper-dive session about your business? Excellent. Is it a deeper dive on product or GTM? And, is the next step a track to a partnership meeting? - Is it a diligence deck? Excellent. Is it more about showcasing the financial plan and key levers? ... what is the ONE thing you want this deck to help you achieve? More tips on fundraising your early-stage round here: https://lnkd.in/gvWYaCwk #startups #venture #fundraising

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I’m excited to share that I’ve been honored as one of the Top 100 Women in Tech by King Street Ventures for my contributions to the women-in-tech community! Thank you Nick Fuller As someone who loves supporting others and being recognized for coaching breakthroughs, I’ve noticed a consistent challenge: early-stage founders often struggle to hire me as a coach because they’re stuck in the difficult process of fundraising. After hearing countless founders talk about their challenges with securing funding, I realized something important—I couldn’t sustainably support founders if they couldn’t get funded first. That’s when I knew I needed to help fill this gap. I decided to create a group program to help founders gain the in-depth knowledge they need to navigate the funding process successfully. Even with my background in finance, VC Lab’s programs, and a VC internship, I realized I had only scratched the surface of understanding the funding landscape. If it’s this challenging for someone like me, how are founders—already overwhelmed with building their companies—supposed to manage it? That’s why I’m partnering with investors, law firms, and startup advisors to bring this much-needed program to life. It will be a 3-month program designed to give founders the tools and knowledge they need to get funded. If you agree this is an important initiative, drop an emoji or GIF in the comments to show your support—it would mean so much to me! And if you’d like to be involved, feel free to DM me. Let’s make this happen together! #WomenInTech #Top100WomenInTech #StartupCoach #Fundraising #TechLeadership #DiversityInTech #WomenEntrepreneurs

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Great news! Gabe Greenberg convinced Christopher Chedeau, front-end engineer at Meta, to give us a crash course on LLMs. 🎉 You might also know him as Vjeux: ⁣ ⁣ → Co-creator of React Native and Prettier⁣ → Creator of Excalidraw⁣, CSS-in-JS, Yoga, and React Conference ⁣ But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Vjeux has also: ⁣ → Improved Facebook's tagging flow with face detection⁣ → Optimized Facebook's image sizes and infrastructure⁣ → Helped open-source many Facebook front-end projects⁣ → Built infrastructure that became Docusaurus → Promoted React by organizing the first two React Conferences So when we had the chance to hear his thoughts about Large Language Models (LLMs), we knew we were in for some serious insights. Here's a glimpse of what he discussed:⁣ ⁣ ✅ LLM math demystified⁣ ✅ Model building and fine-tuning⁣ ✅ Separating AI facts from fiction ⁣ If you want to dive deep into the entire conversation, check this out: https://lnkd.in/ejaa4WZr

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My deepest gratitude to Sarah Kaufman, Paul Cherukuri, and Chethan Sarabu, MD for sharing their time and expertise at Luminary Labs' Climate week Lab Session. All too often, the climate conversation falls prey to oversimplification, labeling some industries, technologies, or interventions as "good" for the planet and others "bad." While there are certainly examples of actors causing extreme harm, more often this assertion conceals a more complex duality: Essential sectors of our society and economy — from education to transportation — contribute to climate change while also facing the impacts of rising temperatures and extreme weather. As a society, we must align on the acceptable tradeoffs of the technologies we have today AND continue to innovate to improve upon what is possible today. For example: 🏥 Healthcare's reliance on single-use materials and high consumption of gasses and power contribute to the sector’s significant environmental footprint. But it’s not as simple as reusing and recycling; disposable syringes are wasteful, but have saved millions of lives — and few patients and providers are willing to return to times when life expectancies were shorter and patient outcomes were more precarious. 🚘 Transportation is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions –– and at the same time, our aging transportation infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle current and worsening climatic extremes.  High temperatures and flooding frequently disrupt multiple modes of transportation, and urban sprawl makes implementing more sustainable interventions difficult. Looking to the future, the experts on the panel also recognized that these sectors will play a key role in driving climate solutions – from mobility wallets to rethinking hospital supply chains. As each panelist explored this duality, a central question emerged: How can leaders advance sustainable innovations while also ensuring that essential aspects of our society and economy are resilient and thriving? https://lnkd.in/evn3qJ2p Image courtesy of April Renae.

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💜 Hue. has been awarded a $150K equity-free grant from the Google for Startups Founders Fund! 🎉 Funding Black founders is crucial, here’s why ⬇ I recently spoke with a founder—let’s call him David—who needed fundraising advice. David’s startup is gaining traction, and he’s been advised to raise a #friendsandfamilyround to boost product development. Sadly, he feels discouraged. David is the first in his family to graduate college, and at 21, he earned more than anyone else in his family in his entry-level job. Now in their late twenties, him and his friends are still in their growth era and don’t have extra cash to invest. David feels stuck. 🚫 His network can’t fund his venture, and he has too little traction to raise a formal round. This is a common experience for many underrepresented founders—Black, Latino, low-income, women, and more. ✨ Grant programs like the Google for Startups Founders Fund provide essential capital to level the playing field. ✨ The Hue team is incredibly grateful for Google’s support for underrepresented founders and its commitment to uplifting startups pushing boundaries in AI. ❓ Does David’s experience resonate with you? Have you raised a friends and family round? What advice would you give other founders? ❓ Comment below ⬇ Check out to the other Black & Latino founders in my Google for Founders cohort! Sherisse Hawkins Nana Wilberforce Ph.D Seke Ballard Megan Nunes Manny S. Kene Anoliefo Tiffany Ricks George Holmes, PhD Rocio Frej Vitalle Rocio Frej Vitalle Florian Pestoni Darren Riley Eitan Winer Darryl Keeton Constanza Gomez Sergio Suarez Jr. Gerald Kierce Iturrioz #GoogleForStartups #FoundersFund #poweredbyhue #beautymarketing #huecommunity #hiring #fundraising

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🎙️🔥 We dropped a NEW interview on She's Interesting, featuring the extraordinary Zoey McKenzie, Founding Partner of Public Ventures $100M fund. Hear why Zoey is placing her bets (and $100M!) on impact investing to drive positive change through climate change, poverty, and health disparities. This episode will help you gain practical advice on overcoming imposter syndrome, fundraising for entrepreneurs, and navigating the business world. And, we also dig into horoscopes and spirituality because it wouldn't be a She's Interesting interview without going deep into the human psyche. In this episode, we dive into: 💎 Zoey's Early Years: From a precocious child to discovering her ADHD 💎 Tech Passion: Pitch competitions, syndications, and government work 💎 Impact Investing Journey: The pivotal moment leading Zoey to health sciences and the UN 💎 Building a Fund: Ground-up strategies for fund-raising and reputation building 💎 Founder Advice: Tips for raising funds, brand elevation, and building support systems 💎 Spiritual Insights: Unveiling spirituality's role in business and embracing your divine plan 🎧 Don't miss out on this enlightening conversation! Listen to the full episode now on She's Interesting Podcast. Links in the comments below! 👇👇 Shout-out to the team at CreatorClub for their ongoing support as a studio sponsor of the podcast! #ShesInteresting #ImpactInvesting #WomenInvestors #FounderStory #Podcast #Innovation #Philanthropy #DiversityInTech #BusinessLeadership #Inspiration #heathtech #Lifesciences

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I had the pleasure of being on a panel with Isabelle Hau of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning at the Care Summit last month, and I can't stop thinking about this fascinating research she presented. RAPID, as they call it, launched in April 2020 to understand and address the experiences and challenges that caregivers of young children were facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, they have found that 71% of child care providers feel burned out "often" or "always" and that 1 in 3 are experiencing material hardship. While these kinds of statistics don't come as a surprise to anyone paying attention to the headlines or their own community's experiences, it is so helpful to have it concretized in this actionable way. They have continued to field monthly national surveys after the most acute moment of the pandemic in order to provide timely, actionable data to advocates, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. If you play any of those roles, or are just a parent wondering—what the heck just happened?!—you will find their beautifully designed site fascinating. https://lnkd.in/gdvCeUmP

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Today, Two Chairs announces $72M of new funding to continue building a world where everyone has access to exceptional mental health care. Since late 2017, when Maveron led the Two Chairs Series A, the need for mental health services has grown considerably as our society has become lonelier and more isolated than ever. At the same time, our culture’s willingness to openly acknowledge these challenges is greater than ever. Sadly, the rapid growth of Two Chairs affirms the fact that our society is in desperate need of better mental health support. Two Chairs has built a business that believes clinical quality is the defining characteristic of success. Alex Katz has always emphasized the paramountcy of measurement-based clinical outcomes, which the team works tirelessly to achieve. In the process, Two Chairs has illustrated that embracing the ‘move fast and break things’ mentality doesn’t always work. Instead, Two Chairs opted for a different approach: they went slow to go fast. They built a proprietary algorithm that matches patients with the perfect therapist at the onset and hired a team of W2 clinicians oriented toward providing the highest quality care available. Even as the Two Chairs team has grown, their culture has remained small. This has enabled more intimate relationships within the team and between clients and clinicians. Reflecting on this milestone brings me back to the founding of Maveron and the values we hold dear. In 1998, my friend Howard Schultz and I founded Maveron to help entrepreneurs build companies that improve the lives of everyday people—their employees and their customers. There is perhaps no better example of this than Two Chairs. *** Thank you to TechCrunch's Marina Temkin, CFA for the great write-up. https://tcrn.ch/4aMt7yG

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“We really focus on building community power because over the last four years, and really, my whole life. If we don't figure out how to work together, we are not going to be successful. I've been doing entrepreneurial ecosystem building for 10 years, but before that, for 20 years, I worked with young people, I worked with communities, and I did youth development education. What I've seen in my 30 years of work is if you're fragmented, you're weak. We need to figure out how to get fragmented and siloed groups of people to work together as a larger entity. This is the crux of this Summit. How do we get people doing great work connected and pooling resources? How do we advocate for more resources from the federal government, from our state governments, from our local governments? How do we actually work as a group with JP Morgan Chase and get some actual funding that can be systemic and long-term to actually grow small businesses? I think we have to create a space where we can all win together,” This is the vision behind the Building Community Power Summit the ESO Foundation is hosting with Startup Champions Network 10/30-11/1... check out the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/gGAmUdq6 #SCNBayArea #Buildwhereyouare #Communitypower #startupecosystem #nexteconomy #ecosystembuilders

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