Sydney Holness

One month left to apply!!!! Apply to NETI's Climate Tech Bootcamp Cohort 3.0, a pre-accelerator program powered by Riffle Ventures, Climate Tech Bootcamp, OHUB and Greater New Orleans, Inc. – GNO, Inc. part of H2TheFuture, a Build Back Better Regional Challenge of The Economic Development Administration. This bootcamp is a 10-week pre-accelerator program for climate tech and new energy entrepreneurs in the United States that have an interest in building in or expanding to South Louisiana. ‍ Five (5) founders from the program will pitch for a $100,000 (US) investment on the terms of their current round. Application is in the comments and here's a quick overview as well: - 📆 When: September 3 - October 31, 2024 - ⏰ Deadline to Apply: August 27, 2024 - 💻 Location: Virtual - 🆓 Cost: Free. The $5,000 per person fee is waived thanks to GNO, Inc. and The Economic Development Administration's Build Back Better Regional Challenge. - 💰 Funding: Up to $100,000 US (equity investment) in current round to the top startup selected at the end of the cohort. - 🈺 Cohort Size: 25-30 entrepreneurs - 🌍 Cohort Geography: United States - 📈 Stage: We welcome applicants from multiple stages, though having a minimum viable product is ideal.

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The last time I was in Atlanta was in April 2018, and I talked for 12 hours straight about early-stage venture capital and startups at digitalundivided. Kathryn Finney is my witness. ====== I arrive in Atlanta this evening, and I'll be there till Monday, when I leave in the afternoon. If you'll be in town for the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) annual conference, please DM me so we can find time to meet. Kurtis Trevan, Candace Mitchell, Brit F., Jewel Burks Solomon, Mark Shaughnessy, Averi Thomas-Moore, Dyci Manns Sfregola, CSCP . . . Please share to help me extend my reach. My network in Atlanta is vanishingly small. I'd love to bring a small group of Industrial Transformation & Supply Chain Tech folks together for an impromptu meetup to try and get The Atlanta Supply Chain Meetup back in the early stages of formation. I'd particularly love to meet someone who wants to build the local community with help from The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation. Also, if you're a pre-seed or seed stage startup founder, I'd love to hear about what you're building. Our Investment Thesis: REFASHIOND Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund invests in early stage startups refashioning legacy industries through Data & AI, Advanced Materials, Advanced Manufacturing, & Next Generation Supply Chains; Defensible through economic moats. At most venture capital firms, Industrial Transformation & Supply Chain Technology is a tiny, emerging “area of interest” . . . At REFASHIOND Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund, it’s our entire world. Join us. #IndustrialTransformation #SupplyChain #Innovation #Technology #Startups #VentureCapital

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Exciting News: Schematic is publicly available and we’ve raised $4.8M in seed funding! 🚀 I’m pumped to share that Schematic is now publicly available! We've also raised $4.8M in seed funding, led by MHS Capital with participation from NextView Ventures, Active Capital, Atlanta Ventures, and Ritual Capital—along with support from incredible founders of companies like CrowdStrike, LaunchDarkly, and Salesloft. A big thank you to our investors for believing in us, to our customers for guiding us, and to Benjamin Papillon, Jasdeep Garcha, Giovanni Hobbins, Vladyslav Len, Youssef Salah, Christopher Brady, Joseph Chrzan, Mohammed Almusaddar, and Markiian Simkiv for the opportunity to build this together. ➡️ Solving the last mile of pricing & packaging At every startup, one thing is certain: pricing and packaging will always change. Product and engineering teams shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time this happens. Most companies hard-code pricing and packaging into their applications, making it slow and painful to evolve as market demands shift. ➡️ What We’re Building We're building Schematic to transform pricing and packaging for B2B SaaS companies by getting product and engineering teams out of billing projects. With Schematic, B2B SaaS companies can change pricing & packaging without code changes or billing refactors. ➡️ How It Works With just a few lines of code, businesses can implement pricing and packaging into any application—end-to-end—from feature delivery through billing and customer experience. Quickly roll out new features and tie them to your pricing plans. Target specific plans to customers and adjust them without engineering support. Experiment, scale, and manage pricing & packaging operations: trials, plans, limits, entitlements, metering usage, handling exceptions, provisioning customers, & embedding front-end purchasing components —all without code changes. ➡️ Who we’re building for We’re building Schematic for B2B SaaS companies who want their pricing & packaging roadmaps to move in sync with their product roadmaps, without slowing down their engineering teams. Some key use cases our customers are already benefiting from: 🔹Outsourcing homegrown & hard-coded entitlement services. 🔹Programmatically managing feature access based on subscription plans. 🔹Metering usage and actually enforcing limits. 🔹Updating and managing plans, add-ons, bundling, and customer exceptions 🔹Delivering embeddable purchasing experiences (pricing tables, customer portals, upgrade/downgrade flows, etc). We’re still in the early innings, but the foundation is strong—we're already handling 500K entitlement flag evaluations every month. If you’re a founder or a product leader looking to avoid building what should be out-of-the-box (feature flags, entitlements, admin dashboards, customer portals), check out Schematic and let us know what you think.

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Please pass this along to all of the #Fintech and #Insurtech founders you know who are raising capital or will be in the next month.

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DC Startup & Tech Week (Formerly DC Startup Week) is right around the corner! Join me and Casey Williams as we talk about building and breaking financial models when it comes to early stage startups. I'm excited to do this Casey, since her team at Fenway Summer diligenced Parlay (Techstars '23)'s model and then led our first institutional round. 🗺️ Why does this matter/why should you care? Your financial model is the blueprint for your business, and the foundation of your potential marriage with the VC that's evaluating whether they want to fund your business. 🧭 📈 I think founders feel the pressure to try and reverse engineer their financial model so it reflects what they think is the "the right things" to get funded by a VC, like the rule of 40, or the T2D3. 🤔 This starts off your relationship on the wrong foot. Your financial model is your opportunity to evaluate whether the VC sees the world the way you do and vice versa. If you don't know where your business is going, your retrofitted model is a symptom of a much bigger problem and it's bad for both of you. 🎯 Your financial model helps you learn: does the VC (and vice versa) understand the world the way you see it, and how they can help get you to the next level? Do your assumptions and forecasts pass the "BS" test and help them see where you're capable of going, and how you can return shareholder value? All this and more! See you on the 24th!! #dcfintechweek #financialmodels #startups #sba #parlayfinance

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Looking forward to hosting another webinar for Hillsborough Community College (HCC) - InLab. Preparing for your 2025 Startup Business Fundraise In this workshop you will learn: 1. How to build your investor list 2. Pitch deck essentials 3. Creating your due diligence "deal room" 4. Answers to important questions investors ask. Date: Tuesday, December 3rd, 10am eastern time via zoom Register at https://lnkd.in/gCDVuHgi About Your Facilitator Scott Kelly, Founder and CEO of Black Dog Venture Partners, is a 30 year fundraising, marketing, sales, training and publicity veteran. Scott has helped companies raise billions of dollars in capital, garnered international media coverage for hundreds of brands and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues for the companies he has represented. He is also the host of VC Fast Pitch which connects investors with startups. Learn more at https://lnkd.in/gaTB5eh and VCFastPitch.com and follow Scott on social media at @blackdogceo About the Pradip C. Patel InLab@HCC The InLab@HCC provides access to tools and resources that promote the creation of ideas, and development of social impact business models. By infusing interdisciplinary elements, workforce preparedness, STEM resources and social entrepreneurship into all its programming the InLab has obtained national recognition through organizations including The National Association of Community College Entrepreneurship, Intuit Education, NASA Tech Transfer University and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families, among others. Our Vision: Equity and Prosperity for All Our Mission: To educate, fund, and support aspiring entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship educators. L earn more about the InLab@HCC at https://lnkd.in/gq8PKXW6 Connect with the InLab@HCC on Facebook, Instagram, and/or LinkedIn About Hillsborough Community College Founded in 1968, HCC is currently the fifth largest community college in Florida’s State College System, serving more than 42,000 students each year at its five campuses, three centers and online platform. HCC offers more than 200 academic options including the associate in art and associate in science degrees, college credit certificates, post-secondary adult vocational certificates, advanced technical diplomas and certificates, as well as continuing education and lifelong learning courses. The College has an annual budget of over $135 million and employs more than 2,200. Over 84 percent of HCC graduates stay in the local community, and together, HCC and its former students contribute more than $1.3 billion in added income and economic impact to Hillsborough County.

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Let’s get aspiring VCs noticed 🌟 Investors & platform folks! I post a list of weekly VC job openings every Wednesday. My mission is to open as many doors as possible for other people so that weekly post is meant to help folks break into the black box that is VC. Another way I like to push that mission forward is by having aspiring VCs flag themselves on my posts for VCs who are hiring to see. It’s worked on other platforms. Let’s try it on LinkedIn! 👤 Name 📍 Location 💼 Desired role 💎 Investor or platform* 📊 Stage focus 🔍 Industry focus *Investor refers to those who source new companies for investment & platform refers to those who support portfolio companies post-investment. For those looking for help breaking into VC, check out my blog: https://lnkd.in/eNXQ7_uS 25+ deep-dives on all things VC recruiting + the opportunity to speak with me live. #venturecapital #startup #recruiting #hiring

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Let’s get aspiring VCs noticed 🌟 Investors & platform folks! I post a list of weekly VC job openings every Wednesday. My mission is to open as many doors as possible for other people so that weekly post is meant to help folks break into the black box that is VC. Another way I like to push that mission forward is by having aspiring VCs flag themselves on my posts for VCs who are hiring to see. It’s worked on other platforms. Let’s try it on LinkedIn! 👤 Name 📍 Location 💼 Desired role 💎 Investor or platform* 📊 Stage focus 🔍 Industry focus *Investor refers to those who source new companies for investment & platform refers to those who support portfolio companies post-investment. Learn the 8-steps of a VC interview process here: https://lnkd.in/gri__2vu #venturecapital #startup #recruiting #hiring

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🚨 This is it – The Final Push! 🚨 We’re down to the wire, and your vote could be the one that helps Ferna Tech take the stage at SXSW London 2025! Our panel, “A $16M Blueprint: How Black Founders Can Raise Smart Capital, Drive Culture & Go from Founder to Funded,” is more than a conversation—it’s a movement. It’s about reshaping the narrative, opening doors, and creating actionable pathways for underrepresented founders to thrive. This is your chance to make a statement: → That representation matters → That excellence against all odds deserves a global stage → That community-driven progress is the future 🔗 Vote here: https://lnkd.in/dHQzFMav 👇🏽 How to vote: 📹 #fernatech #sxsw #voteferna #fernafounders #blacktech #founders #venturestudio #AfroTech #Community #innovation

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Dilution can be confusing, especially if you have multiples SAFEs/Convertible Notes stacked on top of each other. In my Atlanta Ventures blog, I write about how to understand dilution, as well as provide a simple tool to forecast the impact of a fundraising round: https://lnkd.in/eVFBS2At

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Today's Boring Biz: Pool Leak Detection Company - $2.3M Revenue - $610K Cashflow - South Carolina - Day 39 of "50 States In 50 Days" Note: We do not represent this deal, highlighting for informational purposes only for viewers What do they do? 1. Leak detection services 2. Electronic detection equipment 3. Pool inspections Investment Highlights 1. Strong market demand 2. Established reputation 3. Business systems in place Investment risks/concerns 1. What is the competition 2. Customer concentration 3. Length of contracts #SMB #ETA #finance #Cashflow #investing #search #searchfund #privateequity #microprivateequity #smallbusiness #venturecapital #vc #entrepreneur #business #businessowner #pool #leakdetection #southcarolina #servicecompany Disclaimer: Hypothetical and illustrative only. Please do your own research (DYOR) or work with tax and legal professionals before making a decision. This video are intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or tax advice, nor should be construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any security by SMB PE LLC or any third party

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Wilmington North Carolina USA is #1 Startup Ecosystem in the WORLD for small cities under 300,000 people #2 in North Carolina behind an ecosystem that is 40 years old #22 in the USA no matter what size population #61 in the WORLD and the fastest climb up the rankings by moving up 32 spots  in StartupBlink #WilmingtonNC #startup #entrepreneur #investor #NorthCarolina

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2 more weeks until we close Optimist Fund's Founders class. Management Fee's Founders Class 0.5% Class A starting in 2025 1.25% There are two ways you can invest in the fund. 1. Directly with us. Send me a DM or email at [email protected] expressing interest. 2. Through your Advisor. We are approved on RBC Dominion Securities so if you ask your advisor, they can help you place an investment through your RBC account using the FundServ Code BBG600E. If you are with another bank/investment organization and would like to invest, ask your advisor if you can invest as an unsolicited order. Many will accommodate.

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I recently started working with a promising startup here in South Florida - EdVizi. We're a CRM solution specifically built for EdTech startups. Our product is tailor-made for companies that sell into schools and school districts. The three things that make us stand-out against existing solutions are: - Lead discovery (the system contains and organizes prospect information for all schools and school districts in the USA) - Account mapping (Assisted account, territory mapping) - Unified sales / customer success platform Does anyone know any EdTech founders they can introduce me to?

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Let’s get aspiring VCs noticed 🌟 Investors & platform folks! I post a list of weekly VC job openings every Wednesday. My mission is to open as many doors as possible for other people so that weekly post is meant to help folks break into the black box that is VC. Another way I like to push that mission forward is by having aspiring VCs flag themselves on my posts for VCs who are hiring to see. It’s worked on other platforms. Let’s try it on LinkedIn! 👤 Name 📍 Location 💼 Desired role 💎 Investor or platform* 📊 Stage focus 🔍 Industry focus *Investor refers to those who source new companies for investment & platform refers to those who support portfolio companies post-investment. #venturecapital #startup #recruiting #hiring

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Last night at a Techstars DC event, I was asked this question by a few founders: What are the most important things I should do at these early stages? Here's how I replied. 1) Talk to as many customers as possible. The closer you get to your customers, the more you will learn about the problems they're facing and how you can best solve them. The more repetitive feedback you hear, the more you'll know you're on to something. Talk to your customers constantly. 2) Run as many experiments as possible. Is your positioning and messaging not resonating? Test different versions to see what works. Run experiments on different channels to reach your customer. Test, test, and test some more. 3) Stay alive as long as possible. If you can stay alive and execute on 1 and 2, you will eventually hit on a great combination of product, messaging, and channels to drive growth and/or revenue. But you have to buy time and stay alive at all costs. Thoughts? What did I miss?

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🌟 Exciting News!🌟 I’m thrilled to announce Pairgap’s acceptance into the latest class of companies in the Techstars Washington DC powered by J.P. Morgan Accelerator! For those who may not know, Techstars is a global accelerator dedicated to helping entrepreneurs succeed. It provides startups with top-notch mentors and connects them to a wide network of corporate partners and investors. Participants gain expert advice, funding opportunities, and valuable learning experiences from each other. This proven model has helped create thousands of successful businesses worldwide. After 20+ years in banking, I took the leap to pursue my mission of tackling housing affordability. I have all the pieces in place for a successful business, but I know I can’t do it alone. I’m excited to join this community of innovators who will help us refine our strategy and accelerate impact. Together, we can help more people achieve their dreams of ownership. Here’s to the journey ahead! 🚀 A big thanks to Techstars Washington DC and JPMorganChase for their trust, and to our sponsors and organizers: Adam H. Phillips @Alishagolden Darius Clair @elisasepulveda Laurie Felker Jones Elizabeth Salem Graham Ben Bartolome Shoutout to all my fellow founders—congratulations on this amazing journey! 🎉 Let's continue to support each other and drive our visions forward! #Techstars #HousingAffordability #Entrepreneurship #StartupAccelerator #Impact #Ownership

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Thanks for another informative post, Daniel. Urgent Action Needed: Please add your your name to this letter before 5pm ET Today! 🔗https://lnkd.in/grrzAeWG With the dramatic decline in funding to Black founders and outright racist-sexist attacks on Black women funders in the recent Supreme Court Fearless Fund decision, I join you in urging signature of The Center for American Entrepreneurship & Engine | Advocacy & Foundation’s letter urging US Congress to pass: The Community Development Investment Tax Credit Act to boost investment in Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). "The legislation would create a new tax credit for private sector investors that make equity or equity equivalent investments in, or that provide long-term patient capital (i.e., loans with a minimum term of at least 10 years) to CDFIs." Expanding American Entrepreneurship Act: "The legislation would raise the cap on funds organized under a 2018 sub-category of section 3(c)(1) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 from $10 million to $50 million, and double the number of permitted investors from 250 to 500. Together, these changes will enable emerging fundmanagers to raise larger funds." Time to move from being shell shocked to concerted community action that truly advances equitable capital access for all US Americans. Black Philanthropy Month The WISE Fund

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The Venture Institute Cohort 4 has filled with 350 VC associates and venture partners enrolling. Admissions will stay open until Monday and move great candidates to the next Cohort. Some facts… 1️⃣ The program trains aspiring talent to work in venture capital 2️⃣ The top participants get a residency in an actual VC firm to learn on the job 3️⃣ Dozens of Residents and Graduates have got full-time jobs in VC 4️⃣ You learn about VC from people working in VC and study how the industry actually works 5️⃣ It’s 100% free! PS: We have hired multiple Venture Institute Residents and Graduates. The talent coming through the program is amazing. 🎓

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