Will Bunker

I believe two of the big winners over the next 10 years in the SMB category will be PE who are rolling up the businesses and GenAI powered software that makes running these businesses significantly more turnkey and/or profitable. Thanks for having me on Jay Kapoor. If you want spicy takes fast forward to 25 min mark. If you want to get deep in market analysis buckle in for the whole thing. https://lnkd.in/d8M7Jyrx

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LangChain and LlamaIndex are the tools used to build a RAG system, but practical experience shows that Ai teams need to maintain control over it. We have an end-to-end example of a RAG system backpacked with Feedback Intelligence. Drop us a line to try it out on your RAG system! Haig Douzdjian

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Hey Nashville Founder and Funder friends: StartupNash is hosting events! We are having a happy hour during the week of #3686, and I want you to come. This event is for high-growth founders in Nashville launching something new (or an interest in newly launched startups)! Founders should expect to meet peer connections. Let me share a bit more. - Startup founders have a lonely road. It's important to make/invest in professional friendships. - 3686 is a great time to share new things you're working on/launching. - We practice peer mentorship (founder knowledge sharing) every day in StartupNash. - We are bringing our community experience to life with this ongoing event. There is a mix of founders and funders already signed up. Those attending 3686 can attend the conference happy hour, then StartupNash in East Nashville, then LaunchTN's after-party. It'll be a busy day but we can do it! I'll be attending every event. How you can help: - Share this event with a founder new to town - Be open to knowledge-sharing with founders - StartupNash is seeking sponsorships for our founder events in the future Details here: https://lu.ma/03h7wpei

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💡 Are vertical AI startups the future of industry-specific SaaS? SignalFire's latest blog outlines a compelling case for how AI-enabled vertical SaaS solutions could transform industries, tapping into a $6 trillion market opportunity. By applying seven innovative frameworks, startups can address unique, industry-specific challenges like handling unstructured data, achieving data defensibility, and automating workflows. One standout approach is the “networked SaaS” model, where diverse stakeholders—from end-users to insurers—can connect on a single platform, driving efficiency and deep integration. Curious about these frameworks and examples of companies pioneering this space? Dive into the full article! 📈👇

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Vertical Exit Advisors: Official Launch and Mission Vertical Exit Advisors (VEA) will officially launch in Q4 of 2024 after several successful engagements over the past two years creating a foundation for the firm’s success. We specialize in collaborating with Founder/Owners, Private Equity and Venture Capital partners to create optimal exit/profitability strategies for both portfolio and non-portfolio companies. We started with several successful engagements prior to our launch and now look to formalize the offering for both company buy side sourcing and sell side activity. This provides alternative pathways to success for customers beyond billion-dollar mergers or IPOs, offering solutions prior to unicorn valuations and diluted ownership. These solutions include enhanced profitability for current leadership or pathways to exits for owners and founders along with buy side partners. Our Approach: Many companies need support in product development, go-to-market (GTM) strategy, or financial cleanup to position themselves for a successful exit or profits within 6-12 months. VEA addresses these needs by integrating experienced operators into your team to preparing your firm for an optimal outcome. Our network of PE, VC, and investment banking partners enables us to perform thorough health checks, ensuring that founders and owners have clear expectations throughout the engagement. We become an extension of your team and align to your goals whether creating a stronger company or pushing for an exit through our partners. The duration of our engagements varies based on your company’s status, but our goal remains the same: achieve the financial outcomes required by our founders, operators, and investment teams. Our Partnerships: VEA collaborates with some of the top PE, VC, and Consulting Teams globally to fulfill our vision. Building on the success we’ve experienced over the past two years; we are expanding our internal team and partner ecosystem. This expansion will enhance our capacity to prepare your company for successful outcomes, whether through M&A, improved EBITDA, or increased profitability. Leadership: Steve Gantenbein, the owner and operator of VEA, brings a wealth of experience from managing companies with revenues ranging from $5M to $250M and facilitating over $10B in exits. Over the past five years, Steve has worked in the Private Equity sector, providing expertise on mergers from $75M to over $1.5B. He is a Stanford University graduate with a strong background as an operator, executive, or advisory board member. What's next: We will be providing additional updates following this announcement leading to our formal launch in Q4, however, wanted to provide a preview due to our success prior to the formal launch.

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It was an exhilarating odyssey. Huddled in my East Sixth Street office at the Chicon incubator, the heart of Austin's tech crucible, an enigmatic invitation materialized. A Bitcoin party, they said, but with a peculiar twist—I was to assume a false identity. Ignorant of Bitcoin's intricacies and the nascent world of digital wallets, I embarked on a frantic digital expedition. Satoshi Nakamoto, the enigmatic architect of Bitcoin, emerged as my unlikely muse. Thus disguised, I stepped into the clandestine realm of the Bitcoin party. The ensuing days were a whirlwind of innovation. Ideas ignited, and before long, a constellation of patents illuminated the path for Cordoba Blockchain. In just four days, the Cordoba L2 Blockchain will open its doors to developers. Designed from the ground up, it's engineered to obliterate the formidable bottlenecks that have long prevented mainstream consumers from fully embracing the digital token economy. Ready to unlock the future? Dive into the world of Cordoba Blockchain applications examples and see how it's redefining the way we interact with the digital economy: https://bit.ly/4aXrY74

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dub is on to something special... and our mission is resonating with the people as seen by our recent growth. We're just at the beginning of enabling anyone to invest alongside the best investing talent - and build real wealth.

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It’s funny, every technology has adoption curves. Like any technology, whether it be string, steel, software, or hydrogen-fuel- the limitations are on the business model and implementation, and cross-domain ingenuity. Short-term thinking is a real hazard. A big issue today is that people think we are somehow in a different place than we were 100 or 1000 years ago. The past is much closer than modern Americans realize. Things like software, which are magic-tools, are just a domino in the long line of dominos that is human invention.

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Vishal Sachdev highlights the strategic integration of open source and proprietary tech in architecting tech stacks, developer ecosystems and resulting business models. The world class companies effectively balance value commoditization in open source and value capture in proprietary tech. This is the strategic challenge for companies operating in #blockchain and #AI. I believe those who operate at the intersection of blockchain *and* AI stand to win this strategic battle...

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The stats of unitaryHACK 2024 are impressive. 🙌 This hackathon supports existing projects by allowing maintainers to assign bounties to open issues. 🚲Quantum technologies need software to enable them, and supporting projects helps avoiding to reinvent the wheel. The landscape of existing tools is quite complex, from measurement based quantum computing composers to standardize api wrappers. 🦕We’re seeing the evolution of some packages evolving from Python to more effective programming languages, such as quantumtoolbox.jl porting there the quantum optics apis developed in QuTiP or rustworkx, porting to the speed of Rust a graph toolkit like networkx used by transpilers like Qiskit. 📊The event involved more than 800 “hackers” (+10% from 2023) responsible for closing 139 open issues (+ 40% YoY) benefitting 49 projects (+48% YoY). 💯%: Projects that got all bounties awarded: AI inspired classification for QCs, autoQASM, bloqade-python, metriq, autoqasm-parser, pennylane, qadence, quantum universal education, quantumtoolbox.jl, qutip tutorials, tangelo, tensorcircuit, torchquantum. 🎯98% of participating projects got open problems solved. ⚙️ The unitaryhack.dev website is full of information, including tags classifying projects by programming languages, topics, etc. 🧮 A leaderboard ranks winning participants: Congrats to king-p3nguin for closing 15 bounties helping 10 different projects. Many thanks to all mantainers, event sponsors and UF members without whom this event would not be possible. Kudos to the UF team directly involved in running uHack: Nate Stemen, Kallie Ferguson, Ben Castanon, Jordan Sullivan, Frances Joy Poblete. As this fourth edition draws to a close, we can’t wait for uHack 2025 to start!

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In a recent episode of The Expertise Economy podcast, I sat down with Johnny Page, CEO, and Matt Verlaque, COO, of SaaS Academy. Johnny shared a crucial insight for SaaS founders that challenges conventional wisdom 👇 "Many founders aim to delegate sales once they reach $15-20K MRR. This is often a critical mistake. We advocate for founders to remain deeply involved in sales for as long as possible." Why? According to Johnny, "No one can articulate the problem and solution more compellingly than the founder." Key takeaways from our discussion: > Founder-led sales drive stronger growth > Focus on consistent wins rather than quick handoffs > Clarify your customer acquisition strategy > Define your ideal customer profile precisely > Optimize your sales channel and offer > Maintain this focused approach for at least 12 months This strategy is the catalyst for transforming steady growth into exponential scale. For a deep dive into scaling strategies for your SaaS business, watch the full interview now: https://lnkd.in/dju-Be2u SaaS founders, what has been your experience with sales leadership? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. #sales #SaaS #SaaSAcademy #Scale #Startups #Podcast #Leadership

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2025 will be all about Physical AI. BrightAI is putting it to work to fix America’s pipes, power poles, and sewer drains, which are crumbling under the pressure of climate change. With 250,000 sensors deployed on infrastructure across the company, they are collecting data from the physical world to help blue-collar industries be proactive and spot infrastructure flaws before they become disasters. After bootstrapping to $80M in revenue, the company is just now taking on VC dollars to grow its Stateful OS platform. Full story on the platform launch https://lnkd.in/dccWfh7x CC: Alex Hawkinson Nancy Li Smith Erin Dudley Nick Kim

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I had several people reach out with interest in the Triangle Tweener Fund asking for details on the accreditation requirement. It's a SEC requirement and here's a quick guide on what an accredited investor is and how our partner AngelList verifies-> https://lnkd.in/gidDDWP3

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Goldcast's startup journey has perfectly mapped the last 4 crazy years of SaaS. Palash Soni and his cofounders first started the company in 2021 to build great, customizable virtual event solutions for enterprise marketers. While their business kept growing past the pandemic, it was clear that overall spend was shifting back to IRL events fast. However, video consumption continued to rise and quickly became the best way to build your brand and an audience in software - if you knew how to operationalize video marketing. Goldcast's product evolution from a virtual events platform to an AI-native video marketing solution has been incredible to watch. The company had its best quarter yet, adding customers like OpenAI and Coupa Software and I couldn't be more proud. Here's Palash talking about their product evolution and the future of video marketing in an AI-native world.

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AI is reshaping how enterprise software delivers—and prices—value. Companies like Zendesk, Intercom, and Forethought are shifting to outcome-based pricing, charging only when AI autonomously resolves issues. I've been investing in AI for over a decade. The shift to outcome-based pricing in enterprise software is a seismic change. As I told Jon Victor at The Information, software companies now face a critical decision: Does a company decide to change business models at the expense of losing revenue? It's a necessary risk. With cheap access to LLMs, businesses can build their own enterprise apps. Adapt or die. Why this pricing shift matters: → Vendor success ties directly to customer outcomes → Short-term revenue risks enable long-term market expansion → Industry faces widespread pressure to demonstrate measurable value Pitching AI-powered automation software as a clear cost-reduction tool could ultimately lead to greater revenue for vendors. This is because customers may view AI solutions as fundamentally different from traditional enterprise apps, whose business value is often harder to quantify directly. It's a huge market expansion opportunity. Vendors that nail outcome-based pricing could see massive growth as AI transforms enterprise operations. Those that don't? 😬🫣 How do you see this impacting sectors beyond customer support? Leave a comment. And if you're building in this space, send me a message.

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Movac KiwiNet Deep Tech is difficult because you do not comprehend 95% of the universe using the Standard Model of Particle physics. Either learn that measurement is flawed due to human bias or experience and unbiased state through transcendence experiences corresponding to Christ consciousness. The physics of life is based on LENR and not the Standard Model of Particle physics. Unfortunately, scientific research has been captured by the materialism perspective. This is mutually exclusive to the light observed in consciousness. Physics of life. Deep Tech https://lnkd.in/gKqC3PAR Gateway into the aromatic ring Faraday cage system. Time to see the light 😁.

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This is such an instructive interview. Servicetitan and lessons for vertical SaaS cos. https://lnkd.in/ghBXGrk7

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