Wyatt Lunson

Dave Clark Raises $100M for Auger After Going to School of Flexport Hard Knocks Dave Clark has come out of the shadows after his ... err crash course in the educational school of Flexport (still on his linkedin btw). And it's with a new startup called Auger. From reports it sounds like: * Integrates all the supply chain and forecast data * Forecasts using AI (duh) * A "single pane of glass" * Chatbot you speak with (duh) * Dave comments that he is trying to reproduce the "end to end" planning tools he had at Amazon. * Dave comments he wants to replace Excel processes. * The VC firm Oak HC/FT says it invests in healthcare and fintech (curious). I have a few thoughts on this mission: * This is a real problem. There is a wide canyon in large companies between data lakes/BI tools, supply chain software, OMS, and financial planning software. He is 100% right this often gets done in Excel. * ... but it's hard to replace Excel. This sounds like FP&A software to me. But the AI version, you know... * To justify a no software, no revenue, no customers, barely any employees $100M seed investment on who knows what valuation, this has to be sold into Enterprises. No SMBs, please and thank you. Maybe not even mid-market, although that's what the article mentions (I don't buy that explanation). * This is going to be more difficult then thought. Enterprise software is hard, on its own. But keep reading. * Also, Enterprises are notorioiusly slow to change their supply chain software. Harder than martech or even eCommerce platforms which are difficult to supplant. * Data integration and unification is also hard on its own. And it actually does not involve skills that Dave Clark had to learn particularly much at Amazon (they built their own software) or Flexport (primarily small to mid-sized businesses with simpler systems). Other ecosystem neighbor participants may not take so kindly to having their data sucked into Auger's AI. * It seems designed to compete with the Oracle and Blue Yonder-type of supply chain solution. But Dave is smart. He knows all this already. So this means to me: * He's not actually looking to replace existing software. He's going to need to create a new category of software. Also very hard. And finally >> Dave Clark will have to create a Marc Lore Jet-style exit to make this work. I say this explicitly because Marc Lore was famous for valuing his companies far far ahead of revenue, traction or anything, finding a mark (in Jet's case, Walmart) and then pursuing them relentlessly in the hopes of outrunning their outsized valuation. Not impossible, but hard. Dave is a relentless, take no prisoners style of operator, and sounds energized to be on this journey again... which -- sounds like a big challenge that could go horribly wrong. But, that's the kind of asymmetric bet startups need to make to attain an outsized valuation. Those who are about to go into battle, we salute you.

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I've talked to 50+ crypto projects over the last few weeks and they're all looking for help onboarding KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) Many are hiring agencies, BD people, assistants - just to fail miserably Here's what they don't get: Before we get into how to onboard KOLs, just know: KOLs won't fix your problems If users can't understand your product, if your value prop is not strong enough... then go work on fundamentals and then work with KOLs KOLs work great when they amplify sth that's already great Now, back to onboarding KOLs 1) Outreach Most of the teams I've talked to use cold outreach, copy-pasting the same DM over and over again If that's you, you need to stop that NOW - nobody likes spam This is how you win and set yourself apart: - Try to get a warm intro if possible (this is where agencies can help) - Personalize your outreach! - Own your pitch! 💡No agency can do a better job than you at pitching your product! 2) Why your project is a great fit Make it obvious why their followers should care about a project like yours! Share metrics that show traction, Social proof (investors, PR articles, etc) Demo about how to use your product 💡Onboard them to your product as if they were users! 3) Remove friction from generating content Ok so now they buy that your project is legit, but now are thinking how painful could it be to generate content? (yes many of them are lazy) 💡Share some of your own content that has worked, content from other projects/KOLs can work too 4) Landing a good deal Lastly, negotiating a deal that makes sense for both sides is what will make or break this process Make sure incentives are aligned 💡Remember: No deal is always better than a bad deal! That's all - there's not much else to it tldr 1. Personalized outreach 2. Make it clear why your project is a fit 3. Remove friction from generating content 4. Land a good deal If you'd like me to go deeper into KOL deals, please reply to this post and I'll follow up with you

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Very important lesson for any founder - think long and hard to whom and for what you give equity.

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The most popular question among startup founders this week is 'Which Tech Week events are you going to?' I've done my homework: went through 450 events. Of course, I had some help from AI, but I double-checked everything myself. I’ve drawn some conclusions: who’s the most active, where the top tech minds will be, which funds and corporations have really put in the effort, and I even created a personal list of the most unique formats.* In the end, I came up with a schedule – the week kicks off with an ice plunge at 7 AM on Monday, followed by 3 events a day for the first 3 days (since I’ll get lazy after that), then 1 event per day, and saving the lightest and most fun formats for the weekend. Feel free to use, save, and share! 😉 *Last year, morning hikes were all the rage, this year it’s all about the Cold Plunge. Interesting!

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Last week Asian founders did... 🚀 Ka Ling Wu launched Upsolve AI (YC W24), a platform to build and deliver analytics to your end-users via embeddable dashboards. 🚀 Sahitya S. launched Endeavor, an OS for manufacturers to automate key workflows across sales, inventory, and supply chain. 🚀 Kevin Yang launched Serif.ai, an AI email assistant that writes context-informed emails in your personal voice. 🚀 Vishnu Sridhar launched Matter Intelligence, developing advanced sensors to capture extreme-resolution images of natural and artificial materials from space to surface. 💸 David Shim raised a $50M Series B for Read AI, an AI copilot for wherever you work, making your meetings, emails, and messages more productive with summaries, content discovery, and recommendations. 💸 Kevin H. raised an $800k Pre-seed round for EQ Exchange (EQX), a crypto exchange practicing radical transparency by publicly disclosing all financials in real-time, both on-chain and off-chain. 💸 Pranav Ravella raised an $8.7M Seed round for Sapien, a platform to create autonomous coworkers for finance professionals. 💸 Alex Yeh raised an $82M Series A for GMI Cloud, an AI infrastructure company providing GPUs and a platform to optimize inference and fine-tuning.🎙️ Arvind Jain, co-founder of Glean, talks about Glean's enterprise search product and the future direction of the company with Sequoia Capital 🎙️ Akhil Ramaswamy, wrote a substack article about approaches to defensibility for AI agents Links for the last two in the comments ⬇️

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In 2015, Notion almost died. So, the founders moved from SF to Kyoto to build in peace. Last year, they hit $10 BILLION in valuation. Two things that got them there: 1. Focused Product 2. Community-led growth Bookmark this one 👇 Ivan Zhao and Simon Last started Notion in 2013 with the vision to give non-technical users the ability to make their own tools. It did well, and they expanded the vision: all-in-one workspace for entrepreneurs. They launched the beta in 2015. And it imploded. No users, bad feedback, and it constantly crashed. Plus they were running out of money. So Ivan and Simon laid off their employees, left SF and moved to Kyoto, Japan. "No one there spoke any English, and we didn't speak Japanese. There was nothing to do except code." They stayed focused on their original mission: no-code tools for non-technical founders to build their businesses. And they built it obsessively: both in the weeds of every piece of code and every design decision. By 2018, they were ready to launch. Notion 1.0 came out that year. And it exploded. Users loved the UX, convenience, and thoughtfulness that went into the product. Some even called it "a milestone in the history of UX design." Just look at how simple the home screen is. Hiding behind is a very powerful tool you can run a business using. And they keep iterating, but with the same core in mind. In the last 5 years, they've gone viral. Everyone uses Notion. But there's one more part of the story: community-led growth. Early on, they'd see users post on Twitter and Reddit about how they were setting up their workspaces and different things one could do with Notion. Camille, Notion's Head of Marketing, noticed this and went all-in. She hired Ben Long to head the community, and they launched V1 of their ambassador program. It was a super-hit. r/Notion, started by ambassadors now has 300k+ members, and those ambassadors still manage this subreddit. Then TikToks exploded with workspaces, notes and to-do systems. Massive YouTubers got in on the Notion train. People began building businesses out of selling templates! And Notion keeps growing. 30% + growth on a base of 35 million users! What a business. What a team.

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Last week, at Andrew Yeung Yang's startup gathering in NYC, a technical founder asked me, "What’s it like being a non-technical founder?" I was just glad he didn’t ask, "What’s it like being a female founder?" But honestly, I hadn’t given it much thought. As a second-time founder, I’ve always embraced the power of teams. I stay in my lane—strategy, vision, and business development—and trust my technical counterparts to bring the vision to life. Sure, I work in tech, but I don’t code. I know our app runs on a scalable microservices architecture, why we chose our cloud provider, or how GNNs optimize our network recommendations. I can communicate how we want to map out our AI/ML pipelines and explain why predictive modeling improves our UX. But writing code? Hard pass. What I’ve learned is this: Being a founder is about building bridges, not welding them. The best startups are built by teams where everyone leans into their superpowers. I want my employees to shine, part of that power is to let them run with their expertise. This is why I’m so #grateful for the startup communities in NYC, SF, and Austin—places where collaboration, diversity of thought, and complementary skills turn bold visions into reality. It’s where founders and builders come together to make magic happen. #startups #nontechnicalfounders

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One of the things that worries me the most about 2021-era AI startups is precisely this: early-stage burn rate. Burn rate applies not only to dollar amounts but equity as well. Raises ultimately have to tie to revenue at the very least, so even if the first stage VC went starry-eyed, it doesn't mean the second stage will. I suppose it's just the Great Filter of AI, but here's to the prudent leaders!

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The conventional payment gateway isn’t leaving this potential big piece of pie away. With the industry active transaction volume, this amount could be easily ROI. As of now 100B per day, and with stripe rate would be 3B of fees generated with that volume. Again, we have yet to see the full potential to be unleashed by the industry. WE ARE STILL EARLY! #bitcoin #crypto

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What is a SPV and how it unlocks pre-IPO investment? Please read our 5-min post!

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I’ve spoken with 30 subscribers of The Classified Creator (my newsletter) in the last 3 weeks. Here are the 4 key elements I was missing (and how I’m going to incorporate them for you): 1. Monetization - I’ve been talking about the journey of growth but haven’t been breaking down how they actually make money.  2. Platform Jumpers No, I don’t mean someone skydiving or bungee jumping. I’m talking about those that start on one platform (like LinkedIn) and then jump into Twitter/X, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Think about creators like Justin Welsh, Matt Gray, Chris Donnelly, Jade Bonacolta, Will McTighe or your YouTubers like Ali Abdaal, Alex Hormozi and Codie A. Sanchez. My plan is to break apart their FULL journey—not just what they’ve done on LinkedIn. We’re going bigger.  3. The Attention Attractors Have you ever wanted to really boil it down to WHAT attracted the right attention? - Every week, I’ll boil it down to the 3-4 reasons why this person has done so well.  Those things that you think about with the creator are the reasons they work—but where’s the proof? Bringing attention to what has worked in a clear and concise way is what I’m being asked for. 4. Behind the scenes What is actually going on behind the scene (that I can’t see in their public content) that added to their success? - Are they building pods for engagement?  - Do they have a team helping them?  - How are they really doing this? These are questions that we should really know the answers to if we’re going to be attempting to take the pieces that worked for them. So, I’m going to be giving you this—every Wednesday for new creators. The newsletter is going to take a slight turn and be rebranded to Creator Attention. The new tagline: Helping creators define, attract and convert the right attention to revenue. The point I want to lean into is the 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛. Hormozi recently talked about it on a video with one of his clients that has ~6000 followers on Instagram and she’s making $1M/year.  You’re going to see that Hormozi’s content will ONLY be focused on speaking to business owners.  No more videos of him in the kitchen making a smoothie with a bucket of FAGE nonfat yogurt. Lots of views.  No cash. My point is—I’m going to help you figure out how to attract the 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜n so you can turn it into revenue too.  If you’ve already signed up for The Classified Creator—you’re on the list already. If you haven’t signed up yet, do it here: https://lnkd.in/g5-EU7Js This Wednesday, I’ll be breaking down Luke Matthews’s journey.  I figured he would be the best one to start with considering he’s been banned 8+ times on LinkedIn. Get ready for the next chapter.  PS…this is a pic of me with my new Ice Barrel that’s going to be a 4:30am cold plunge everyday.  It just showed up and I couldn’t be more excited!  Who wants a video of me in the ice plunge!?

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I love YC Demo Day season. It’s an insane concentration of driven founders building something they deeply believe in at the frontier of tech. I know it's more trendy for VCs to complain about YC. But I believe Garry Tan when he says 5-10% of companies become worth a billion dollars. Maven’s hit rate from YC is even higher: 16% have had $B+ exits, and we’re trending toward a 40% graduation rate from Seed to Unicorn with investments we’ve made alongside YC. Since Maven’s founding in 2013, we’ve funded 12 YC startups out of the 66 companies we’ve invested in. Here are a few: Cruise: acquired by GM for $1B+ Embark: $4B SPAC, acquired by Applied Intuition Chariot: acquired by Ford before Series A May Mobility: raised $300M+ in follow on funding, including from Toyota Carrot Fertility: raised $100M+ in follow on funding, including from CRV and USVP Daybreak Health: Series A from Lightspeed, Series B from USV Moment Robotics: acquired by Cruise founder Kyle Vogt’s new company, The Bot Co (Maven is an investor) Our strategy differs from other YC investors. Many funds build a YC “index fund”, investing in many startups per batch. It’s not a bad move. But we focus on concentration, meeting all the companies in our thesis area and investing in one or two. Gratefully, I think every company from the list above can point to Maven as one of their most trusted partners that made a difference: intros to customers, closing follow-on funding from top VCs, connecting key hires, and offering genuine care and advice in both the best and toughest of moments. What are we looking for in a YC investment? 1) Team - a technical product team with startup DNA and hustle that can achieve a bold vision. Brilliant, determined founders no one would bet against who are ambitious enough to build an iconic company. 2) Vision worth fighting for - what are you bringing into the world that is worth all the time, effort and money required for success? Why aren’t existing solutions good enough? Are we proud to help bring this idea to the world? 3) Massive market - because of the valuation premium YC demands, even a $B outcome may not return today’s average Seed fund. Honestly, that math sucks. In order to pay the premium, we have to believe that if we’re right, we’ll be wildly successful. 4) Consumer trend - Maven invests in tech companies addressing emerging consumer trends. Even if some investments are B2B or B2B2C, they are always grounded in a consumer insight: autonomous vehicles in 2014, fertility care in 2017, mental health in 2020. Today, we’re looking at consumer applications of AI and frontier consumer health. Many successful companies we fund are outside of YC as well – like Zoom, Hello Heart, Epic!, Class, Wildtype. So we match YC’s Unicorn % across the rest of our portfolio, too 💪 YC founders in consumer tech and digital health: if you want to build an iconic company that delivers a positive impact for millions of consumers - I can’t wait to talk to you!

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Why I’m Picking China Over Nasdaq Right Now Let me tell you a little story… Imagine this: you're standing in front of two doors. One leads to Nasdaq Land, the bright, tech dreamland we've all grown used to. The other is China Ville, a place that’s been a bit quieter lately – but if you listen carefully, it’s starting to hum with a new tune. The world’s a bit like a game of Monopoly right now. We've all been buying up Boardwalk (hello, Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft!), but as everyone crowds to grab hotels on it, other properties are going way underpriced. Now, I’m not saying China’s Baltic Avenue, but it’s definitely on sale compared to the tech-driven Nasdaq that's been hogging the spotlight. Now, let’s break down why China’s catching my eye (and hopefully, yours too): China's Hitting Refresh on Its Economy China recently unveiled a big package of economic stimulus, almost like it’s saying, "Hey, I know you forgot about me, but look what I’m bringing to the table!" From tax cuts to infrastructure boosts, the government is taking steps to spur growth – and it’s not every day you get a state-led boost with long-term planning. It’s like they’re giving their economy a double espresso shot! Changing World Order The world is shaking up! China’s emerging with a “let’s make friends” strategy with nations worldwide. The goal? Strengthen alliances, enhance trade, and become a strong competitor to the West. Room to Grow While the Nasdaq has surged in recent years, China’s growth potential could be like a springboard waiting to be launched. Stocks there are undervalued right now, so investing could be like buying a ticket at a discount to the next big show. Don’t get me wrong, Nasdaq’s still the golden child. But as the market matures and the stakes change, sometimes it’s worth exploring new grounds. After all, would you rather be in a crowded room where everyone’s fighting for WiFi – or in a new spot with a stronger connection? So, What’s the Play? In the grand strategy of portfolio balancing, shifting some of your attention (and investment) toward China could offer that perfect blend of growth potential and diversification. Let’s invest where there’s room to grow. Who knows? You might just find that the new world order has your back! #InvestingInChina #GlobalMarkets #ChangingWorldOrder

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In my 4+ years in the dYdX ecosystem, I’ve consistently admired the team's ability to innovate on emerging technologies and scale billion+ (and in one case, trillion+) dollar products—while strategically sunsetting old versions to focus on 10x larger opportunities. Solo - L1 Spot & Margin Trading: https://lnkd.in/e36dudcx L1 Perps: https://lnkd.in/eUUQPQrt V3 - L2 Perps: https://lnkd.in/eWudVbW7 “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”—and this requires a strong product vision and technical prowess to embrace tech that improves exponentially. The dYdX Chain, launched 1 year ago, has already generated $250B in volume, $50M in USDC protocol fees distributed to stakers and validators, and onboarded 20K traders. Still not the biggest exchange yet, but it's getting there. And if anything, it's a major step toward achieving the goal of democratizing access to financial opportunities. dYdX Unlimited launched this week which unlocked the next stage of growth with Instant Market Listings, Megavault, an affiliate program, and much more. All code is fully open-sourced and run by 60 independent validators, running the network in a permissionless manner.

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TL;DR China steals our stuff! WireScreen is doing amazing work (thanks Trevor DeLew for the graphics) keeping pace with this threat. China and other foreign threat actors use the fast and loose operating at the fringes of the VC ecosystem to gain more and more influence over US and partner nation based tech companies. And it is moving from the fringes to the mainstream. In 2018, the U.S. Trade Representative warned that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government directs the investment in, and acquisition of, U.S. companies by China-based firms to obtain technologies and Intellectual Property (IP), and to facilitate technology transfer to support PRC state plans. VC investment from China has focused on U.S. emerging technology sectors like Artificial Intelligence and other PRC government priorities. Recent developments have heightened these concerns: In January 2024, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) added IDG Capital, a China-based VC/ private equity firm, to its list of “Chinese military companies” operating directly or indirectly in the U.S. The firm has invested in more than 1,600 companies, including several in the U.S. Last year, the CEO of a U.S. startup (which is suing defendants in China for trade secret theft) told U.S. Congress that some China-based VC firms may target and pay employees of U.S. startups to acquire technology, then fund competitors in China who try to monetize the stolen technology.  Some U.S. and European firms have alleged China-based investors offered them investments, then withdrew the offers after obtaining their proprietary data in the due diligence process. One U.K. firm, after agreeing to a takeover by an investor in China, began transferring technology to its would-be acquirer in exchange for part of the firm’s sales price. The investor in China later abandoned the acquisition. The U.K. firm was left facing bankruptcy after sharing its IP. A complete DD package has to include a scrub of every level of LP in the source Fund.

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The insane story of how Retool (YC W17) went from zero to a $3.2 billion company in just 5 years 👇 David Hsu founded Retool in 2017, 6 months after he graduated from Oxford. As an undergrad, he started Cashew, a Venmo competitor for the UK, where he first experienced the frustration of building internal tools and admin dashboards. This frustration would inspire Retool. David applied to the W17 batch of Y Combinator with the mission of improving the internal tools experience. He experimented with various ways to position Retool, but couldn't drum up much interest. Until... One day, David sent a cold email to a startup called Rappi, telling them Retool "helps companies build internal tools faster." Rappi's CTO replied within 15 mins to request a demo. David had finally landed on positioning that worked! He continued to refine this positioning over the next few months and continued to leverage cold outbound as a way to reach his ICP. 9 months later, Retool had already hit $500k in ARR. After a year of growing the business primarily via cold outbound, David decided Retool needed a scalable inbound strategy. Turns out, this was easier than he thought. After launching officially on Hacker News, Retool began to get 15-20 new company sign ups every day 📈 To keep these new customers happy, Retool spied on them. No, not literally. But the Retool team had a notification set up whenever an error happened and made it their mission to contact the customer and fix the error before they even knew they had it. This helped immensely in building trust and a strong user community, and these early product evangelists supercharged Retool's growth. From there, it's been product led growth and traditional enterprise sales. In July of 2022, Retool raised a $45M Series C led by @Sequoia at a $3.2 billion valuation. They're a major player in the growing dev tools market and are one of the most successful recent YC companies. Key learnings: 1. Early stage startups can focus on outbound as a GTM strategy until they have 100% product market fit. 2. Companies can find product market fit via sales. Retool analyzed the feedback they were getting from emails and used it to change not just their messaging, but their product features as well. 3. Be customer obsessed to the point that it's almost crazy. A community of product evangelists is one of the most valuable growth engines a company can have. Thank you for reading! Source for this post linked here: https://buff(.)ly/4f5Pwcl ____ Find this helpful? Follow Jake Johnson for daily startup insights ⚡

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who are we building for on ton & why? - existing onchain user base - user base onboarded via recent airdrops - apps looking to monetise but lack licensing + infra - casual user base that wants to pvp on their internal chat without any global restrictions data to back my thesis: 👉 there are 22m activated wallets 👉 there are 600K+ daily active wallets gas is almost ~$0.025 the onboarding stage on ton will soon turn into the adoption stage, that's what are we building for.

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"No startup from day one should be thinking about moats." - Tony Xu, DoorDash founder He adds: - Moats are academic. Great for classrooms, useless for operators. - No startup builds a moat in 1-2 years. Period. - Day 1 thinking about moats? You're doing it wrong. - End game matters, but it's years away. - Focus on lowest cost structure instead. The kicker? There's no moat on day one. For anyone. For any company. That's not bad news. It's liberating. So what should you do? - Solve real problems - Build something people want - Focus on execution - Think long-term, act short-term DoorDash didn't start with a moat. They started with restaurant delivery. Why? Lowest cost structure for future expansion. The moat came later. So stop stressing about moats. Start delivering value. What's your take? Is the moat mindset holding you back? — #VenchaVideosforFounders | Video #15 Find us at Vencha 💛 Read about my Book - The Go To Market Handbook for SaaS Leaders here - https://buff.ly/47mUhM4

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Here's a new list of 31 fast-growing Y Combinator backed startups, currently hiring for REMOTE roles: Big thanks to Ben Lang for sharing this list! 1) Unriddle (YC S24) - read, write and find research papers faster 2) Stacksync (YC W24) - sync between CRMs and databases 3) Akiflow - tasks and calendars in one app 4) Finni Health (YC W23) - empowering autism care providers 5) Ply Health (YC S24) - get providers in-network with payers 6) Versable - product description enhancement for auto parts industry 7) Formance - open source infra for finance 8) Forage - payments infrastructure for government benefits 9) Hona - client communication portal for law firms 10) Zeal - automated payroll 12) Courtyard.io - invest in collectibles 13) Blueberry. Pediatrics - pediatric clinic in every family's living room 14) Centaur Labs - labeling medical data at scale 15) TrueBiz - background checks for businesses 16) Thera (YC S22) - payroll, banking for global teams 17) Recall.ai - API for meeting video, audio and metadata 18) Text Blaze - slash commands anywhere 19) Rollstack - automate decks and documents 20) Infisical - open-source secrets manager for developers 21) Arist - learning at scale 22) Optery - removes private info from the internet 23) Vendoo (YC W22) - manage sales on multiple platforms 24) Paragon - embedded integration platform for SaaS apps 25) Gordian Software - software to remove friction in travel 26) Roboflow - computer vision tools 27) Hatchet - background task orchestration and visibility 28) Typewise (YC S22) - AI customer services/sales 29) Oneleet - automated security and compliance 30) SpeedyBrand - AI marketing content for SMBs 31) Shimmer - ADHD coaching links to all of their career pages will be in the comments 👋 for more content: Follow groveto

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