Nick Edwards’ Post

We have some exciting news! We’re launching our office in South Park in San Francisco to relocate our companies to SF once they’ve formed in London, Paris, Bangalore and New York. This has been a long time coming since we have been building the bridge between the world's best founder talent in Europe and Asia, and the world’s best funding ecosystem in SF since 2017, when we raised our Series A from Greylock and Reid Hoffman. This is a direct result of the increased follow-on investments in our Europe and Asia portfolio from some of US' top investors. Recent rounds include a16z’s investments into Gensyn and Aztec Network, Founder’s Fund’s investment into Magdrive, Khosla’s investments into PolyAI, GenieAI, Mimica, TORTUS and OchreBio and Sequoia’s investment into Guided Energy. Entrepreneur First

🍂Welcome Autumn! The Untapped Investing Fall Quarterly Experience!✨ Untapped Investing is a powerful collective and catalyst for change in venture purposely launching on Juneteenth of this year. Thrilled to share in just four months, the investment group has raised over ~$400k and funneled on-average, six-figure “I believe in you” capital to three Black and underrepresented early-stage startup founders from Energy Tech, Fintech, and Sports/Media & Entertainment. This esteemed executive group of mission-aligned angel investors reconnected two weeks ago for our hybrid Fall Quarterly Experience at the Chief Clubhouse in San Francisco. This quarter's curated session featured "take 'em to church" opening remarks from the renowned Kimberly Bryant, an educational learning segment from Adam Walker of JP Morgan Private Bank entitled "Leverage the Experts to Build Your Own Generational Wealth", and, of course, pitches from two new industry-disrupting, Black and underrepresented startup founders from Infrastructure/Hardware-as-a-Service and Film/Media & Entertainment. The unparalleled Fall experience continued this past Thursday with a field trip to Healdsburg. It's one thing to watch a captivating demo but nothing compares to an onsite visit, tour, and live demo of one of the startup installations hosted by a local board member (thank you Marc). Progress is achievable through the combined power of community and capital! Mica Eades Mayo Attica Alexis Jaques Felicia Mayo #UntappedInvesting #BeTheChange #TapIntoTheMovement #ChangingTheVentureCapitalLandscape #CloseTheWealthGap #UnderrepresentedFoundersAndFunders

See below for the next Venture Lane | Startup Hub Pitch Night Event info! Applying earlier is better and it is coming up fast!

Greater Cleveland is starting to be blessed. "Tech unicorns" are privately held tech companies worth >$1 Billion, and a "herd of unicorns" is called a "blessing". Over the last few weeks, I asked around to develop a list of Cleveland unicorns. Here's what's in so far: 🦄 Keyfactor (Last round valuation at $1.3B backed by Insight Partners, Sixth Street) 🦄 MRI Software (Last round valuation >$3B; backed by TA Associates, Harvest Capital, GI Partners) 🦄 OEC (backed by Genstar Capital) 🦄 Park Place Technologies (Just secured $2B debt from BlackRock) 🦄 OverDrive (backed by KKR) 🦄 Hyland (backed by Thoma Bravo) 🦄 Dealer Tire (backed by Bain Capital) Some are newer firms, others are older but going strong. Interesting that all are backed by PE funds. Who's missing? Greater Cleveland Partnership, OhioX, COSE, JobsOhio, JumpStart Inc.

🔍 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐈 𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐁 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲? With nearly a decade immersed in the startup scene, I've had the privilege of structuring equity distributions at various companies — Ledgy, wefox, and several Visionaries Club portfolio ventures among them. 🇺🇸 While data on US peers is readily available and well-documented, aligning equity distributions with European industry standards isn't a simple task. After all, Europe isn't a one-size-fits-all landscape. 🗣 Typically, I'd tap into my network to gauge their perspective on fair equity compensation for specific roles. But it often involved some guesswork to strike the right balance considering factors like country, role, and seniority. 🇪🇺 To address this challenge, I'm excited to unveil Ledgy's latest initiative: Europe's most comprehensive equity benchmarking dataset. Join the waitlist through the link in the comments to gain access! #equitycompensation #esop #benchmarking #salary #startups

Platform teams in VC go beyond funding—they support founders with operations, marketing, hiring, and more. This week, I interviewed Lauren Young (Head of Network Operations at Union Square Ventures) and Stephanie Manning (Operating Partner at Lerer Hippeau) - they shared how their firms help early-stage startups: 💡 Focused Support: USV connects founders with experts at the right time, while LH guides them through key steps like fundraising and go-to-market plans. 💼 Leveraging Networks: Both firms use their networks to help startups solve challenges and access valuable communities. 🙌 Empowerment, Not Micromanagement: USV and LH let founders run their companies, offering support when needed without adding extra tasks. Platform teams are reshaping how VCs support founders—providing value while letting them stay in control. Check out the full video of the interview below. Thank you to Annie Shapiro for helping to organize these insights!

This is why we started Table for Ten ventures: - Get more operator investors and tech executives involved in startups - Educate new Angel investors into getting onto the right deals - Help founders assemble strong board members - Have more tangible experience at the forefront - Improve founder transparency of deal flow - Reduce exclusivity The last one is the most important one for us. And it shouldn't be a surprise that we're making dinners and The Club central to this. When you put relationships and values first, strong early investments can happen. Experienced or new Angels, hit the link in the comments and come along to one of our first dinners!

Looking to raise capital? Check out the @2024 Mid-Atlantic Capital Conference

🗽 Founders N' Funders is coming to New York City on July 10th ..... and we have one last spot open for a VC investor to present at our inaugural NYC VC Reverse Pitch Event. So, please share with me who your favorite VCs are in NYC! These are such fun events for everyone, where we turn the tables and have the investors pitch to the founders. This particular event is for Seed and Series A tech startup founders and will provide founders a unique opportunity to see first-hand that not all investors are the same. Investors can have different qualifications they look for in terms of industry, investment amounts, company stages, business models, geography, etc. If you are a tech founder and interested in attending, simply comment with the "🗽 " emoji below and we'll send you a link where you can apply to attend. Capacity is limited and filling up fast, so register asap. Special thanks to Dylan Scott at Techstars for helping organize this event and also to our awesome sponsor partners for making this event possible! 🙌 Carta (Will Buckstaff) Capchase (Ian Garrett) Kintsugi (Ryan Connell / David Lorenzo Lopez) CAVU Securities, LLC (Chris McMillan) Optimist Legal (Omeed Tabiei, Esq.) Forecastr See you in NYC on July 10th!!! #FoundersNFunders #startups #founders