Eamonn Carey

In a recent Sifted article, I share thoughts on emerging managers esp. Solo-GPs, here's what I think 👇🏽 https://lnkd.in/eYx7h5Qv I’m a solo-GP building OpenseedVC, here’s what some think this means; 🔻That there is key-person risk 🔻That there is little accountability or governance 🔻That it is a one-person show Here’s what it ACTUALLY often means; 👇🏽 ✅ We've set up governance that foster accountability, not bureaucracy ✅ As a fund, we have a dizzying depth of complementary skillsets ✅ We build conviction and move quickly; critical for early stage ✅ We are process geniuses, automations and efficiency is in our DNA ✅ We have a lean, mean team optimised for high for efficiency There is no "founder-like fund" quite like a Solo-GP emerging manager. For us at OpenseedVC, we invest up to $150k at the angel stage, and are flexible. We can lead your angel round. We can follow if the terms work for us. We don't take board seats. Whatever it is, we are first investors in ambitious and experienced operators just as they start their technology companies! We are founders ourselves, and have parallel experiences to the most ambitious and resilient founders, and this is ultimately superpower 💥 Solo-GPs are outliers, and in the business of #VC #venturecapital, outliers signal potential for outsized opportunity. #operators #openseedvc #europe #africa #soloGPs

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Insightful look into bioplatform strategy, and what it takes to raise a Series A from my partner, Omri Amirav-Drory: https://lnkd.in/dFv7GbF6

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Investors often get asked what we’re currently looking for as we evaluate early stage companies - how do we build conviction that a company can succeed? This is how I think about it ⤵ There are lots of different aspects that can and should be underwritten when evaluating an early stage company. These aspects range from team > traction > TAM > product > incumbent dynamics > product > competitive landscape > cap table > valuation and the list goes on. My current framework is to spend most of my time on one of two things: > Previous experience > Current traction When I think about previous experience, I’m particularly interested in how the founder handled challenges while building a previous business. I had a conversation recently with another founder-slash-investor, and we talked a lot about how being a successful founder is all about pain tolerance. Like how many proverbial punches in the mouth are you able to take before you give up, surrender, wave the white flag and move on? This founder-investor told me he will really only work with founders who have already gotten beat up. The founders who are battle-tested. This is important for a couple of key reasons. > First, it’s easier to believe battle-tested founders have the pain and stress tolerance required to be able to build a big business and endure all of the highs and the lows and the ups and downs that come with it. > Second, I'm very interested in working with second- and third- and fourth-time founders because they know where the landmines are. The good ones have made the mistakes, and they've learned lessons from them that make them even better the next time around. Now let’s look at traction: If you’re a first-time founder, the traction bar for me is considerably higher. If I can’t check the battle-tested box, then I am looking for a lot more traction than I might from a repeat founder in the early stages of building. Unpacking this a little further, these two buckets are my answer to the “what are you looking for” question above: > Battle-tested, repeat founders who have a big disruptive vision in a market that has dynamics that allow you to build a moat. Earlier on in their journey is fine in this scenario. > Founders who have positive unit economics and meaningful traction with a product, service or good in the market, ideally growing their number one KPI by 20% MoM. If you’re a founder building in the Built World and fit one of those buckets, let’s connect. For investors, I’m interested in how you think about this framework and what you spend the most time on during your diligence process. #builtworld #venturecapital #startupfounder

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We're excited to co-lead the $10.8mn Seed+ of Mawari with Anfield Ltd & 1kx alongside ACCORD VENTURES, Animoca Brands, Blockchange Ventures, Draper Dragon, Samsung Next, iAngels, Mulana Capital, @Parami investors, @Waldo holdings and notable angels including Helium co-founder and Borderless Capital's Partner Sean Carey, The Tie co-founder Joshua Frank, former Galaxy Chief Information Security Officer Ivan Brightly and Techstars Web3 leader Pete Townsend Mawari is a Solana Labs-based #DePIN project focused on scaling spatial computing that blends the physical world with digital information, allowing users to interact with their surroundings through technologies like augmented reality (#AR), virtual reality (#VR) and extended reality (#XR).  Mawari is revolutionizing spatial computing by building a decentralized content delivery network #CDN that empowers creators to build immersive experiences that captivate their audiences. It is the world’s first and only #DePIN that orchestrates storage, bandwidth, and rendering in real-time, enabling seamless 3D content streaming to spatial computing devices. Mawari is the Netflix of the #XR world, but instead of videos, it streams interactive 3D content to devices like Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3. By offloading the heavy computational work to a global network of #GPUs, Mawari ensures smooth performance and minimal delay, providing a truly immersive experience by addressing one of the core challenges in the XR (eXtended Reality) industry: scalable infrastructure for real-time #XR applications. Compared to our other portco Render Network Foundation, Mawari excels in real-time rendering, a crucial differentiator in the #XR industry. While web2 companies like Hololight offer #XR streaming services, their reliance on centralized cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform poses a single point of failure. Mawari holds three patents, with 11 more in process related to 3D streaming. It's innovative approach has attracted over 40 global brands including T-Mobile, Netflix, and an average annual revenue of $1.5 million. Currently under development on Solana Labs devnet, Mawari plans a mainnet launch in the first quarter of 2025. To expand its infrastructure, the network will also conduct a node license sale in the fourth quarter of 2024, offering spatial streamer nodes, verifier nodes, and application nodes. More here: The Block: https://lnkd.in/dH9KhAKN Defiant: https://lnkd.in/dRC8ac-G Crypto Daily: https://lnkd.in/d7xpqniG

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Taavet Hinrikus and I made the Financial Times Due Diligence email. https://lnkd.in/ez2AuGQx One 'unintended consequence' is that if there is a 45% tax on carry and CGT (raising £40m per year, remember) it for all intents and purposes closes the door on new VCs in the UK. Especially started by teams from non-traditional backgrounds. To meet the GP commit, you need to be already part of the 'wealthy' as you cannot rely on the value you create - nearly half of it will disappear - to fund it. We have both had extremely successful startups which are few and far between. The smaller number of new VCs will therefore more likely increasingly be for people who have inherited the capital or can draw it from their already rich family. Probably not want they have in mind with this policy.

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The latest update from the research team at Primal Capital explains the importance of wallets in the Web3 ecosystem and highlights the evolution of solutions in the market today. These solutions provide greater utility compared to the original Web3 wallets, which was simply to safeguard assets from centralized platforms.

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On a quiet Wednesday in August 2024, Mars ended a decade-long drought in big-ticket food M&A. The privately-held confectionery giant's USD 36 billion bid for Kellanova sent shockwaves through the packaged foods industry and likely had investment bankers not on the deal choking on their morning coffee as they realized they'd missed the largest transaction in the sector since Kraft-Heinz in 2015 😱. The numbers were enough to wake up any consumer banker: USD 83.50 per share, a 33% premium to Kellanova's 52-week high, and an eyebrow-raising 16.4x LTM EBITDA multiple 🤨. Within about a week, however, the news cycle, research analysts and merger arbs moved on to other things as there was not much more to report on or analyze, especially as Mars was private held. In September, however, Kellanova filed its preliminary proxy statement on the transaction. This is where all the juicy bits about a transaction are often buried: 🍽 A lunch meeting at Skadden that wasn't just lunch 💲 An unsolicited offer 📈 Four offers in 10 weeks ⏱ A ticking fee that disappeared 📰 The Reuters leak that brought out the interlopers 🛑 Why Mars paid a USD1.25bn reverse termination fee Full analysis in comments 👇 #MandA #FMCG #Consumer #PackagedFoods #Mars #Kellanova ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

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LOOKING FOR INVESTMENT? 💰👀 Fuel Ventures 🚀 is one of the most active early stage tech investors in the UK. We back disruptive & ambitious founders at all the early stages: 👉 Concept/Pre-Seed 👉 Seed & Seed+ 👉 Series A stages 170 Investments and counting… 🚀 We look for/focus on fast growth digital/tech businesses. We like software, platforms fintech, e-commerce, B2B and B2C with super ambitious hard working founder/s or founding teams, companies that have large global growth potential with multibillion market opportunities. We really want to see companies that have the potential to deliver x100 potential growth, mostly meaning £1billion+ future market cap potential. 📈🚀 We have funds that can invest from Concept/Pre-Seed, Early Seed, Seed, Pre-A and A stages, so if your at any of these stages we are keen to hear from you. The best way for us to take a look at you business if you are looking for investment is to submit the business to our web form for me and our investment team of 8 people all get it directly into their inbox to review within our process, we review weekly in our investment meetings and will come back to you if we spot something of interest that gets us excited. So be punchy, ambitious and bold! Please do highlight why your business is special, the market size and opportunity and any traction or progress achieved. Please submit the business here: https://lnkd.in/d6AK2rjy

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🚨 Fundraising Alert 🚨 Top tier companies raising Pre-Seed to Series A in the next 6 months should apply to Focal where they can pitch almost all their prospective investors at once. Demo day is on May 16th. ✅ Applying takes 7 mins ✅ Previous applicants raised from funds like Sequoia, Balderton, Episode 1, Lightspeed and GV. ✅ Even if you find fundraising easy, this is a way to build added momentum. You can apply here: https://lnkd.in/eTdTtSw7

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When the first alphabet in these conversations changes from 'M" to 'B', you know the funding winter is transforming into spring 🌱 #VC #VentureCapital #Earlystagefunding Read more about the latest monthly funding report for VC funding in July 2024 here: ttps://https://lnkd.in/dhdWF8fP

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🚨 EGYM attracts nearly $200 million in primary funding from L Catterton and Meritech at a valuation of over $1 billion 🚨 I'm excited to announce that EGYM / EGYM | DACH / EGYM Wellpass has recently secured nearly $200 million in primary funding from L Catterton and Meritech Capital, valuing the company at over $1 billion. The fundraise last year with Affinity Partners marked a significant achievement for EGYM: we were profitable, debt-free, and maintained a big chunk of the fundraise in the bank, all while experiencing rapid growth. That meant that we no longer relied on investor funds for survival; instead, we could take the time to focus on building relationships with the best possible investors to support EGYM's mission. Phew 😅 that was quite a relief as a founder, and the next round ended up happening much faster than expected. We are a fitness technology company: In my research, I identified L Catterton as the ideal partner for EGYM on the fitness and health side, given that they are the world's largest fitness investor. For the technology piece, Meritech Capital stood out as the best fit, given its deep understanding of SaaS and its success stories with leading companies like Facebook and Salesforce. Therefore, I started reaching out to both firms with the intent of building a long-term relationship, which has turned into a round of funding. I had the pleasure of meeting Marc Magliacano, a Managing Partner in the L Catterton Flagship Fund, and was impressed by his extensive experience in fitness investing. His deep industry knowledge will be invaluable as he joins our board. On the Meritech side, I was equally impressed by Paul Madera, a co-founder of the firm. His sharp questions and focus on the important elements of our business convinced me that he is the right fit for EGYM. The EGYM team has earned the trust of what I consider to be the best possible investor partners for our mission to get to where we are today, and we are much more capitalized than we were planning. However, this trust now comes with even greater responsibility. Our mission to build the leading global platform at the intersection of fitness and health is not just a business goal but a commitment to driving sustainability into the world's largest market—healthcare. We are 120% dedicated to making it happen and are grateful to our existing investors for their continued support. 👋🏻 Welcome aboard, Marc and Paul. 🚀 Let's go, EGYM team!

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By accident, I re-watched a couple of episodes of Silicon Valley over the weekend. It premiered in 2014 and is still a perfect introduction to the crazy world of startups and venture capital. Anyone in the ecosystem can recognize themselves and/or all the weird characters occupying this space. Watching all six seasons should be mandatory before starting or investing in a tech company. It’s mind-boggling how the creators managed to showcase futuristic elements like self-driving cars, AI, robots, and VR headsets, even before they became mainstream topics of discussion. It’s only the bubble content that changes, not the actual way the bubble is inflating… Movie nerd comment: It would be fun to see someone use the Silicon Valley characters the same way Lemon uses the Thomas the Tank Engine characters in Bullet Train! https://lnkd.in/dsGqTRA3 #siliconvalley #startups #VC #techbubble #buzzwords #piedpiper

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VC Platform explained, in apples. By the nature of what I do, I think about social systems a lot: how do we build a platform of founders supporting other founders? It’s so easy to get caught up in complexity here, that I make myself think about it, quite literally, in apples. Give it a try: * If I have two apples, and give you one, how many do I have left? One less than I had, so down to one apple. * But in real life the correct answer is that I now have an apple and a relationship with the culture of sharing with others when you can. I‘ll be able to lean back on that relationship when in a twist of fate it’s now me standing with no apples. I am now part of a system. * Can I rely on someone else to start this system? Yes, I can. But apples in life are a bit more complicated: — Maybe the person in front of me doesn’t share the apple with me, because she has already committed it to someone else. — Maybe she borrowed the apple from someone else in the past, and now wants to return it. — Maybe she hasn’t eaten in a while, and now needs not one, but both apples to sate herself. — All these people might be generally willing to share an apple with me—but maybe not this exact one, the timing may be not right at the moment, they are part of a bigger group where they have agreed to only share apples inside the group etc. Yes, the analogy with deal-sharing is intended, too. :) * When we factor in real-life circumstances, it’s hard to tell if the person, in fact, has a spare apple or not. Besides, when I wait for someone else to share an apple first, I make myself dependent on an external factor over which I have no control. I shouldn‘t, therefore, be surprized to find myself in a situation when I would want someone to share an apple with me, but the system is not there yet. * So, in reality, the only sure way to become part of a system like that is to wait for a moment when I have a spare apple and share it. * For this to work, the person I am sharing the apple with should actually need the apple. Let’s imagine I try to share an apple with someone who has just had two, doesn’t like apples, or has an apple tree. In the best case, it just won’t work. In worse cases, if let’s suppose I insist on giving the apple, the person might grow irritated. So, I need to share my spare apple with someone who actually needs an apple at this point in time. * This example is fabulous, as it helps answer other questions as well. For example, should I then give both apples, so that the relationship is 2x stronger? My answer will follow in the next post. PS. The artwork frivolously used by me to illustrate my thoughts is by a generative artist @dmitricherniak on inst who considers automation his artistic medium. He makes it seem easy, but after spending an hour in DALL•E and getting a bunch of really ugly apples in webs, I am a raging fan.

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If you’re interested in the positive impact VC can have, CHECK THIS 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

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If you're looking for VC funding in the UK, check out FundFinder.live If you're one of those people that likes to just play with all the circles on an Apple Watch because it's super satisfying, but struggle to pick one because playing with the interface is too satisfying, then maybe don't go to this website :) FundFinder has a similar interface to Apple Watches, but on web. Thank you Hector Mason, Jack Richardson, and the team at Focal for sharing this. Simultaneously showing me a very useful tool that could save me time in research, but also could waste lots of my time thanks to my brain (not sure if ADD or something else). And thank you to Concept Ventures and Justified Studio for building it. Oliver Kicks - who deserves the credit? #random #fundraising #startup #vc

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Hey Fundraising-Startups and Investors, VC on the rise again! Very exciting insights and takeaways about the VC/Startup-Fundraising-Market. Massive shoutout to Rohit Yadav for sharing and putting it together for free! 💰 MORE: 53% of VC Managers expect to allocate more capital and invest in more startups than last year, with only 6% expecting fewer. 📊 SEED SIZE: According to an analysis, the sweet spot at Seed stage seems to be USD 2-2.5 million for maximising chances of follow-on fundraising. 📉 MINIMUM TRESHOLD: Don't Go Below $1m: Companies securing less than $1m in seed funding were less than half as likely to reach Series-A. ⏱️ SPEED IS KEY! Act fast. Raising seed funding within a year of launching your startup doubles your chances of reaching Series-A compared to those waiting 3+ years. 🛠 TOOLS: More tools (getpantom, OpenVC, shipshape.vc, Signal from NFX) are coming up to support founders in their fundraising (also watch out for +Azava 🤘)...

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A SAFE and convertible note had a baby and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati was the midwife- out popped the D-SAFE! 👶🏽🎉 A new #climatetech funding instrument was announced by Elemental Excelerator last week. One of the company’s main goals is to support smaller, up and coming companies during the awkward “Scale Gap” phase between #VC funding and natural growth. It’s called the #DSAFE (Development Simple Agreement for Future Equity) and it aims to aid the process by giving companies a small amount of cash to overcome initial risks and expenses during the developmental stages of a product launch or company. How does it work? D-SAFE has a redemption clause meaning companies can choose to have their payments offered as a loan or convert to equity at the investor’s discretion. Funders and companies will have clear communication and expectations about where the money is going and how it will be applied to either the company or the projects at hand. Financiers and companies will work together with more #transparency, and that’s a great boon for #startups and VC alike. As of this month, Elemental has already invested using D-SAFE in eight different companies, including Dimensional Energy and Origen — both companies investing in innovative and out-of-the-box solutions to environmental issues! Seems like a win-win on the surface. What do you all think about the D-SAFE? Alfredo Coppola Momoka Ueda Tim Wagner Stephen D. Torres Olya Irzak Natsuho Toyama Noriya Tarutani Shin Ogawa

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Is this slower funding market only USA related or has Europe entered the same? #funding #founder #startup #seed #seriesa #vc #market #growthfunding #capitalraising #fundraising #investmentstrategy

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What Dave McClure is building resonates well what we are doing with our Siena Secondary Fund. Although one focuses on fund stakes and the other company positions, the journey is the same - need to educate the market about what is #VC #secondary and how to benefit from it...

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