Alex Hawkinson

Drop In Venture Funding To Black-Founded Startups Greatly Outpaces Market Decline Chris MetinkoGené Teare February 27, 2024 Venture funding to Black-founded U.S. startups last year totaled only $705 million — marking the first time since 2016 that the figure failed to even reach $1 billion, Crunchbase data shows. The decline in capital to Black-founded companies greatly outpaces the overall decline in startup funding. While total venture dollars in the U.S. fell 37% last year, funding to Black-founded startups dropped a staggering 71%, according to Crunchbase data. Last year’s total investment in Black-founded startups in the U.S. marks the lowest amount since such startups raised only $582 million in 2016. The drop in total dollars also meant Black-founded startups received their lowest share in the venture market since at least 2016, per Crunchbase. Black-founded startups received less than 0.5% of the $140.4 billion in venture funding all U.S.-based startups received last year. In 2021, Black-founded startups received 1.4% of all U.S. venture funding. In 2022, it was 1.1%.

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Exciting news! We just sent out the inaugural newsletter for Future Frontier Capital, our pre-seed venture fund backing frontier tech startups. As I hit "send," I realized how launching FFC parallels the path of the founders we support. Starting FFC has required the same passion, perseverance, and self-belief that drive entrepreneurs. Just like a startup, getting a VC fund off the ground demands relentless hustle—building the brand, perfecting the pitch, and networking tirelessly. There are constant challenges that test your resolve and endless hours of unglamorous work behind the scenes. And perhaps most daunting - the self-doubt, wondering if you're crazy for attempting something so bold. Pushing through that negative self-talk requires unshakable faith in your mission. Raising this VC fund reminds me of starting our IP strategy and patent analytics firm two decades ago. It’s a powerful reminder of the perseverance, creativity, and resilience needed to turn an ambitious idea into reality. This experience makes us more empathetic partners, ready to support the founders we back. Our work is just beginning, and this inaugural newsletter underscores our commitment to supporting frontier tech startups every step of the way. #startups #VentureCapital #EmergingManagers #Entrepreneurship #InnovationMindSet

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Leveraging proven frameworks helps founders accelerate their technology, culture, sales, and operations. Frameworks help founders for us in action instead of struggling to figure it out. Join Julie Penner, Jim Franklin, Larson Stair, and myself as we delve into how frameworks have been game changers for us in this Denver Startup Week panel. Tuesday, September 17, 10am Techstars Denver #FrameworksForFounders #startups #DSW2024 #CTO CTO Levels

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Exciting news from Techstars for our #Colorado ecosystem! Thanks, Nicole Glaros, Natty Zola, and David Cohen, for your collaboration in reimagining how best to support founders in #Colorado. #startups #entrepreneurship #ecosystem #innovation

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And my second investment at defy is in 🐶 zeroETL puppies 🐶... I mean PuppyGraph, which is all the beauty of a graph database, none of the data migration or continuous upkeep of a graph database. Sounds like magic? So are puppies 🐶 . Puppygraph is NOT a graph or a database. It is graph analytics engine that answers graph questions on your existing data warehouses, whether that is a Databricks datalake, Google BigQuery or postgres. Compared to SQL, it's faster, handles way more complexity, scales and has almost no upkeep. How did I get to conviction? 1. Tailwinds - 🌊 Lakehouses 🌊 have helped enterprises put all their data in one place, enabling Puppygraph to unlock insights previously unavailable. - 📚 LLMs! 📚AI and RAG cannot easily traverse fragmented data. Puppygraph's Graph RAG unlocks insights with their Knowledge Graph and spoonfeeds to the LLMs. 2. 👯 Team 👯 We have graph experts from Google, LinkedIn, Databricks, Tigergraph, and Instacart who are uniquely able to build this solution. 3. 💸 Customers 💸 . My alma mater Coinbase is a proud user. The feedback from my former colleagues was off the charts! A blockchain is very much a graph database and Puppygraph tracks down fraudulent transactions that go through mixers and helps identify patterns. Huge congrats to Weimo Liu Danfeng Xu Lei Huang Zhenni Wu Gary Hagmueller, defy.vc is proud to be an investor!!

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In this exciting episode of the Duran Inci Podcast—where innovation meets deep insight—I am thrilled to host Alex Berg, a pioneering entrepreneur who is revolutionizing industries with his innovative approach at Cratos Equipment, often dubbed "The Tesla of Construction." Visionary Insights: Dive into the motivations that drive top entrepreneurs beyond mere profit. Learn about Alex's passion for transforming the status quo and how it leads to groundbreaking results. The Power of 'WHY': Discover how aligning business operations with core values can shape the future of an industry and forge unstoppable teams. Challenging the Norms: Unpack why tackling complex challenges is essential for creating a fulfilling and impactful future. This episode is a must-listen for aspiring entrepreneurs and anyone eager to explore the limits of what's possible in business innovation. Tune in and be inspired to think differently and act boldly. #EntrepreneurialSpirit #InnovativeLeadership #VisionaryThinking #BusinessTransformation #CratosEquipment #DisruptTheStatusQuo #FutureOfBusiness #PodcastForChange #DuranInciPodcast #ChallengeConvention

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🚢 Today, we are launching the expanded platform for Retirement At Finch, we are democratizing the data models underlying the employment industry. Access to this data will spur new and much-needed innovations, such as what the retirement sector is currently experiencing. With around $40 trillion in retirement assets in 2024, retirement represents a major segment of the employee benefits industry that has only become more important as our Social Security is unable to sustain the growing population. SECURE Act 2.0 is going to drive 2-3x more sponsors to offer retirement benefits over the next five years, and the retirement infrastructure needs to evolve to sustain this. As an infrastructure company, we power the likes of Fidelity Investments, Ameritas, ePlan Services, Inc. (Paychex), Morningstar and other leaders in the space, serving more than 40 recordkeepers and TPAs and 45K+ sponsors with 5M+ participants. By working with the early technology adopters, we saw firsthand the need to evolve our platform so that Finch could grow to serve all 2,000 TPAs and 500 recordkeepers, ultimately powering the entire ecosystem. The speed we ship features at Finch is incredible, and there are more on the near-term roadmap! Now is the perfect time to onboard with Finch. Reach out to me at [email protected], and I’ll make sure you get a personal onboarding experience.

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The (Healthcare) Ground Beneath Our Feet… This year it is likely that over $10 billion will be invested in the digital health sector – a robust amount, no doubt, but inconsequential when compared to the amount of capital tied up in healthcare real estate assets, which is estimated to be $1.2 trillion by Jones Lang Lasalle. Of that amount, approximately $790 billion is in the hospital sector while the remaining $490 billion is in medical office assets. It is estimated that there are 48.6k facilities with 3.4 billion square feet of healthcare real estate, 42% of which are owned by REITs and another 33% held by other private investment vehicles. Much of the digital health investment is meant to make the physical healthcare infrastructure more productive: greater operating efficiencies, greater patient throughput, more relevant personalized care models with better outcomes. As the healthcare system is being pushed to be more distributed to lower cost sites of care, accelerated now by the rapid proliferation of automation and AI capabilities, the potential impact on healthcare infrastructure assets will be profound. Thoughts on what that might look like... https://lnkd.in/eTfAdUbS #digitalhealth Flare Capital Partners

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Hey folks, I think you might be aware that what we're building at DeepCast includes a podcast discovery and exploration platform for listeners at www.deepcast.fm. We also recently unveiled www.deepcast.pro -- a promotions, marketing, and monetization platform for podcasters (and folks like networks and agencies who support them). "You make the shows, let us help you with what comes after." Shows claimed and processed via DeepCast Pro are also published for listener consumption on DeepCast. High value all around! If you're a podcaster, claim your show at www.deepcast.pro to get started. Free speaker-labeled transcripts for all your episodes as well as generated insights for each (key takeaways, quotes, topic & keyword sets, summaries, and more) plus many more features—and growing daily! We're shipping fast over here! (Thanks to Rachel Perez Hosna Qasmei Kim Burgaard Benjamin Moon Rachel Magana Hari Ramachandran!)

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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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It is great when we can share how Canix drives real and measurable results for cannabis operators. In the cannabis industry, it is a major challenge for operators to drive efficiency in their tech stack when they are shifting between the state-mandated tracking system and spreadsheets. It is so critical to have integrated software that creates clear operational efficiency and facilitates data-driven savings.

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Brain fog and chronic fatigue can turn your most reliable team member into your firm's biggest bottleneck. Our innovative testing program helped one VP of Engineering double his energy levels and clear his review backlog. Want to know more? Let’s chat: https://lnkd.in/eCnQDCAt #energy #bioenergetics #healing #naturalhealth #healthwithbeth

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Pivot or persist? It’s a question every founder faces. Don’t wait until it’s time to make that call to think about how to make the decision. I shared my perspective on how to plan for that question with Starcycle and Jaclyn Siu https://lnkd.in/gvtaKChi #founders #entrepreneurship #startups

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One thing I constantly feel like I'm saying is that the Southeast is growing and you can feel the momentum here within the early-stage tech community. But it's one thing to talk about the ecosystem - it's another thing when there's data backing it up. Last week, Embarc Collective and Build In SE dropped the Southeast Capital Landscape 2024 Report, and wow... We're seeing 38% growth in new VC firms creating a presence in the Southeast over the past 3 years. But what really gets me excited? Seeing the Startup Flywheel in Motion: Mandiant's acquisition (now part of Google Cloud) led to a new cyber-security VC firm, and Red Hat alumni co-founded unicorn Pendo. io. This isn't just growth. It's transformation. It's reinvestment. It's the Southeast tech scene leveling up. Check out the full report: https://lnkd.in/e4D6gXyJ

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Episode 361 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Phil Pergola, CEO at CloudZero: https://lnkd.in/eDHZk2JQ Phil has a tremendous track record and we talk about a lot of great companies that he’s helped build throughout his career, but I need to highlight one of these companies in this intro and that is BladeLogic and the lasting impact the company has made. If you’ve ever read the famous startup book by Ben Horowitz called The Hard Thing About Hard Things… the competitor to his company Opsware was BladeLogic which is absolutely classic. BladeLogic went on to become a public company and was subsequently acquired by BMC Software. Another fascinating point about BladeLogic is the people and how many have gone on to become C-level sales executives or advisors at some of the most successful companies out there like MongoDB, AppDynamics, Snowflake, Wiz, Okta, and others. There is even a podcast called Hunters + Unicorns which interviews a bunch of them. CloudZero is the leader in proactive cloud cost efficiency. They enable engineers to build cost-efficient software without slowing down innovation. The company announced a $32M Series B round of funding last year from Innovius Capital, Threshold Ventures, G20 Ventures, Underscore VC, and Matrix. In this podcast, we cover: * The importance of building a successful pre and post-sales organization, plus the details of the LAYR model (Land Adopt Expand Retain). * Phil’s background and the story of his initial interest in pursuing a career path as an actuary. * A trip down Boston tech memory lane across multiple companies like Eggrock Partners which was acquired by Breakaway Solutions, BladeLogic, enerNOC, and CloudHealth Technologies. * All the details about CloudZero - how they found product market fit, why he joined as CEO, and the latest at the company today. * Advice on raising venture capital funding. * Lots of great advice on being a first time CEO - his lessons learned, what you should think about in the first 90 days, and advice on how to get on the radar for CEO positions. * And so much more. Episode Sponsor: As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com. Contacts at SVB: Christopher Morrison, Alicia Fuller, Ben Maitland-Lewis, Hani Azzam, Hannah Heyliger, Lisa Puleo, and Mark Gallagher. #startups #entrepreneurship #podcast #founder #cloud #venturefizz

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Want to improve your school's environment while reducing energy costs? Check out our latest blog post, which delves into school energy inefficiencies and highlights how air monitoring and purification solutions can greatly enhance indoor air quality while improving energy efficiency. Did you know? Implementing energy-efficient practices in schools can reduce energy costs by up to 30%, freeing up funds for educational programs and resources! By investing in smart technologies and sustainable solutions, schools can create a healthier environment for students while maximizing their budgets. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ezU35cVE #BackToSchool #HealthyLearning #School #Education #AirQuality #IndoorAirQuality #IAQ #Smartbuildings #HealthandSafety #Government #HVAC #FacilitiesManagement #Architechs

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Entrepreneurs in housing: this one’s for you! The premiere accelerator for those innovating at the intersection of housing and equity. Check it out and/or pass the word along!

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Today, Sean Byrnes, Mark Jacobstein, and I are launching Near Horizon! Since early 2023, we have been working on something new and different, and what we’re launching today addresses a real need and opportunity in how startups start up! Our vision is to empower solo founders and harness AI to solve important problems across multiple domains. We know how hard it is to find and maintain healthy co-founder relationships, and the company-killing risk that poor co-founder fit introduces. But at the same time, the startup journey is difficult and lonely. What if there was another option for solo founders? At the same time, we’ve seen AI's incredible potential to transform industries. What if we could partner experienced technologists and early-stage startup veterans with domain experts to build industry-changing companies? That’s exactly what we’re setting out to do: beyond providing capital, we're working alongside our founders. Drawing from our collective experience, we’re helping them build the company, the product, the technology – doing whatever it takes to get from zero to one! I’m excited about the opportunity to do impactful work with our portfolio companies! If you're a solo founder or know someone who is, let's connect! You can learn more at nearhorizon.vc and explore how our unique model at Near Horizon might make for a different startup journey: one we go on together!

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