Claudio X. Gonzalez C

#ObsessivelyEnthusiasticInvestor #UnreasonablyEnthusiasticInvestor #IrrationallyEnthusiasticInvestor at REFASHIOND Ventures: The Industrial Transformation Fund. We look for the people we believe are doing the best work in Industrial Transformation & Supply Chain Technology; Attempting the impossible. Then we go all-in on them. With obsessive, unreasonable, and irrational enthusiasm. We back them with evangelical zeal. Join us. #IndustrialTransformation #SupplyChain #Innovation #Technology #Startups #VentureCapital #DemandTheImpossible #UnreasonableEnthusiasm #ObsessiveEnthusiasm #IrrationalEnthusiasm

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We gathered dozens of operators from the MGMT Boston Operators Club and local founders alongside the 186 Ventures team this October to discuss the evolution of our dear software markets, the status of some predictions for 2024 (all looking good!), and what’s on deck for next year. General Partner Giuseppe Stuto led us through the following predictions for 2025 to share with you all.. ↕ We will see more vertical AI applications manifest themselves within the Enterprise in a similar ways that SaaS moved from horizontal to vertical use cases 🔔 We will see services business models more common and software budget purchasing models less common - SaaS may even be given away for cheap/free as a “way in” ⚖ Capital efficiency, on a relative basis, will almost be required to create enduring & compounding defensible enterprise value. Details like procurement cycle lengths and creativity with non-dilutive financing, like leveraging revenue based financing tools for example, will all matter 💡 Specific to AI, premiums will be placed on applications that can actually get “reasoning” right. All purpose LLMs still have a ways to go and there are multiple approaches with the “jury still out” on how to get context and reasoning right. Infrastructure solutions that use general purpose or customizable knowledge graphs to help application developers get to 100% (enterprise acceptable accuracy) will emerge OR savvy application developers will fill the gaps themselves. We will likely see both, depending upon the specific case! Thank you Giuseppe, Julian, and Sophie for a great discussion and evening!

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Congratulations to Pedro Siciliano, Fábio Baldissera, and the entire team at Teachy for raising a $7m Series A from some of the best in the business. When we first met Pedro in early 2023, he was a first-year student at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business with a full course load and a crystal clear vision for the company he had started to build. After a few interactions, it was clear that Pedro was the epitome of a mission-driven founder. He had a strong sense of purpose, a deep commitment to the problem he wanted to solve, and extreme focus. Being authentically mission-driven gives you superpowers that are key to building a large business. Here are a few: 👉 *Authentic leadership*: Having high conviction in your mission allows you to lead from the gut with persuasion and strength. 👉 *Boundless energy & resilience*: Understanding why you are building your business gives you the energy and grit to fight through the hard times. 👉 *Culture building*: Culture flows from the top, and nothing beats caring deeply and setting high standards for the work you, your employees, and your company produce daily. 👉 *Customer centricity*: Being mission-driven, by definition, means putting your customers and users first, the key to every successful business. Pedro and Fabio have these superpowers, and I can't wait to see how they continue to put them to work on their mission to improve education around the world. 

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NY friends! Please come see me at Tech Day on my panel discussing the future of the NY tech ecosystem and what I hope to bring to it!

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Third and last part of my post with some insights from the #fundraising of our latest fund. Some of the tools we used and how we managed to get the finish line successfully!

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A new era of deep tech has emerged. First time funds will raise “unheard of” amounts of capital to fuel next gen deep tech startups - producing outsized, superior returns for LP’s compared to the rest. Prudent investors will act on this data and shift investment strategy as LP’s or risk being left behind savvy wealth managers and CIO’s / FO’s who saw this trend begin 4 years ago.

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I recently saw this metric from Carta’s 1Q24 VC Fund Report, which is very concerning. DPI... is nowhere to be found in earlier vintages that probably should start showing DPI. Funding early-stage projects is great, but ultimately, these venture dollars need to exit their investments and pay back their limited partners. That’s where the metric Distributed to Paid-In Capital (DPI) comes in. While managing a fund, we get interim measures during the life of the fund (e.g. IRR, MOIC), but ultimately, “you can’t eat IRR.” If you want to build a lasting venture capital organization, you need to start showing DPI for your fund. Keep in mind that this is traditional VC data from Carta, and is not strictly crypto venture. Crypto venture tends to get liquidity earlier (tokens) and things tend to go parabolic sooner (faster, more unicorns) - but I’d wager that the data here is somewhat similar for Crypto VCs… Not as much DPI as there should be from these earlier vintages. Read the full article, as well as a recap of all the crypto fundraising rounds for August, here: https://lnkd.in/g3eVJ-iF

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Last month, Uncork Capital celebrated its 20th anniversary with a jubilant gathering attended by 420 guests, marking two decades of success in the venture capital realm. Over the years, the firm, alongside industry peers like First Round Capital and Felicis, has witnessed remarkable growth, now managing billions of dollars in assets. This expansion reflects the flourishing landscape of venture capital, with the industry experiencing exponential growth in investment. Moreover, positive shifts in VC norms, such as the evolving attitudes towards board seats, underscore a commitment to providing tailored support to startups, enhancing their growth prospects. Amidst discussions surrounding sectors like AI, optimism prevails, emphasizing a steadfast dedication to investing in innovative ventures with lasting impact. Read More Here: https://lnkd.in/efN6-Spd Branded Hospitality Ventures Jeff Clavier Susan Liu Ashley Cravens Tripp Jones Sarah Du Andy McLoughlin Amy Saper #innovation #technology #management #venturecapital #startup

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Department of Government Efficiency is the solution to combat government overspending Elon (the best capital allocator on earth) will rip out any waste and improve efficiency by an order of magnitude. Javier Melei of Argentina has already done this and he is now bringing down hyper inflation in one of the hardest environments by eliminating a bloated overpaid underperforming government staff. Elon and Vivek will undoubtedly make a huge impact and lower inflation for Amercian citizens as they understand that government overspending is the main cause. Unproductive government bodies and bureaucrats should be nervous and on the flip side all I see in the UK is more goverment bodies and task forces being formed and regulation being put in place which is costly madness. #DOGE #Trump #Elon #Melei #Inflation

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Truly fantastic Notable Capital podcast highlighting the strengths of Nozomi Networks and the "three amigos" Andrea Carcano Edgard Capdevielle Moreno Carullo as they scale to/through $100M ARR Back in 2017 the Energize Capital team was fortunate to partner with Nozomi Networks "three amigos" when we led their $15M Series B after Glenn Solomon and Bilal Zuberi + Lux Capital led the Series A. Now the company is 300+ employees and the leading product in the growing space Highlights of the podcasr: - clear camraderie and deliberate culture alignment required to bring in a nonfounder CEO. Incredibly humility from the cofounders, and leadership from Edgard. (Also bug kudos for making the initial intro) - Massive, and growing, TAM for OT cybersecurity. The intersection of the cyber physical environments are growing in every industry. - running a global firm requires operational expertise and making difficult organizational decisions early on... And culture permeates. You can "feel" the respect and collaboration between Edgard and Andrea here. https://lnkd.in/gDuwMsVg

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Thrilled to announce our team at Andreessen Horowitz is leading the Series A in HappyRobot! (CC Olivia Moore, Seema Amble) Happyrobot is reinventing communication for logistics - starting with AI phone agents that can handle load updates, check calls, negotiations, and more. Freight is a massive market, which today runs on calls, faxes, and emails. AI can handle this back-and-forth at much lower cost than humans and with 24/7 uptime, enabling brokers and carriers to pick up every call. This unlocks better margins, and frees up employee time to build deeper relationships. Over the last year, Happyrobot has completed more than 1M calls for some of the largest players in freight. Customers use Happyrobot to trigger custom workflows during and after each call, connected to their data systems...and, even transfer to a live human if needed. The last gen of freight software cos got it wrong by trying to disrupt the broker. We (+ the HappyRobot team!) believe brokers are the experts, and the right approach is empowering them. We're excited to partner with logistics leaders on this round - including Ryder System, Inc. Ventures, Andrew Berberick, Tobenna Arodiogbu, Jin Shieh, Jett McCandless, Dan Lewis, and George Ezenna - and work with angel investors Carles Reina, Bram Sugarman, Christopher Coleman, Nicholas Hinrichsen, Andrew Berman, and Gokul Rajaram. We're joining Y Combinator and @Array Ventures who led Happyrobot's seed round. We couldn't be more excited to work with co-founders Pablo Palafox, Javi Palafox, and Luis Paarup as they build software to solve big problems for freight. They're growing quickly - and hiring engineers! Read more about the company and our investment here: https://lnkd.in/g4ZdHnGb

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Big announcement below! 👇 Let's talk about the current state of GP-LP affairs: 🤯Emerging VC managers have absolutely exploded over the past 5 years. 📈 At the same time, more and more data has surfaced that shows that emerging VC firms tend to outperform larger, established firms. 🤔 All of this has made it intriguing but tough for LPs to know where to direct their attention. 🛍 GPs frequently meet LPs at conferences who are window shopping but not committed to the asset class or emerging managers. 🧾 And both crews get overwhelmed by transactional convos. So Sydney Paige Thomas and I created Abundance. Abundance is a private, nomination-based retreat for active LPs and top emerging GPs to form new experiences together and build lasting relationships. Why Abundance? Abundance is knowing that there is more than enough for more than one to succeed. And a single win within a community is a win for the community itself. The journey of an emerging VC manager from 1st close to final close or Fund 1 to Fund 2 is (1) communal and (2) requires an abundant mindset. LPs look for structure and confidence to feel comfortable investing in early VC firms. Yet many of the feeds we scroll and conferences we attend reinforce inherent power dynamics and transactional thinking, which allows scarcity mindset to creep in for emerging GPs. Some of the best events I’ve attended have been intentionally non-transactional, e.g. Camp Hustle, Recast Summit, and other GPs’ AGMs. The fundraising success stories we see usually involve a community (usually of other GPs & LPs) coming together to support and open doors for the emerging GP. We designed Abundance to be an immersive gathering that fosters these connections. Starting tonight, ~100 GPs and LPs are descending upon Seattle for the inaugural Abundance retreat. This has been under wraps for months and I can’t wait to see it come to life! Thanks in advance to our awesome sponsors who were the earliest believers in this vision: Sydecar, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Gunderson Dettmer, & Zelda Ventures. And shoutout to my dad Ed Illig for logo design & Halle Kaplan-Allen being the first sponsor to say yes 🤩 Presented by The Council Capital & Symphonic Capital.

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I recently met a family office ("FO") considering making a future investment in 640 Oxford that conducted an ingenious diligence exercise on myself... This FO shared a deck of a seed-stage company looking to raise $3M and asked if I could meet the founders the following week in-person at a NYC office. When I arrived, the FO was in the room and asked me to conduct a typical diligence meeting which they would observe. After the meeting, I met separately with the family office and we deep-dived on why I asked certain questions, what excites me, and what gives me pause about the business. This led to such an intellectual conversation that I found gave this FO real insights into crucial skills that GPs need to have: (1) Founder relateability - ability to establish a connection and rapport with founders in a first meeting. (2) Technical, business, and GTM understanding - ask questions that highlight where the founding team was strongest / weakest (3) Preparedness - doing my homework and have a basic understanding of the industry We'll see how this all plays out but this tactical and hands-on approach was refreshing and I think great if adopted more broadly by LPs.

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Excited to share the news from Theo Ai —founded by Patrick Ip, Alex Alben, and Tiago Luchini—announcing that our team at nvp capital and NextView Ventures have co-led their $2.2M pre-seed round! TheoAI’s innovative legal prediction engine, designed to forecast the outcomes of legal disputes, aligns perfectly with our vertical AI focus. We believe it has the potential to become an essential tool for legal firms nationwide, streamlining decision-making and maximizing efficiency. Thrilled to partner with this visionary team and support their mission to transform the legal tech landscape! Congrats to my partner Daniel Borok and Skylar Dorosin on your work here. Read more at https://lnkd.in/ezgzwQsN

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In many ways (although not every way), Latin America is where North America was a couple of decades ago. The rapid proliferation of internet-enabled smartphones underway right now is one of these ways. Numbers from market research outfit Canalys indicate shipments of smartphones to the region soared 26% to 34.9 million during the first quarter, marking the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth after a prolonged, pandemic-prompted lull. And yet, there's plenty more room for continued growth of the continent's number of smartphone users. GSMA suggests only 72% of Latin America's residents own a mobile phone, while only 65% of this population uses a mobile internet service. More are on the way, though. GSMA believes the mobile internet's penetration rate in South America will swell to 72% by 2030 when over half of these connections will be super-high-speed 5G connections. As was the case in other parts of the world, online shopping is following the advent of widening access to the web. Market research outfit Americas Market Intelligence says Latin America's e-commerce industry is set to grow to 24% this year, and expand another 21% next year and another 21% the year after that.

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How to Scale 10X in a Tough Market? What does it take to disrupt a $10B bus transportation market and take on Brazil’s entrenched monopolies head-on? 👀 In our latest The J Curve, I sit down with Marcelo Abritta, the founder & CEO of Buser Brasil, Brazil's leading bus sharing platform backed by SoftBank Investment Advisers, Lightrock, monashees, Globo Ventures Valor Capital Group and Iporanga Ventures From navigating regulatory challenges and leveraging media as a growth engine to scaling 10X during the pandemic and achieving cash flow neutrality amid market downturns—this episode is packed with insights on disruption, growth, and resilience. Here's what we discuss👇🏻: 🎯 Validate Before You Build: The importance of early demand validation for smarter, leaner startup launches. 🗞️ Media as Your Growth Hack: How to leverage PR to supercharge your startup’s growth and adoption. 🚨 Innovating in Regulated Markets: Why playing by (or breaking) the rules can drive success. 💎 Spotting Lucky Breaks: How to seize those pivotal moments that can be your startup’s secret growth weapon. 💸 Turning Red to Black: A guide to surviving and thriving during financial crises. If you’re looking for real strategies on building a scalable, resilient business, this one’s for you. 🎧 🔗 Link in comments! PS: Thank you to Marcelo Sampaio for introducing me to Marcelo and for some amazing question suggestions. I really appreciate that! #thejcurvepodcast #entrepreneurship #venturecapital #leadership

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This San Franciscan has landed in the Big Apple for #NYTechWeek! Here’s why it was important to me to be out here this week and I view NYC as a sister city. ((scroll down for 2 events The Council is hosting today!)) 🏭🏥 Reminder: The Council Fund invests at Pre-seed in Software’s Third Act, the transformation of the essential economy. Our investments span healthcare and industrial sectors like manufacturing, logistics, construction. 🐂 I’m eternally bullish on NY & SF and hate how many pit the two cities against each other. The reality is that a lot of capital and talent flow back and forth between the cities. They need each other to thrive! 🗽🌁 Cities like NY & SF attract young and mid-career talent because of their population density, transient nature, beauty, and reputations as cities where someone new on the scene can make a name for themselves. For the areas we invest in, I’m *specifically* excited about NY because of: 🏗️ Closer proximity to industrial hubs which are scattered across the Midwest / Rust Belt 🏛️ Closer proximity to DC where a lot of regulation around VC, startups, healthcare, onshoring initiatives, and industrial sectors takes place 💰 Many of the large financial institutions that are backing hard tech focused funds and major healthcare initiatives are also headquartered here in NYC 🎯 We’ve got several startups here who are hitting it out of the park, like Dirac and Siena. This has further validated my belief in this ecosystem to support young companies! Today we are kicking off with 2 events on Day 1 of #NYTechWeek 👉 AI Demo Day: The Council, Next Wave NYC, Lynx Collective, Flybridge will host 8 founders and 200+ investors and founders for a pitch competition this evening! Luma: https://lnkd.in/gbdYiJMw 🔜 Can still join the waitlist! Small & Big VCs in Hard Tech: The Council joined General Catalyst, Lux Capital, Iron Prairie Ventures, AlleyCorp, House Of Ventures, Steel Atlas for 2 back to back panels on industrial innovation & collaboration across the capital stack Luma: https://lnkd.in/gj6D4-Au ⏰ Event has passed

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