Daniel Falabella

Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

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Thanks Chinenye. I couldn't agree with you more. However while we work on this, we also have to be mindful of the fact that bias isn't just the problem in this data rather a combination of poor economy and bias. Of all these regions mentioned, Africa is the least performing market. therefore Davidson, naturally you would expect investors to do less there. They are not charity organisations but a venture set up for outsized returns.Therefore the major issue we should be discussing is, which sectors are receiving this funding in Africa? Are the investments coming to sectors that will lift the other sectors up fundamentally or to sectors that will window dress the issues? or Worst still the ones that will reap-off on the people and distort rather than disrupt the system. (eg Nigeria POS fintech and the real banking system. a discussion for another day). Until strong investments are made in the technology sectors powering manufacturing strong job growth in Africa be it REAL B2B eCommerce not repeating what is already being done, or B2C eCommerce that is truly efficient and cost effective. Equally important is the improvement in the purchasing power of the consumers via credit card system. in as much as Sub-Sahara Africa lacks good credit system that captures the average citizens and residents, B2C will continue to struggle. in as much as our logistics investments are predominantly in the last mile delivery rather than efficient crosborder logistics, both B2B abd B2C eCommerce will struggle to scale efficiently and profitability. So, it's time for the investors to do away with the low hanging fruits and start tackling the real issues that will empower and propel Africa economies. That's where the main bias lies.

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Did you know that YC founders get a secret weapon… and it’s not what you think. “Bookface” is YC’s internal social network. It was needed because YC had funded larger batches and the hardest part of a community is knowing who is in it and who you can trust and ask for help. On the platform, founders share real methods and advice that would break if it were shared widely It’s secret knowledge shared with a trust-first community - answering 80% of the questions a founder can have about building and selling a product, be it to clients, candidates or investors. Before the platform, if you had a B2B startup, you had to reach out cold to potential customers. Now there are over 1000 YC companies you can sell your service to and all of their contact information is in Bookface. As a result, YC alumni companies are often over 50% of your new sales during YC. It’s superpowers like this that make YC deals so attractive compared to the norm. You are investing in a founder with a 10x network already!

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Huge opportunity

🚀 *“Launch fast, iterate quickly”* has become a guiding mantra in the startup world, but is it always the right move? Take **Zoom** and **Clubhouse** as examples. Zoom’s early backers, like Emergence Capital and Sequoia, supported a strategy focused on product reliability and quality before scaling. When the pandemic hit, this approach enabled Zoom to scale smoothly and establish itself as a market leader. Meanwhile, **Clubhouse**, backed by Andreessen Horowitz, followed a different playbook: launching quickly, even with limited features, to capture initial user interest. This approach drove rapid growth but also brought challenges, from scaling to competition with bigger platforms. The “launch fast” philosophy—championed by Y Combinator with advice to “launch something bad”—often works well in **tech**, where products can be iterated rapidly based on user feedback. However, **in the entertainment industry, first impressions are everything**. A poorly received launch can damage credibility, making it difficult to recover. Quality expectations are higher, and you can't always "fix" a show, game, or movie after release. 🎬 *In entertainment, initial development, QA, and polish are crucial before launching.* When the first impression counts, launching too quickly can be a recipe for failure. What do you think? Should entertainment startups follow a different path than tech, or is there room for a hybrid approach? #startups #venturecapital #tech #entertainment #productdevelopment #launch

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Startups don’t just “run out of money.” They wait too long to discover and validate real problems or unmet needs. Problems get rationalized until it’s too late. Funding creates a false sense of security, exacerbating this issue. Founders need to get back to basic business building. Focus on achieving product-market revenue fit, and less on raising capital too early. Talk to customers, invalidate hypotheses and assumptions, iterate, and address problems early. Stay focused and be in the trenches. 💡 #Startup #Entrepreneurship

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One of the best #videos on #starting up ! In a nutshell : 1. Make a team and that's more important above all 2. Allocate budget for one year and learn to live a meager lifestyle during your first year 3. Track personal accounting and keep it to minimum before jumping on to company's but both are equally important 4. Raising money is secondary and going live in 2 months is more important 5. Don't hire till you need it and hire talent better than yourself. India might not necessarily follow the above but still the video makes lot of sense

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Approximately how much should an early-stage founder budget for getting demand gen off the ground? To: Friends of Noble From: Sophie Buonassisi One question we often get at GTMfund from early-stage founders is around the cost of getting a demand gen program off the ground. Build in-house, contractor, agency... how to approach the build and according realistic benchmark costs. It’s a question packed with trade-offs, from cost to speed to control, and we typically share the nuances of each of these. When Noble launched their video series Phone a Friend, I was so excited to submit this question. Would love to hear any thoughts and advice in the comments for founders around benchmark costs for standing up demand gen. 😇 #marketing #B2B #PhoneAFriend #ThatsNoble #B2BMarketing

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Sometimes I'm reminded of the paradoxical exuberance/foolishness of my own youth. Every day I meet amazing founders. Yo-Yo Ma level geniuses that are budding masters of their crafts and vectors, early in their careers, and intensely brilliant. The top products of the labs at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, amongst other amazing institutions. They span upbringings, backgrounds, socioeconomic class, whathaveyou - doesn't matter. They're legit, and they're smarter than all of us. One or two of them will be a Tesla/Turing. Take my word for it. It's a pleasant byproduct of my job. Not the point. What I want to focus on is how in almost every conversation one of these folks says something that renders them a complete buffoon. Usually the baseheadedness is rooted in an Icarus Complex or can just be chalked up to being young, bold, and inexperienced (ironically the same qualities that can lead them to later build a decacorn). It's like listening to an LLM with an incomplete data set, hallucinating in real time. The only variation in these instances is how doggedly said youngin' sticks to their proverbial guns and digs in on a position of high moronitude. I've been there. I don't think I've ever told any one this story outside of Rob May having actually been there, sitting next to me. Not sure if he remembers. I was at a NextView Ventures dinner hosted at Trade in Boston. It was some startup event. Lots of very smart people. I was 27, and the CEO of my first vc-backed startup. The company had some heavy math roots - algorithmic rostering and optimization software, which I wrote the initial schema for. Anyway, I was sitting next to an older gentleman and (slightly) buzzed on wine, I mathsplained to him about how our statistics worked. Generally. A diatribe on normal curves. I think I said something along the lines of "should I explain normal curves to you?" It was painful, I'm sure. He listened politely. We both then returned to our dinners. It was only afterwards that Rob told me who that man was. It was Stephen Wolfram. I explained statistics and normal curves to Stephen Wolfram. I'm not sure what else to say here. Epic. I am the clown. The clown is me. There's no parable here. I just find it funny. If anything, it's that we all get ahead of our skis a bit - and probably more often when we're young or inexperienced. I certainly did. But I guess the ultimate takeaway for me is this: don't try to explain statistics or math to Stephen Wolfram.

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👀 Founders who are the right fight for the Community VC forums and Iceberg 👀 The most successful founders—the top 0.1%—achieve remarkable outcomes by systematically building vast networks of investors and supporters, leveraging them for capital, promotion, and critical resources. Companies like Zeroco (raising $5m in 7 hours from 3082 supporters) and Superhuman (raising $75m off the back of a 50k person waitlist) are prime examples. However, most founders: 👉 Lack the experience, network, or structured approach to replicate this success 👉 Spend 10+ hours a week chasing support (emailing, booking meetings, having pointless conversations) with little predictability or payoff 👉 Leave untapped value on the table with their investors and advocates That’s why we’ve built Community VC as a growth engine and Iceberg, a supporter CRM designed to replicate Zeroco and Superhumans’ success by helping founders attract, nurture, and activate their first 10, 100, and 1,000 supporters. In the past 6 months we have supported 30+ companies in building their supporter base to close capital for less than 3 hours per week (compared to 10 normally) and we’re still improving. We have 100 founders working with us and 500 on our waitlist. Every week we are receiving 10+ new sign ups, with zero marketing spend so far. A recent example of ROI on 10 nurtured supporters through our ecosystem by a founder: ✅ 3 months ✅ 15 hours total spent nurturing ✅ 50 referred deals ✅ $24,500 revenue 💯 That’s $326 per hour per advocate nurtured in revenue 💯 Plus investment of $25,000 Imagine if a founder who was gearing up for a raise of any type had an army of 100 or 1000 people who could be activated at an even better ROI with an automated, personalised system... How? 👉Founders uncover investors through their own network, via Community VC and other channels by distributing their Iceberg profile links 👉The link collects supporter data and adds them to the systematised Supporter CRM 👉The founders are prompted with evolving best practice investor comms to nurture and engage the supporters for help and capital Not only are founders attracting more supporters than they ever were, they are closing capital faster and with more aligned people with Community VC and Iceberg. 🕐Why now? The future of outsized returns will come by supporting small teams who can achieve huge amounts in extremely niche sectors, with much less funding. They will achieve this through leveraging AI and leveraging their community.

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Silicon Valley Slackers: Myth or Reality? We sat down with Menlo Ventures’ Deedy Das to discuss his viral tweet about underworked engineers earning $300K+ and the phenomenon’s broader implications. Mouse Jigglers & Ghost Engineers: Deedy shares wild stories of remote workers gaming the system, from "working" in Mexico for years to productivity software catching patterns of inactivity. Misaligned Incentives: Deedy argues that middle managers prioritize headcount over productivity, creating an environment where underperformance is overlooked. Measuring Productivity: Lines of code and git commits aren’t enough. Engineering productivity remains complex and difficult to quantify, so there’s no silver bullet. Viral Backlash: Deedy’s anecdotes sparked heated debates in tech, with some engineers admitting to coasting while others criticized him for "narking" on the culture. Should companies rethink how they measure and incentivize performance?

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Have you noticed an increase in founders making vlogs? I think its awesome… YC's application process includes a video… they don’t allow promos or demos, and it must appear unscripted. It’s a hard communication medium to master - and requires storytelling + authenticity. Many founders aren't stopping at the application video. They're vlogging their entire YC journey - from application to acceptance (or rejection). This trend is reshaping how startups grow their audience: • Raw authenticity trumps polished pitches • The journey becomes the content • Founders are building audiences before building products It's a new playbook for startup growth. By documenting their process, founders create: - A built-in audience for launch day - Real-time feedback on ideas - A talent magnet for potential hires and investors The lines between founder and creator are blurring. Were YC inadvertently early with their simple video requirement? By the way… Check out my portfolio company Sync Labs’ founder Prady Modukuru, for some of the best founder content in the game!

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HUGE opportunity

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Successful Exit from a Failed Start-up? Sometimes, a VC's goals may not align with those of the Founder. In this scenario, there's still an opportunity. Even in Europe, more and more funds and companies are becoming interested in acquiring small, stable SaaS startups.

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When I created Founders Game, I wanted a space to empathize with founders at my level. That's why we required founders to have either raised $1M, or generated $500K ARR to even apply. Now, we're opening it up founders at all levels. If you want to join the closed beta, leave a 2 sentence pitch of your startup in the comments below.. I'll be DMing select pitches with a link to an application.

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About to go live... Startup Studio portfolio VC fund. $8.5 mil. with room to oversubscribe. All deals warehoused and ready to allocate. Built in equity on day 1. Low 1 time management fee. $35k minimum investment. 506c so accredited investors only. GP's are personally invested. Multi tiered exit strategy in place. Liquidity options available at year 2. *** This presentation of Sidecar Portfolio Fund (the “Company”) is for information only and shall not constitute an offer to buy, sell, issue or subscribe for, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, sell or issue, or subscribe for any securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.***

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As the “get startups unstuck” guy, I see many businesses that are circling an eddy and can’t get back into the flow of the river. Often, it’s a result of founders overly identifying with their companies and making decisions to protect that identity. This is a subconscious pattern that develops in childhood and we all have it. I can personally check every box on this list. However, overly identifying with your company can kill it. Why? We lose objectivity in seeking acceptance and belonging and prolong, intensify, or mishandle situations. And then it snowballs. How do you know if you’re over-identifying? 1. You have a glowing cocktail party description. I recall meeting the founder and CEO of a well-known company who hurled success metrics at me for ten minutes straight. A year later, the board pushed her out. 2. You use “I” a lot. You rely on your personal experience and vision to describe the company, instead of a team of people bringing an idea to market. 3. You invest heavily in PR: This sounds harmless (and no offense to PR people), but it can indicate a leader who values being “seen” over more lucrative marketing tactics. 4. You’re obsessed with competitors. Some “shared enemy” motivation is good, but if it generates the fury of a thousand suns, it becomes the equivalent of road rage: harmful, embarrassing, and useless. 5. You have more answers than questions. Wanting to have “all the answers” equates your brain with the company’s brain. While this may come from a desire to help, it can squash critical learning, growth, and culture-building. 6. You raise too much money. Big funding rounds can feel like success and validation, but without strong market tailwinds, they set an incredibly high bar and may not be in the company’s best interest long-term. 7. You don’t take breaks. If your company is your identity, you’ll gravitate to workaholism, exacerbating the problem and further hindering sound decision-making. 8. It’s hard to talk about hard things. Painful issues feel like personal condemnation rather than objective circumstances, so you avoid them–until it’s too late. 9. Setbacks = depression: If the company loses a deal to a competitor and you crawl into bed with a bowl of Cap’n Crunch for a week (just me?), you may be over-identifying. This is when the team most needs your positive energy and growth mindset. 10. Your narrative varies from your team’s. If your perspective on your product, market, and competitive position is much rosier than theirs, you may protecting an image and missing key signals. Again, I’ve done all of these. I offer them up as warning signs that may prevent your company from being among the 10% of successful startups. The good news: there are clear paths to transformation. For me it was working with a coach, mentors, my team, and doing some outside retreats. If you’re curious, shoot me a note. I’m happy to help. 💬

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35 Days into YC: 3 Real Startup Lessons We Didn't Expect 🪄 #1 Master the Art of the Impromptu Pitch - Keep it magical: Your demo should always tell a story — keep the focal point your users, and make sure they experience the “WOW” moment of your trick. 🎯 #2 Activation Trumps Acquisition: The Real Metric That Matters - At Spur (YC S24) we measure activation by measuring the frequency with our users are creating and running tests on the platform. - Signing up for a demo, a pilot, or even onboarding does *not* signal activation The question that really matters: are your users actually using your product and finding value from it? ✨#3 Make things ridiculously easy for your customers - Set up easy channels of communication with your customers, and be proactive about using them. - Handoff doesn't cut it, your customers should hit the ground running when you onboard them — even if it means you are doing the work to set them up P.S. 👀 Keep an eye out! Exciting things to come from us early next week #ycombinator #AI #Testing

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