Emery Waddell

✨ Breaking: Halogen Ventures Announces New Fund.- Halogen Ventures Halogen Ventures focuses on early-stage consumer technology startups with at least one woman on the founding team. The fund announced a $10 million investment to support female founders in Alabama. https://halogenvc.com/ Please share to let other #Founders know For the ❤️ of Startups #Fusion42 #Startups #Venturecapital

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If you're building a fintech startup, you likely know of this investor, but just in case... This week's findfunding.vc spotlight is on Neil Kapur from TTV Capital. He: 🛫 Is based in SF & Atlanta 💲 Has spent time at Google in consumer-facing payments & at two fintech startups  🏔️ Loves alpine mountaineering and has climbed Kilimanjaro, Denali, Rainier, and more!! Amongst founders, Neil and the team at TTV Capital , including Gardiner Garrard, Mark Johnson, Sean Banks, Lizzie Guynn, and Laney Lewis are known for saying “lift, not lean.” They believe that their job as investors is not to create work for founders, but instead ask the right questions and help navigate to the best outcomes. Knowing Neil well personally, he's not only my go-to person for anything related to fintech but I can also highly recommend having him on your cap table - he's the kind of human you want to have in your corner during both good times and bad. Make sure to: ✉️ Pitch him at [email protected] ➡️ Follow TTV Capital on LinkedIn For more, check out our funder spotlight card below along with TTV Capital's profile on findfunding.vc (link in comments).

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Summary: Trucks Venture Capital has announced a new $70 million fund to support early-stage startups in the transportation industry. Led by co-founder Reilly Brennan, the firm plans to invest in a diverse range of companies, including those working on autonomous vehicle tech, electric air taxis, and mobility data platforms. This is the firm's largest fund to date and its investment strategy has evolved to focus on great founders rather than specific sectors or ideas. Key takeaways: Trucks VC has a new $70 million fund to invest in early-stage transportation startups. The firm's investment strategy has shifted to focus on great founders rather than specific sectors or ideas. Previous investments from the new fund include charger installation-as-a-service startup Treehouse and zero-emissions jet aircraft company JetZero. Counter arguments: Some may argue that focusing on great founders rather than specific sectors or ideas may limit the firm's potential for success. The transportation industry is constantly changing and evolving, making it a risky investment for any venture capital firm. #startups #venturecapital #transportation

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💰 Founders, are you wasting time and resources pitching to the wrong investors? 💰 In this podcast excerpt, David Forsberg, CFA from Ascent Energy Ventures shares a crucial piece of advice: Make sure your startup is truly venture-backable before you start seeking funding. 🎯 I've advised hundreds of startups that have raised billions in VC and venture debt funding, and I've seen firsthand the pressures founders face when growing their companies. 🌱 Listen to the full podcast for more game-changing insights. Link in the original Kruze Consulting post. 🎧 #startups #venturecapital #funding #entrepreneurship

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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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If you enjoyed our first blog on the metrics that matter for Verticalized SaaS then don't miss on the Part II of the series where my colleagues Devraj Hom Roy and Matt Schaar discuss the strategic and operational choices to improve these operational indicators. https://lnkd.in/g5QkCrcH

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Exciting News: Schematic is publicly available and we’ve raised $4.8M in seed funding! 🚀 I’m pumped to share that Schematic is now publicly available! We've also raised $4.8M in seed funding, led by MHS Capital with participation from NextView Ventures, Active Capital, Atlanta Ventures, and Ritual Capital—along with support from incredible founders of companies like CrowdStrike, LaunchDarkly, and Salesloft. A big thank you to our investors for believing in us, to our customers for guiding us, and to Benjamin Papillon, Jasdeep Garcha, Giovanni Hobbins, Vladyslav Len, Youssef Salah, Christopher Brady, Joseph Chrzan, Mohammed Almusaddar, and Markiian Simkiv for the opportunity to build this together. ➡️ Solving the last mile of pricing & packaging At every startup, one thing is certain: pricing and packaging will always change. Product and engineering teams shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time this happens. Most companies hard-code pricing and packaging into their applications, making it slow and painful to evolve as market demands shift. ➡️ What We’re Building We're building Schematic to transform pricing and packaging for B2B SaaS companies by getting product and engineering teams out of billing projects. With Schematic, B2B SaaS companies can change pricing & packaging without code changes or billing refactors. ➡️ How It Works With just a few lines of code, businesses can implement pricing and packaging into any application—end-to-end—from feature delivery through billing and customer experience. Quickly roll out new features and tie them to your pricing plans. Target specific plans to customers and adjust them without engineering support. Experiment, scale, and manage pricing & packaging operations: trials, plans, limits, entitlements, metering usage, handling exceptions, provisioning customers, & embedding front-end purchasing components —all without code changes. ➡️ Who we’re building for We’re building Schematic for B2B SaaS companies who want their pricing & packaging roadmaps to move in sync with their product roadmaps, without slowing down their engineering teams. Some key use cases our customers are already benefiting from: 🔹Outsourcing homegrown & hard-coded entitlement services. 🔹Programmatically managing feature access based on subscription plans. 🔹Metering usage and actually enforcing limits. 🔹Updating and managing plans, add-ons, bundling, and customer exceptions 🔹Delivering embeddable purchasing experiences (pricing tables, customer portals, upgrade/downgrade flows, etc). We’re still in the early innings, but the foundation is strong—we're already handling 500K entitlement flag evaluations every month. If you’re a founder or a product leader looking to avoid building what should be out-of-the-box (feature flags, entitlements, admin dashboards, customer portals), check out Schematic and let us know what you think.

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How should founders mitigate 2024's economic headwinds? "Behave like you're owned by PE" shares Jonathan Heiliger, General Partner Vertex Ventures US. As the macro-environment gets tougher, founders have to shift their operating mindsets to that of proving value and watching each operating move. #venturecapital #founders #entrepreneurship

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Big things on the horizon, we are motivated and blessed to be at the dawn of a new age for the internet. Read more about our journey below or listen to the podcast: https://lnkd.in/eJeNhvVa

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One of my proudest moments as an investor occurred today as Alaffia Health announced its series A because it shows how the Aperture® Venture Capital vision of multi-level, multi-generational #impactinvesting is succeeding in the marketplace. Here’s the model in its most basic form : ✅As diverse fund managers with meaningful capital to allocate, we are changing the VC landscape every day just by doing our day jobs. ✅As Black/Brown investors with ~40 years experience collectively, Aperture GPs have access to talent /excellence that others do not, so our portfolio *organically* is more inclusive by race, gender and geography even while optimizing for financial outcomes (all about the alpha). ✅Our most successful portco’s are using financial #innovation to solve market problems that impact underrepresented demographics and underserved communities. Alaffia Health is a shining example of the impact portion of our overall fund thesis, and we couldn’t be prouder of TJ Ademiluyi and Adun Akanni, MPH, PMP - the dynamic brother-sister founder duo whose vision we have steadfastly supported on their journey. Congratulations to TJ and Adun from William Crowder and myself, as well as the whole Aperture team- Marjorie King Philip McKenzie Yves Louis-Jacques Tanvi Lal Michelle Dhansinghani Lisha Bell Katie Kelly Amy Chung Cindy Chong, CFA Brian Fernandes-Halloran Monroe France Jayden Pantel Darren Herman Evan Wladis Neal Triplett Thomas Scriven Peter Ammon Irina Bit-Babik Tim Milanich Rob Rahbari

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What a day at the inaugural Alpaca VC Capital Cup! 🏌️‍♂️☀️ Yesterday, we brought together 20 of South Florida's most incredible VCs, founders, and allocators at The Park in West Palm Beach for an afternoon that was about more than just golf. It was about starting the New Year by getting outside, connecting in-person and continuing to build the South Florida tech ecosystem. And for our team’s David Goldberg, it was about getting out of the sand in a pretty spectacular way – at least ESPN thought so (see ~45 seconds into the clip below, and you’ll get it!).   Since making South Florida my home, I've become increasingly convinced that the future of our tech ecosystem is made stronger when we step away from our screens and spend time together in person. The golf course isn't just about the green or the game – it's about the conversations, collaborations and unexpected outcomes that happen along the way. Huge thanks to our partners Escalon Services, LLC (thank you Zack Mellin) and First Circle Law (thank you Drew Morris) for supporting this vision of ecosystem building. And an even bigger thanks to everyone who showed up, swung a club and helped be a part of what’s happening here in the region: Jonathan Beda of Connexa Capital, Eric Helitzer, LEED AP of SubBase, Patrick Miller and Rob Cousin of J.P. Morgan, Steven Himmel of HighPost Capital, Harry Hurst of Protagonist, Jacob Slevin of FuseProp, Chris Wallace of Dunbar Capital, Paget S. of Gemini, Henri Pierre-Jacques of Harlem Capital, Blake Hatten of CEAS Investments, Howie Diamond of Pure Ventures, Luba Lesiva of Palumni VC, Nicki Berlyn Katz of Related Ross, Rob Hayden of Renew. These are the moments that make our South Florida tech landscape one I’m glad to be a part of. Who's ready for the next gathering? 🤝 #SouthFloridaTech #VentureCapital https://lnkd.in/eZWkqChP

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The healthcare landscape is rapidly evolving, driven by advancements in technology and a deeper understanding of patient care. I had the pleasure of speaking with Ambar Bhattacharyya, Co-Managing Partner at Maverick Ventures, on the latest episode of The Full Ratchet. Ambar has partnered with numerous billion-dollar companies like hims & hers, Cityblock Health, Devoted Health, and ConcertAI. His unique journey from rural America to becoming a prominent figure in venture capital offers invaluable insights into the future of healthcare and technology. We discuss his investment strategy at Maverick Ventures, the megatrends shaping healthcare, the impact of AI on the industry, and the importance of integrated care. Ambar also shares his thoughts on the challenges and opportunities in healthcare investment, offering a comprehensive view of what lies ahead. Check out TFR Episode 438 to catch our conversation. You'll be glad you listened. Link to the full episode is in the comment section below.

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Chargezoom Announces $11.5M Series A - https://lnkd.in/g9VDQW5f Founder - Matt Dubois Funders - Kickstart Fund, Motley Fool Ventures, Early Light Ventures, Frazier Group VC, adly, SaaS Ventures, Stout Street Capital, and Okapi Venture Capital. #SiliconSlopes #UtahVC #UtahBusiness #VentureCapital

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The “long-term hold” strategy is one that has received an increasing amount of attention within the #ETA ecosystem of late: Instead of selling a company within 5-7 years of acquiring it, why might you choose to hold it for a much longer period of time? Why not hold it indefinitely?   To unpack the long-term hold thesis, I could think of no guest more appropriate than Zac Carman: Zac acquired ConsumerAffairs.com in 2010, and has been its CEO for the past 14 years. In our discussion today, among many other things, we unpack Zac’s long-term-hold strategy and discuss the extent to which it was deliberate or emergent, how he has managed liquidity requirements for both himself and his investors, the commercial and personal reasons why a long-term hold strategy makes sense for him, and if he thinks it makes sense for an entrepreneur to target a long-term hold strategy before acquiring their first company.   Please enjoy! https://lnkd.in/gZujiyxD

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Great time on the Embracing Erosion podcast w/Devon O'Rourke! We talked about: 🚀 How to scale a company from concept to 9-figure exit 🔄 How to break away from the traditional consulting model and apply product approaches ⏩ Why it’s important to iterate quickly and often with messaging 💸📈What signals are important to pay attention to when investing in startups and much more!

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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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In our newest blog post, Nine Four Ventures General Partner Kurt Ramirez shares some of his thoughts on the current environment of startup shutdowns and valuation resets, and if these are natural consequences of an earlier period of frothy investment and easy money. Some key points are around how:  ·        Startup failures are common and expected, especially after a period of high funding.  ·        The recent increase in shutdowns should be viewed relative to the outsized number of startups funded in the boom years of 2020 and 2021 and reaching their make-or-break moment now.  ·        Some of these startups may have been funded based on unrealistic expectations of future growth, leading to valuation drops. Read the full post on our site, Substack, or by clicking below to learn more. Please reach out with any questions or comments on trends, companies, or anything else. https://lnkd.in/dZm6vfis Cc Jeffrey Elowe, Kurt Ramirez, Paul La Londe, Sophia Ghadamian Kier, Avi Pradhan #VentureCapital #Startup #Valuation #Tech

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🚀 Ready to take your VC and PE investment strategy to the next level? Our latest blog dives into the top five metrics that every savvy investor should be tracking in quarterly reports. From Revenue Growth Rate to Net Dollar Retention, these insights will help you make smarter decisions and maximize your returns. Don't miss out on these key performance indicators—your portfolio companies will thank you! 📊💼 https://lnkd.in/gNPE6prj #VentureCapital #PrivateEquity #InvestmentStrategy #BusinessGrowth #FinancialMetrics

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