Harsh P.

Today, GTMfund’s is excited to announce to launch of Operator, its first incubated company. Max Altschuler (founder of GTMfund) teamed up with co-founder Adam M. (design engineer and 0-1 builder) and co-founder Mark Kosoglow (Outreach employee #1 and former SVP of Global Sales) to create Operator.ai alongside an insanely talented team Pleasant Middelhof, Jeremy Jonas, Carl Gunderson. We've entered a period called “The Great Ignore”. Spam and irrelevant, poorly-automated outbound campaigns are running rampant.   Operator gives you an easy-to-use Growth Engineer that allows you to build and enrich lists with accurate data, and run experiments and queries using AI to generate highly targeted outreach.    Check out their website to get updates, early access, and see how they are taking the world back to 2 touches meant to attract buyers into conversations that convert, instead of 20 touches meant to make sure you hit your activity number: https://www.operator.ai/

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Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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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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Today, Two Chairs announces $72M of new funding to continue building a world where everyone has access to exceptional mental health care. Since late 2017, when Maveron led the Two Chairs Series A, the need for mental health services has grown considerably as our society has become lonelier and more isolated than ever. At the same time, our culture’s willingness to openly acknowledge these challenges is greater than ever. Sadly, the rapid growth of Two Chairs affirms the fact that our society is in desperate need of better mental health support. Two Chairs has built a business that believes clinical quality is the defining characteristic of success. Alex Katz has always emphasized the paramountcy of measurement-based clinical outcomes, which the team works tirelessly to achieve. In the process, Two Chairs has illustrated that embracing the ‘move fast and break things’ mentality doesn’t always work. Instead, Two Chairs opted for a different approach: they went slow to go fast. They built a proprietary algorithm that matches patients with the perfect therapist at the onset and hired a team of W2 clinicians oriented toward providing the highest quality care available. Even as the Two Chairs team has grown, their culture has remained small. This has enabled more intimate relationships within the team and between clients and clinicians. Reflecting on this milestone brings me back to the founding of Maveron and the values we hold dear. In 1998, my friend Howard Schultz and I founded Maveron to help entrepreneurs build companies that improve the lives of everyday people—their employees and their customers. There is perhaps no better example of this than Two Chairs. *** Thank you to TechCrunch's Marina Temkin, CFA for the great write-up. https://tcrn.ch/4aMt7yG

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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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💰Sharing a List of 80 Black-led VC funds (US based): About this list: I realized that I couldn’t find a current list of Black-led funds as of 2024 when a lot of new funds have launched over the last couple of years including GPs Sydney Paige Thomas, Terri Burns and more. I have been gathering a list of these funds in my network, and that I could find publicly over time so wanted to share with the ecosystem. Only 2% of VC funds are Black-led: I found 80 funds (maybe there’s more!). There are 3,417 VC firms in the US (according to NVCA). Founders - These funds invest from pre-seed through growth, some with a focus on diverse founders, others more broadly. ⅔ of them have OPEN funding applications that I’ve linked in the sheet. LPs - As mentioned, a number of these funds might not be in the databases used for tracking, so hope to get some more Black-led funds on your radar! VCs - maybe there are some funds you should get to know for deal sharing, etc 👉🏾Link to full list here: https://lnkd.in/gktBhY-W

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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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RETHINKING RETIREMENT We've been investing in the Future of Work since we launched BBG Ventures, targeting underserved segments like deskless workers (Anthill, OX) and solopreneurs (Topline Pro). Over the summer we spent time digging into another deeply underserved segment of the workforce: Boomers. By the end of this decade, the entire generation will have hit retirement age and, for the first time, Americans 65+ will outnumber those under 18. This has huge implications for every aspect of society, and it mandates that we start thinking differently about retirement. The question for all of us is this: Can we re-focus healthy Americans 60+ on a new phase of productivity, a “third act” that enables them to keep learning, keep earning, keep socially-engaged and contributing to the nation’s economic growth? And what role can AI play in helping every senior identify their unique skill set and personal priorities — and connect them with the right opportunities? We have some thoughts on how to make this happen, and we'd love you to give it a read, add your feedback, forward it to a founder who's working in this arena (or who you think might be intrigued), and share it! AgeTech has been too focused on death and decay; it's time we embrace longevity and give older Americans a way to keep working -- on their terms. cc: Carol Magalhães Isaacs, CFA Nisha Dua, Claire Biernacki, Drew Silverman Fennessy

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Building on the success of Rocket Studio with Simon Kirby and Pivotal with Dominic Joseph we decided to merge with Impact Counsel, led by the awesomely talented John D., Erim Jones and Robert Fok earlier this year. We’ve combined our significant and complimentary skills, experience and passion for growing amazing businesses to create a new breed of VC - Creative Capital Ventures Group (CCV). Fund 1 is focused on Sports, Media & Entertainment. Joining us on this exciting journey is media titan Tom Rogers (ex CEO Tivo & CNBC). We have also assembled a mighty team of Venture Partners bringing their expertise into our team, with the legendary Harvey Goldsmith leading our Immersive Entertainment category, and Cam Blackwood (Platinum award winning record producer) and his team at Rezonate heading up Music Rights acquisition. Creative Capital Ventures is designed to disrupt traditional VC models and accelerate the growth of innovative start-ups. We’ve already secured €18 million in commitments and are raising €35 million in total to fuel the next generation of game-changing businesses. What makes CCV different? •⁠ ⁠Founder-Led Expertise: Our team comprises serial entrepreneurs and operators who have built, scaled, and exited successful companies. We know what it takes to drive rapid growth. •⁠ ⁠Speed Scaler: Through our unique venture studio model, we’re not just funding companies—we’re actively accelerating their growth, shrinking the timeline from seed to exit. •⁠ ⁠Industry Focus: CCV focuses on high-growth sectors like Sports, Media, Entertainment, and Lifestyle, with a unique emphasis on IP acquisition to drive returns in stable asset classes. If you're interested in learning more about how CCV is reshaping the venture capital landscape, let’s connect!  More updates to follow! #VentureCapital #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #Startups #ScalingFast #CreativeCapitalVentures https://lnkd.in/eiuWVtvT

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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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Apply now to get a coveted spot for the Venture Lane B2B Pitch Night Event! 🚀 🥇 On November 19th, Venture Lane | Startup Hub is hosting our exclusive Pitch Night 👉 - a rare opportunity for Boston's B2B tech founders to tune their pitch and get in front of awesome mentors, investors, and industry leaders. ⏰ Apply by November 1st to secure your spot! 📲 Find the application link in the comments below. #B2BTech #Startups #Fundraising #BostonStartups #PitchNight #VentureLaneStudio

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I met Hersh Tapadia and Darrell "Jeremy" Freeman in late 2016 at NC IDEA LABS (formerly Groundwork Labs). We were a bunch of kids working on startups. We thought we had it figured out. You know the rest of that story....we had no clue! But Hersh and Jeremy did have it figured out. Not the specific thing they were working on. They pivoted a few times out of Groundwork Labs. But what they knew how to do as well as any founders was to be curious and listen to their customers. They WERE their customers. They were engineers building for engineers (leaders and teams). They were humble and knew what to ask. They were great at learning. Then they brought on Adam Dahlgren and the founding team felt complete. "Off to the races" means something different to every company. In Allstacks' case, it meant taking the disciplined, thoughtful, thorough approach to growth. And while the team is way more focused on executing for their customers than cheering about a funding announcement, it's also important that they do get their cheers. This is day 1 for these guys. They're building something incredibly big and incredibly impactful. And they're doing it the right way. And as a final side note, when I think of people I want in my corner - to confide in, to learn from, to grow with - I think of Hersh. He's a founder's founder. A CEO's CEO. And one heck of a guy.

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Amongst the most successful VCs in consumer in the past decade has been Kirsten Green at Forerunner So I asked her all about how startups can navigate the 70% reduction in consumer investing & why now might be the best time for VCs to look harder at the category. I loved this discussion. I always learn something from Kirsten. Click below to watch / listen https://lnkd.in/g3kiMPD5

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WE DID IT! After 2 years of pushing through the biggest downturn in VC in decades, Matthew Stotts 🌐 and I made it to the finish line with Fund I! We couldn't have done this without One Small Planet (Will Peterffy and Jack Wielebinski 🙏), Regen Network and Regen Foundation (Austin Wade Smith Gregory Landua and Will Szal), and a dozen other family offices and angels who believed that we can build a nature-positive economy utilizing our eye for software and our history as founders from day 1 A shout out goes to all of our founders (only four announced today, but watch this space - there are multitudes!) who trusted us enough to give us a spot on their cap table for this 10-15 year journey. This is the best job in the world, and it's because we get to work with people like you who have weird ideas in the best possible way. Using Bitcoin as anchor base load to decarbonize residential housing in America's most expensive energy market? Make every complex supply chain legible to machines so we can find and eliminate deforestation in commodity supply chains? Build deeply liquid environmental asset markets to price ecosystem services, on a blockchain, that no one needs to know is a blockchain? I'm so excited to get to work on this stuff for the next 10-15 years minimum, and to see what we can accelerate with our tiny fund in the next 5-6 years as we approach 2030 Onward! https://lnkd.in/gy3B-DFe

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👀 Looking at our recent investments at Draper Associates, here’s what standout founders nailed, making our decision to invest much easier (and faster): 💥 Visionary Tech with a Bold Vision – These founders are not here for incremental wins; they’re reimagining what’s possible in across tech - biotech, robotics, aerospace, and beyond. Their vision is big and audacious, tackling complex problems that demand breakthrough solutions, others have not been willing to try. 👊 Clear Passion & Purpose – The drive in these founders is undeniable. They’re committed to their mission with a depth of purpose that shapes every choice. One founder, for example, took two years completely off to learn and meet everyone in longevity biotech. This level of grit and dedication is rare but essential for the most impactful founders. 🌟 Assembling All-Star Teams – They bring together top-tier talent from diverse disciplines: experienced business leaders with successful exits or industry experience at top companies, technical co-founders with deep expertise, often PhDs or industry pioneers, and even published authors. It’s a complementary team, unified by a shared vision. They make the: "Why this team?" obvious - at a glance. 💻 Data-Driven to the Core – These founders present data insights that show why their approach is unique, especially against a competitive field of companies. This data is delivered with clarity and they make the complex simple. Many are published in top journals, adding depth and credibility to their approach, and reinforcing that they know their tech inside out. ⚡️ Memorable, Clear Vision – They don’t just pitch; they make the future feel tangible, with a vision that’s both compelling and concise. If I can relay their pitch in under 30 seconds to my team, they’ve killed it. 📣 Transparent & Proactive Communication – The best founders don’t wait for questions. They come prepared, often with a comprehensive FAQ doc, give timely updates to our questions, and are candid about challenges. This level of openness builds trust and strengthens our partnership. 💸 Milestone-Driven Funding Strategy – Each funding stage aligns clearly with already achieved or upcoming achievable milestones. They’ve mapped out a roadmap that minimizes risk at every step, giving us confidence in their journey. 💰 Revenue Milestones Along the Way – Even if it'll take a decade to hit revenue on their big vision, these founders find revenue generation stops along the way to profitability. They share a trajectory that connects early wins to revenue, showing how every step is a building block toward their bigger vision. Overall, the best founders are incredibly thoughtful, prepared, and fantastic verbal / written communicators. #founders #startups #fundraising #VC

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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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Not all of the investments that Kindred Capital VC makes can be a 13 year sourcing process.... but... this is one of those very fortunate moments in which a relationship that started over a decade ago in the Bay Area where the brilliant A-H. Hleileh and I overlapped has now turned into an incredibly exciting opportunity for Kindred to lead his and Ron Holifield's first institutional round at Civic Marketplace. We believe: 1. Local government procurement is one of the most underserved areas in technology today, and has failed to keep pace with the private sector. They deserve better. 2. This is a huge opportunity, with US local governments spending alone amounting to over $1.5 trillion in annual spend, which is only going in one direction... 3. As the brilliant Kip Harkness shared with me in our diligence phase, "this industry moves at the speed of trust." And this is a unique founding team with A-H. Hleileh and Ron Holifield at the helm who bring together two critical ingredients: 1) decades of trust-building within this domain, and 2) a team who can build beautiful and scalable technology platforms. Onwards!! 🚀

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Our revamped newsletter, The Angle by Angular Ventures, officially launched today! We hope this new format will make it easier to read, share, and subscribe. Back to it, in this week's column, Gil Dibner covered the spirit of risk-taking that inspired Angular to venture into unusual spaces. While, of course, we invest in AI and SaaS, as of late, we have been investing in more and more contrarian spaces - from quantum, to spacetech, to energy, etc. in search of the supposedly impossible - the truly contrarian. Read the full column via the link.

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Proud to have supported Wander in securing their recent $1M extension seed round! 🚀 This achievement underscores a crucial lesson in startup growth: success in follow-on funding rounds demands strategic thinking and unwavering dedication to hitting key milestones. Wander's team, led by the visionary AJ Brau, has exemplified this perfectly. Their journey from concept to a global, AI-enhanced interactive mapping platform is a testament to the power of customer-centric innovation and persistent execution. It's been a privilege to guide them through our Value Creation program, helping translate potential into a robust, actionable strategy. To aspiring entrepreneurs: remember, each funding round presents unique challenges. While initial rounds often focus on your idea, vision, and promises, follow-on rounds require solid achievements and compelling arguments supporting your actual execution. Key points to consider: 1. Expect your initial plan to evolve; investors understand that perfect 1:1 execution is rare. 2. Be prepared to showcase your decision-making process and how you've adapted to challenges. 3. Governance and operational mechanics will be scrutinized more closely in later rounds. 4. Focus on creating tangible value, hitting your targets, and effectively communicating your progress and learnings. Remember, each round is an opportunity to prove your ability to execute and adapt. The capital will follow well-executed strategies and demonstrated results. Congratulations to AJ and the entire Wander team! Your hard work is paying off, and I'm excited to see where this new funding takes you. Read more about Wander's journey and innovative approach here: https://lnkd.in/dE-9n8_2 #StartupSuccess #VentureCapital #TravelTech #Innovation #ValueCreation #Utah #Advisor

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