Jigar Shah

Worth reading: Situationsl Awareness by Leopold Aschenbrenner PDF : https://lnkd.in/gkxQ3yMD Web site: https://lnkd.in/gyJUCBhb Interesting perspective, time of course will tell.

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I had a lot of fun recording a podcast episode with Shiva Singh Sangwan. We discussed the evolution of Humba Ventures & Susa Ventures; tips for raising and building a fund; how to improve investment sourcing & picking; the role of luck in investing, and so on. https://lnkd.in/eiqsStej

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📰 Solo VCs are rising in popularity once again. This means only one General Partner is leading the firm, versus multiples. 💔 Why? There are GP breakups going on all around us after partnerships have been tested by the market for years now. The bar to co-found a venture firm with a partner is very high. Those GPs that thought they might graft another one on in the short term to share the load are stopping in their tracks to deeply consider those implications. 🌱 Many are opting to bring in more junior talent and grow them into Partner roles instead. It’ll take time and capital to be able to do that as the firm grows. Talked to 3 diff GPs about this at dinner last night and we’re all leaning toward that approach in our short and long term planning. 💡 FYI - this is just an observation of the moment we’re in. There are plenty of firms thriving with full partnerships as well as solo GPs. But it’s worth calling out that new partnerships are particularly risky right now, especially if the partners haven’t worked with each other for a long time.

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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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During yesterday's LibreQoS APNIC webinar, I posed the question: won't more bandwidth solve these problems? As Herbert Wolverson said, yes, more bandwidth is good, but, still these problems remain if queueing is done incorrectly. Here's my take on why bandwidth alone is not as good as bandwidth + good queueing policies: Generally it was believed that 'data is important, so don't throw it away; hang on to it and send it later'. In practice, this has proven to be suboptimal as two issues may emerge: 1) latency increases for some flows due to heavy demand from other flows using the same bottleneck link, 2) even a single flow can have excessive latency due to aspects of typical TCP behavior (referred to bufferbloat) when the buffers grew large enough that the data being buffered was retransmitted anyway. It turns out that not all data is equally important. Active Queue Management is the art of deciding priorities, both in deciding what data to throw away, but also in allowing some later arriving data to be transmitted ahead of data in another connection that arrived before it. These problems have been studied, and good solutions have been found by using certain queueing policies in routers and switches, referred to as “fq_codel’ and “cake”. These track the different flows not by classifying the data, but by watching the behavior. Flows that send relatively little data (DNS lookups), or at a measured pace (video chat) have priority over flows that send a lot of data as quickly as possible (App and System updates, Video and ISO downloads).

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Wow, great stuff on this first episode. I got the run down from Ataes Aggarwal and Arya Satish, and I see that critically important business and life topics will be covered in this podcast series. Follow, tune in, and spread the word. PSA: Some super thoughtful and practical content to be had here with this podcast. 🙌

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ex Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at Stanford this week. Lots of nuggets here, but most interesting for the near term, Schmidt believes in the next year AI is set to make a big leap forward. He predicts AI will combine three important features: 1. Vast knowledge retention (1 million token models) 2. Text-to-action capability 3. Personal AI agent fleets While the full impact is unknown, everyone may soon command their own AI teams. Here's an example: Imagine you're developing new quantum computing algorithms. Your AI assistants could: - Continuously scan and synthesize global quantum research papers - Generate novel algorithm ideas based on this knowledge - Simulate and test these algorithms across various quantum architectures - Automatically document findings and prepare draft papers - Identify potential collaborators and draft outreach emails All initiated by a command like "Advance our quantum algorithm research." This could dramatically accelerate R&D cycles and scientific breakthroughs.. https://lnkd.in/eJbg6cnD #frontiertech #AI #futurefrontier

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"Editors note: Welcome to issue #2 of Transcriptions. Today, we’d like to present a conversation between Qasar Younis of Applied Intuition, and Bilal Zuberi of Lux Capital. We discovered Qasar recently, and find his focus and clarity of thinking to be admirable. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their talk, first held at the Paklaunch forum." Link to transcipt: https://lnkd.in/gH4uBmPE

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VC platform teams rarely add meaningful value to portfolio companies. They’re mostly a tool for GPs to justify raising larger funds and collecting higher management fees.

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In Q3 2024, 19 Series A+ Harvard-founded Startups Raise $1.1B! Harvard College ($502M), HBS ($434M), Other ($161M) Rounds: * 7 Series A ($154M) * 9 Series B ($451M) * 1 Series C ($25M) * 1 Series D ($225M) * 1 Series E ($242M) Sectors: * AI: 6 deals, $372M raised * FinTech: 4 deals, $490M raised * Health: 3 deals, $124M raised * Other B2B: 6 deals, $111M raised Full report and company details in the post below Subscribe if you're interested in Harvard's startup ecosystem S/O to the founders represented: Chuma, Tasso, Joel, Gage, Adarsh, Mark, Nathan, Honghao, Eric, Timothy, Larry, Caleb, Stuart, Jean, Jeffrey, Will, Jeffrey, Ross, Victor, Roger, Pranitha, Marta, and John 🚀🚀 -- Phoenix Fund invests in early-stage startups founded by students and alumni of Harvard and Harvard Business School. Know a founder raising or thinking about starting a company? Please share a note https://lnkd.in/ekKPg4kx

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🌟Innovative VC Firm Overcomes Exits Drought with Secondary Sales🌟 ⛵Navigating a challenging landscape where exits are scarce, Santa Barbara Venture Partners (SBVP) has pioneered a novel approach to sustain its growth and attract investors for its second fund: secondary sales. Instead of waiting for traditional exits like IPOs or acquisitions, SBVP opted to sell shares of its portfolio companies, demonstrating its ability to generate returns for investors and stand out in a competitive market. 🎤According to Dan Engel, founder and managing partner of SBVP, these secondary transactions have been a game-changer, sparking investor interest and bolstering the firm's credibility. By leveraging its recent successes, including a lucrative stake in sports-betting company DraftKings Inc.' acquisition of digital lottery app Jackpocket, SBVP seized the opportunity to return profits to its limited partners (LPs) and pave the way for its second fund. 💡Engel highlighted the challenges faced by young VC firms in raising subsequent funds, particularly amid a downturn in exit activity and heightened investor scrutiny. With traditional exit routes becoming increasingly elusive, the pressure is on for firms to demonstrate tangible returns and establish a track record of success. ✨"For us, secondary sales have been a game-changer. They've helped us return profits to our LPs and attract investors for our second fund," said Dan Engel. 💰For SBVP, the decision to pursue secondary sales was driven by the need to provide liquidity to LPs and validate its investment thesis in the eyes of prospective investors. By strategically offloading portions of its holdings in high-performing portfolio companies like Bark Technologies and Rad AI, SBVP not only generated substantial returns but also bolstered investor confidence in its ability to deliver results. ⚠Despite the complexities and potential stigma associated with early share sales, Engel emphasized the importance of prioritizing investor returns and seizing opportunities to unlock value for stakeholders. With a focus on profitability and transparency, SBVP remains committed to its mission of delivering sustainable growth and maximizing returns for its LPs. 🔍 "Returning profits to our investors is our top priority. By strategically selling shares, we're proving our commitment to delivering results and driving value for our stakeholders," added Engel. As SBVP continues to explore secondary transactions and expand its investor base, the firm stands as a testament to innovation and resilience in the face of market challenges. 🚀 ✅ Looking to raise capital for your #fund and increase the international pool of your LP #investors?   🤝 Need warm #LP introductions?   📝 Selling #secondaries to increase liquidity?   🧐 Looking for co-investments?   ▶ G+QUANT's link for inquiries and fund decks: https://lnkd.in/gjC_EuTE #VCInnovation #SecondarySalesSuccess #InvestorReturns #ValueCreation 

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I first met Mike Maples, Jr in 2010, when Founders Network was just an idea. Over the years, Mike and his team at Floodgate (special shoutout to Arjun Chopra) have been great mentors, sharing their insights and guiding our founders. Most recently, their advice played a pivotal role in helping us launch Founders Network Fund. Today, Mike shared the key ideas with FN'ers from his new book Pattern Breakers (https://a.co/d/buKBd5O ), which explores the insights he’s gained from backing companies like Twitter, Twitch, and Okta -- and which put him on the Forbes Midas List 8x. This is the most important book on startups in the last ten years, according to Steve Blank. My notes on the key concepts of his talk: 1) Inflections – "not a trend but a change event that represents a turning point in our ability to provide empowerment." e.g. The GPS chip in iPhone 4s 2) Insights – "a non-consensus and right insight about the future that's powerful and non obvious and leverages inflections." e.g. Lyft = GPS + strangers driving you 3) Founder future fit – "Living in the future before other people live in the future and then try to build what's missing in the future." If you're a founder, check out the book. Grateful for the impact Mike and Arjun continue to have on both me and the Founders Network community!

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If your startup competes with a large incumbent, how can you win against their superior resources? More importantly, how can you sustain advantage over time? Most pitches don’t answer these questions at all. I offer a new strategy framework, the Can’ts and the Won’ts, that does. ¶ Can’ts and Won’ts are two types of differentiators. A Can’t is something your competitor isn’t able to do. A Won’t is something they have important reasons not to do. ¶ In common parlance the word “can’t” is used loosely, but for our purposes we mean it strictly. “They can’t match our science because we have the PI and an exclusive license” is a potentially valid Can’t. “They can’t match our price because it would crater their stock price” is not - they 𝘤𝘢𝘯 do it, but they choose not to because of expected consequences. That’s a Won’t. ¶ When you’re up against a powerful incumbent, Can’ts are hard to defend. The larger the market, the more this is true. Won’ts, conversely, tend to be more sustainable. Let’s see why. CAN’TS: Suppose your team of five engineers has built something clever, and the competition doesn’t have it. They can’t meet your customers’ needs the way you can. Yay! But hold on… as soon as you get big enough for them to notice, they can assign fifty engineers and catch up fast. In fact, that may be an optimal strategy for them - let lots of startups try things, then fast-follow what works. Or suppose you have a patent, so the competitor can’t do exactly what you do. Well… many patents can be worked around, especially if the other guys are sufficiently motivated. Ultimately, 𝗖𝗮𝗻’𝘁𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆. Ask yourself, how scarce is what we have? and for how long? Try a red team exercise - if you were the incumbent, how would you overcome that scarcity? WON’TS: While Can’ts come from scarcity, 𝗪𝗼𝗻’𝘁𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗮𝗯𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲. The competitor is holding onto something valuable, and they’d have to loosen their grip on that something to chase you down the rabbit hole. The magic of a Won’t, like the magic of a great poker bet, is that it forces the competitor to make a tough decision. If they can crush you without putting their existing business at risk, that’s not a Won’t; but if you can force them to choose between one and the other, then you’re onto something. Strategy wonks out there may recognize the overlap with other competition frameworks. i) Disruption Theory says the incumbent won’t participate in a lower-margin market until it’s too late. ii) Blue Ocean uses Won’ts to build advantages that can ultimately be turned into Can’ts. iii) Porter’s “What is Strategy” is a system of self-reinforcing choices (ie Won’ts) that together create a defensible Can’t. So, if you’re into that sort of thing, I offer the Can’ts and the Won’ts as a sort of Grand Unified Theory of competitive strategy. If you’re not, just take it, standalone, as a way to make yourself robust against a competitor’s countermoves.

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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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At Forum we look at thousands of deals each year across our Accelerator and Pre-Seed funds but only end up investing in a little over 1% of those startups.  As an early stage VC, I am in the business of saying no to nearly every startup I meet, and while there is nuanced rationale for many of the startups I pass on, a vast majority of businesses that don’t meet the qualification to get funded typically fall into one of two buckets. ▪ First time founders have a tendency to go out to market too early to raise pre-seed capital ▪   I’m sure most founders have heard some iteration of this from VCs that ultimately pass on their business.  In some cases it's a blanket excuse covering up for other pass reasons- perhaps a VC doesn’t believe in a team or isn’t bullish on the market opportunity - but in many cases founders simply haven't proven enough to the market to warrant an investment. I meet many teams with an articulate vision for the product that they want to build, but they either haven't performed enough customer discovery to prove demand for their initial wedge product, or need to raise pre-seed capital to build out an MVP.  In those cases, pre-seed investors are unwilling to underwrite those risks.  To be default fundable, teams need to be able to keep costs low, perform extensive customer discovery, and ship some version of an early product - pilots and early paid customers are key. A huge piece of this is having founding engineering talent on the team. ▪Not every startup is a venture opportunity ▪ By definition, a venture backed business is solving a problem within a market opportunity so massive and so desperately needed, that its growth rate is off the charts.   It spreads like a weed, absorbing almost unlimited amounts of capital to fulfill demand within its customer base.   Each year there are maybe 20 companies launched that ultimately have venture scale outcomes. The bar to reach this rarified air is unfathomably high and the reality is the vast majority of founders simply aren’t building for opportunities that have the potential to be one of these generational companies. Many startup founders view VC as the only viable option for capitalizing their business, but not every great business is a venture business, and most successful founders never take VC dollars.  In order to reach an IPO/acquisition large enough to generate venture returns, a startup needs a credible path to $100s of millions in revenue. This is the standard by which early stage opportunities are evaluated. The flip side to this, and I share this feedback often with founders I meet that are building interesting business in non venture markets, if you are able to scale to $10- $20M in revenue that can be a massively successful outcome for a founder.  There are investors who focus on these type outcomes, namely lower middle market PE shops, and the typical path to those deals is a bootstrapped business or a friends/family capital raise.

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