Katelyn Melan

🙋 Why I started Socap.ai (YC W23) as the top YC founder and what’s next Thanks all for the support during last week’s Socap.ai (YC W23) announcement! A lot of you were curious why I decided to start it after transitioning from CEO to a Board Member at Mighty Buildings (a top Y Combinator company) — here’s why 👇 I’m a rare founder who has been at the other side of the venture table (just to remind you, I started as a VC having founded a number of firms — Ruvento Ventures, EnchantVC, and HaxAsia to name a few — and have famously invested in 2 unicorns out of 17 seed investments while at Ruvento). Being a VC was fun and all, but I wanted a more interesting challenge. When we started Mighty, I couldn’t have imagined how complicated this road would be. As a deep tech company, we needed to raise A LOT of funding and needed to raise it fairly quickly. So far, Mighty has raised over $150M all the way from YC W16 to Series B in 2023. During this journey, I learned from the best of the best — at the YC Series A program and from the unicorn founders who have angel invested in us/advised us. Hundreds of people have helped me along the way with their generous feedback and, most importantly, intros/connections. I don’t think we would have been able to get there if not for my meticulous approach to parallel fundraising and activating/growing my social capital. I started Socap.ai (YC W23) because I grew tired of seeing founders completely misunderstanding what the successful fundraise looks like as well as lacking a quality way of growing their network. Oftentimes it’s a one-time opportunity and if you fuck up the process, that’s it. My mission with this is to change the mindset and make it 10x easier with the help of AI and the right kind of infrastructure (e.g. community). The tech startups scene and fundraising as the use-case is just the beginning for Socap.ai (YC W23) — I, my partner Alexander Nevedovsky, and our team (former VC associates and finance leaders) are so well-connected and well-versed in this beachhead market segment, that it would be stupid to start anywhere else, especially seeing founders pain every single day (I get around 50 connection requests daily from founders seeking help). I’m proud that along with the official Socap.ai announcement we have started hosting regular Socap.ai fundraising bootcamps as the initiative where founders can learn from me and a slew of other top founders (Abakar Saidov, Aaron Holm, Michael Ma, Salman Ahmad, Sly Spencer-Lee, Eric Sanchez to name just a few, there are dozens more whom I'll tag in the coming posts) — for free. We’re pioneering a more streamlined way for these top founders to share their social capital and help companies/founders they like, all powered by the AI platform we’re currently beta testing. Excited to kick off our bootcamp cohort #1 this Thursday — we’ve already started sending out first cohort acceptance letters — check them out if you applied! #fundraising #startups #socap

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Founders’ agreements are like prenups for startups—most founders avoid them, but they’re essential. Daniel Ospina and I recently revamped our co-founder agreement at Pygma, covering everything from carry, salaries, and conflict resolution to non-competes, side hustles, and performance metrics. What started as a ‘business discussion’ turned into one of our best conversations as co-founders. This process forced us to align on the tough stuff: how to handle leaving founders (good leaver vs. bad leaver), conflict frameworks, and more. The result? A stronger partnership and even more admiration for my co-founder. Building something as ambitious as Pygma isn’t easy, but having the right person by your side makes all the difference. If you haven’t tackled your founders’ agreement yet, don’t wait. It’s not just paperwork—it’s an opportunity to build trust and set your foundation for success. Hopefully, my wife Emilia González Casabianca doesn’t get jealous. If you need help feel free to reach out! I'm happy to help in any way.

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Are you looking for quality without breaking the bank? Imagine a lifeline that doesn't just save you money, but turbocharges your startup with a rush of efficiency and quality. 🌎 Welcome to the world of #Nearshoring. Picture this: You're a startup in Denver, your development team is in Mexico. Same time zone No more pesky late-night phone calls Or Waiting for what seems like an eternity for email replies. That's the power of Nearshoring. But there's more than just time compatibility. You're diving into a fresh talent pool, slashing operational costs, and aligning cultures. You're turning traditional challenges into strategic advantages. Don't mistake nearshoring for another outsourcing buzzword. It’s the strategic partner your startup has been hunting for. It’s the key to assembling a global team that breathes and works together in real-time. It’s the weapon that will keep your startup a step ahead in the ruthless battleground of today's market. In the high-stakes race against time and competition, nearshoring is your startup's secret weapon. Ready to unlock its potential? #QualityAffordably #EfficiencyBoost #NearshoringAdvantages #GlobalTeam #StrategicPartnership #StartupSuccess #RealTimeCollaboration #SkilldLabs

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🚀 It’s a big day at Hoop! We’re excited to share we’ve raised $5m led by Index Ventures with participation from Origin Ventures, Chingona Ventures, Divergent Capital, and an inspiring group of angel investors. Two years ago, Justin, Brian, and I got together and started brainstorming. We had worked together as early executives at Trello for 7.5 years! We wanted to recreate the magic of the early days of Trello and respond to the epidemic of distraction we were seeing in the workplace. When I left Atlassian, I was in back-to-back meetings most days. Slack was constantly buzzing. My whole day was spent going between apps and praying I wouldn’t miss something important. I would wake up in the middle of the night remembering that DM I forgot to respond to. In an age of AI, this kind of mental fatigue across tools drains humans of our energy to do the work that really matters: the focused and creative work that comes when we can feel secure that we’re on top of all important work. Hoop is the product I wish I had. It connects to Zoom, Google Meet, Slack and email and automatically captures tasks for me using AI. It then centralizes everything in one spot so I never miss a task. Our vision is to rethink task management with an AI first principles mindset. There’s so much we can do now that we couldn’t have imagined back when we were building Trello. It’s an exciting time to be building in the space, and we’ve got a world class team taking on this challenge. Now’s the time to try Hoop out and let us know what you think! We couldn’t be more grateful for all the amazing support from our community, investors, and friends. Let’s go team! 👏🏼 Special thanks to our investors for all their belief and support - Damir Becirovic Neil Rimer Katie Shea Samara Mejia Hernandez Jason Heltzer Andy Dunn Wade Foster Linda Lian Michael Pryor Kristen Habacht Elizabeth Hall Barry Clark Nikita Miller Mihika Kapoor Jiaona Zhang (JZ) Maggie Adhami-Boynton Sonia Sahney Nagar Sean Harper Darren Murph Mike Arauz Job van der Voort Annie Duke Jay Simons Maria Christopoulos Katris Ezra Galston Sheel Mohnot Ilya Fushman #futureofwork #ai #startups #fundraising

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Wing Venture Capital's Founder Docs project is a unique collection of startup wisdom, by founders, for founders. The authors of the docs are talented founders themselves, sharing their experience on the topics they are most passionate about. I'd like to highlight the contributions of Edo Liberty, founder / CEO of Pinecone. Edo writes about the special opportunities for the scientist / founder (and he is one of the best of this breed!), as well as some of the risks and challenges they face. I got a lot out of reading Edo's stuff and I suspect you will too! https://lnkd.in/g_wyRMiE

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I remember the pitch deck. It was 2021, and Baubap, a Y Combinator startup, was disrupting the financial landscape in Mexico with their unique approach to microloans. They had impressive traction, but the valuation was high. Most investors hesitated. But I saw something different: a company with explosive growth potential, fueled by a data-driven approach and a strong team. I knew I had to invest. Fast-forward to today, and my investment in Baubap has grown 32x in just three years! On this week's Lobster Talks Podcast - Y Combinator Secrets, I share the insights behind this successful investment, outlining my investment criteria and why I prioritize growth and traction over sky-high valuations. Learn how you can: - Identify top-performing Y Combinator companies. - Maximize your chances of co-investing in these high-growth startups. - Unlock the "YC premium" and achieve greater investment returns. Watch the full episode now to discover the secrets behind my investment strategy and how you can find your own unicorn: https://lnkd.in/eUkUAYF4 #ycombinator #venturecapital #investing #startup #growth #unicorns #lobstercapital #baubap #fintech

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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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Today I’m thrilled to share that Fondo has raised a $7M seed round to accelerate our mission of putting accounting on autopilot for startups. With Fondo, startups don’t need to worry about tax penalties, financial statement errors, or missing out on up to $500k in tax credits. Onboard in minutes then set & forget — taxes are filed on time, timely and accurate financial reporting is delivered, and cash back tax credits from the IRS (up to $500k per year) are claimed and received. Over 1,000 startups trust us to put their bookkeeping, taxes, and tax credits on autopilot and starting today any startup can try Fondo for $1: tryfondo.com/1 We are very grateful for our supporters in this round. The round is led by Money Forward, Inc. (Sandy Kimura, Yosuke Tsuji) with participation from Y Combinator (Gustaf Alstromer, Michael Seibel, Arnav Sahu), Motley Fool Ventures (Maggie Dorn, Brendan Mathews, Abigail Malin), Next Coast Ventures (Mike Smerklo, Michael Maloney, Kaitlyn Debernardo), Twenty Two Ventures (Katey Caldwell), a16z scout fund (Theo Browne, Warren Schaeffer), Index Ventures scout fund (Nitzan Shapira), Costanoa Ventures scout fund (Todd Johnson), 1121 VC (Mike Rosengarten), Rho (Everett Cook), Capchase debt (Miguel Fernandez Larrea) and angels including Craig J. Lewis, Chris Bakke, James Hawkins, Josh Cohenzadeh, Kush Patel, Greg Castle, Loren Brill, Austen Allred, Harsh Patel, Matt Doka, Jesse Sung, Jason Levin, David Walker, Shail Patel, Reuben Torenberg, Paul Cameron, Todd Burns, Dante Galan, Emmanuel Galan, Jack Sanchez, Joey Reil, Danika Koenig, Kunal Bisla, & others. Startups can now try fondo for $1 with our new TaxPass Trial which includes 3 key upcoming deadlines:  •  Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) Filing - due January 1st (Late Penalty: $500/day + up two 2 years imprisonment)   •   Delaware Franchise Tax - due March 1st (Fondo has saved startups over $75M from overpayment of this tax)  •  Federal Tax Extension - due April 15th (this extends your federal tax deadline to October 15th and keeps your eligible for tax credits) The Fondolorians are proud of our accomplishments so far and grateful to have the opportunity to support so many incredible startups and founders. Kudos the Fondolorians Ali Ghanimati, Brian Simmons, Diane McCormack, Patrick Brennan, Sara Conde, Brett Fox, Stefan Gomez, Jay Meredith, CPA, Lisa Hope, Anatoli Silva, Jacob Wedig, CPA, Crystal Granacher, Dylan S. Phillips & others for your ambition, ingenuity, work ethic, and obsession with solving our customers’ problems 🙏 Thank you Kate Park at TechCrunch for covering the story of our: https://lnkd.in/gHsETf2X

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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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A couple of years ago, I published a post On YC batch quality at scale that showed the upward trend in Y Combinator startup outcomes despite a massive increase in YC batch sizes over time. While it’s counter-intuitive to many investors, YC has managed to only maintain but improve the quality of startups it admits into the program even as batch sizes have increased from a dozen or so companies in the early years to 200+ today. My previous post measured YC batch quality simply by the percentage of startups from each batch that made it onto YC’s Top Companies list ($150M+ valuations) or became unicorns ($1B+ valuations). While these are great measures of YC startup success, they are retrospective in nature, since it takes several years for YC startup valuations to mature. Since Rebel Fund maintains the most comprehensive database that exists of YC startups, founders, and outcomes outside of YC itself, we’re in an excellent position to not only look at retrospective measures of YC startup quality like valuation growth, but also prospective measures like overall company and founder quality…

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“Europe does have great entrepreneurs. Europe does have mega markets..“ Nice to see some optimism about European startups - there are deep challenges, yes, but belief in the ability to defy the odds and huge commitment to making it a reality are the first steps to helping change the narrative.

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There has never been a more ideal time for an entrepreneur to initiate and develop a startup. Costs of creating and operating a startup continue to decrease. Access to resources and the ability to be a founder is increasingly more democratized. Currently, a founder raising money has many more options than ten years ago. The Founders VC blog is focused on educating the reader how does the founder evaluate the myriad opportunities and maximize the result. The knowledge that will be conveyed in the Founders VC blog will save those interested in entrepreneurship and VC much time and money in the journey of navigating being a founder or VC.

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*Key Learnings from Building Cedalio: Insights from a Second-Time Founder* Starting and growing Cedalio (YC S23) has been an incredible journey so far, full of lessons and insights. As a second-time founder, I know how hard it is to build a company from the ground up. Here are some new learnings and reminders from my journey with Cedalio: Listen to Your Users: Even if you start with a clear idea, your users will guide you on what to build, and it will change. A lot. We began as a blockchain decentralized database, but our users’ needs led us to pivot. Now, we help companies automate data gathering for sustainability teams with AI. Patience and Discipline: In this unpredictable environment, patience and discipline are essential. I’ve chosen to take it easy, hire only what we truly need, and automate as much as possible with AI. This approach not only conserves resources but also positions us for long-term success. Value-Added AI Wrappers: AI wrappers present immense opportunities if you add value on top of the model. In our case, we focus on a specific process: validating data so you can trust the results. This added value differentiates us and makes our solution indispensable. Enterprise AI is Different: AI for enterprise is a different game. It's not just about adding ChatGPT to your old website. It requires robust integration, security, and scalability to meet the complex needs of large organizations. Distribution is Key to Success: Distribution is critical, and we’re still working on it. We are currently focusing on partnerships with carbon accounting software companies to expand our reach and deliver greater value to our clients.

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Nathan Beckord has been a valuable resource to me and the various startups we're mentoring through NeoTerra Ventures and/or funding through NeoTerra Capital LLC. Startup valuations can be very subjective and can be calculated and justified by a variety of means, however knowing the "market rate" is also important when setting a valuation for a round of funding. In the end, the company is worth what an investor is willing to pay for it, which is the final determination of the venture's value in its current state of development. #startups #vc #funding #valuations

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Every VC claims they have an edge, but from where I sit as an LP, it’s clear: the next generation of fund managers will need stronger arguments than 'working very hard' or 'being helpful for founders' to raise money. The best fund managers will set themselves apart with these three non-obvious skills: 1. Cultural fluency - Some of the best startups come from immigrant founders, but they’re navigating a system that isn’t always built for them. VCs who know how to build trust, understand their challenges, and support them where it matters will unlock incredible opportunities. 2. Downstream sales: There’s more money than ever chasing top founders, and the best deals are going to the VCs who founders actively want to work with. It’s not just about pitching; it’s about being the one they call first because they know you’ll add real value. 3. Value-add 2.0: Founders don’t need more generic advice. The best VCs create real pull by building opportunities—whether that’s connecting the right dots in their portfolio or unlocking new markets—that founders actually want and can’t find anywhere else. This is what LPs should focus on when backing funds—it’s what separates good from great. ---- Interested in investing in VCs & startups? let's connect.

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Remove the detailed roadmaps from your pitch decks. No VC will invest the time to go through all the milestones in your history and those in the future, with all the bullets providing details about each milestone. Far too early. VCs are not warm enough when they read your pitch deck. Put your detailed roadmaps into your data room and let VCs digest them after they had 1-2 meetings with you and ask for further material. If you think a roadmap could help to increase a VCs appetite, then only provide 3-5 high-level milestones on a slide that could be read and understood in max 10 seconds. Check my FundraisingCOUP program if you want to become a Top 1% fundraiser & get in touch with me if you're building a disruptive Future of Work & Learning startup and looking for Pre-Seed or Seed funding.

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Founders, besides valuation and terms, board members can make or break your company so make sure you factor that in when selecting your next investors. #Governance #VC #BoD

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