Raphael Bennett

An interesting article below, that demonstrates out how San Diego is punching above its weight.  And how Connect's strategy and execution over time, contintues to be central to that success. The article describes the current state of the market in Seattle.  (And i love Seattle.) It's a market that we tend to track with relative to venture fundings.  They used to kick our butts, we outraised them each of the last three years.  This despite the fact they have 3x as many funds there, and 9x the amount of resident capital there. (per pitchbook) Some key takeaways:  * They continue to compare themselves to SIlicon Valley. Instead, we leverage our proximity. *They whine there's not enough local investors (see note above - they have more than us). We bring over 200 VCs to SD annually! * They say founders are not connected with one another. We bring CEOs together regularly, in a variety of ways - private dinners and through our Springboard program. * They say they need to elevate their image on a national & international stage. Why we created and continue to build Five.Ten.Thirty (aka Inno Day).  * And the last paragraph - they need to concentrate on making their region a great place to live. Our mantra: "It's about Better, not Bigger." (See XEO, TL Fund). THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. WE ARE ON A MISSION TOGETHER!!!  (Comments, whining, suggestions on SD always welcome.) https://lnkd.in/g6Rq_f2Y

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Kettleborough VC has been active for ~6 years, invested in ~30 companies, gone through ~80 funding rounds, witnessed ~12 exits including ~4 instances of partial principal erosion, seen ~4 seed to $100M journeys, tracking ~29% XIRR across the portfolio. A couple of IPOs from the portfolio surely seem very much in line ahead.

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Having a Cars and Capital event tomorrow in Southern California with Oren Klaff. If you want to join message me. https://lnkd.in/gDQ4D39u Oren Klaff Bridger Pennington #InvestorEvent #FamilyOffice #InvestmentOpportunity #CarlsbadEvent #PrivateEquity #WealthManagement #InvestmentConference #CapitalRaising #NetworkingEvent #IndustryLeaders #FinancialGrowth #InvestorsMeetup #WealthBuilding #BusinessGrowth #InvestmentForum

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118 VCs (one hundred eighteen!) are gathering in San Diego next week - to meet with 30 SD startups. But it's so MUCH bigger than just those 30 co's. It brings VCs back - when they see quality companies. It helps those who are next-in-line and adjacent. It enables us to send deal flow all year 'round. It attracts talent and other companies. It inspires entrepreneurship. Connect is working for SD. Together, we're building the best damn innovation ecosystem on the planet. Year over year. Five.Ten.Thirty.

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Thanks to Taylor Soper and GeekWire for asking the questions! I asked ChatGPT and Claude what they think of my predictions for 2025.... ChatGPT: Ken, you nailed the AI prediction—agents are definitely coming for our boring tasks, but if you’re hoping they’ll take over your meetings, we’ll see how that pans out. Your skepticism on crypto feels like a safe bet; it’s the trendy tech with a lot of bluster, but not enough muscle to transform the world just yet. As for remote work, I agree that it's not going anywhere, but predicting it’ll morph into a “flexible utopia” is like predicting everyone will suddenly love pineapple on pizza—possible, but not guaranteed. Solid overall, but maybe leave room for the remote work revolution to surprise us! Claude 3.5 Sonnet: Ken, you've got a pretty solid crystal ball there, especially on the AI agents trend and the analytics companies needing to evolve or die. Your take on remote work playing it safe (basically "same as 2024") was probably the most boringly accurate prediction - like choosing "water" as your favorite beverage. I think you underplayed the potential crypto comeback after the Bitcoin ETF approval, and your biotech AI prediction feels a bit early - we're still figuring out how to get AI to reliably order lunch, let alone design drugs. Next year, I'm turning to the LLMs for my predictions 🤣 Great to see smarter people in the article thinking in similar ways Erik Benson, Heather Redman, Sri Chandrasekar and Kyle Lui 👏👏 On to 2025!! https://lnkd.in/gUf63kRZ

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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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Awesome new initiative Aviel Ginzburg!! When Sean Sternbach and I launched Venture Out, Aviel and Pablo Brown-Rodriguez were silent cofounders. Aviel freely shared his words of wisdom from years of building community in Seattle. He and Chris DeVore were the first money into our community, followed quickly by Flying Fish Partners, Liquid 2 Ventures, M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, and a huge list of Seattle angels. After growing to 1200+ members in <3 years, running multiple pre-preseed accelerators, a few learnings about building great community and the Seattle Founder Ecosystem: In the early days, no one knows what they are doing. Seek outside advice and guidance from people just ahead of you. Unicorn founders and tech moguls have great stories, but the woman who left amazon six months ago, launched an MVP, and crashed through her first 2 dozen investor discussions will have golden advice. Be open, honest, and vulnerable. Our best events and discussions happened when people let their guard down. No one will spend their life (which a startup requires) to build your idea. They might build something similar and tackle the same problem, but only your life experience and decision-making will make the difference. Share ideas often. Give first. As a ~10 year Techstars mentor, I saw this as the best part of the community. In my opinion, they have lost this completely. Don't come into a community and take. Give all you can, even when it feels counterproductive. Something might eventually come back that changes your life and direction. Even if it never does, you will 1000% feel great about the decision. Play long-term games with long-term people. Naval Ravikant was the first person I heard say this. Surround yourself with committed doers, makers, and visionaries. There are a lot of want-entrepreneurs in the world (which is a good thing; we need more people to take risks), but spend the most time with people in the ring, putting their time behind what they are doing. Learn how to give advice and direction without being evangelical, condescending, or a jerk. Learn to be direct but helpful. It's what you want on your journey, so invest in being a great thought partner for others. A final few notes: 1) No, you likely will never get paid the same amount or make as much money as a founder as you would as an L7/L8 at Amazon. If that is why you are starting a company, you're already in trouble. But knowing Aviel, he is already filtering for this 😂 2) You will likely learn in 6-18 months in the ring as a founder, than the rest of your life combined. Start to write, share your experience, find a therapist, and get ready to unpack a LOT as you go. The only way to make space for new information is to process it, store it, and then let it go. 3) The relationships are the most important part of the journey. I will always remember meetings with Matt Ehrlichman, Asha Sharma, Kyle Sandburg, and Matthew Neagle and the rest of the Porch Group team. Go Aviel!!!

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Team San Diego! I though you may find this as surprising as I did...we are not alone. Read this quick article from Jon Prentice's (Silicon Valley Bank) interview with with James Newell (Voyager Capital), published in GeekWire on Seattle's innovation ecosystem....they lament the SAME issues as we do in San Diego: * Lack of angel investors, (Especially, it calls out, given the local giant tech co's) * "We need low-conviction check writers." * Lack of "cachet associated with being an angel investor" - We have similar efforts (as described in the article) to drum up angel activity: NuFund Venture Group and, Interlock Capital (read the article and you'll see why the Interlock effort is tops as relates to "paying back into the ecosystem") Connect.org strives to 'connect' innovative companies with investors of all types (angel, VC, PE...) - just see "Innovation Day". Their Springboard program provides another great way for experienced entrepreneurs to give back through mentorship...as for the companies going through Springboard: "Ask for advice, and you often get $$" Your thoughts on the article or San Diego innovation ecosystem? https://lnkd.in/gfwq6mfq

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Reflecting on another fantastic StartupAZ retreat in Flagstaff last month! I’m grateful to be a part of this incredible community that continually supports technology founders in Arizona. StartupAZ is more than just a network; it’s a powerful ecosystem of founders, mentors, and seasoned entrepreneurs who come together to uplift and propel each other forward. The monthly cohort meetings provide the kind of support and mentorship that makes all the difference in launching and scaling a technology company. This organization has been a game-changer for me personally, connecting me with like-minded leaders and providing the resources needed to navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship. Being surrounded by other founders who are as passionate about innovation and growth as I am has been truly inspiring. Below is a video from our retreat, showcasing the spirit and energy of this incredible group of people dedicated to pushing the limits of what’s possible. Seeing how much we’ve grown and the impact we’ve had on Arizona’s tech landscape is both humbling and motivating. If you're a founder in Arizona or someone passionate about the startup ecosystem, I highly encourage you to get involved with StartupAZ. Let’s keep building, growing, and supporting the next wave of innovators right here in Arizona! #StartupAZ #FoundersSupportingFounders #ArizonaTech #Entrepreneurship #StartupCommunity #Innovation

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Two weeks ago I spent 3 days with brilliant human beings discussing the state of AI investment with other angel syndicate leads, angel investors and VCs at Hustle Fund's #camphustle in Los Gatos. It was brilliant. Truly awesome to learn so much from insanely accomplished investors. But was so clear to me again is that the US and the UK are two countries divided by separate languages of ambition. Aspiration and ambition underlined by the cluster effect of successful exits, incredible talent and venture capital driven by operators and founders rather than accountants. But one reason why the US often trumps (pun not intended) the UK is they learn from failure. Run a startup that didn't reach the dizzying heights of venture-scale returns? Learn, reset and go again. What they certainly do not do is look at failure with glee and an "I told you so" attitude. Which is what I sense when I read most of the narrative around the failure of Cazoo. Alex Chesterman swung and missed. The business was flawed, unit economics didn't add up and in reality - there was very little innovation outside the vertical alignment of a well-understood business. But when we look down upon what he tried to do and 💩 💩 it all we're doing is making it harder for someone else to be equally as ambitious. Focus on what went wrong. Focus on the fundamental underlying business models that drive efficient use of capital and the push for profitability. But let's celebrate people shooting their shot and not celebrate the failures.

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Excited to announce our investment in Alta Resource Technologies alongside Leonardo Banchik (Voyager Ventures) with participation from Orion Resource Partners, Overture Ventures, and WovenEarth Ventures. Rare earths are critical in products from magnets to ceramics and it's important for the US to develop its own supply chain. While the US has some of the best rare earth resources, separating them has historically proven expensive and environmentally unfriendly. Alta through it's computationally designed and optimized proteins allows the US to bring back rare earth production with a cleaner, lower capex, and lower opex solution - and that's just the beginning. Congrats to Nathan Ratledge and the entire Alta team. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gbGnAJn3

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The best things Founders can receive from investors (apart from term sheets) is feedback! At Funden, about 50% of pass notes come with some sort of feedback thats actionable and helpful to the Founder. Here’s an example of a pass note from earlier this month: “We focus on having live, paying enterprise customers with a repeatable, scalable sales process and line-of-sight to series-A financial metrics" Boom! That kind of transparency is unprecedented in the venture world. This type of feedback says, "Hey we're excited about the industry and product, but we need to just see a little more proof of concept on the business before we can dive deeper". Now, this founder has someone they can reach back out to, who is going to be familiar with them, and the Founder will now be right in their investable sweet spot! Another one we got recently was a few investors are telling the same founder, independently of one another, that their round size was far too big for their level of traction. Hearing the same type of feedback as to why they're passing in such a short period of time has a real and meaningful impact on how founders are structuring their raise. And we're happy to help them. https://lnkd.in/gZ_tVkTB ---------------------- Funden is the #1 fundraising platform connecting founders to capital. Founders use our tools and strategic guidance for quicker, more effective fundraises. Investors use us to receive curated, quality deal flow and broadcast co-investment opportunities to our audience of 1000+ global VCs, family funds, angel networks, syndicates, and more.

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Another edition of VCs Doing Work: Slauson & Co. 🎉Congrats to raising $100M for your second fund continuing your mission to make a difference!🎉 Wait... What and who is Slauson and Co? Slauson & Co. is a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage technology investments, founded by Austin Clements and Ajay Relan. The firm's mission centers on economic inclusion and democratizing access to entrepreneurship for underrepresented founders. Slauson & Co. primarily invests in: Preseed and seed SMB Tech (tools supporting small and medium businesses) Consumer technology The firm typically writes checks between $500,000 and $2 million, aiming to lead most rounds. Since its launch in 2020, Slauson & Co. has made significant strides: Raised a $75 million Fund I, exceeding its initial $50 million target Backed 38 companies, with a majority led by people of color and at least half by women Recently closed a $100 million Fund II, demonstrating continued investor interest in their inclusive approach The firm has garnered support from prominent investors and organizations, including: PayPal Ron Conway (veteran technology investor) Ashton Kutcher will.i.am True Capital Management Alpaca VC Slauson & Co. is just getting started! If you think you have a startup that fits their thesis and stage, reach out! #diversity #inclusion #venturecapital #consumer #smb Brittany Crockett #longla #losangeles #celebration #vcsdoingwork

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We (Climate VC) need to stop making excuses for the growth trajectories of our companies There’s a reason why Matthew Stotts and I chose the venture capital asset class to focus on - it has to GROW fast. And there are a lot of fast-growing, money-making opportunity areas with huge problems that could benefit from highly motivated well-funded and skilled teams looking to build a large company. If you need to make an excuse or caveat for any of the statements in the previous paragraph, you’re in the wrong asset class The good thing about VC is it grows fast and BIG. The clock is ticking on our biggest problem areas - let’s get to work!

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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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Breaking down the Seattle Venture Ecosystem! Kudos to Jacob Laes and Nick Khormaei for shedding light on the often complex and opaque Seattle funding ecosystem with their comprehensive investor map. For founders, navigating the venture capital world can feel like a maze, but this map offers a much-needed clearer view of where Seattle’s investors are truly placing their bets. And you know me—data is everything! Data drives decisions and, in this case, holds the key to unlocking new opportunities for startups. This project covers 58 firms with insights on: Industry sector focus Investment stages Portfolio track records It’s a game-changer for founders looking to connect with the right investors more efficiently. Check out their breakdown for a detailed view, and feel free to reach out for the full data set! Evan Poncelet Jesse Posey #Startups #Entrepreneurship #VentureCapital #SeattleTech #Funding #TechInnovation #Investing #StartupCommunity #VentureEcosystem #FounderJourney #BusinessGrowth #SeattleStartups

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Someone broke down the estimated costs of a $15 Sweetgreen salad. We need these cost graphics for digital health to help future founders. Especially for tech enabled cos, the greatest cost is labor. Much of the "value created" is in curation and matching, which means the gross margins are reliant on labor arbitrage. Pay someone $X, but get paid $X+Y% per visit. The challenge with healthcare is that you often have to pick one of two business models: 1. specialized, low volume, high cost, low gross margin % 2. generalized, high volume, low cost, high gross margin % I'd argue founders should focus on gross dollars over the lifetime of the customer (like Jeff Bezos said) instead of gross margin %'s, but we'll leave that for another time. The challenge is that many tech enabled digital health cos have high cost of goods sold (labor) and moderately high product, design, and engineering budgets. We must build differentiated solutions for patients, clinicians, and clients to be out incumbents, however, we're realizing that companies are ultimately valued on the discounted value of future cash flows. And the high SG&A costs at most organizations might be inbalanced to the unit economics of the business. I'm not sure the math pencils out for everyone unfortunately. But I'm just a guy on the internet, would love to hear the thoughts from those smarter than I (you!). Comment below. --- p.s. I have no idea the accuracy of the graphic and not an investor in Sweetgreen. Cheers. Credit: David Crowther

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Just shipped this week's Diaspora.nz podcast with Paul Copplestone, founder & CEO at Supabase. We talk about: ⚡️why open source is an unfair advantage — as a product development strategy, supercharging recruiting, and helping build customer community. ⚡️how they are building the end-to-end tech stack for AI startups — seeing many customers grow into the millions of users in just weeks, growing to be one of the most tagged products by makers on Product Hunt + most redeemed Y Combinator “perks.” ⚡️raising $116M, and scaling to ~80 people in 30+ countries over the past 4.5 years, operating as a distributed + asynchronous team. ⚡️building three startups over nearly a decade living in South East Asia. Subscribe + listen links in comments below👇 Subscribe at diaspora.nz for weekly episodes 🎧👈

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"Probably the worst decision that I made as CEO of Loudcloud was to take ona. 10-year lease with a $30M letter of credit. We leased the space right before the dot-com crash. Rents dropped 10-fold in Menlo Park... worse yet, due to the recession, we couldn't hire so the space we already had was sufficient and we never ended up moving into the new building. So I basically lost $30M for nothing." This is from Ben Horowitz's recent interview with Big Think. Even a quarter century ago the typical office lease construct is misaligned with how a company needs to operate. Our industry could get away with this when office spaces had a monopoly on how and where work got done, but those days are dead. As global markets are crashing, we'll be looking at another disruptive cycle for businesses which will create more cost cutting pressure and the first thing to go when they roll will be inflexible leases. CRE needs to develop new offerings and fast. https://lnkd.in/ePuZgzkU

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