Taleha Aftab

As the Shasta Ventures approval deadline approaches, we're presented with a unique opportunity to observe the complexities and inherent conflicts in GP-led secondary transactions. This scenario sheds light on the considerable leverage GPs hold within the private equity infrastructure. According to the article, proposed continuation fund requires LPs to approve the transaction if they wish to roll their interests into the new structure—a stipulation that could be seen as putting undue pressure on LPs. This raises critical questions about the balance of power in private equity deals and the alignment of interests between GPs and LPs. What are your thoughts? Is it appropriate for GPs to demand such conditions for LPs to participate in a continuation fund? How do you see this impacting the broader private equity landscape and the perception of GP-led secondary transactions? Looking forward to hearing your insights and perspectives on this pivotal issue. #PrivateEquity #VentureCapital #InvestmentTrends #ShastaVentures #GPledSecondaries

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A new flood of fresh funds is reshaping the venture capital landscape! 🚀 Recent highlights include TVM Capital Healthcare’s $250M Afiyah Fund LP, SVC's $30M investment into General Atlantic’s private equity fund, Golden Gate Ventures' $100M MENA-focused fund launch, and Investcorp's $570M fund closure. These announcements signal a broader trend of escalating financial commitments within the industry. MEA funds are heating up! 🌡️ Our data reveals a 74% YoY increase in the number of MEA-based funds being financed as of May 20th, 2024. Since Q4’23, there has been a notable surge in regional funds securing capital, with international investors also establishing localized funds. Stay informed with the latest trends in VC activity: https://lnkd.in/dP6ZkmCd By MAGNiTT Repost by : Salem Bagami Chief Executive Officer Digital Transformation Company & Managing Director 2080 Ventures Email: [email protected] Website: www.2080.ventures #VC #Funds #Investing

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So great to speak to Mohammed Islam on The Mo Show podcast last week! Watch the full episode here!

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I really enjoyed breaking in our new studio to sit down with Temporal Technologies Co-Founders Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev for the latest episode of Founded & Funded. Temporal was founded in 2019 based on an open-source microservices orchestration engine project but is the result of a more than decade-long partnership between the two co-founders that spanned their time working on different iterations of the same thing at AWS, Microsoft, and Uber. In this episode, Samar, Maxim, and I dive into the challenges of building an open-source ecosystem while also working on a commercial offering and scaling a successful company, how to navigate and adjust a product roadmap in an ever-changing world of AI and large language models, and how to successfully build an early startup team, navigate through a CEO transition, and bring on a startups first independent board member. It's a very compelling conversation and a must-listen for every builder out there. Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gymf9sES Find other platforms and the transcript on our website: https://lnkd.in/ggRtnKtM Be sure to subscribe to our channel for more deep dives into cutting-edge technologies and the minds behind them. Don't forget to like, comment, and share this conversation if you found it valuable!

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Considering a career in startups or VC? Starting today, I'm available for 1:1 calls on @Intro to help startup founders and aspiring VCs think through the path ahead. As the founder + managing director of Red Sea Ventures, we invested early in companies like Allbirds (IPO), Sweetgreen (IPO), Nest (acq. Google), Casetext (acq. Thompson Reuters), and Prose to name a few. What topics can we cover? ✔️ Finding product-market fit ✔️ The different paths to funding ✔️ Determining how much you need to raise ✔️ Building a VC firm ✔️ Careers in VC ✔️ Celebrity partnerships Honored to be alongside world-class Experts like Chris DeWolfe (co-founder of MySpace (sold for $675M), Scott Saunders (founder of Happy Money, valued $1B+) & Geraldine Martin-Coppola (former President of Goop). I’ll be donating 100% of the proceeds to Seeds of Peace

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✴️ Did you see who raised funds last week? Several U.S.-based startups have secured capital at the start of 2025 to drive innovation, and they’re hiring! 🇺🇸 Rembrand (Los Altos, California) #Advertising Founders Ahmed Saad, David Wiener, Omar Tawakol, and Abdel-rahman Mohamed raised $23M in Series A funding to enhance their In-Scene Advertising platform, helping brands become part of the story rather than interrupting it. 🔗 Led by: super{set}, with participation from The Trade Desk, NAVER D2SF, #L’Oréal’s BOLD, Greycroft, and others. ✅ Hiring: 2 roles available - https://bit.ly/404w2in 🇺🇸 LTV.ai (Houston, Texas) #AI Founders Asad Rehman and Kevin Kai closed a Series A funding round (undisclosed amount) to help brands maximize Customer Lifetime Value using AI and membership models. ✅ Hiring: 2 roles available - https://bit.ly/4064BVh 🇺🇸 Veritone (Irvine, California) #AI Founders Chad and Ryan Steelberg raised $20.3M in Post-IPO Equity to develop and market their AI platform that transforms data into actionable intelligence. 🔗 The company plans to use funds for: capital expenditures, debt service, and further product development. ✅ Hiring: 14 roles available - https://bit.ly/4fLXFmh 🚀 If you're exploring new opportunities or just want to stay updated on who's raising capital, make sure to follow me! #StartupFunding #HiringNow #FundingAndHiring #Innovation

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Excited to participate in pre-seed round of Fraction AI led by The Spartan Group & Symbolic Capital with participation from Anagram Ltd, Karatage, Foresight Ventures, Generative Ventures, MH Ventures, Cogitent Ventures, Mask Network , @PAKA fund, Oak Grove Ventures, Kosmos Ventures , Builder Capital, @Next Web Capital, ByzantineMarine and renowned angels including @Sandeep Nainwal (founder Polygon Labs), Illia Polosukhin (founder NEAR Protocol), Michael Heinrich (founder 0G Labs) and several others Fraction AI addresses the growing challenge of producing high-quality data at scale. Traditional methods rely solely on either human labor or #AI, but Fraction AI blends human insight with AI efficiency. By leveraging human understanding to guide AI agents, Fraction AI decentralizes data labeling—the process of tagging raw data (such as images, text, or audio) with meaningful labels to train AI models for pattern recognition and accurate prediction. Among AI's three core components—data, compute, and models—data remains the most opaque and tightly controlled. Fraction AI aims to change this, leveling the playing field and empowering anyone to train high-quality AI models. Fraction AI employs a hybrid approach to data labeling, combining human insights with AI agents. Its competitive framework encourages these agents to generate high-quality data through real-time competitions. The platform involves three key participants: stakers, builders, and judges. Stakers earn rewards by staking $ETH or liquid staking tokens ($LSTs) like Lido Finance's staked ether (stETH). Their earnings derive from entry fees paid by builders, with 5% of each fee distributed directly to stakers. Builders create agents by providing human insights or detailed text instructions, requiring no coding. They fund their agents with $ETH or $LSTs to compete in challenges and pay a small entry fee to participate and generate the best possible data. The top three agents (out of five) in each competition receive rewards from the entry fee pool, multiplied by a performance-based multiplier determined by specialized large language models (LLMs). This additional multiplier-based reward comes from the stakers' pool, ensuring that underperforming agents indirectly fund stakers while significantly boosting rewards for top performers. Judges, who are specialized LLMs, evaluate agent outputs against predefined criteria. To participate, judges must stake Fraction AI's native $FRAC tokens. Fraction AI is primarily built on Ethereum and is currently live on a closed testnet with over 60,000 users. The public testnet is expected to launch next month, with the mainnet release slated for late Q1 or early Q2 2025. The $FRAC token launch will coincide with the mainnet release. The token's utility will be to secure a network of judges who evaluate agent outputs through staking and slashing mechanisms, ensuring quality and fair evaluation. More here: The Block: https://bit.ly/3BPgBT1

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Wiz rejects $23B acquistion offer from Google Why did this seemingly enticing deal fall through? 1) Strategic Independence: In a recent internal memo, Assaf Rappaport, the CEO of Wiz, addressed employees regarding the importance of strategic independence. The leadership believes that by staying autonomous, the company can capitalize on growth opportunities and work towards its goal of becoming the leader in the cloud security industry. 2) Financial Considerations: Although the $23 billion acquisition offer is substantial, company leadership seems to believe that the future potential of the company surpasses this amount. Currently valued at approximately $12 billion, the company anticipates achieving greater valuations through market expansion and innovation. Additionally, a potential initial public offering (IPO) could further enhance the attractiveness of this decision. 3) Antitrust Concerns: The agreement between Wiz and Google was likely to draw the scrutiny of antitrust regulators, which may have played a considerable role in the decision to reject it. - #acquisition #vc #venturecapital #privateequity #tech

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I am always amazed when someone discovers whitespace in B2B SaaS that is eligible for pre-seed funding. It's interesting to see that Chiratae Ventures led Pre-Seed round for Pepsales. Pepsales is trying to help B2B SaaS companies improve their sales by creating personalized product demos using AI and ML. The pain point they are trying to address is that most demos don't impress buyers because they tend to be generic and one-size-fits-all. Congrats Ajay Singh and Abhinandan Sahgal! Source: INC42, Entrackr, VCCircle #VentureCapital #B2BSaas

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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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Venture capital firm Gobi Partners said on Thursday that it plans to raise $50 million for an investment fund targeting startups in Pakistan, the largest of its kind in the South Asian country.

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At Kearny Jackson, founders constantly ask us what we look for in founding teams. I’m sharing the rough framework that my partner, Sriram Krishnan, outlined to assess founders as a pre-seed/seed investor. This is also how I judge whether someone is “biased for action” or “biased for thought.” I get along well with the former and not the latter, but that’s a story for another day. Level 1 - Speed of communicating Whether by text or email. Quick turnarounds, “acknowledged receipt” types of folks. Not being speedy is not necessarily a bad sign; it can also mean they’re busy or don’t care about you or your email. Usually “closes the loop” and, most importantly, tries to leave no email unresponded. Level 2 - Speed of rewriting deck or memo Founders who pitch one version of the deck and share an updated version after the pitch the same day with slides that address the questions asked during the pitch. Or founders that iterate on positioning and strategy quickly based on input and ship a new version of a deck within days. Some founders use a static deck when presenting (i.e. the same deck for weeks on end), but some are more dynamic and change/pivot/edit when new information or tactics come to light. Level 3 - Speed of talking to or onboarding design partners Founders who not only speak to 50-70 potential prospects within a short time frame but also ones who onboard X design partners very quickly. I’ve seen some founders pitch an idea in week one and sign up four design partners in week two. That’s pretty impressive regardless of what is being built and shows they can execute. Level 4 - Speed of shipping new code, new features, new products, or new pivots This is the holy grail. This is what every early-stage investor means by execution velocity. In the world of early-stage startups, the big fish don’t eat the small fish. The fast ones eat the slow ones. And how quickly you ship code represents how efficient or productive you can be in a resource-constraint environment. All investors would preferably want to see how founders execute with code, but (A) founders don’t always have product during the seed/pre-seed rounds, eg. figma designs, mock-ups, ideas, etc (B) so investors have to rely on other signals to decipher whether you can execute on 4 so levels 123 above will hopefully inform them on that.

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𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 I first met Stefano about three years ago at a pitching competition when Podeo | بوديو was just getting started. His journey and ambition stood out—he captured the room’s full attention. Though it was too early for us to join their journey at that time (pre Oraseya), I made a strong mental note: there was something remarkable about this team—Stefano Fallaha, Ramzi Farah, Mario Hayek, and Anthony Essaye. They were onto something. Since then, Stefano and I have stayed in regular touch, exchanging thoughts on both the challenges and opportunities that came their way. Leading up to this round, our long voice notes became “mini-podcasts,” as he likes to call them—dedication in his DNA. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll release some of them on Podeo. What’s impressed us most about Podeo is their ability to adapt quickly, execute swiftly, drive product development, and always keep their focus on the goal—empowering creators. That kind of discipline is rare, and it is striking to see it firsthand. This Series-A round felt like the right milestone for Oraseya Capital to step in, and we’re thrilled to finally be part of Podeo’s journey as they begin their next chapter. As a side note, sometimes a “not yet” becomes a “let’s do this” and there is nothing more exciting. (thank you TechCrunch for picking this up!) #venturecapital #techcrunch #dubai #podcast

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🎉 2024 in Review: A Year of Vision, Hustle, and Milestones 🚀 If you had told me in November 2023 when working outside in the frozen workout park pictured below that a casual conversation about the future of industrial-focused venture capital with Marek Malik at Jet Investment would kickstart this interesting journey of terminating my "early retirement" sipping wine, doing all day sports, and enjoying life, I would not believe it. Yet here we are, closing 2024 with more achievements, lessons, and excitement than I could have imagined. It all started in December 2023, when I presented my vision for an early-stage industrial-dedicated fund to the Jet Investment partners. From the very beginning, I valued the open and direct communication style within the team and was impressed by the strong reputation Jet Investment has built in the industry. A few days later I received an answer that my concept was selected as the best among competitive proposals. That’s when the real work began: 💡 Shaping a Vision: Crafting the fund’s thesis, setting up a sustainable model, and defining parameters that reflect both innovation and fund positioning and risk management. 👩‍💼 Building the Team: Finding talented individuals who believe in the mission and bring diverse expertise to the table. 💰 Putting Skin in the Game: We committed our own money to the fund to ensure we’re perfectly aligned with our investors and fully invested—both figuratively and literally—in its success. 📈 Launching the Fund: By September 2024, our hard work culminated in the official fund launch—an exhilarating moment that signaled the start of something transformational. Huge thanks to Milan Gašo 🙏 . 🏗️ Making an Impact: Our first investment in PARTORY was going in parallel with the fund registration and validated months of planning and gave us momentum. 🎓 A Hectic Finish: Supporting Jan Bravek’s fundraising team, with two additional investments in the due diligence phase, setting a high bar for 2025, it is a whirlwind. The cherry on top? Our first close in May 2025 is on track, and we’re fully committed to reshaping the European VC landscape with a laser focus on supporting innovative founders from Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Poland in their dreams of building global B2B companies. Looking back, this journey was about more than launching a fund. It was about: 🌟 Taking risks and stepping into uncertainty. 🌟 Surrounding myself with brilliant minds who challenge and inspire me. 🌟 Proving that Europe has the talent, vision, and ambition to lead on the global stage. As we wrap up the year, I wish everyone a calm and joyful Christmas. May 2025 be the year you get to do what you truly love—because when you love what you do, you do it best. Here’s to an even bigger, bolder 2025. Let’s make it count. #VC #Innovation #IndustrialTech #2024Reflection #BuildingTheFuture

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One of my favorite things is to have a conversation with builders & founders about the personal experience and complexity of working to bring new deep tech to the point where it makes a real difference in our world. So looking forward to this!

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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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For the past five months, I’ve been going through VC Lab, the leading venture capital accelerator that helps new VC managers close on capital faster and more efficiently. It’s been a whirlwind of activity and learning. Here are the three major things I’ve learned by participating in the program. ***There’s so much more to VC than just doing deals*** You’re building a firm, not just a fund. You need to position your firm in the best light possible to attract LPs to invest in you, and startups to invest in. You have to model your portfolio construction and ensure your financials are sound. You need to assess and recruit partners - investors, team members, law firms, and others - whom you’ll work with for years or decades. And much more! ***Your Network is Your Net Worth*** VC is probably the most network-driven job in existence. First, new managers will be highly dependent on their first-degree connections in raising their first fund. Your friends, family, and close industry contacts will likely be your first investors, and may intro you to others in their network. And a lot of deal flow will come from your network of other VCs and founders. Strong deal flow is the lifeblood of your fund, and many deals will come from your existing network. VC is 100% based on relationships. ***VC is All About Trust*** Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once said: "In a networked world, trust is the most important currency." Truer words may never have been spoken. Raising a VC fund is based on trust and the strength of the relationships you have with your LPs: -How much do they trust you to manage their money and act in their best interests? -How confident are they that you understand your industry and will make investments that will provide outsized returns? On a similar note, strong founders will want to work with VCs who have their success in mind: -How much do they trust you to support them through thick and thin? -How confident are they that you can provide value beyond just capital? And both will judge whether they will enjoy working with you for the next few years or decades. Trust is truly the most important currency in VC. Read more about my experience here: https://lnkd.in/e52m9Vm9 If you’re thinking about starting your own VC firm, I highly recommend checking out VC Lab. They are currently accepting applications for Cohort 15, so get to it! https://lnkd.in/ecG7bqhj Let me know if you have any questions about the program or VC in general. Happy to help!

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