Ryan Perlowin’s Post

Big congrats to Hersh Tapadia, Darrell "Jeremy" Freeman and the entire Allstacks team! I have followed Allstacks from inception, as I do most software startups contributing to the vibrant Raleigh-Durham tech scene. Really just an idea when it entered the Citrix Startup Accelerator in 2017, it graduated Techstars a year later. The company has survived a pandemic, a VC boom-bust cycle and it's fair share of naysayers to emerge battle-tested and poised to accelerate growth. The successful completion of this Series A round is a testament to the team's relentless pursuit to create a new product category that promises to be paramount in a world where all businesses, markets, economies and governments are reliant on software. IMHO, Allstacks products will benefit greatly as AI makes its mark on software delivery, operations and security. Can't wait to see what the future holds! #Citrix #Allstacks #triangletweenerfund #devops #grepbeat

Big thanks to Omar Faridi and Crowdfund Insider for featuring Capchase and highlighting how revenue-based financing bridges the gaps in venture capital funding. 💸 We’re all about supporting startups with the innovative financial solutions needed to accelerate their growth, including our Capchase Grow product for when VC funding is hard to come by. 💰 Click the link to learn how our approach to financing is transforming the landscape for early-stage businesses: https://bit.ly/3zigQEF

Today we announce a new branch of Community Labs and the launch of ao Ventures at $35M in committed capital towards projects building on ao. Here's why: Since 2020, we’re proud to have built a number of core products and protocols within the Arweave Ecosystem. But there is still so much greenfield for innovation on top of permanent data storage. To date we’ve only tapped into a small fraction of what Arweave is capable of. If you don’t believe me, Arweave was primarily created to archive historical artifacts in 2018. We’re now leveraging that same technology as an application layer that can outscale and outperform every other blockchain, alongside already being the most permanent and decentralized archive of civilization ever to exist. ao expands on those abilities even further, and we’re committed to helping founders get started on this new web. This is personal for me because it’s how I got my start in 2020. I wouldn’t be here without Arweave's team operating a program similar, and I’m grateful to all of the people who helped me get what is now Community Labs off the ground in the first place. We’re now committed to passing that torch forward to the next generation of founders on the permanent web. We have the protocol, we have the rails, and we have the funds. Now more than ever is the time to build. If you're interested in learning more, check out https://aoventures.io

On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of hosting an event with Flat Capital, where CEO Hanna Andreen and CFO Antonio Melani discussed their unique approach to venture capital. Flat Capital, a venture capital company founded by Sebastian Siemiatkowski, is invested in pioneering startups like OpenAI, Instabee, Figma, DeepL, SpaceX, Perplexity and more. Here are my three key takeaways: 1. Access to Exclusive Deals Flat Capital uses its board’s network to gain access to investment opportunities that are typically available only to the prominent investors in the VC market. 2. Equity Structure Over Traditional Fund Models By choosing an equity structure instead of the typical fund structure, Flat Capital can remain passive, long-term investors without needing to sell assets to return capital to fund owners. This approach also benefits owners of the stock since they avoid traditional fund-related fees, creating more value for them. 3. Focus on Founder-Led Companies and Trusted Co-Investors Flat Capital primarily invests in founder-led companies and those supported by major VC firms like Sequoia Capital. This allows them to rely on the thorough due diligence done by these investors while focusing on delivering long-term value.

🗣️ 645 Ventures: Pioneering Data-Driven Seed Investing ➡️ 645 Ventures, founded by Aaron Holiday and Nnamdi Okike, is revolutionizing seed-stage investing by integrating software tools for data-driven decision-making. Starting with an $8 million fund in 2014, they've grown to manage $350 million across two funds. Their unique approach combines traditional networking with proprietary software for sourcing and evaluating startups, applying growth-equity practices to early-stage investing. ➡️ This strategy has led to over 50% of their seed investments reaching Series A, outperforming industry averages. The firm's success is attributed to its focus on overlooked sectors, quantitative analysis of founding teams and markets, and a robust platform team supporting portfolio companies post-investment. 645 Ventures' success demonstrates the potential of combining traditional VC methods with data-driven tools. Their approach of bringing growth-equity practices to seed-stage investing offers a new model for improving investment outcomes and supporting startups more effectively. This hybrid strategy could be the future of early-stage venture capital, balancing human insight with technological efficiency. #VentureHighlight

Wing Venture Capital is excited to unveil today the "Angels' Share 100", an exclusive list of the most active angel investors in the most promising startups in B2B technology. This project's mission is to serve as an information and relationship platform for the founder and angel community. Building a successful B2B technology company is hard work, and as early-stage investors and long-term company builders ourselves, we know we need all the help we can get! An important source of help has been the individual investors we work with. Individuals investing alongside us have consistently made powerful contributions to ultimate success. So we set out to study these “angels” in our midst. Who are they? Where did they come from? What allows them to make a difference? https://lnkd.in/gfFs4-bu

What makes ven^x an intriguing experiment worth watching? As Tim De Chant writes in TechCrunch, the recently launched collaborative group – which includes involvement from Hitachi Ventures, Myriad Venture Partners, SkyRiver Ventures, The Steele Group and Anzu Partners – could be the start of something bigger, fostering partnerships to support deep tech investments in a way that’s mutually beneficial instead of zero-sum. Read on to learn more about this new initiative, last week’s inaugural event and what ven^x aims to accomplish over time. #deeptech #VC #boston #venturecapital

When should a serious SaaS founder raise outside funding from institutional investors—and when should they not? There are only a small minority of software companies where a bigger investment bet with more risk could make sense for the founders. Here’s the surprising thing: VCs agree. A VC has yet to tell me, in person or on LinkedIn, “No, Greg, you’ve got it wrong. Most SaaS founders should raise funding from venture investors!" Ever. They know that VC funding is for a narrow slice of startups that can grow big fast enough with founders who want to bet big to create a monster exit. But VCs are not saying this out loud. We don't hear this at crowded VC pitch events. It’s a sin of omission—they know it but don’t say it. So we are left with the perception that “everyone’s doing it” and “this is how you play the game” because we only see the big headlines. But this week, a new VC investor, Gregg Scoresby, said it clearly in our discussion on the Practical Founders Podcast. Gregg has a seed fund, PHX Ventures, that supports B2B SaaS startups with high growth potential in Phoenix, Arizona. He is a 3X tech founder who is now investing his and others’ money to help create more big and successful software companies in Arizona. Gregg started, grew, and just sold CampusLogic, a Phoenix-based software company that had grown to $50 million in revenue before it was acquired in December 2021. Gregg started CampusLogic with his own money and then grew it with venture funding. But he was always capital-efficient and disciplined about funding, spending, and growth. So I asked Gregg, “When should a serious SaaS founder raise outside funding from institutional investors—and when should they not?” Here’s what Gregg said, loud and clear: “I don’t think founders should raise more just to raise more. In fact, if you could raise nothing, you should raise nothing. If you can build a company and achieve the type of outcome that you want to achieve and not raise capital, you should do that—100%. “But several things could justify a founder taking outside capital. Like when a B2B SaaS company is efficient and they’re a high growth company, but they’re in a very competitive market and they want to be number one in that market. You want to hire more salespeople, so you can’t wait until you’ve got a couple hundred thousand dollars in the bank.” “Or if you have to build a new product or there’s a lot of complexity with building in a regulated environment. Those can be good reasons for going faster with outside investment.” We talked about the PHX Ventures approach of supporting capital-efficient SaaS founders who don’t raise big and spend wildly. It’s a great episode with a practical investor and a savvy SaaS founder whom I have known as a friend for over ten years in Phoenix. Listen to this expert interview at https://lnkd.in/gh_bVR9u. #practicalfounders

I love learning about companies that swim against the stream and innovate beyond their industry's norms. Recently I read about Thrive Capital, and it's a great example of this. Founded by Josh Kushner in 2010 while he was still at Harvard Business School, Thrive Capital is trying to redefine venture capital. Here's a prime example: ▪️ Last month, according to the FT, Thrive committed a whopping USD 1bn to OpenAI’s lastest USD 7bn funding round. ▪️ To put this in perspective, USD 1bn is nearly a third of the size of its 8th fund raised in 2022, which had USD 3.3bn of committed capital! ▪️ To add to this, Thrive had already invested USD 130m in an earlier round, bought an undisclosed amount of employee stock, and secured an option to invest another USD 1bn by the end of 2025. That is a crazy level of commitment. Thrive and Josh’s approach is apparently to stay loyal to their companies, support them during crises (as Josh did for Sam Altman when he was ousted by OpenAI’s board), and focus their funds on a select few companies. This last point is where Thrive truly stands out. “Betting a billion dollars or more on a behemoth inverts the classic venture model: firms typically write dozens of small cheques in young start-ups; most fail, but the flops are more than offset by a few spectacular successes........Most VCs split funds between dozens of start-ups, but the vast majority of a Thrive fund will go to just 10-15. The firm has put 10 per cent or more of earlier funds to work in single companies, including workplace messaging app Slack, GitHub, Instagram and Stripe.” (Quote from Financial Times article "Thrive Capital: the venture firm staking billions on a few big bets") What makes Thrive’s story even more intriguing is that Josh is the brother of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. Unlike the rest of his family, he shuns the limelight, is known for his politeness, and has built his and Thrive’s brand through silence and mystique. In an age where everyone is trying to be louder than the next person, this approach is both fascinating and refreshing. Anybody have thoughts on whether this "bet big on a few companies" approach will prove to be successful over a 20 - 30 year cycle? #VentureCapital #Leadership #ThriveCapital