Sam Baker’s Post

Ilya and Alex distill for us The Venture Mindset and how we — as corporations and individuals — can apply tenets from venture capital to our own lives, transforming traditional organizations into hubs for innovation. The book is full of powerful, practical lessons on changing how we think and act: from avoiding groupthink by encouraging dissent to internalizing it's home runs that matter, not strikeouts. The authors share many of the lessons I learned the hard way over decades in technology. I found this a digestible, propulsive, and insightful read for those within and beyond the walls of Silicon Valley.  https://lnkd.in/gdWiQmut

Opinion : Just like physicists used to have to live near cyclotrons sites 50 years ago to do their work - it seems likely that the best inventors will want to move near the guarded military-like bases with the supercomputers that have autonomous invention capabilities. But if these sites are in remote areas of the U.S. where it’s no problem to build a new local nuclear plant- they need to be a “hip” place to live - in advance - because unlike the los amamos days, people (yes, even scientists) today suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out) and need to live in a cool place. The best practice would be to establish attractive remote infrastructures way in advance in order to draw in the best global talent. Worst case scenario would be losing talent to remote nuclear powered areas in another country. An interesting tactic to get started near term is hosting “world economic forum” type events in remote regions of the U.S. - because (IMHO) there is no way places like Davos are safe from swarm drones - and remote venues will be the future meeting grounds for world leaders / important people to meet up. This is where our wonderful American capital markets come in! I just hope Eric gets in early and has a nice spot in the best part of town 🫡🇺🇸

While I've always seen parallels between the worlds of innovation, foresight, and venture capital, I thought this perspective from ryan hays did a great job highlighting the connections in interesting ways I hadn't considered. The importance of seeing around corners and embracing failure are timeless concepts that always resonate, whether you're starting a company, developing a new product, or driving systems-level change. https://lnkd.in/gZHKYFcp

I am either behind on my Blog Venture VINE from Last Week, or I am ahead for next week. I prefer to think positively, I am ahead. This week's subject is CVC | Corporate Venture Capital as I lay out a 3 phase framework to get going and if you are interested, my partners and I at Nour Capital can absolutely help you guide the way to your 2025 Innovation Agenda. I appreciate all the content on CVC from Counterpart Ventures and Global Corporate Venturing and look forward to seeing more CVC progress in 2025. https://lnkd.in/gqPnUzk5

Very intersting and useful article A must read

Many of our customers are VCs and we love to share when founders and investors partner together on a round of funding to build great companies: $100 M+ fundings: Enfabrica (high-performance networking chips for data centers) Round: Series C Amount: $115 million Lead Investors: Spark Capital, Asset & Resource Management Holding Company (ARM HoldCo) Investors: Cisco Investments, Maverick Silicon, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and Venturetech Alliance LLC. Kong Inc. (software that helps businesses manage and secure APIs) Round: Series E Amount: $125 million Lead Investors: Tiger Global Management and Balderton Capital Investors: Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and 137 Ventures as well as previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, CRV, Sapphire Ventures, and Notable Capital. Skydio (drones that use AI for autonomous flight: Round: Series E extension Amount: $170 million Investors: KDDI Corporation and Axon as well as previous investor Linse Capital. $10 M+ fundings: Agentio (platform to connect brands with YouTube content creators) Round: Series A Amount: $12 million Lead Investor: Benchmark Investors: Craft Ventures and Alley Group Distyl AI (AI-driven workflows tailored to an organization's specific needs) Round: Series A Amount: $20 million Lead Investors: Lightspeed, with Khosla Ventures Investors: Coatue, and Dell Technologies Capital Spines (AI to assist authors in publishing their books) Round: Series A Amount: $16 million Lead Investors: Zeev Ventures Investors: Aleph, M-Fund Club, and LionTree Seed and Pre-Seed Rounds of < $10 M+ funding: Jimini Health (human therapists with AI assistants) Round: Pre-Seed Amount: $8 million Investors: Zetta Venture Partners, LionBird, PsyMed Ventures, BoxGroup, and Arkitekt Ventures Congratulations to these companies and investors. There is a lot of work and effort that goes into closing a round of funding and the relationship between the founding team and investors is forged in large part during this process. Trust has to be built early and sustained to keep the relationship, and business, thriving. #venturecapital #startup #funding #preseed #seriesa

Five key steps can help business leaders of large organizations consistently grow new ventures into the next corporate unicorn: 1. Get buy-in: Align key decision-makers on a clearly defined set of success criteria to ensure new ventures get the appropriate amount of runway to succeed. 2. Keep it separate: Ringfence personnel, resources, and capital from the core business, so the venture does not compete with core business priorities yet can still tap the endowments of the core business. 3. Reward quick wins: Deploy a series of capital funding rounds as the new venture reaches milestones that prove its viability and build the business with conviction. 4. Don’t go it alone: Deploy a “build, buy, partner” model that uses internal endowments, brings along ecosystem partners, and strategically acquires complementary capabilities, market access or both. 5. Cross the chasm by starting small: Use bite-sized experiments that identify a scalable recipe at low cost or risk, rather than making a large investment in untested solutions with a high risk of failure.

I am reposting my last Venture VINE blog about CVC | Corporate Venture Capital as I normally release it on a Monday, but did so over the weekend. A really easy playbook to follow if you wanna launch CVC at your corporate, the nice thing about my playbook is that you can do it one phase at a time, no need to go all in at the start. reach out if you wanna see how easy it is. https://lnkd.in/g9vdiVZn

Curious about corporate venture building and its significance? Dive into innovation insights with Whataventure's blog. Discover why it's crucial for modern businesses. #Innovation #VentureBuilding