Anand Chandrasekaran

One of my proudest moments as an investor occurred today as Alaffia Health announced its series A because it shows how the Aperture® Venture Capital vision of multi-level, multi-generational #impactinvesting is succeeding in the marketplace. Here’s the model in its most basic form : ✅As diverse fund managers with meaningful capital to allocate, we are changing the VC landscape every day just by doing our day jobs. ✅As Black/Brown investors with ~40 years experience collectively, Aperture GPs have access to talent /excellence that others do not, so our portfolio *organically* is more inclusive by race, gender and geography even while optimizing for financial outcomes (all about the alpha). ✅Our most successful portco’s are using financial #innovation to solve market problems that impact underrepresented demographics and underserved communities. Alaffia Health is a shining example of the impact portion of our overall fund thesis, and we couldn’t be prouder of TJ Ademiluyi and Adun Akanni, MPH, PMP - the dynamic brother-sister founder duo whose vision we have steadfastly supported on their journey. Congratulations to TJ and Adun from William Crowder and myself, as well as the whole Aperture team- Marjorie King Philip McKenzie Yves Louis-Jacques Tanvi Lal Michelle Dhansinghani Lisha Bell Katie Kelly Amy Chung Cindy Chong, CFA Brian Fernandes-Halloran Monroe France Jayden Pantel Darren Herman Evan Wladis Neal Triplett Thomas Scriven Peter Ammon Irina Bit-Babik Tim Milanich Rob Rahbari

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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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📈 It's not 100% clear where the economy is headed, but given how busy this summer has been for Cervin Ventures and other investors I talk to, there is momentum building in early-stage B2B tech (and yes, beyond just the AI app companies). Read more about the state of the market in Cervin's Q2 recap -- as well as some recent updates from portfolio companies such as Catch+Release, LaunchDarkly and Anvilogic.

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As an early stage founder, you want two things from any solution (tool/person): 1. Peace of Mind that the problem is getting handled -- often in an ambiguous & broad problem space where the requirements are ill defined & subject to evolve 2. Cost-effectiveness given tight runway #1 is *far* more important than #2 -- most of the time you optimize for cost-effectiveness over peace of mind, you end up paying more and getting worse results.

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Big announcement below! 👇 Let's talk about the current state of GP-LP affairs: 🤯Emerging VC managers have absolutely exploded over the past 5 years. 📈 At the same time, more and more data has surfaced that shows that emerging VC firms tend to outperform larger, established firms. 🤔 All of this has made it intriguing but tough for LPs to know where to direct their attention. 🛍 GPs frequently meet LPs at conferences who are window shopping but not committed to the asset class or emerging managers. 🧾 And both crews get overwhelmed by transactional convos. So Sydney Paige Thomas and I created Abundance. Abundance is a private, nomination-based retreat for active LPs and top emerging GPs to form new experiences together and build lasting relationships. Why Abundance? Abundance is knowing that there is more than enough for more than one to succeed. And a single win within a community is a win for the community itself. The journey of an emerging VC manager from 1st close to final close or Fund 1 to Fund 2 is (1) communal and (2) requires an abundant mindset. LPs look for structure and confidence to feel comfortable investing in early VC firms. Yet many of the feeds we scroll and conferences we attend reinforce inherent power dynamics and transactional thinking, which allows scarcity mindset to creep in for emerging GPs. Some of the best events I’ve attended have been intentionally non-transactional, e.g. Camp Hustle, Recast Summit, and other GPs’ AGMs. The fundraising success stories we see usually involve a community (usually of other GPs & LPs) coming together to support and open doors for the emerging GP. We designed Abundance to be an immersive gathering that fosters these connections. Starting tonight, ~100 GPs and LPs are descending upon Seattle for the inaugural Abundance retreat. This has been under wraps for months and I can’t wait to see it come to life! Thanks in advance to our awesome sponsors who were the earliest believers in this vision: Sydecar, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Gunderson Dettmer, & Zelda Ventures. And shoutout to my dad Ed Illig for logo design & Halle Kaplan-Allen being the first sponsor to say yes 🤩 Presented by The Council Capital & Symphonic Capital.

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The Council's first SPV of 2024 is down in the books and oversubscribed. Running SPVs where we have pro rata or extra allocation in fund deals is a muscle we are building pretty late in the game as a firm. As a solo GP with a tiny team, it's crippling to think of the extra work required and risk of not meeting platform minimums to run an SPV. But 7 of our port co's have recently raised follow on funding where we had pro rata. These are awesome deals for our LPs, angel members, and syndicate community. We simply can't afford to let them slip through the cracks. These allocations are only becoming more valuable as our firm grows, so we must start NOW! Proud to say this one went off without a hitch and our syndicate community is small but THRIVING. Wish us luck as we keep building. Note our SPVs are now on Sydecar. The best way to get access is to know someone on The Council Fund team and be on our SPV email list. **What's an SPV?** An SPV is a Special Purpose Vehicle. It allows multiple angel investors to pool together into one larger investment into a company. This helps the founder keep paperwork and investor relations to a minimum (less names on the cap table = simplicity!). When people say they're investing with a "syndicate" or they are "syndicating a deal," SPV is the entity and process by which they do that. A "syndicate" is like a community of people that invest via SPVs together.

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VC funding in healthcare has been more resilient than in other industries. Here are some key takeaways from recent Carta data: 👉 At the priced seed, Series A, and Series B stages, dilution for health startups has noticeably decreased, while dilution for SaaS startups has stayed flat or increased slightly. 👉 In priced seed rounds, median dilution for healthcare companies dipped to 14.2%, compared to 20% for SaaS.  👉 The frequency of bridge rounds surged in the health sector in Q1, jumping to 44.3% from 36.9% in Q4 2023. This is the first significant increase in bridge rounds in healthcare over SaaS since early 2022. 👉 More founder-friendly terms for health startups may result from enduring VC interest since COVID. Healthcare has remained strong through economic turmoil, enabling higher valuations with smaller round sizes. What are the implications? The healthcare sector might see a rise in new ventures due to favorable investment conditions and lower dilution rates. The surge in bridge rounds suggests that certain sectors within healthcare face unique challenges that require interim financing solutions. Founders and investors in the healthcare space- what are your thoughts on this? I’d love to hear from you. If you know a founder innovating in healthcare, tag them in the comments! The Artemis Fund is especially interested in groundbreaking care tech companies. You can check out Carta’s full blog linked in the comments. If you haven’t read our latest blog on care tech, you’ll find that there too. #healthcare #caretech #fundraising

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I always recommend founders consider doing a secondary transaction and taking some money off the table, if they can: - This applies to Series B or later only. If you’re doing a seed round and asking the investors about secondaries, it might be seen as a red flag move. - Back in the day, I sold some of my shares through secondaries. Those shares could have been worth a lot more when the company exited. Funny enough, I didn’t even use the money at all, it was just kept in the bank. But the psychological factor alone was well worth it. - What do you do with the money? If you’re under any sort of personal debt, pay off the debt first ASAP. You can’t focus on running the company if you’re under a personal financial stress. Or you can buy something nice (but small), and get back to work.  - How much do you sell? It really depends, but personally I’d say less than $1mm. Somewhere around a down payment for a house (not the whole purchase price) or kids’ college money would be reasonable, IMO (in California, this means something like $500K-700K; again there’s no hard rule and everyone’s situation is different.) - Let’s say the company is doing a Series B round at $100mm premoney value, founder has 25% shares, then selling 1% = $1mm pre tax = ~$650K after long term capital gain tax, state tax, and other fees, while still keeping the founder share reduced by only 1% - Again this 1% could be worth $10mm if the company reaches Series C and becomes a unicorn, but it's not how the math is supposed to work, you have to factor in the psychological factor and again my personal opinion is it's well worth it - If you're selling, other people (eg other cofounders and early employees) should also be given a chance to sell - up to x% of their respective shares - Don’t try to re-up the shares immediately by asking the board to give additional stock options so you can make up for the shares sold. You sell, you keep less ownership - plain and simple. Don’t be greedy. CEO stock options are usually reserved for hired guns (professional CEOs who might come in later), or there might be exceptions made for founders who’ve been with the company 7+ years and pretty heavily diluted, but the latter is exception not norm

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This is fascinating. My two portfolio companies on the fastest path to Series A have kept the leanest teams. Both of them are lingering around cash flow positive on a monthly basis. One is growing gangbusters, one is growing nicely. Good data below to show that these activities are being rewarded. We're still in cockroach times. Also fwiw, I'm constantly amazed by and learning from Peter Walker. If you're interested in the data of venture funding (AND IF YOU'RE A FOUNDER, YOU SHOULD BE), then follow Peter.

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Today, GTMfund’s is excited to announce to launch of Operator, its first incubated company. Max Altschuler (founder of GTMfund) teamed up with co-founder Adam M. (design engineer and 0-1 builder) and co-founder Mark Kosoglow (Outreach employee #1 and former SVP of Global Sales) to create Operator.ai alongside an insanely talented team Pleasant Middelhof, Jeremy Jonas, Carl Gunderson. We've entered a period called “The Great Ignore”. Spam and irrelevant, poorly-automated outbound campaigns are running rampant.   Operator gives you an easy-to-use Growth Engineer that allows you to build and enrich lists with accurate data, and run experiments and queries using AI to generate highly targeted outreach.    Check out their website to get updates, early access, and see how they are taking the world back to 2 touches meant to attract buyers into conversations that convert, instead of 20 touches meant to make sure you hit your activity number: https://www.operator.ai/

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Crucial differences between Private Equity investment vs Venture Capital investment. This will help entrepreneurs at growth stage make the right choices when approaching financiers!

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💰Sharing a List of 80 Black-led VC funds (US based): About this list: I realized that I couldn’t find a current list of Black-led funds as of 2024 when a lot of new funds have launched over the last couple of years including GPs Sydney Paige Thomas, Terri Burns and more. I have been gathering a list of these funds in my network, and that I could find publicly over time so wanted to share with the ecosystem. Only 2% of VC funds are Black-led: I found 80 funds (maybe there’s more!). There are 3,417 VC firms in the US (according to NVCA). Founders - These funds invest from pre-seed through growth, some with a focus on diverse founders, others more broadly. ⅔ of them have OPEN funding applications that I’ve linked in the sheet. LPs - As mentioned, a number of these funds might not be in the databases used for tracking, so hope to get some more Black-led funds on your radar! VCs - maybe there are some funds you should get to know for deal sharing, etc 👉🏾Link to full list here: https://lnkd.in/gktBhY-W

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As we dive into 2024, the Series A fundraising landscape is becoming increasingly daunting. Investment standards are soaring, and fewer startups are making the cut. Series A investors are finding many seed stage companies too premature. The median valuation jump from seed to Series A skyrocketed from $19.5 million in Q1 2022 to $28.7 million in Q1 2024. Investors now demand stronger revenue performance, targeting $2 million to $3 million in ARR, up from $1 million to $2 million. Alarmingly, only 12% of Q1 2022 seed startups secured Series A funding within two years, down from 31.8% in Q1 2020. #venture #earlystage #seedtoseriesa #seed #seriesa #inspireglobalventures https://lnkd.in/gW4bkcNy

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Thrilled to announce the launch of our inaugural edition of Beyond Benchmarks at Emergence Capital. This comprehensive report dives deep into the metrics and trends shaping the early-stage enterprise cloud market. A huge thank you to our VC partners and contributors for making this possible! Here's a sneak peek of our findings: --> 60% of companies have already integrated GenAI into their service offerings, with another 20% planning to do so this year. --> While most companies use OpenAI as their primary LLM, many are experimenting with multiple models. We’re seeing a trend toward intelligently routing GenAI inference requests based on cost, performance, and security. --> Companies that have implemented GenAI are showing promising results, with a 7% higher NDR compared to those that haven’t. Beyond Benchmarks goes further with more GenAI trends, insights on the current fundraising environment, and key performance metrics. Our goal is to provide founders and their teams with valuable benchmarks to help them make better-informed decisions. At Emergence Capital, we're committed to helping founders build iconic companies. Dive into the full report here: https://lnkd.in/g6bnvAZM

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Worth reading: Situationsl Awareness by Leopold Aschenbrenner PDF : https://lnkd.in/gkxQ3yMD Web site: https://lnkd.in/gyJUCBhb Interesting perspective, time of course will tell.

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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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I'm excited to announce that Mindset Care, the platform designed to simplify the application process for Social Security Disability benefits for individuals with mental illnesses and their caregivers, has raised $13 million. Science led the latest funding round and has backed the company since it launched from Science Inc.’s startup studio. We are thrilled to have Wellington Management (Van Jones, Jackson Cummings), Tubbs Ventures, Enable Ventures (Regina "Gina" Kline, Margaret Knowles), XYZ, and LivEdge Capital on board to enable Mindset to meet the growing demand for disability assistance. 17 million Americans live with a serious mental illness and qualify for disability benefits. Yet, it is estimated that about 65% of initial disability applications are denied, often due to errors or incomplete information​. This financing will enable Mindset Care to expand into partnerships with community and large-scale organizations, including local mental health nonprofits, government agencies, and homeless shelters. It has been a privilege to work with Darren Webb, Mindset’s co-founder and CEO, and see his passion and commitment to supporting people struggling with their mental health and their caregivers firsthand. Mindset Care’s community outreach teams work directly in homeless shelters, corrections facilities, veteran organizations, food drives, and rehab facilities to find and assist eligible applicants. Mindset’s platform utilizes AI to handle operational tasks, streamlining and automating the prequalification of prospective claimants and reducing the time required from weeks to less than an hour. At Science, we remain steadfast in our dedication to supporting companies as they strive to build a brighter tomorrow for society. Organizations like Mindset Care are deploying innovative solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges, and we are honored to be part of their journey. We congratulate the entire Mindset Care team for their dedication and upward momentum. We are thrilled to continue working alongside Mindset Care and uplifting their critical role in addressing America’s mental health crisis. *Fun fact: I connected with Enable Ventures thru the Columbia Business School alum network. Grateful for their support. Link to announcement in comments below. #venturecapital #mentalhealth #digitalhealth #disabilityawareness

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