Podcasts about rre ventures

Spring Health raised $100 million in a Series E funding round, increasing its valuation to $3.3 billion, a 65% rise from 2021. Generation Investment Management led this round with participation from Kinnevik, The William K Warren Foundation, RRE Ventures, and Northzone. Founded in 2016 and based in New York, Spring Health has garnered nearly $467 million in total funding. The company partners with employers to provide mental health services using AI to speed up care delivery. Recent weeks have also seen significant funding activity in the mental health sector, with Talkiatry raising $130 million and Headway securing $100 million, valued at $2.3 billion. While not at 2021 levels, funding for mental health startups remains stable.Learn more on this news visit us at: https://greyjournal.net/news/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.Tom Loverro, General Partner at IVP is our guest as part of our Venture Unlocked Shorts series intended to go deep on a single topic.We revisit Tom's Twitter post from early 2023, which spoke to the market shift that was in motion and the difficulties start-ups would face in a capital-constrained market. Specifically, he spoke about 2024 as being a time of reckoning for many companies that were built with growth at all costs mentality. We went through that original post, and what's transpired since then, including why it's time for well-positioned startups to go on offense again. Tom brought a lot of interesting insights for founders and VCs alike, so we hope you enjoy the episode. About Tom Loverro:Tom Loverro is a General Partner at IVP in Menlo Park, California, where he focuses on investing in enterprise software and fintech companies. Since joining IVP in 2015, he has served as a Board Director or Observer for several companies, including Attentive, NerdWallet, Paper, Podium, Skydio, and TaxBit. He has also co-led investments in Amplitude, Datadog, GitHub, IEX, OnDeck, and Tanium.Prior to IVP, Tom was a Principal at RRE Ventures, focusing on early and mid-stage startups, and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Lightbank. He also served as Senior Director of Product Marketing at Drobo, Inc., and began his career as an Investment Banking Analyst at Goldman Sachs within the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Group.Tom holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, with concentrations in Finance, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship & Innovation. He earned a BA in Political Science and History from Stanford University.In this episode, we discuss:(01:37) - Discussion on Tom's Twitter post from January 2023 and its context(02:09) - Tom's insights on the shift from a zero interest rate environment(02:59) - The concept of a mass extinction event for startups in 2023-2024(03:31) - Comparison with the Great Financial Crisis and its impact on startups(04:01) - The role of venture excess in 2021 and its aftermath(05:00) - Discussion on venture fund deployment and its impact on startups(06:49) - Dry powder theory and its implications on startup funding(07:49) - Insights on current market conditions and startup valuations(09:14) - Strategies startups adopted in response to market conditions(10:27) - The three archetypes of startups in the post-2021 era(13:18) - Observations on fundraising challenges and potential outcomes for startups(14:48) - Impact of LP capital dynamics on venture funding(16:34) - The evolving role of private equity in acquiring tech startups(18:09) - Comparison of venture fund impacts on early and late-stage investors(21:30) - Discussion on the IPO market and its high bar for startups(24:19) - The broader ecosystem of liquidity options for startups today(25:41) - Tom's recent post on shifting from defensive to offensive strategies(28:47) - Characteristics of startups that should consider going on offense(30:00) - Importance of survival, product-market fit, and unit economics for startups(31:50) - Potential exogenous events and their impact on market predictions(34:00) - Tom's advice to founders on acting with convictionI'd love to know what you took away from this conversation with Tom. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you'd like to be considered as a guest or have someone you'd like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com

Wine: 2014 Chardonnay, Herencia del Valle Elisabeth Rosario is an outsourced communications strategist that works with startups of all sizes and venture capital firms. As an independent contractor since 2016, her clients have included venture firms such as: Lux Capital, Renegade Ventures, Spero Ventures (sole LP is Pierre Omidyar), Equal Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Innovation Endeavours (founding partner Eric Shmidt). Startup clients have included: Sonoro, Koinz, Pattern Brands, Pitch, ServiceTitan, Own It (a book) by Ellevest's Sallie Krawcheck, Emi Couple, Token, Flutterwave, Morty, Looking Glass Factory, Eight Sleep, Dipsea, Loft Orbital, and more. Previously, Elisabeth was the Director of Communications at Spark Capital, an early stage venture capital firm that has backed companies like Twitter, Oculus VR, Slack, Warby Parker and Cruise Automation (acquired by GM). As the firm's first in-house communications hire, she helped startup founders and the firm's investment team to develop and share their points of view with the world. She also helped to lead platform initiatives with the firm's community of entrepreneurs: building infrastructure, resources and programming to empower and connect over 100 portfolio companies. Before that, Elisabeth was a key part of the growth of various PR agencies where she led media relations campaigns for over 100 disruptive entrepreneurs and startups including Rakuten's Buy.com, Trello, ClassPass, HowAboutWe, HelloFresh, Squarespace, Zola and Academy award-winning sci-fi film Ex Machina. In 2015, Adweek named Elisabeth on its 30 Under 30 in the PR Industry list. In 2018, Bustle named her on their list of Must-Follow Latinx. She's a graduate of Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business. Instagram TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tom Loverro is a Partner @ IVP where he has led or was actively involved in investments in Amplitude, Coinbase, Hashicorp and Datadog to name a few. As a result of his investing success, Tom was named to Forbes Midas List in 2021. Prior to joining IVP, Tom was a Principal at RRE Ventures. In Today's Episode with Tom Loverro We Discuss: 1.) The Entry into Venture: How did Tom make his way into venture first with RRE? How did the role with IVP come about? Does Tom believe we will see many venture investors move firms with much of their existing expected carry cut in half with the changing landscape? What is Tom's biggest advice to someone looking to make their way into the venture world? 2.) The Calm Before the Storm: Why does Tom believe now is the calm before the storm? Why does Tom urge founders to go out and raise now before the storm hits? Is Tom already seeing pricing coming down for both early and late-stage companies? 3.) When The Storm Hits: When does Tom believe the storm will hit? Why does Tom believe when it does hit, it will be worse than The Great Financial Crisis? How will VCs respond when the storm hits? How will it impact their investing cadence? How will LPs respond when the storm hits? Will they cut back their manager commitments? Does Tom have hope that their will be a new class of LPs in this new economic cycle? 4.) The Rounds That Happen When The Storm Hits: Does Tom believe we will see a wave of down rounds when the storm hits? Why are they less common than people think? In the eye of the storm, will we see further layoffs? Will we see firesales? Will we see a tidal wave of shutdowns? Will large multi-stage funds with huge amounts of dry powder change their deployment pace? The Survival Guide for the Storm: 1.) Raise Now: Why does Tom believe that startups should raise now, not later? What amount of runway should they raise for in this environment? 2.) Cut, Cut and Cut Some More: What amount of runway should startups be cutting to get to? How will this impact marketing spend? Why are your marketing dollars more powerful now than ever before? 3.) Focus on Survival Not Valuation: What does Tom mean by this? How can founders gain leverage with VCs when raising today? How can founders instil a sense of urgency in their raise with investors? 4.) Bring on Operators with Experience: Why would operators with experience join a struggling startup? Will operators with experience not have a flight to safety and stay at their well-paid FANNG role? Does this potential operator not shorten runway even further as they are often expensive? 5.) Unit Economics over Growth: How can founders show investors a superior profile of unit economics moving forward? Do investors not want both unit econ and growth today? 6.) Play Your Cards Right and Then Go on Offense: How does Tom advise founders on the right time to go on offense? 7.) Be Decisive, Half Measures Rarely Succeed: How does Tom define a half-measure? What is so wrong with half-measures?

In this episode, we cover: 00:00:00 - Introduction  00:02:20 - “B's” Background and the Beginning of Axle Payments 00:06:40 - Why Transportation and Freight 00:17:00 - The Details and Risks of Working with the Industry  00:22:45 - Client Changes from Working with Axle Payments 00:28:30 - Axle Payments' Future   00:33:15 - How Axle Payments Makes Money 00:35:50 - The Supply Chain Crisis   00:39:00 - The Future of the Industry Links:Axle Payments: https://www.axlepayments.com TranscriptWill: Welcome to Perfectly Boring. I am Will Coffield from Riot Ventures.Jason: And I'm Jason Black from RRE Ventures.Will: And today on the podcast, we've got Bharath Krishnamoorthy, who is the founder and CEO of Axle Payments. And Bharath is joining us today to talk about the unbelievably boring and strange world of freight intermediaries and invoice factoring. Jason, this is a business you know pretty well—have known Bharath for a couple of years—but this was a really interesting discussion. You know, like, what were some of the key takeaways that you had from our discussion with [B 00:00:37]?Jason: Yeah, I think this is another classic case of an under-digitized industry that runs the world, right? It's a multi-trillion dollar industry that's run on paper, fax, Excel, phone calls, and human relationships. And you've got these freight intermediaries that actually benefit from all those relationships, those things are actually fantastic. That's what they want to be focusing their time on that allows them to offer great services to their customers, but we've got a new kind of class of tech companies coming in that are offering new financial services that allow for, kind of, QuickPay and faster payments in the industry. And that's a benefit to everybody involved, but the incumbents have a difficult time actually meeting those new demands of the market.And I think what B has built with Axle Payments is a way for that industry to focus on what they're best at, which I think is what we want to see technology and financial services do. So, I thought it was a fantastic discussion. And before we get too deep into the weeds, let's kick off the interview with B.Will: All right everybody, we are joined today by Bharath Krishnamoorthy, who is the founder and CEO of Axle Payments. Bharath, thanks for joining us today.Bharath: Yeah, thank you for having me, Will.Will: So, that I don't botch this going forward, Bharath actually goes by B. So, B, appreciate you being with us today. And I think maybe as kind of a way of kicking off the podcast, what we've been kind of doing throughout the first couple of episodes is having the founder give a little bit of a background just on, sort of, themselves personally, kind of your personal and professional background that ultimately led you to founding Axle Pay, and then we'll kind of dive into the business from there.Bharath: Sure. Sounds good. So, my personal background, I grew up in New Jersey, moved to Virginia in high school with my family, studied economics at JMU in Virginia, and then moved to New York for law school. So, graduated from Columbia Law School, practiced as an attorney here in New York, doing M&A and private equity work, which is about as fun as it sounds.And sort of parallel with this, my co-founder, Shawn, who's my high school best friend, had taken a slightly different path. So, you know, he went to UVA for school and then started working in the FinTech space, a couple of different FinTech startups of varying sizes. And throughout this, we'd started a bunch of small businesses together. Those have been the projects where I'd felt the most energized and the most excited to actually do work. It seems sort of obvious to me, and I think to him as well, that down the road, that's what we ultimately wanted to do, right, was to build something really dope together, something big enough that it could be our full time jobs, right, where we could quit our jobs and just work on something awesome together.And the obvious difficult question was, you know, what are we going to build? So, in 2017 when I was working as a lawyer and Shawn was working at this tech startup in DC, we were taking these buses back and forth to visit each other all the time. Probably you know Greyhound, Megabus, you may or may not know that there's, like, a dozen other smaller regional operators that all kind of operate similarly in the same areas. And we realized that these companies are just, they're kind of like airlines in terms of their business model, but just way lower tech. And so we came up with this idea to build a revenue optimization solution for them that would basically help them with their pricing and scheduling in order to maximize the money they earned.Started working on that; we have to quit our jobs, incorporated the company. We got a few customers within, I think, about six months, we were doing about 100 grand in annualized revenue. So, it was, you know, it was working a little bit. And what we realized is it wasn't going to work much more than that because the market in the US was just very small, right, that if we totally knocked it out of the park and did everything right, maybe we get to a million dollars a year, which sounds like a lot of money, but really isn't that much if you're banking on everything going perfectly.So, that started this process of us really taking a step back and trying to find a better opportunity. And we basically just, like, pivoted over and over again over the course of two years to various opportunities in the transportation space. Eventually we came up with this framework, right, that whatever we decided to do had to meet three criteria: it should be something that we thought we had a relative advantage at given our backgrounds, it should be something that we cared about solving, right, so a problem that we would feel good about working on today, tomorrow, and in ten years; and it should be a really attractive business opportunity. And it's pretty difficult to find something that satisfies all three of those.Where we eventually found some traction was in the world of freight finance. And we found this problem which, at a high level, was solving cashflow problems for small logistics businesses. And it struck all three chords, right? It was at the intersection of transportation and finance. By this point, we had a lot of exposure and a lot of relationships in the transportation industry, and both of our professional backgrounds very closely tied to the financial world.Second, it was a pain point we cared about, right? It's not that we were coming from a long line of truckers or had some extensive background in the logistics industry, but we were small business owners, and we know that for small business owners, cashflow problems are often the most salient problems they face. And so the idea of solving that problem for thousands of companies was just very compelling for us. The first client we closed literally had his COO recording him signing the contract because it was such a life-changing experience for him. And I was like, “Man, if we can just do that again, I'm going to feel really, really happy.”And then the third is that it was, it's kind of a no-brainer business opportunity, right? Huge market, highly fragmented, the incumbents are notoriously low tech, so there's a really clear opportunity to come in, build a better tech-enabled solution and really consolidate the space. You know, that was mid-2019, and it's sort of an off to the races since then.Jason: What drew you to transportation as an industry to begin with?Bharath: Pretty random. It was, we're literally riding on those buses thinking of business ideas, and we're like, well, here's a busine—here's an industry that needs help, right? The bus industry clearly needs better technology. And it started there, and then through that, we just ended up meeting a bunch of other founders and investors who work in transportation technology. I think over the course of those two years, we really started expanding our lens.I think initially, we were very focused on the passenger transportation side, just given that's an industry that we had direct exposure with. Buses aren't sexy, but passenger transportation is sexy because of Uber and Lyft, and freight was just sort of this other part of the ecosystem we didn't really think about. But over time, we realize, like, hey, from a business perspective, freight transportation is actually much more interesting. A) there's just way more money flowing through that ecosystem, there's just there's a lot going on, and it's a lot more complex, right? So, there's a lot of different types of opportunities. And B) the bar is so low right now, in terms of where the state of the art is, so there's a lot of room to come in and deliver a ton of value to the companies that are operating in it by building them better technological solutions.Jason: As you're starting to look at transportation, what drew you away from the passenger side into freight? And what does a typical freight operation in the US look like today?Bharath: So, a typical freight operation in the US today, there's basically three key players in the space to understand: you've got carriers on one end, which are the actual trucking companies who are getting paid to haul freight; you have shippers on the other end, which are the end customers, right, so these are companies like Target or WalMart who paying to have their freight moved; and in between, you have 100,000 freight intermediaries, which is an umbrella term that captures freight brokers, freight forwarders, 3PLs. And what these companies have in common is that they're essentially acting as outsourced logistics arms for the shippers. And they'll find carriers who have excess capacity and connect them with the shippers who have too much demand. So, they'll essentially broker those transactions.What's interesting about this ecosystem is that it's under a lot of stress right now and it's changing very rapidly, right? So, these freight brokers have essentially operated in the same way for decades, but over the past five or six years, there's been this rapid influx of venture-backed, tech-enabled freight intermediaries. These are companies like Convoy, Uber Freight, Flexport that basically raised a bunch of venture capital and used it to build software that's enabling them to disintermediate this customer segment. And in part, they're doing that by expanding their product offering to include payments and financial services.And that's what's putting so much pressure on these incumbents to try and modernize, right? They're not just going to lie down and give up. They're going to try to figure out how can we get those same capabilities, ideally without having to raise a billion dollars in venture capital ourselves? And that's where we come in, right? We're essentially building the software and the tools to give that long tail of the market the equivalent capabilities of the Convoys and Ubers of the world.Jason: And can you give us a sense of scale for that market? Like, what is the topology of the industry? My sense is very fragmented, lots of small mom-and-pop kind of business operations. Could you put some numbers on that?Bharath: Yeah, that's a great question for people who are not from the logistics industry, the first time they hear the numbers, it's kind of like shocking how big it is, right? So, in the US alone, there's over $700 billion generated in freight movements, right? So, payments to carriers and to freight brokers. And freight broker segment of that market—the freight brokers and freight forwarders—rake in almost $250 billion. So, it's a pretty sizable segment.In terms of how fragmented that is, there's about 100,000-plus freight intermediaries in the US. And the top four of them combined are only raking in 10% of the segment's revenue. So, there's a lot of fragmentation. So, when we look at the market, we see just a ton of these small mom-and-pop shops that are, you know, small relative to these big billion-dollar companies, but meaningful businesses, you know, raking in millions of dollars a year, often employing 5, 10, 15-plus people. So, it's a very, very fragmented market.And each of them does things in their own way, their business model is slightly different from other ones, they maybe add-on other services that other ones don't provide, or they don't provide other services that some of their competitors do. So, it's very interesting, complex space.Will: And, B, as the venture-backed companies have moved into the space, wha—I mean, aside from having better digital tools, has there been a key mechanism that they've used to win over customers and build market share? I mean, is there, like, a key differentiator that the Flexport and Convoys are introducing to the market that created an opportunity for Axle Pay?Bharath: I think it's hard to narrow it down to a single one. The industry was just very outdated and these companies—the Convoys, the Flexports—they're doing a lot of things differently, and that combination of things is making it very compelling to the shippers. One in particular that has really changed expectations in the market is around this payments and financial services, right? And this is particularly true for the digital freight brokers, right, which are the Convoys and Ubers.So historically, the broker didn't need to pay the carrier until they received payment from the shipper, right? So, if the shipper pays him 30 days after the load is moved, then after they receive payment, the broker will pay whatever they owe to the carrier then. What's changed is that Convoy and Uber have normalized the practice of offering their carriers next day payments. In the industry is called QuickPay. So, as carriers have come to expect QuickPay, all of these other freight brokers have been forced to provide it.But it's very difficult for them because remember, their shippers are still waiting 30 days to pay them. So, now these other brokers are in a spot where, “Hey, we just moved the load. Now, I need to pay the carrier today, but I'm not going to get the money for that load until 30 days from now.” And that's, I think, really the genesis of the problem that we went to market solving. What we do is we go in and buy that freight broker's invoice, let's say it's $1,000 that they're supposed to get paid from the shipper, we will buy it some amount upfront, let's say $900. We'll pay some of it to the broker right now will pay out the carrier in entirety, right, so we're providing that QuickPay to the carrier. And then 30 days from now, when the invoice becomes due, we'll collect from the shipper the full amount, and we basically pocket that spread.Will: Factoring isn't a completely new concept, right? I've got to imagine that there are lots of folks that have been doing factoring, even specifically within the trucking freight ecosystem for decades, maybe give folks a little bit of the state of play of how factoring is currently done within this, kind of, specific niche, and how you guys are kind of turning that on its head.Bharath: Yeah, that's a great point. So, factoring has been around for literally thousands of years, right? It's one of the oldest forms of business financing. Huge ecosystem, right? There's over $3 trillion dollars in invoices factored globally.To your point, in the US the largest vertical for the factoring industry is actually freight and logistics, right? So, there's a lot of companies in this space. They are very similar to the freight brokers that we're serving, in the sense that it's a very outdated industry, right, very low tech, not a lot of innovation. You know, just one example, a lot of these factors still require clients to fax them documents in order to factor the load, which is outrageous because I don't even know how to send or receive a fax, and then if think about the fact that their clients are truck drivers who were literally on the road the vast majority of the day, that makes it a lot—even more difficult to understand how that works.In contrast, right, we're building a tech-enabled solution. The software that we've built our business around, provides us three very distinct competitive advantages. The first is that it allows us to do a lot more than just factoring, right? We're able to automate a lot of the key back office workflows for our clients and provide them more sophisticated reporting so they can make better decisions. So, when I'm talking about these back office workflows, I'm talking about carrier payments, invoicing, collections, book reconciliation. These are all really important, but normally time consuming, and error-prone business functions that our clients just no longer have to worry about.And it's more than just, like, the hour saved or the reduction in hours, right? If you look at it from the perspective of these, like, small freight brokers, right, they got into this business, they started a freight brokerage because they love logistics, they love sales, they love client service, but I guarantee you, none of them got into freight brokering because they love accounting, or accounts payable or accounts receivable, right? So, it's the parts of the business they see as the most mundane, but are still absolutely critical for growth that we're able to take over for them. The second piece, the second really—Jason: Sounds really Perfectly Boring, I will say.Bharath: [laugh]. Yeah.Jason: It's the perfect time to have you on the show.Bharath: For sure. The second big advantage that we get from the software is that it allows us to run a much more efficient and effective operation, right? So, if you look at freight factoring companies generally, it's very difficult for them to scale, and that's because they're normally based on these really manual and paper-based processes that become really difficult to manage as you add too many clients and debtors into the portfolio. In contrast, we're able to automate a lot of that operational overhead and streamline our onboarding and client-funding cycles so that we can continue to deliver really high quality service, even as we're rapidly scaling the business.The last differentiator is—you know, I mentioned that factoring—that freight and logistics is the largest vertical for the factoring industry in the US, but a nuance there is that almost all of those factors exclusively service the carrier, right, the trucking companies. Very few of them will take on freight brokers as clients. And the reason for that is a piece of the Uniform Commercial Code, which is a statute which has been adopted by all 50 states. And this piece of the UCC provides carriers a first position statutory lien on their freight broker's invoices. So, what that means in practice is if you as a lender, buy an invoice from a freight broker and that freight broker uses that money to pay a sales rep or to cover some other business expense instead of paying the carrier who hauled their load, then you as the lender, are really out of luck because that carrier still has that statutory lien which supersedes your own.So, when it comes time to pay, the shipper is legally obligated to pay the carrier instead of you, which is a bad position to be in if you're a lender. What we've done to get around this problem is we've designed our product to handle multi-party payments. So, in addition to onboarding all the brokers into our system, we separately onboard their carriers. They create their own accounts, we verify their identity, we link to their bank accounts via Plaid, and this enables us to directly pay out the carriers to extinguish their lien at the time that we purchase the invoice. So, now we're in first position so when that invoice becomes due, we're able to safely collect on it.Because most of these other factoring companies are running on an off-the-shelf software that lacks this functionality, they're really just not able to effectively compete in this space.Jason: That's interesting. So basically, you have perfect information on both sides, right, which allows you to see that both the shipper and the carrier are receiving the proper payments, and you're able to factor, kind of, the time in between confidently because you can actually watch the flow of funds. Is that correct?Bharath: Yeah. A hundred percent right. Normally, if you don't have this type of software and you're trying to buy that invoice from the broker, you don't really know what's happening with the money once you send it to them, and because of that you're taking on a lot of additional exposure. In our case, that's not a problem, right, because we have visibility on both sides.And what's really cool here is that it provides this risk mitigation benefit to us, but it also solves the brokers' pain point of them wanting to QuickPay their carrier, right, which was sort of the original genesis of this whole problem, which is that they need cash to pay the carrier today. We can make that even faster by paying it out to them directly instead of sending money to the broker and then having them pay the carrier, right? So, it's sort of a two-birds-with-one-stone solution.Jason: I think you brought up an interesting point which I'd love to dig into as well is, like, there still is a bit of risk in the system, right, even with a typical loan, right? People can default on their loans. What mechanisms have you guys come up with to make sure that you have, kind of, the proper payments flowing through and that you're not putting yourself at outsized risk. This looks like, you know, a great part of that solution, but things can still break down. I'm curious how you guys, you know, do kind of quality assurance and make sure that you're also going to be in a position to get paid properly and payout properly?Bharath: Yeah, that's a great question. So, when we look at risk mitigation, we look at it at three levels. On the first level is us underwriting the client themselves, right? So, that's making sure that they have the proper licenses to operate, that they have no other liens against their assets, there's no red flags on their [Carrier 411 00:20:25] account, right? So, just making sure that we trust them to be a good actor, essentially.Once we've approved the client, we separately have to approve or reject each of their shippers, right, their customers. And this looks more like a traditional credit underwriting approach. We'll look at Ansonia, Experian, Dun & Bradstreet. If there's not great credit data available, or if they don't have great credit, then we will not approve the shipper.Once we've approved both the client and the shipper, we separately approve or reject each individual invoice, right? And so this is looking at, on a transaction basis, do the receivable documents match and do they make sense, right? Is the carrier they're asking us to pay the same carrier listed on the bill of lading? Is the bill of lading signed? Is the dollar amount they're requesting the same as what's included on the rate confirmation? That type of thing.So, between these three layers, we're able to catch problems before they end up in our portfolio. There's other things outside of this we've implemented. For example, you know, we buy the invoices full recourse, we only advance a certain portion of it. It's a full suite of risk mitigates, but the combined effect is that we are very protected in our portfolio. So, we've not actually lost a penny in more than the past year. Actually, since we hired our head of operations we haven't lost a dollar.Jason: And what percentage of freight intermediaries do you bring out on the platform, of the people who apply to become Axle Payments customers?Bharath: So, I don't have the exact number there, but it's a good portion. It's around, I would guess, like, 70, 80 percent. We typically see more rejections on the shipper side, right? So, they're working with debtors that we don't feel confident will pay us, or there's issues on, like, the invoice-by-invoice level. But we are generally able to work with most clients, right?So, we a lot of times will reject them upfront, like, there's some issue, maybe there's someone has liens against their assets, their account is inactive, but we'll usually work with them to get those remediated. It's not super often that we find someone who we both cannot work with, and can't get them to a position where we could eventually work with them.Jason: And once you're on the platform, then you've got that visibility as well, which is great.Will: I think this is all super interesting, and I'm curious, you've been operating for long enough at this point and I'm sure I've had a couple of these great intermediary and kind of broker clients for any one client for 12 to 18 months at this point. I'm curious, like, what you notice in the evolution of their business after they start working with Axle Pay, and just what streamlining cashflow does for the freight intermediary from an operational perspective, and then, you know, kind of what the impact of not only streamlining cashflow but also accessing digital tools for running other parts of the business. Like, what's kind of the emergent behavior you're seeing, if any, within the customer base?Bharath: Well, that's one of my favorite questions because it's incredible what we see with the clients, once they start working with us. A huge number of them just blow up, just start growing very, very quickly. On average, our clients grow, over a 12 month period, about 75% over the course of the year. So, if the average client is doing $100,000 in revenue, January 2020—or January 2021—12 months later, we're expecting them to do 175,000. The segment of our clients that actually already have a functioning business when they start working with us grow much faster, even.So, with that portion, if they're already doing least 50,000 a month in revenue, we see them growing on average 250% over the course of the year. And there are some crazy outliers there too, right? People who started working with us, and then a year later are doing more than ten times as much revenue as they were a year prior.Will: That's insane.Bharath: Yeah, it's really cool. And it feels really good, right, to talk to them. And, you know, I'm not going to take credit for their success; they're all excellent at what they do, but it's awesome to hear them attribute, you know, even a portion of that growth to working with us and having the capital they need to scale and having a partner who can take over a lot of the business administrative functions.Will: There's an interesting dynamic at play here where most of the other venture-backed businesses in the market have decided to be the operators themselves and to build the technology to be the most digitally native, nimble operators in the market. You've taken a completely opposite tack of saying you're actually going to be an arms dealer to the a long tail of operators in the market to enable them to compete in a more digitally powered market. How does this play out? Like, what is the evolution of the way the old guard, now armed with tools that you're selling them, engages, competes with the new guard and this kind of class of venture-backed companies that have come into the market over the last really, you know, just over the last three to five years?Bharath: The way I look at what we're doing is very similar to what Shopify did in retail, right? So, you have Amazon who comes in and builds this incredible business and really consolidates a huge chunk of the retail market, but there's still this long tail of retail businesses that are not just going to give up and die, but who will demand and pay for services that allow them to compete with Amazon. And Shopify was able to build a massive business by building that tooling for the long tail of the market, right? I think the founder of Shopify uses the analogy that Amazon is the Empire, and Shopify is arming the Rebels.And what we're doing is something very similar, right? You have Uber, and Convoy, and Flexport who are building these incredible, valuable businesses by consolidating a large chunk of the logistics space, but there's still a very long tail of the market, that's not going to just give up and die, right? They're looking for services that will allow them to compete. And we're filling that gap by providing them the tools that allow them to compete with these companies. And you know, I am a huge fan, if it's not clear, of all three of those businesses, right, Convoy, Uber, Flexport, and even some of the smaller ones like Loadsmart.We, you know, we've met with some of the founders, some of them are invested in the company. They're building great businesses and I think they're going to build huge multi-billion dollar businesses that will be profitable, independent public companies, but there's still going to be a lot of other very large logistics players in the business, right? So, if I zoom out ten years what do I think the market looks like? I think it will continue to be highly fragmented, but I think every player in this space is going to be tech-enabled because if you're not tech-enabled, you're not going to be able to keep up and the business is going to die. Now, if you look at those technical players, a handful of them are going to be tech-enabled because in the early 2020s, they raised billions of dollars in venture capital and built out their own internal proprietary software, but the vast majority of the market will be tech-enabled because they used the profits they were generating to pay for software services that gave them the equivalent capabilities.Jason: You know, this is, kind of, maybe an inversion, a little bit, of enabling the kind of incumbents here. The incumbents are incumbents for a reason, right? They have a lot of great relationships, et cetera. Now, that you're providing them with a modern set of tools, what advantages do they have in order to compete? I mean, as you mentioned, it's a multi-trillion dollar industry, so there's plenty of space for great companies of different kinds of origins to be grown, but what are the advantages of being an incumbent here now that you've enabled them with, kind of, technology and financial services to compete?Bharath: Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head, right? They have been huge rolodexes, right? It's the relationships, both the people they work with, and with customers, employees, and they have a lot of in-house expertise and knowledge that allows them to deliver a really great service. I don't think those benefits are going to go away or become less important just because someone has built software that helps them operate more efficiently.Jason: Yeah, one amazing thing here is, you're kind of getting paid to build trust with an amazing, huge incumbent base, initially with factoring and some back office workflow. I can imagine that you have a pretty robust roadmap for things that you'd like to build going forward. Maybe you can talk about some of those features that go beyond just the factoring part of the business.Bharath: You know, we see this as, sort of, three phases, and this first phase is just building out this carrier payments platform, right, and taking two freight brokers and just making it as great of a product as we can and being the market leader for that. And I think we can build a massive business on just that. But like you said, I really think what's exciting here is that's, sort of, a platform to build out a lot of other cool products and services.So, phase two, I see as building this all-in-one financial services platform. And what's exciting there is there's adjacent financial services we can introduce, like credit cards or [shipper 00:29:25] finance. There's better workflow automation tools, right, to help them run a more efficient business.And where it goes from there is to this phase three, right, which is—you know, my co-founder and I joke, it's world domination, right, because there's logistics is just one of the biggest markets in the world, globally, and there's this opportunity to take this suite of solutions that we're building for freight brokers to distribute it to shippers, to carriers, to take it international, right, to Canada, Mexico, overseas to Europe, and build a payments network that allows all of these different players in the supply chain to efficiently transact with one another. And that's where I think the really exciting opportunity is, right? There's a lot to be done; there's a lot of value to create there.Jason: Yeah, no, I can imagine that the international freight landscape looks quite a bit different than the US. What are some of those, you know, interesting idiosyncrasies that you guys have uncovered? I know that's a couple phases down the line, but it is a global ecosystem, we have a global economy now, so I'm curious what opportunities you see in other countries.Bharath: Like you said, there's a lot of nuance between different countries. I think one of the biggest things that separates the US market from most other domestic freight markets, is that, besides just the dollar amount of transactions happening in the US, is that in most countries, if you go to Germany and you look at the freight that's coming in, it involves a lot of different modes of transportation more frequently than just trucks. In the US, so much of the freight movement is via trucks. Like obviously, things are shipped in, and obviously things are flown in, but trucks just make up a vast majority of it. And that becomes less true as you go to other countries. And they're reliant more on international shipments to get products in.Jason: I would assume they still also have the factoring issue. Are there other, kind of, unique issues that pertain to maritime or air freight that are kind of unique to that market versus trucks?Bharath: Of course, the factoring issue is still there. I think one of the interesting ones is around this shipper finance problem, right? So, when you look at the shippers themselves—so, like, again, these are the companies that have freight that needs to be moved—there's this issue of them getting financing both to buy the goods themselves, to pay for the very expensive shipment overseas, to pay customs and duty fees. And right now, they go to a bunch of—you know, it's a super fragmented space of independent lenders who provide this trade finance to the shippers. I think there's a really cool opportunity for us to piggyback off the business we're already building to provide a better financing solution to those shippers, right, for a couple of reasons.One is that because we're going through these freight intermediaries, we have access to all of their shippers, right? If we partner with our client and say, “Hey, we're going to distribute to your shippers. We'll do a revenue share.” Which really reduces the cost of us acquiring new clients, right, because we can just piggyback off their distribution channels. The second is that our current clients, the freight intermediaries, have all of this data on the relationship with their shipper, right?For example, if they say, like, the shipper we're working with has been doing 5 million a year in revenue every year, like clockwork, but then two years ago they did 4 million, last year they did 2 million, this year they're doing 1 million, well, that's a sign that, like, maybe we don't want to be lending a bunch of money to that business, right? So, there's interesting underwriting applications of the data they're collecting. And then finally, with these international shipments, the freight forwarders often take possession of the goods themselves, which means we can use that to secure the loans, right? Which is like, “Hey, it's a long-term relationship. If you don't pay back the first one we made, then we will take possession of these goods.” So, there's an incentive for them to make sure that we're currently—you know, we're always being paid out on time.Will: And B, one of the things we actually haven't touched on much yet is, you know, you're a lender, and would be great to spend a little bit of time talking about, like, kind of, the capital side of the business, some of the unit economics there. And you're creating a monster amount of value for your clients. How does Axle Pay make money?Bharath: Right now we have two sources of capital. So, like many tech startups, we raised money from VC funds, and that comes in as equity and funds the business operations, right? So, that's paying our salaries, our marketing spend, our software costs. Separately, we also raised debt from other sets of financial institutions, and that's where we get the money to actually lend out to the clients, right, because VCs aren't going to give you a million dollars if you're using 800,000 of that to lend to another business, right? And so this allows us to get a lot of leverage off of our equity dollars.So, when we first started, right, because we had no real operating history, we had to go out to hedge funds or high net worth individuals to get that debt that we could then lend out. I think as the business scales, there's opportunities to go to larger banks, who will, [write 00:34:29] larger credit facilities and have a lower cost of capital. And farther down the road, there's an opportunity to set up securitization programs where we're basically able to sell off that debt at an even lower cost of capital and get that off of our books, as you had alluded to.Will: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a super interesting opportunity to do that, particularly as you accrue more data to support at least what appears to be ridiculously compelling numbers as it relates to default and repayment stats. So far it looks like unbelievably reliable borrower with a very predictable payback period.Bharath: You know, like, right now, there's a lot of people with a lot of money, looking to deploy that in the market, and getting a lot of interest from lenders of all different sizes and backgrounds who are looking for somebody to get a piece of that. So yeah, I think to your point, there's a lot of cool stuff that can be done in the long run.Jason: Well, yeah, and we've also—you know, now that we're kind of getting to a little bit into the, like, the shocks. We've had a COVID impact, you know, massive global supply chain shortages. We also at the same time have kind of a generational shift in a lot of these, you know, under-digitized industries that are now rapidly digitizing. I'm curious what you see as kind of like, the macro impacts on the freight space right now, and how that's been evolving and maybe accelerating in the past year or two.Bharath: The obvious one is, like, the current supply chain crisis. I think people naturally look for a single cause and effect, which is tough to do here because there's a lot of problems, right? There's raw material shortages, there's exceptionally high demand, there's driver shortages, factory closures, right? And I think a lot of these are, you know, indirectly caused by COVID, people not being able to work, so the factory shuts down; people not being able to spend money on anything except physical goods, so they're just buying a ton of physical goods. And I think there's this narrative that, like, oh COVID caused this supply chain crisis, which is not entirely true, right?I think, yes, those are all causes of the current crisis, and COVID did sort of supercharge the problem, but there were underlying trends which I think made this crisis somewhat inevitable and which are continuing to accelerate. One of these is, this is just the growth in e-commerce. Obviously, the growth in e-commerce is increasing demand, but what's more interesting is that it's not just increasing demand; it's a new type of demand, that's putting a ton of stress on supply chains, right? Before, you would go to Walmart and you would buy whatever Walmart had in stock, and there's sort of a handful of brands they carry in stock for each good, and you go get it there. And that's a fairly simple supply chain problem.But today, you go to Amazon, which is, you know, quote-unquote, “The everything store,” and there's a million different brands for every product you want to get. And then there's actually a ton of things you can't get on Amazon that all these direct-to-consumer brands are selling to you that, you know, creating more competition. And each one of these companies needs to have their own supply chain set up to be able to deliver a product in two days to you, wherever you are in the country, right, which is a much more interesting and complex problem than what we've been dealing with in the past. Then if you combine this with globalization and the diversification of supply chains—so people are getting those products from different parts in the world—you get even more complexity. And then you look at this in the context of an industry where technology and processes just really haven't evolved much in a decade, and you get a recipe for disaster, right?They're solving today's highly complex problem with tools that were designed for a much, much simpler supply chain. So, you know, this is going to sound really self-serving, but to me, the obvious solution is in technology, right? We need better visibility into the movements of goods and the status of payments up and down the supply chain. We need to make it easier for brokers and for forwarders to run really efficient business operations. We need to supply them with the analytics that allow them to see problems in the supply chain before they become an all-out crisis.And you know, I don't think—I'd be lying if I said Axle is going to single-handedly deliver all of these solutions to the market, but I do think will be a key piece of that solution, and I think there are a number of other really cool, interesting companies in the supply chain tech space that are delivering the rest of this solution.Will: B, what does the market look like in ten years when, you know, you're a public company, you have sufficiently armed the long tail of these great intermediaries with the digital tools to succeed and grow in kind of a, you know, modern supply chain, what has changed forever? Are there any, you know, kind of, predictions you have about the way the Axle Pay is going to dramatically alter the topology of this industry?Bharath: Yeah. I mean, I think from, like, a payments side, it's just going to be clean and efficient, right? It's not going to have multiple companies auditing the same physical piece of paper to find out if a load was delivered on time, right? That data is going to be digital and it's going to be easily accessible by everyone up and down the supply chain. Payments will flow seamlessly between parties, access to capital to scale will be a lot more efficient so you're not going to have these behemoths existing just because they happen to have access to capita;. It's going to be the businesses that actually run the most efficient operation to deliver the best service will get access to capital they need in order to scale it, and those are the businesses that dominate the market.Will: And so, I mean, that sounds a little bit like we're almost predicting that what is today an unbelievably fragmented market, once armed with these digital tools, is potentially going to see some consolidation, right? I mean, and a lot of your customers have operated in almost an exclusively regional kind of mindset for, you know, basically their entire existence. With these new tools, do you think that they start to—we start to see more national expansion from some of the leaders of the pack here, and therefore some consolidation?Bharath: Yeah. So, I think the market will still be fragmented, but I think it will be relatively a little bit less fragmented. So, I think to your point, there will be some consolidation. I don't think it's going to have—you know, I don't think the market has, like, winner-take-all dynamics where there's going to be, you know, two or three freight brokers that dominate the US market. I think it's going to be a lot of smaller freight brokers who are able to deliver really good, tailored service to their clients, but maybe it won't be 100,000 freight intermediaries in the country.Jason: I think there is, like, a generational shift that's happening, and the people who grew up on, like, iPhones and smartphones, [audio break 00:41:16] and they also don't know how to fax anything [laugh]. Like, I have no idea how to fax things. I could watch a YouTube video to figure it out. There are also—as you kind of mentioned a little bit in the consolidation piece, like, is it going to go truly national?—there are benefits to the existing players, and I'm curious, like, what resistance there is in the market to change.Because, like, e-commerce isn't new, factoring isn't new, tech in workflows isn't new but, you know, for some reason, it feels like they're all coming to a head. You tend to have people who were, kind of like, on the forefront but, you know, maybe there are pockets that have resisted for one reason or another.Bharath: You know, we've definitely spoken to brokers who are basically like, “Brokers shouldn't need factoring because they shouldn't need to QuickPay carriers, right, so I don't want to work with you.” Which is very much this mindset of like, “Hey, when I built this business, this was not a problem, so I don't need this solution because that's the way things are.” Which is just, you know, it's the resistance to change. And I think that's the same approach which is like, “Hey, I don't need to provide visibility to my customers in real time because I built a great business and never did that, so why do I need to do it now?”And I think what's inevitable is that those companies are not going to be… around in ten years, right? Because at the same time, there's a bunch of other people we've worked with who are 28-year-olds, 32-year-olds, starting freight brokerages who are asking—you know, emailing us, asking us if we have an API, right? Like, “Hey, can you integrate with our stuff because we'd rather pipe all this data in so we don't have to do manual data entry.” That attitude is going to get them so much farther than someone who's just like, very resistant to change, right? And I think what's going to be great is that some of these companies have, like, the best of both worlds; some of our clients are just, like, super, super smart people who have a ton of logistics experience, who are great at running a business, and who realized, like, technology is not going to solve all of your problems, but it's going to solve your technology problems, right? It's going to solve a lot of things that you would have had to do manually otherwise.And so they're building businesses that are growing incredibly fast. I think it's easy to sort of paint the whole industry with a brush and say, “Oh, like, freight brokers are outdated.” And on average, I think that's true, but like you said, there's pockets here and there which are very tech-forward, who are reading about ways to implement technology to make their business better, and who are probably going to be the market leaders in five, six years.Jason: I always think it is fascinating in these markets that are meaningfully digitizing for the first time—like, they're using some software, but not modern software—the kind of tension between pushing, you know, all the way to the forefront with, you know, the demands of the customer base that might only be able to meet you halfway. Like what you have to do? Like, do you guys still enable people to manage, like, faxes coming in? Like, what did you kind of have to build in the product that made it attractive enough for the freight company that's been operating for 100 years and it's been passed down, you know, from generation to generation to the 28-year-old, who's just starting their own?Bharath: Yeah, that's a good question. So, we don't take faxes, but we have run into issues that, like, you know, I wouldn't have expected we ran into, and so we've had to build around it. So, for example, we've had clients who forgot their email address, right, which for me, is like forgetting your own name because it's so core to, like, you know, that's—it's like, I'd forget my phone number before I got my email. But that's, you know, they just come from a different world where it's just not as important. We had to build up the functionality for us to send payments by check—even though we offer free electronic payments—because a huge chunk of carriers would prefer to receive a check in the mail instead of getting the money direct-deposited into their account for whatever reason. And so, like, you know, we had to go integrate with another company and figure out how to manage that process.So, there's definitely been, you know, a number of these things which are like, if you asked me to write a list of the problems we might face, this would not have come up on that list, but by virtue of, like, the industry being a little bit older and used to different types of practices, we've run into those issues and we've been able to solve them. And I think that's part of it; like you said, it's meeting them halfway because everyone's sort of at a different point on this curve.Jason: Yeah. Because you're there to serve the customer, right? And so you got to kind of meet them where they are. Which I think makes a lot of sense and makes this a particularly interesting challenge to solve because you're solving for a fairly broad. Swath of customers that are—you know, might as a whole look homogeneous, but are heterogeneous, particularly because they're regional and smaller, older generation, you know, newer generation, et cetera. That's really interesting.Will: Bharath, thank you for joining us today, man. This is awesome.Will: Thank you for listening to Perfectly Boring. You can keep up the latest on the podcast at perfectlyboring.com, and follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll see you next time.

This week we had on Abigail Tisch at RRE Ventures. RRE is one of the top funds in the world investing in early-stage, category-defining startups across all sectors and across the country. Abigail works on their investment team, and she focuses on opportunities within mobility, climate, supply chain, and women's health. In this talk, we discuss: Learning to operate within venture Climate tech and the limitations of capital Tailwinds and opportunities within mobility tech

Steve Schlafman is the Founder of High Output, a boutique leadership development company, where he coaches to improve the habits, productivity, and energy management of high-performing entrepreneurs. A certified coach, Steve is also an angel investor, facilitator, and speaker, with a Bachelor's Degree in Business from Northeastern University. He has previously held a mix of operating and investor roles with companies including Primary Venture Partners, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, RRE Ventures, The Kraft Group / The New England Patriots, and Microsoft. Steve currently splits his time between Manhattan and the Catskills and enjoys spending time with his family, meditating, reading, cooking, and - of course - watching the Patriots. In today's episode, Steve shares the moment he became aware he was not living life the way he felt it should be lived after reading Eckhart Tolle's most famous book, The Power of Now. He shares his journey of recovering from an addiction he had managed from his teenage years until his mid-thirties. Steve explains the process of acknowledging he was done with the corporate life and just how long it took to take the idea of coaching to become a fully qualified and experienced coach. He also reveals the aspects of coaching that many founders and high-performing leaders need and benefit from and shares his own unique experience of what working in those industries brings to his coaching. “Energy Management is more important than Time Management.” - Steve Schlafman Today on Mastering Midlife: How reading The Power of Now was Steve's lightbulb moment Why ‘energy management' is more important than time management How meditation was the gateway to Steve's self-discovery Why leaders find sharing their struggles difficult The difficult conversations new companies should have Resources Mentioned: Book: The Power of Now Connect with Steve Schlafman: High Output Website The Founder Library Steve Schlafman's Website Steve Schlafman on LinkedIn Steve Schlafman on Facebook Steve Schlafman on Twitter Are you a busy, overwhelmed business leader? Through my work as an author and executive coach, I've discovered the 10 lies we all tell ourselves that keep us away from true productivity and creativity.  If constant firefighting is part of your daily grind, I have a free gift for you.  My “10 Uncomfortable Truths” about overwhelm, from “Only 10s, Confront Your To-Do List – Transform Your Life.” Go to www.markjsilverman.com, click on the red banner and receive your 10 videos (one minute, one per day) as well as the first chapter of the book.  While you are there, check out some of the other ways I may be able to help you on the journey. Mastering Midlife...Together! Thanks for tuning into today's episode of the Mastering Midlife Podcast: How to Thrive When the World Asks the Most of You with Mark Silverman. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. Be sure to visit our website and connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube and don't forget to share your favorite episodes on social media.

CodeSignal, a technical assessment platform dedicated to helping companies, including Facebook, Roblox, Zoom, Robinhood, and others, make data-driven hiring decisions in tech recruiting, announced $50M in Series C funding and the launch of CodeSignal's new advanced Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that unlocks highly relevant assessment experiences.  This round, which brings CodeSignal's total funding to $87.5M,  With Codesignal's newly launched advanced IDE, candidates will now be able to interact with code, files, a terminal, and a preview of their application in a persistent, fully configurable environment. This means candidates will have a similar experience to coding on a local machine, and the assessment  provides a more powerful and familiar environment for them to solve tasks just as they would actually do on the job, showcasing their full range of skills.  https://hrtechfeed.com/codesignal-announces-new-advanced-assessment-capabilities-fueled-by-a-50m-series-c-funding/  Talenya, the provider of the world's most advanced, AI-powered talent sourcing and diversity solutions, today announced the release of Engagement AI™: a first-of-its-kind, fully automated talent sourcing solution.  As recruiters and HR teams struggle to find talent in an increasingly competitive market, Engagement AI™ saves hours of work by automatically sourcing and contacting potential candidates, allowing more time for interviews and connection. Talenya's data scientists spent four years developing the GDPR-compliant technology to enable talent acquisition teams to fully automate talent sourcing, with a focus on diverse talent.  https://hrtechfeed.com/talenya-launches-automated-talent-sourcing-tool/ WurkNow.com, a fully-integrated, digital staffing and workforce management platform for hourly work, today announced the closing of a $10 million Series A funding round, led by Newport Beach, CA-based Newport Hayseed Group. This funding will be used to further optimize WurkNow's user base and product offering, including investments in new product development, staff growth and scaling the company's brand and market presence. WurkNow's capital raise comes after a year of immense growth, brought on by the digital acceleration the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to many businesses. Demand for WurkNow's fully-integrated staffing and workforce management platform has surged within its client base of staffing and recruiting firms and employers that manage large, hourly workforces. Currently there are over 125,000 active employees using the platform; a year-over-year increase of 400%. https://hrtechfeed.com/wurknow-gets-10-million-series-a/ Clovers (www.clovers.ai), a human resources technology firm leveraging conversational intelligence to improve interviewing and hiring practices, today announced it has raised $15 million in seed funding.  The company was co-founded in December 2020 by HR tech pioneers Adam Miller, Founder & former CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand, and Jason Nazar, Co-Founder & CEO of Comparably, along with Doug Leonard and Cihan Ucar. Clovers is jointly headquartered in Los Angeles and Nashville. https://hrtechfeed.com/clovers-raises-15-million-to-revolutionize-interviewing-for-the-modern-workforce/ Nomad Health, the leading digital marketplace for temporary healthcare jobs, today announced the completion of $63 million in new equity and debt financing. Adams Street Partners led, and all existing investors participated, including Icon Ventures, Polaris Partners, RRE Ventures, .406 Ventures, First Round Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank.  With this financing, the business has raised over $100 million since the company's inception in 2015. The funding will be used to support Nomad Health's explosive growth, allowing the company to double down on efforts to hire, invest in the technology platform, and grow its national footprint. https://hrtechfeed.com/nomad-health-raises-63-million-to-address-healthcare-staffing-shortages/

Few people make the transition from being a Venture Capitalist to running an operating company. Even fewer do it successfully. I just met one of them. His name is David Wald, CEO & Co-Founder of Aclaimant. After years at Bain & Company and dough, he was a successful venture investor at Lightbank. Now, his fast-growing Chicago-based SaaS platform helps companies manage their risks. Specifically, tracking the processes around people who get hurt & property that gets damaged. With over 50 distributed employees, David & his team have weathered the pandemic with strength. Clearly, he's onto something big… Aclaimant investors include Royal Street Ventures, Mercury Fund, KEC Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, Aspen Capital Group, RRE Ventures, EBSCO Capital, KEC Ventures, Moderne Ventures, SMW Capital In this 20-minute, David reveals how he puts a Rockstar in every seat of the business.

Steve Schlafman is the Founder of High Output, a boutique leadership development company, where he coaches to improve the habits, productivity, and energy management of high-performing entrepreneurs. A certified coach, Steve is also an angel investor, facilitator, and speaker, with a Bachelor's Degree in Business from Northeastern University. He has previously held a mix of operating and investor roles with companies including Primary Venture Partners, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, RRE Ventures, The Kraft Group / The New England Patriots, and Microsoft. Steve currently splits his time between Manhattan and the Catskills and enjoys spending time with his family, meditating, reading, cooking, and - of course - watching the Patriots. In today’s episode, Steve shares the moment he became aware he was not living life the way he felt it should be lived after reading Eckhart Tolle's most famous book, The Power of Now. He shares his journey of recovering from an addiction he had managed from his teenage years until his mid-thirties. Steve explains the process of acknowledging he was done with the corporate life and just how long it took to take the idea of coaching to become a fully qualified and experienced coach. He also reveals the aspects of coaching that many founders and high-performing leaders need and benefit from and shares his own unique experience of what working in those industries brings to his coaching. “Energy Management is more important than Time Management.” - Steve Schlafman Today on Mastering Midlife: How reading The Power of Now was Steve’s lightbulb moment Why ‘energy management' is more important than time management How meditation was the gateway to Steve’s self-discovery Why leaders find sharing their struggles difficult The difficult conversations new companies should have Resources Mentioned: Book: The Power of Now Connect with Steve Schlafman: High Output Website The Founder Library Steve Schlafman's Website Steve Schlafman on LinkedIn Steve Schlafman on Facebook Steve Schlafman on Twitter Are you a busy, overwhelmed business leader? Through my work as an author and executive coach, I’ve discovered the 10 lies we all tell ourselves that keep us away from true productivity and creativity.  If constant firefighting is part of your daily grind, I have a free gift for you.  My “10 Uncomfortable Truths” about overwhelm, from “Only 10s, Confront Your To-Do List – Transform Your Life.” Go to www.markjsilverman.com, click on the red banner and receive your 10 videos (one minute, one per day) as well as the first chapter of the book.  While you are there, check out some of the other ways I may be able to help you on the journey. Mastering Midlife...Together! Thanks for tuning into today’s episode of the Mastering Midlife Podcast: How to Thrive When the World Asks the Most of You with Mark Silverman. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. Be sure to visit our website and connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube and don’t forget to share your favorite episodes on social media.

The world needs more risk takers, big thinkers, and problem solvers that are willing to take on the really hard problems that need to be solved. As you'll hear from this interview, the world needs more Eden's. She started her first company in high school which was focused on improving energy and water access in the developing world. She left Princeton to pursue an opportunity as a Theil Fellow as the program was just beginning and Eden is now building a company that is taking an innovative approach to mobile app testing. Her company is called Mobot and they are using robots (real robots) to test mobile applications. This was a problem that she witnessed firsthand as a Product Manager and decided to build a company around solving this problem. The company is backed by leading investors like Primary Venture Partners, Newark Venture Partners, Bling Capital, RRE Ventures, and Y Combinator. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Words of encouragement to others on taking risks and starting a company. * Eden's background growing up and the creation of her first company, SunSaluter and the progress she made building it. * The story behind her decision to leave Princeton to become a Thiel Fellow. * A deep dive into Mobot and how they are taking a much more effective approach to mobile testing. * Why she decided to build a company as a solo-founder. * Advice on getting traction from the media. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

My guests today are Raju Rishi, Nikita Singareddy, and Jason Black of RRE Ventures. RRE is a New York-based VC firm investing in early-stage start-ups with more than 400 investments over its 25 year history. Raju, Nikita, and Jason focus their time in the world of healthcare investing, a topic I haven't explored much personally or on this show. We discuss the current landscape for healthcare investing, the variety of stakeholders in the healthcare value chain, the opportunities for founders and investors in the space, what excites them most about the future of the space, and the impact COVID has had in shaking up the industry. I hope you enjoy my conversation with the RRE team.    This episode is brought to you by Koyfin, one of the fastest growing fintech startups. I discovered Koyfin earlier this year when I asked twitter for the best Bloomberg alternative, and the overwhelming winner was an intriguing new product called Koyfin.  Koyfin has tons of high-quality data, powerful functionality, and a nice clean interface. If you’re an individual investor, research analyst, portfolio manager, or financial advisor, you should definitely check them out. Sign up for free at koyfin.com                                                    Ladder Teams is a modern personal training experience with expertly designed workout plans, 1x1 access to some of the best coaches in the world, and the power of community, all delivered to your phone.  If you’re looking to switch up your fitness routine at home or if you are back at the gym and looking to refresh your training plan Ladder Teams has a program for you. Check out https://ladder.fit/Patrick to download the app and get started.   For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (2:34) – (First question) – How the team think about attractive investment concepts (7:13) – The current landscape for healthcare investments (8:53) – Complications in pricing healthcare and where it needs to change             (17:45) – Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about Health Care Is Wrong (17:55) – The major stakeholders and where the innovation is coming from             (18:22) – The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your Hands (24:43) – How Covid is changing the healthcare sector (28:43) – Cutting edge of remote patient monitoring (37:03) – Passive monitoring and future tech of healthcare (39:38) – Improving the clinical trial process (44:54) – Doctors being lost in the shuffle and improving the experience for them (50:20) – Excites them most about the future of the space (56:17) – Kindest thing anyone has done for them   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag  

This is an episode of Mastering the Attention Economy Podcast with host Ari Lewis and Steve Schlafman. Steve is a certified professional development coach and angel investor. Steve is the founder of High Output, a boutique leadership development company. Previously, he was a VC at Primary Venture Partners and RRE Ventures. Some of his select investments include Boom, Breather, and theSkimm. We discuss why Steve left VC to coach, Steve's leadership and coaching philosophy, and the importance of building a personal brand. Follow Steve on Twitter: https://twitter.com/schlaf Read Steve's Blog: https://schlaf.me/ Check out the Founder's Library: founderlibrary.com Follow Ari on Twitter: https://twitter.com/amlewis4 Follow Ari on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ari_lewis4/ Visit Ari's Site: http://arilewis.com/ Produced by Courtnie Lewis: https://www.courtnielewis.com Music by Mark Rhodes: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2F3QTcv7P4TxveL1tDeXmL?si=KEiZ9oB_TQyD_3ISQC8y-A

Steve is a professional certified coach, angel investor, and the creator of Founder Library. He currently operates High Output, a boutique leadership development company based in NYC. Through his company, Steve partners with entrepreneurs to help them amplify output, increase resiliency, cultivate inner wisdom, and lead more effectively. Throughout his career, Steve has held a mix of investing and operating roles at Primary Venture Partners, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, RRE Ventures, The Kraft Group / The New England Patriots, Microsoft, Stickybits / Turntable.fm, and Massive. His mission is to help entrepreneurs bring their boldest visions to life and evolve into extraordinary leaders. -- Thank you for listening to Pod of Jake! All shares and reviews are appreciated! If you enjoy this podcast, you might like reading blogofjake.com If you prefer listening over reading, you might prefer Blog of Jake's blog on tape, available through any of your favorite podcast providers. Website: podofjake.com Twitter: @blogofjake Email: jake@blogofjake.com Call: superpeer.com/jake Support: patreon.com/blogofjake Bitcoin: 3ESGQxrJZmGqd2SifqCUiHPvah1uWtN1Zd Bitcoin Cash: qznma8vxf8kjn4v9phsfkhzd0559gm7yfsx0gkl4sf

Bill Barhydt is the cofounder and CEO of Abra which is a digital wallet that supports bitcoin and over 50 fiat currencies. The company has raised over $35 million from investors such as First Round Capital, RRE Ventures, Lerer Hippeau and Digital Currency Group to name a few. Prior to this, Bill Barhydt founded three other companies.

Bill Barhydt is the cofounder and CEO of Abra which is a digital wallet that supports bitcoin and over 50 fiat currencies. The company has raised over $35 million from investors such as First Round Capital, RRE Ventures, Lerer Hippeau and Digital Currency Group to name a few. Prior to this, Bill Barhydt founded three other companies.

For this episode of Breaking Banks, host Jason Henrichs was joined by Wade Arnold, CEO of Moov Financial, and Maria Palma, Principal at RRE Ventures, to discuss the current state of open source and the real need for banks to have a side core. Then stay tuned for the second installment of Women in Fintech, a Breaking Banks initiative bringing females into focus in fintech, with host Chloé James. Chloé speaks to Adrienne Harris, Financial Services Investor and Advisor, as well as Bianca Lopes, Founder of Talle, about the future of travel, fintech, and the world of business. Chloé James is the Group Director of Media & Communications for global insights provider RFi Group.

For this episode of Breaking Banks, host Jason Henrichs was joined by Wade Arnold, CEO of Moov Financial, and Maria Palma, Principal at RRE Ventures, to discuss the current state of open source and the real need for banks to have a side core. Then stay tuned for the second installment of Women in Fintech, a Breaking Banks initiative bringing females into focus in fintech, with host Chloé James. Chloé speaks to Adrienne Harris, Financial Services Investor and Advisor, as well as Bianca Lopes, Founder of Talle, about the future of travel, fintech, and the world of business. Chloé James is the Group Director of Media & Communications for global insights provider RFi Group.

Nikita Singareddy and Nikhil Krishnan joined me on the show this week. You don't often hear their last names as these two have rapidly earned their way into the ranks of first-name status in our industry. I wanted to have both of them on the show together as they have incredible rapport and both bring an absolutely refreshing and unique perspective on the industry, as younger analysts having graduated college in ‘16 and '14. Nikita (@singareddynm) is the creator of the Waiting Room blog. Her recent coverage of the new interoperability regulations is one of the best out there. In her day job, she's an investor at RRE Ventures. She cut her teeth in healthcare working at Oscar Health. Nikhil (@nikillinit) is the creator of the Out-Of-Pocket blog. He brings a satirical slant to his coverage of more esoteric slices of our industry, employing memes throughout to shine a light on the ridiculousness of the various arrangements he uncovers. The conversation jumps around a bit and they end up making my job really easy, interviewing each other on how they met, industry trends, how they got into the space, and tips for young people trying to do the same. Here are some highlights: 2:51 - Nikhil's background avoiding healthcare, then ending up here 5:04 - Tips for people breaking into healthcare 6:56 - What will change as Millennials and GenZ emerge 11:18 - Creating a safe environment for creative courage 13:34 - Here's the Venture Stories podcast Nikita mentions 17:13 - Nikita's journey from Oscar to RRE 19:28 - Current industry trends driving Nikhil's and Nikita's investments 28:33 - How consumers are poised to upend existing business models 35:15 - Nikita's thoughts on her next job 37:46 - Nikhil's vision for Out-Of-Pocket Hope you enjoyed the conversation. As always, send any feedback, suggestions, ideas to podcast@redoxengine.com.

There’s a whole new way to increase your customers’ loyalty, and it’s called product protection. You know what this is. When you check out at Apple, they offer you AppleCare. When you buy something at Best Buy, same thing. Well, now you too can add this to your website, increase revenues, and more importantly better serve your customers. The company is Clyde (love the name!) and I tracked down the Founder & CEO Brandon Gell because he’s onto something big. He started Clyde 3 years ago. Then raised $17M from top-tier VC’s like Spark Capital, Correlation Ventures, Starting Line, Red Sea Ventures, Knightsgate Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Techstars. In this episode, Brandon reveals how he’s scaled a sharp team of 30 to turn an industry upside-down.

Niko Skievaski (@niko_ski), founder and president of Redox, and Nikita Singareddy (@singareddynm), investor at RRE Ventures, join Erik to discuss:- How regulation has changed the landscape in healthcare.- How to figure out what the the next wave in healthcare will be.- Why in the past government regulation has pulled technology into the present that wasn’t ready.- The biggest trends in healthcare now.- Where they would be investing if they were running a fund focused on the space.- What it takes to be successful in healthcare.- The state of the EHR space.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Niko Skievaski (@niko_ski), founder and president of Redox, and Nikita Singareddy (@singareddynm), investor at RRE Ventures, join Erik to discuss:- How regulation has changed the landscape in healthcare.- How to figure out what the the next wave in healthcare will be.- Why in the past government regulation has pulled technology into the present that wasn’t ready.- The biggest trends in healthcare now.- Where they would be investing if they were running a fund focused on the space.- What it takes to be successful in healthcare.- The state of the EHR space.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

On Tuesday, we had to layoff 44 Redoxers. That was about 25% of our team. On today's episode, we're going to go into the conditions that brought us to this place, how we went about making the decision to reduce the size of the team, and finally how we attach names to that decision. Redox co-founders Luke Bonney (CEO) and Niko Skievaski (President) are joined by board member Raju Rishi. Raju is a general partner at VC firm RRE Ventures and led Redox's series B in January of 2017. Beyond sharing his perspective on the market and the layoffs he offers some relevant stories from his days as a founder. We thought sharing what we're going through might be helpful as I know a lot of people in our industry are attempting to figure out how to navigate the waters through recovery. Additionally, Redox is working to place these 44 people at jobs within the industry. Contact christine@redoxengine.com to learn more.

Venture Capital Investor Panel, from Angel to IPO w/ speakers Nikita Singareddy Investor @RRE Ventures | Kunal Mehta Principle @Hearst Ventures & Mario Gabriele @Charge Ventures Panel Presented by Entre CEO Michael Marra Talking Covid-19 Impact on investing, raising capital & how to best strategies approach investors. What Qualities they look for in successful founders, networking & build strong relationships. Technology, healthcare tech, transportation mobility, esports and religious tech? Yes its all here! Mario's Newsletter: https://readthegeneralist.com Kunal’s Book https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Genius-Venture-Capital-Betting-ebook/dp/B07YCZH3NS www.CharlieNYC.com 

Adam Jiwan is a serial entrepreneur and most recently the co-founder and CEO of Spring Labs which is a transformative and centralized infrastructure for credit and identity data. The company has raised $38.8 million from investors such as RRE Ventures, August Capital, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Jump Capital, General Motors Ventures, and GreatPoint Ventures to name a few.

Adam Jiwan is a serial entrepreneur and most recently the co-founder and CEO of Spring Labs which is a transformative and centralized infrastructure for credit and identity data. The company has raised $38.8 million from investors such as RRE Ventures, August Capital, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Jump Capital, General Motors Ventures, and GreatPoint Ventures to name a few.

The past few weeks drastically changed the landscape of the world. While I am generally an optimist, it’s my belief that the next few weeks will continue to be a challenge for many. With that in mind, I have been reflecting on what I could do to help. The Intentional Performers Podcast has given me an amazing gift; a stronger connection to amazing people and expanded wisdom and knowledge. It’s my hope that the listeners have received this gift as well.  So, here’s my idea to help others during this time of uncertainty. I am creating a series of panel discussions with past podcast guests to help others learn, grow and take action to better their lives and careers. It’s my hope that the content will help people navigate some of their toughest challenges right now in a productive way. You can also go to this YouTube link to watch all panels. Bios below for panelist participants.  Keith Mitchell Keith Mitchell is a former All-Pro NFL football player turned internationally renowned Celebrity Yogi. As a Motivational Mindfulness Coach, Holistic Health and Wellness Advocate, Community Activist and Humanitarian, he is committed to providing holistic tools that help others achieve optimal health, harmony and aliveness to the fullest degree.     A life changing football injury left Keith partially paralyzed, he utilized Yoga and Meditation to fully recover, he now shares his inspirational transformation with others as a highly sought after spiritual lifestyle/ wellness coach, teacher and motivational speaker.  Although Keith’s football accident forced him into an early retirement, it led him to his true life’s calling — inspiring others to move beyond survivor and victim consciousness to full empowerment.  Keith is a leader and exemplary teacher for people dealing with emotional and physical suffering. His personal shift from a professional sports athlete to spiritual luminary allows him to mentor from experience with full transparency and authenticity; utilizing his many years of Yoga and meditation training combined with his stellar PRO athlete expertise. As the founder of the The Light it Up Foundation , Keith considers altruism and service as his life’s purpose— the most rewarding position he has ever played— sharing his mindfulness skills Yoga and meditation certification whether for peak performance and self-awareness to help others heal from the inside and out.   Keith’s mission is to guide others to find the power within themselves to make a positive shift— so they may live a life full of joy, gratitude and purpose.  Stu Singer Stu Singer works as the sports psychology and performance consultant for the NBA’s Washington Wizards, the WNBA’s 2019 World Champion Washington Mystics, University of Maryland Women’s Basketball team, Rice University Basketball, and many other programs across the country. Stu served an integral role in helping the Mystics win their first WNBA Championship in team history, the University of Maryland Women’s basketball team reach back to back Final Fours in 2014 and 2015, and multiple NCAA Division 1 Conference Championships. The WellPerformance “system” is based in solid research and performance psychology theory, and then developed further through the lens of well-over a decade worth of "in the trenches' experience in high-performance environments. WellPerformance is all about applicable skills that can be developed and then used in the real world. Pro and elite amateur athletes across sport and gender - NBA, WNBA, NBA G League, NCAA, NWSL, MLS, USMNT and USWNT call-up players, USA Basketball Team Members, and Olympic gold medalists have been trained in Stu's system.  Stu completed his Doctor of Psychology coursework at the University of the Rockies specializing in sport and performance psychology, and is a professional member of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. Additionally, he received his M.Ed. in Counseling from Shippensburg University.  Steve Schlafman I became a seed investor in 2010 and a certified professional coach in 2017. I chose these two professions because I love helping entrepreneurs bring their visions to life. I also love jamming on organizational design, leadership development and company building. This is what I plan to do for the rest of my life. I currently operate a boutique leadership coaching practice. I work closely with CEOs to help them lead more authentically and effectively. I also partner with ‘executives in transition’ who are contemplating a new role, career or venture I’m also an active angel investor and operate a small fund that invests in pre-seed and seed stage technology companies in NYC. Over the last decade, I’ve honed my human-centric investment philosophy and approach. I always put the founding team, market opportunity and human impact above everything else. Some companies I’ve been fortunate to work with include Bark & Co., Boom Aerospace, Bowery Farming, Breather, Brightwheel, Care/of, Citizen, Giphy, Groups, Managed by Q, SmartThings, The Skimm, View The Space and Zipline. Previously, I’ve held a mix of investing and operating roles at Primary Venture Partners, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, RRE Ventures, The Kraft Group / The New England Patriots, Microsoft, Stickybits / Turntable.fm, and Massive.

In this episode, Tej Singh interviews Jonathan Bensamoun, the Co-Founder & CEO of Fi, the most accurate, lightweight, modern smart dog collar. The company was founded in 2017 and has raised $10M from Lerer Hippeau and RRE Ventures. Fi has a battery life 20x longer than competitors, alerts you when your dog leaves a designated safe zone, and tracks your dog's daily step count, allowing you to compare to other Fi users and compete on a leaderboard with pups of similar breeds. FI hopes to put an end to the problem of 10 million dogs going missing every year in the US. Before founding Fi, Jonathan founded the location-based app Pins in 2013, which was acquired by Square the following year.

Special guest Will Porteous, General Partner and COO at RRE Ventures, joins host Ryan Lewis, IQT CosmiQ, and Tom Gillespie, a Managing Partner on IQT’s investment team, to discuss investment strategies, technology trends and predictions, and what’s next for the commercial space and aerospace industry. Commercial space and, more broadly, Frontier Technologies have been a key investment area within IQT in recent years, requiring a comprehensive strategy and close coordination with investment partners like RRE.

Matt Meeker is the Founder of Meetup.com and BarkBox. In this episode, Matt and Mayra Ceja discuss how he launched Meetup.com and why he left and how he turned his passion for dogs into his second multimillion startup, Barkbox. Barkbox has raised over $80 million from VCs like RRE Ventures, August Capital, and Resolute Ventures. Follow Mayra on Twitter @mayraceja007 and go to VentureUnplugged.com for more facts and insights on this episode. ------This episode is sponsored by Qtum, the first proof-of-stake smart contracts blockchain. If you're tired of paying high fees on other smart contracts platforms, head on over to http://Qtum.org and start building today your own low fee, solidity smart contract today! -----If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group, an exclusive content, and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space. 

Saeju Jeong is the cofounder and CEO of Noom which provides mobile health coaching, focused on combating chronic and pre-chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. The company has raised over $100 million from investors such as Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, RRE Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Samsung Ventures, TransLink Capital, Scrum Ventures, Recruit Strategic Partners, and LB Investment to name a few.  

Saeju Jeong is the cofounder and CEO of Noom which provides mobile health coaching, focused on combating chronic and pre-chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. The company has raised over $100 million from investors such as Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, RRE Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Samsung Ventures, TransLink Capital, Scrum Ventures, Recruit Strategic Partners, and LB Investment to name a few.  

In this podcast, Craig Elbert and Mayra Ceja discuss how his experience at Bonobos shaped his leadership style, why his commitment to the lean startup methodology led him to launch a fake company and how he turned plain old vitamins into an instagrammable DTC brand. Care/of raised over $40m from Goodwater, Tusk Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Juxtaposed. -----This episode is sponsored by eToro, the smartest crypto trading platform, and one of the largest in the world. Join myself and 11 million other traders and create an account at eToro.com and build your crypto portfolio the smart way. ------This episode is sponsored by Qtum, the first proof-of-stake smart contracts blockchain. If you're tired of paying high fees on other smart contracts platforms, head on over to http://Qtum.org and start building today your own low fee, solidity smart contract today! -----If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

Rajaie Batniji is the cofounder of Collective Health which is a company providing an alternative to traditional health insurance. The company has raised over $430 million. Their lineup of tier-one investors includes Softbank, DFJ Growth, Life Financial, Google Ventures, NEA, Formation 8, Great Oaks, RRE Ventures, Signatures Capital, Maverick Ventures, Redpoint, Oakhouse Partners, S28 Capital, MSA Capital, and Green Bay Ventures.

Rajaie Batniji is the cofounder of Collective Health which is a company providing an alternative to traditional health insurance. The company has raised over $430 million. Their lineup of tier-one investors includes Softbank, DFJ Growth, Life Financial, Google Ventures, NEA, Formation 8, Great Oaks, RRE Ventures, Signatures Capital, Maverick Ventures, Redpoint, Oakhouse Partners, S28 Capital, MSA Capital, and Green Bay Ventures.

Welcome to Episode 110 of The VentureFizz Podcast, the flagship podcast from the leading authority for jobs & careers in the tech industry. For this episode of our podcast, I interviewed Jonathan Bensamoun, Founder and CEO at Fi. Did you know that 10,000,000 dogs are lost in the U.S. every year? That's an insane number and if you own a dog, you probably consider that dog to be a member of your family. I know I do. And like any other family member, you want to make sure your dog is given the best care, attention, and security possible. That's where Fi's Smart Dog Collar comes in. It's a collar that tracks your dog's location 24/7 and it also tracks steps to make sure your dog is getting enough exercise. The company has raised $10M to date, including a $7M Series A in March led by RRE Ventures. Jonathan is a serial entrepreneur, who started his career in the technical ranks as an engineer before transitioning into product management. His first company called Pins was acquired by Square. His new company, Fi, is on a mission to keep dogs safe and healthy with a device that has many benefits and improvements as compared to other products in the market. In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of topics, like: -Jonathan's background and how he made the transition to product management. -What led him to start his first company Pins and how he built out his network in the Bay Area? -All the details behind Fi and how his dog Thor was the inspiration. -How the Fi collar works, plus what makes it such a game-changer. -A deep dive into hardware development. -What makes a great product manager. -Advice for founders looking to raise capital for a hardware company. -Plus, so much more. Ok - quick side note. Have you checked out our YouTube channel? You'll find videos from our podcast, plus lots of other interviews with founders and our very popular Inside: series, which gives you an inside look at a functional area in one of the fastest growing tech companies. Go to youtube.com/venturefizz to check it out. Lastly, if you like the show, please remember to subscribe to and review us on iTunes, or your podcast player of choice!

Home trade-in platform Knock has brought in a $400 million investment to accelerate a national expansion and double its 100-person headcount. Foundry Group has led the Series B funding round in New York-based Knock, with participation from Company Ventures and existing investors RRE Ventures, Corazon Capital, WTI and FJ Labs .Knock co-founder and chief executive officer Sean Black declined to disclose the startup's valuation.

Will Porteous is the General Partner & COO of RRE Ventures. RRE Ventures is a New York-based venture capital firm. They have a reputation as open-minded and thoughtful investors that encompass independent perspectives. During his nearly 20 years in the industry, Will and his team at RRE Ventures have invested in a range of higher risk ventures that cover the entire ecosystem of our industry, including Spire, Spaceflight & Ursa. These have become category defining ventures, which stimulate investment from others and the confidence of entrepreneurs.  Since his first investments in space and satellite technology, Will has become a central figure in the New York space technology sector.

Key quotes -“When I was thinking about the life that I want to have 10, 20 years from now.. how do I combine investing, coaching and facilitation into one so that I can be of service to people” -"I probably would’ve gone inward" -“I view coaching as an entirely distinct skillset... Building a skill that I don’t think is going to go out of fashion" -“I believe investing should be a business that should be in service of entrepreneurs. I believe that entrepreneurs are our customer” Resources: -Steve's twitter account -Primary Venture Partners -Finding Your Own Voice blog post by Steve

Alice Lloyd George Contributor Alice Lloyd George is an investor at RRE Ventures and the host of Flux, a series of podcast conversations with leaders in frontier technology.

Alice Lloyd George Contributor Alice Lloyd George is an investor at RRE Ventures and the host of Flux, a series of podcast conversations with leaders in frontier technology. More posts by this contributor A conversation with Dean Kamen on the myth of “Eureka!” Behind the scenes with Tezos, a new blockchain upstart Below are excerpts from the most recent episode of the Flux podcast hosted by RRE Ventures principal Alice Lloyd George.

Dislocation is a podcast dedicated to innovation in real estate — exploring technology's impact on the way in which assets are planned, designed, financed, built, marketed, and operated. Joining us this week is Julien Smith, the Co-founder and CEO of Breather, a company that operates a network of furnished spaces that companies can access on demand — to use for a meeting, an offsite, or as a temporary office. Breather raised about $150 million so far, from investors such as Zach Aarons, RRE Ventures, Slow Ventures, Temasek (Singapore), and Caisee de Depot which is one of the largest pension funds in Canada. Some of the topics covered include: - How do you build a real estate company for the 21st Century? - What does it mean for office space to be responsive to customer's needs? - How big is the opportunity for Space as a Service? - How will WeWork, Convene, The Office Group, Industrious, and Breather fit into the new office landscape - Lessons from Salesforce early SaaS efforts for Space as a Service Companies - Changes in consumer, investor, and landlord interest in flexible space ___ Dror Poleg is the founder of NYC's Rethinking.RE, where he advises institutional real estate investors on innovation and investment in emerging technologies. His insights have been featured in reports and events by KPMG, Urban Land Institute, JLL, PERE, NYU, Savills, Estates Gazette, and EPRA. Read more here: www.rethinking.re/dror-poleg/ David Friedlander is the founder of Hothouse.co, a marketing communications, public relations, and trend consultancy with a narrow focus on the future of real estate. Hothouse work has been featured in the New York Times, Wired, Dwell, CNN, and many other outlets. Read more here: hothouse.co/about/

When Americans vote, many positions on the ballot don’t even make sense to us. A superintendent? A comptroller? However vague they may sound, these “down-ballot” posts can sway everything from the lunch your kids eat at school to the way the subway system runs. New York State candidate for Comptroller Jonathan Trichter joins “American Enough” to tell us what the hell a comptroller is and why he suited up as a Republican to change the game.BIO: Jonathan Trichter is an investment banker and expert in public pensions and public finance. He has worked for J.P. Morgan, the restructuring firm MAEVA Group LLC and served on underwriting teams for the largest municipal bond issuers in the country. His work has helped state and local governments identify major long-term liabilities that were previously unaccounted for. Active in New York government, policy and civic causes for decades, Jonathan spent his early career in New York City government and on political campaigns. He worked for the New York Public Interest Group both in high school and through college. At J.P. Morgan, Jonathan covered the Office of New York State Comptroller and put together a complete directory of New York’s outstanding bonds to provide the details of the State’s debt profile for the incoming Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli. In 2010, Jonathan served as policy director on Harry Wilson’s campaign for New York State Comptroller. His work included researching and contributing to white papers on the New York State’s pension system that were covered extensively by the media and helped earn Mr. Wilson the endorsement of every major newspaper in the State, including The New York Times. Jonathan went on to work for Mr. Wilson’s restructuring firm, MAEVA, where he was a key leader on the largest out-of-court pension consent process in a corporate restructuring in recent years for a private sector workout. He later ran a municipal restructuring subsidiary of MAEVA, which was tapped by the Pew Charitable Trusts to work on public pension restructurings across the county. In this capacity, Jonathan helped lead some of the most meaningful pension reforms implemented by cities and states at that time. In Jacksonville, Florida he worked with Mayor Alvin Brown and the Police and Fire unions to restructure one of the most distressed public-safety pensions in the country; the work ultimately preserved the system’s defined benefit status via a consensual solution that saved the city $1.5 billion while funding the pension plan in a reasonable period without major benefit cuts to its members. Jonathan spent 2014 working for a venture capital firm owned by his wife’s family. There he managed a digital media startup, serving as its President in preparation for a key round of financing. With his background in communications, Jonathan took monthly traffic from under 2 million “uniques” per month to over 7 million in just 60 days. Afterwards, he worked directly with the VC firm’s chairman on a successful Series A, in which Discovery Communications led the round along with participation from Softbank, RRE Ventures, Greycroft Partners and Sterling. In 2015, Jonathan returned to MAEVA as a principal. Jonathan has published numerous articles and op-eds in The New York Times, The New York Post, The Daily News and others. His commentary has appeared on local news and national networks. He served as an adjunct professor at Fordham University in the political science department, and he founded a polling institute at Pace University. He is a graduate of Emory University and resides in New York City on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with his wife, the Executive Editor of Seventeen Magazine, and son. He is also an ironman triathlete, marathoner and open-water swimmer, but mostly before his son was born. “American Enough” and MouthMedia Network do not necessarily support nor endorse any specific candidate for elected office.

Produced by Foundersuite.com, "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders who have raised capital. In this interview, we chat with Kel Guerin of Ready Robotics. Ready Robotics is a "robotics-as-a-service" startup that leases collaborative robots to manufacturers for a period of time ranging from a few days to a year. The Company recently raised a $15 million Series A in a deal led by Drive Capital. Emerald Development Managers, RRE Ventures and Eniac Ventures also participated in the round. In this episode, Kel talks about the Company's roots in academia and the tech transfer process, how to find investors interested in robotics, why they are expanding in Columbus Ohio, when it's time to start working on your next raise, and more.

Will Porteous is the General Partner & COO @ RRE Ventures, one of New York's leading venture funds with investments in the likes of Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, Giphy and Paperless Post just to name a few. As for Will, he works primarily with media and hardware companies, where he is a Director of BuzzFeed, Paperless Post, Spaceflight, and Spire. Prior to VC, Will held senior management positions with SupplyWorks and NetMarket, the e-commerce pioneer now owned by Cendant Corp. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Will made his entry into VC and came to be the hardware and media specialist as General Partner and COO @ RRE Ventures? 2.) Why does WIll believe VC is like the movie industry? How can VCs be prepared to movie producers? How does the talent required to make a great movie resemble that of making a great startup? 3.) Why does Will think the current venture model of 10-year life cycles is broken? How would he like to see LP liquidy opened with iterations on the current venture model? How can the secondary market be revolutionized to provide such liquidity? 4.) Why does Will believe that location awareness will drive a wave of value creation an order of magnitude greater than anything we have seen before? What is the thesis behind this? What are the barriers, both from a technology and cultural perspective? 5.) What were Will's biggest takeaways from being mentored by the legend, Bill Campbell, Former Chairman and CEO @ Intuit? What did he learn about leadership and incentivising a workforce from Bill? What example does Bill provide from seeing this at Google? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Will’s Fave Book: Radical Candor; Be A Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity Will’s Fave Blog: AVC by Fred Wilson Will’s Most Recent Investment: The Outline As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Will on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. WePay helps online platforms increase revenue through integrated payments processing, helping platforms offer ROI-positive integrated payments to their users – within their UX and without taking on fraud & regulatory exposure. WePay also offers award-winning support and can even work with your team thru Slack or Zendesk. Get the payments revenue you want, without getting bogged down every time a user has a payments question. Simply visitwepay.com/harry PipeDrive is the Sales CRM and pipeline management software to use, with the primary view being the pipeline a clear visual interface that prompts you to take action, remain organized and stay in control of a complex sales process. This is why sales pros and deal makers love it (my words, not Pipedrive’s). Plus it easily lets you find the stats you need and is fully customizable. Even better, you can signup for free on here it really is a must.

Steve Schlafman is an early stage investor @ RRE Ventures, where he specialises on marketplaces, mobile services, and hardware. Steve is responsible for RRE’s investments in theSkimm, Hightower, TinyBop, Breather, and Managed by Q. Prior to joining RRE as a Principal, Steve was a Principal and rockstar seed investor at Lerer Ventures. Before becoming a venture capitalist, Steve worked at Stickybits Inc. and Turntable.fm, and served as Director of Venture Investments at The Kraft Group. Steve also worked at Massive Inc. and at Microsoft, where he focused on Biz Dev Strategy and Corporate Finance.    In Today’s Episode with Steve You Will Learn: How Steve made his way into VC from Microsoft, to Kraft to startup to VC? Why does Steve think Seed to Series A is such a different ball game? What are the different characteristics encompassed within each? With such little data at seed, what does Steve’s DD process look like? How does that affect his investment decision making process @ RRE? What is the valuation comparison between Seed and Series A? How is this determined and how has this changed since Steve’s time at Lerer? Why do the best markets often appear small and become meaningful? How does Steve look to detect these small markets? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Steve’s Fave Book: Who (Hiring Process), Work (Hiring @ Google), Leading (Michael Moritz) Steve’s Fave Blog or Newsletter: AVC, Stratechery, The Skimm Steve’s Most Recent Investment: Brightwheel As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Steve on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

RRE Ventures Co-Founder and Managing Partner James Robinson discusses technology investing.

The explosive growth of New York’s tech industry in the last decade has reshaped the city’s economy and its demographics — and has kept New York at the forefront in a rapidly changing digital landscape. Over the last decade, Bloomberg administration policies aimed to foster this growth in the tech and information sector. What new directions should the new de Blasio administration consider in order to ensure — and strengthen — New York’s role at the forefront of innovation? We were joined at Roosevelt House for the latest in our continuing series, “Changing New York,” as Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC’s “New Tech City,” led a distinguished panel of experts in a wide-ranging conversation exploring the new policies, priorities and strategies that the de Blasio administration ought to focus on in the years ahead. Each brings a business and personal perspective to the crucial questions of what the new digital New York might look like — and how the new administration can help make it possible. Speakers: Jessica Lawrence, Executive Director, NY Tech Meetup; Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute and author of Building a Digital City: The Growth and Impact of New York City’s Tech/Information Sector; and Steve Schlafman, a principal at RRE Ventures, who also writes the blog “Schlaf Notes: The Chronicles of an Accidental VC,” about trends and his “adventures in startup land.” Introducing the panel was Stanley S. Litow, Vice President, Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs of IBM, President of the IBM Foundation, and member of the Roosevelt House Advisory Board.

Path 101 founder Charlie O'Donnell will be interviewing Jim Robinson, a Co-Founder & Managing Partner of RRE Ventures. He has been active within the technology community for over twenty years as a venture capitalist, banker and entrepreneur.

Path 101 founder Charlie O'Donnell will be interviewing Jim Robinson, a Co-Founder & Managing Partner of RRE Ventures. He has been active within the technology community for over twenty years as a venture capitalist, banker and entrepreneur.