Podcasts about series seed

Angel Academy Session 5 brings in Brian Dirkmaat, a startup attorney at Procopio and longtime SDAC sponsor, to walk the room through the legal mechanics of angel investing. Brian covers the full evolution of startup investment instruments - from the original bridge notes of the 1990s to today's post-money SAFEs - and breaks down the real differences between convertible notes, SAFEs, and priced equity rounds. The session goes deep on valuation caps, pro rata rights, the unresolved IRS question around QSBS treatment for SAFEs, and the practical tradeoffs between investing directly into a company versus through an SPV. If you've ever looked at a term sheet and wondered what you were actually signing, this is the session.Key Topics* The evolution from bridge notes to convertible notes to SAFEs* How YC's post-money SAFE works: valuation caps, discounts, and MFN provisions* SAFE vs. convertible note: the unresolved IRS code 1202 (QSBS) question* Priced equity rounds: Series Seed vs. Series A (NVCA docs)* SPVs vs. direct investing: platforms, carry, admin fees, and when each makes sense* The California C Corp trap: unpaid founder wages and W-2 classification* Term sheet fundamentals: liquidation preferences, anti-dilution, board seatsLinks & Resources* San Diego Angel Conference (SDAC)* Procopio* YC SAFE Documents* NVCA Model Legal Documents* Rising Tide PartnersConnect on LinkedIn* Brian Dirkmaat* Neal Bloom This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit risingtidepartners.substack.com/subscribe

The Great Talent Redistribution: Where is Talent Actually Going in 2026 and beyond?  Is the start-up compensation model broken? How about big Big Tech? How about non-tech small & medium businesses? What is happening to talent, going forward? This and many other topics in this episode of Tech Deciphered. Navigation: Intro The Broken Contract? The Great Unbundling The Three (?) Destinations Alternative Cap Tables, Alternative Compensation Models Investor Landscape Fragmentation Operator Playbook and Predictions Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves Pedro Introduction Welcome to episode 77 of Tech Deciphered. This episode will focus on the great talent redistribution. Where’s talent actually going in 2026 and beyond? The Silicon Valley deal of the last 30 years, very low salary, stock options, you will either sell for a ton of money or IPO, and everyone gets rich, is seemingly broken. Or is it really? The dominant narrative says the tech middle class is dying. We disagree. There is obviously a lot of stuff going on whereby big tech is partially barbelling. There’s a superstar concentration on the top. There’s a bit of a seemingly allowing of the belly. We’ll come back to that. We don’t quite believe that is totally true. There’s a collapse at entry level. The belly is migrating into three, potentially even more, very different destinations: AI native startups, human-verified premium businesses, and the read the industrialized middle of the S&P 500 and SMB world. Each has its own cap table, each will have its own compensation model, and each will have its own investor profile. In some ways, this is the third episode in our Reset trilogy. We started with episode 75 on the SaaS-apocalypse. We talked about the great private capital reset in episode 76, and now we talk about talent redistributions. Bertrand, exciting times, not always positive times.   Bertrand Schmitt Yeah, it’s exciting times because it’s a time of change. Of course, we have the doomsayers. If you listen to Dario Amodei of Anthropic, every white-collar job on Earth is going to disappear. I think I strongly disagree, and I suppose you too as well, we strongly disagree. It’s going to be more of a redistribution. If you look at the history of technology, this is what always happened. We forget how many jobs have disappeared over the past 150 years. We move from a time of 150 years ago. People were mostly in agriculture. Then you had a lot of weird jobs that disappeared from people transporting water to people bringing ice from the pools to people doing the job of computers. People forget that computer was a title given to human beings. We’re doing calculations. Then, of course, secretory jobs in the ’80s, ’90s, where suddenly anyone can type using a word processor, the rise of Excel, that sort of stuff. Many things have changed. Some jobs have indeed disappeared. Some jobs have totally transformed. Where you do these jobs have changed. I think we are at a similar stage where, thanks to AI, and I would say for now, or at least the rise of AI coding, there is a dramatic change happening. I don’t think it means that people will be without a job. It just means, from my perspective, that jobs are changing. You are not just doing a lowly coding level task that actually indeed could be replaced, but you are going to have more of builder type of mindset, a product manager type of mindset going forward. We also expect that the distribution of jobs, depending on the type of business, will be quite different.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro The Broken Contract? Maybe let’s reset a little bit to the broken contract, or if it’s really a broken contract. There’s been this image in technology and tech that basically you get paid very little to work in tech. You get a bunch of stock options. The earlier you are in the company, the higher the level of stock option grants you get. Then you make a ton of money at some point because the company will either sell or IPO, and that’s heard of it. Obviously, there’s a lot of movements happening right now that are changing how these dynamics work. The first part is obviously AI, and in some ways, AI is shrinking companies. It’s not unheard of that companies with as little as four or five people reach 50 million in ARR. There’s companies with one person that have gotten bought for hundreds of millions of dollars or billion of dollars. Obviously, things are moving very, very fast, and therefore, there isn’t a large employee cap table. How would you share the upside? Would you actually give a couple of percentage points to an early employee rather than your 0.2-0.5% kind of thing for early employees? The second part is a little bit the other side of the table, which is the IPO market is seemingly in a drought. There’s not much happening in IPOs. Maybe 2026, at some point, there will be an unlock, but right now, it’s seemingly difficult to get your upside. Even if you’re an employee, you have to wait a long time. The median time of IPO has climbed over 10, 11 years, the longest in over a decade. Basically, not only you have to wait a long time as if there is an IPO drought, like we might be going through right now, when do I actually get my cash back? Unless the company gets bought, maybe there are secondary transactions along the way, maybe there’s something else. But obviously there’s a little bit of a reduction and lowering of the upside seemingly for this contract and for this place. The easy conclusion that I think many are taking is, because of all of this and all the layoffs that are happening, even in big tech, that serve the tech middle class is dying, that basically AI screwing the workers, et cetera, there’s also a lot of discussion that even it might be affecting the entry-level jobs as well. Everyone coming out of undergrad right now can’t get a job, et cetera. There’s this doomsday scenario that you’re alluding to that everything is changing. We have a slightly different perspective. We think there’s a realignment of market. In layoffs, there was a lot of layoffs that were warranted. Big tech, in particular, had actually hoarded a lot of engineering capacity over the last decade or so. There’s a little bit of a realignment that needed to happen in any case. When everyone’s saying, “Well, AI is compressing everything,” well, it’s compressing right now, but we don’t think actually it’s going to compress over time. You’ll still need engineering and science talent to come on board for you to be able to scale up. It’s not like AI is going to take care of everything and teams are going to be five people for companies that are worth a trillion dollars. That’s not happening. Today’s thesis, I think a little bit of this doomsday scenario needs to be seen with a more nuanced lens. I think that’s how we’re framing today’s episode, that there’s a bit of a nuance, there are some extremes happening. We’re going to talk about those extremes, but ultimately, it’s not quite as simple as saying that the tech middle class is disappearing in early jobs are going to be a thing of the past.   Bertrand Schmitt At the same time, what you started with is true. I mean, that 50 million ARR company, just five people. At a bigger scale, that’s exactly the matrix for Anthropic. They have reached a stage where they are at a range of 12 million ARR per staff per employee. It’s metrics that are definitely never seen before. I don’t think any company raised to this level. Best in class, best run companies, one, two million per employees. I mean, that was your target if you can make it. We are definitely in a different game. But I think what matters at the end of the day, and that’s what we’re arguing, is that you have to see the big pictures. Yes, some positions might disappear inside some companies, but some other positions will be created in other companies. Usually, what people do is keep talking about the jobs who disappear and not looking at the bigger picture of jobs that are being created as well. What is true, and I think you alluded to that, is that the big tech the past 10, 15 years had some strategy of hoarding talent in a war where having the best talented people will make the difference in numbers, will make the difference between winning or losing. The Google of the world, the Microsoft of the world, the Amazon of the world, they were hoarding talent. They would try to make sure that they might not have such needs in talented number of people. But if they have the talent, it means their competitors didn’t have the talent. It means that the startup trying to reach scale couldn’t pay the giant salaries that the Google of the world were paying. There was definitely some hoarding. But it went so far in the 2020, 2021, that I think since then there has been a coming back to normal. There is also now in 2026, the recognition that it’s not true anymore. Yes, talent can be very valuable, but there is now a bigger and bigger gap between the extremely talented versus the rest that are merely talented because of AI. AI is able to replace at scale your software engineers, your software managers. I would say it’s quite new. I don’t think it was true a year ago. We’re really talking about a recent dramatic change in what can be achieved thanks to AI. We can see most of the big AI companies are moving to coding. It was started by Anthropic as a trend, OpenAI has followed through. Obviously, the Cursor of the world existed before, but they were not as successful. All the Chinese open-source models are moving very fast to coding optimization the past few weeks. It’s quite an incredible change. I think there is that dramatic change, recognition that coding can be done differently. As a result, we are going to see change in the distribution of jobs. I think it will start from the top because we see the news of the big Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others who used to hold talented software developers to a change in realization that no, we actually need to invest in AI. We need to invest in compute because compute is going to do the job of most of these people. Therefore, we can’t pay for both at the same time, even us with all our money, we cannot. Wall Street is not going to let us do that. They start by removing a lot of position. I think we see that accelerating, quite frankly. We have only seen the beginning, but in the next 2 years, we see a dramatic shift. But I think my position, I guess yours, and you know as well, is that there will be a lot more opportunities created as well, probably by also entities.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro The Great Unbundling Yeah, there will be more opportunities created. The hoarding is just taken also a little bit of a different view. To your point, there’s hoarding of resources, compute, et cetera. But there’s also hoarding of top talent. We are seeing people getting paid, packages all in that could run up to 100 million, in some cases even over 100 million over several years. This is unheard of. I mean, an officer of Meta would make, I don’t know, maybe 20, 25 million a year. It’s like now there are people that are on the top end of AI researchers that are getting paid around that amount just to join some of these companies. There’s a little bit of a different hoarding. It’s very selective hoarding of certain talent. We’ve seen some acqui-hires. We’ve talked about it in previous episodes that are just literally about getting one or two people specifically to come on board. Alexander Wang, again, going to Meta to lead their intelligence labs there. I feel, I don’t know what you feel, but I feel this is a transition moment where there is overpaying for certain talent on the top of the market. At some point, this will stabilize. You can’t keep paying people 100 million over 4 years or something like that across the board. To your point, a lot of this is actually going to scale up quickly also on the AI side. There’s a little bit of a different hoarding happening on the top end, not just the resources, but also of people, which seems to give further this notion of barbell, that there’s two extremes, the haves and have-nots, the super-duper talented people that get paid a ton of money, tens of millions of dollars a year at the very least. Then the emptying of the middle where there’s a ton of tech layoffs going on in some ways, the belly, as they would call it, is being expelled. The middle market, the managers are being fired because there’s nothing to manage. There’s a lot of positions going away. In some cases, you might keep some of the more junior talent, but with a little bit of experience. But even the talent coming out of colleges is not getting hired either. It’s a little bit of a weird thing where there’s hoarding at the top, there’s an emptying of the belly, the middle, and then the early, early, early is also not getting recruited. It’s like what gives? How is this going to look in the future? I agree fully with you, Bertrand, that there’s a migration of this talent, not only to other companies, but also to other jobs. There will be new jobs that will emerge out of this. The DevOps, dev tools market didn’t exist until maybe 20 years ago at scale, and it got created. In some ways, we’re seeing there will be new markets, there will be new roles and new jobs that will be created around engineering teams going forward. We can’t anticipate all of them. But basically, the emptying of the belly is true as it’s happening right now. The low hiring on the early and the top end, getting tons of money. We think this is a transition to something else. There’s the hoarding of engineering in general is coming to an end at momentum. Now it’s time to rightsize teams, to get the right at the table, et cetera, and start figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. We’ve already had some horror stories coming out even from Amazon where they were breaking systems with their use of AI tools, and I’m sure it’s happening across the board. I’m on a board of a company and been tremendously affected by Meta and its algorithms, where basically because of advertising, there have been people served with ads for this specific company where the ad doesn’t match the company, so basic stuff like that. It’s been actually very, very difficult because in some ways, the company goes back to Meta. It’s like, “Hey, dudes, you guys are serving ads that are not even our ads with our copyright and stuff. How does this work?” They’re like, “Oh, it’s AI.” It’s like, “Well, it’s AI but can you give me my money back?” They’re like, “No, we won’t give you money back.” This creates huge issues for companies, for example, that are very dependent on advertising, which obviously there’s a lot of industries that are. They’re actually in production systems at scale. Meta is, I think now, the largest digital advertising in the world. I think they outgrew Google in one of the last quarters. Basically, this has a tremendous effect that systems that are in production at scale are getting inputs and changes driven by AI tooling, and somehow nobody can say what the hell is happening. Again, there will be a reckoning, there will be a redistribution, there will be a rightsizing of teams and an adequacy of teams going forward. I personally think this is a transition period.   Bertrand Schmitt I think we are moving from hoarding or software engineering to hoarding the top of the top scientists in AI and hoarding of GPUs, GPUs/data center. For me, it was quite interesting to see the deal of Cursor with xAI, where basically they couldn’t get access to computing resources to run their model. But xAI had, I forgot the exact numbers, but close to half a million GPUs that no one, I mean, “no one was using” because their services are not so successful yet in terms of AI chatbot and the like. Basically, suddenly they are like, “You know what? We control access to resource.” But the new resource is, again, a mix of extremely talented AI engineering or AI scientists versus GPUs/data center. There is this race of controlling boss and everything else is going to be collateral damage. Some examples, I think, are quite interesting. You talk about some example of Amazon, even some production issues. I remember reading a quick post-mortem of one of the issues, and the conclusion was it was AI, definitely part of the issue. But the other part of the issue was AI used by junior engineers. For me, it’s interesting. It shows that actually junior plus AI is actually a danger zone. That’s why many companies are going to be way more careful. “Why do we need the junior people if they are just playing with fire?” I think we go back to that situation of barbell, as you call it. The top talents are extremely valuable because they know how a production system works. They are here to develop better AI systems. But the junior guys playing with fires, yeah, maybe it’s cute in startups, but in a big time production environment, a different story.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro There will be a barbell with top-end talent super-mega paid and then mid-level talent that is individual contributors still doing a lot of great work, et cetera. Along the way, a lot of emptying of entry, a lot of emptying of the middle. Where does the talent go? The Three (?) Destinations I think we could say there’s three destinations for this talent. Maybe there’s four, maybe there’s more. Three that we can immediately identify. One is the AI native startup piece, where we have smaller teams that potentially get to a lot of revenue or top line over time, and where the Series Seed is the primary round, where we’re seeing Series Seed being raised of tens of millions of dollars, actually even hundreds of millions of dollars in Series Seed. In some ways, the stars there can get incredible compensations in terms of stock. They will stay for private and selling in secondaries later down the road because there’s so much capital at the table. Actually, in some ways, salaries are very high as well in some of these companies. It’s not like you’re trading off anything. You can get paid a lot of money. If your company at Series Seed for 10 or 15 employees has raised 50-$100 million, you can pay great salaries. In some ways, this is the extreme destination. The AI native startups that can make it is the extreme destination. Now, there aren’t a ton of AI native startups that can raise 50-100 million to 400 million in Series Seed, just to be clear. There’s a handful of hot deals in that space, but that’s one clear destination for top-end talent going through that. In that market, I think that’s one of the destinations. The second one is more what we would call the human-verified premium. It’s more of a play of companies that has still the need of human in the loop, either in terms of development, also in terms of activity, either because go-to markets are very intensive, and so therefore you need to have sales forces, partnership teams, et cetera. Or on the engineering side, it needs to have a lot of customization, integration. Companies are not just going to the, “Oh, you can come in and just apply your AI tooling and somehow magically the systems all work.” there needs to be quite a lot of and work and high touch work in getting stuff done. A significant part of that market, I’m not sure, is super VC investible. Maybe it’s a hybrid of private equity in VC, more PE style in many cases. It’s a PE-hold, sell to someone else market. As we’ve discussed in a previous episode on the SaaS-apocalypse, that hasn’t quite worked out for PEs. Question marks on how that human-verified premium market is going to evolve. But obviously, there’s a lot of work still to be done there, even on the engineering and science side. That’s the second potential destination. Then the third more aggressive destination is the reindustrialized middle companies that have a lot of specificity in going after small and medium businesses, local or regional affectations like ERPs or CRMs for specific markets, et cetera. Those are the three natural destinations. I would add the fourth, which is big tech. I mean, big tech doesn’t magically disappear, and I don’t think it fits neatly into any of these three markets. In some ways, big tech is now looking at the extreme for top talent a little bit like the AI native startup because they can pay. They can pay the 100 million every four years, et cetera. I do think it will typify taxonomically into a fourth type emerging, where, as we discussed, you’ll have top-end individual contributor talent. You’ll have the absolute top-end of the market because they can get paid. Then you’ll start having the emergence of earlier talent that is highly capable, et cetera. That will go back to a bit of a normal distribution in terms of talent on big tech. For me, those are the four destinations that I would put at the table.   Bertrand Schmitt For me, big tech moving to big tech, I’m not sure if it’s really a destination. I mean, yes, in some ways it’s a reshuffle between the big tech companies. They are definitely all fighting in some ways for some of the same people. I can see that dramatic shift where big tech has to remove a lot of positions in order to replace by AI. Again, I think at this stage, it’s mostly driven by AI coding. We are still at the beginning because this is brand-new phenomenon that AI coding is so successful at its task. I don’t think it was true even 6 months ago. Some companies, take Anthropic, take OpenAI, are definitely there or close to be there in terms of no more writing of a single line of code by a human, zero. This is, again, 6, 12 months ago. Not true. But now it’s true in a few top companies. Take OpenClaw as well, most successful GitHub project of all time, not a single line written by its author. It would have been impossible. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of line of code in a few months. It’s impossible to achieve that manually. If you look at the other big tech companies, the Google of the world, the Meta of the world, the Microsoft of the world, they are absolutely not there yet. They are going to be there because they have no choice. It’s you either go fast there or you die. You are not going to be able to survive competitors that are shipping 10, 50, 100 times faster than you are shipping. It’s a life and death situation. All the big tech companies are going to move, and mark my word, in the next 2 years from 10, 20% of AI-written code to 100%. During that transition, the next 2 years max, if you don’t do it in 2 years, you are going to die. Your stock price is going to crash. Then, of course, you will have to make changes. You will have to invest more in GPUs. You will have to invest less in your standard typical software engineer employees. Like you, I’m very optimistic that there are new buckets. AI-native startups definitely will be there. It will be transformational. Human-verified premium, very interesting category. In a way, it will be businesses that are inevitably less scalable through AI, and there is definitely a spot from there. I think the biggest would be the reindustrialized middle SMBs. Most of S&P 500 type of business are going to dramatically offer new software opportunities, new opportunity story to talented software employees because they will need to implement AI in everything they do. They will do it. They will need people who have software engineering knowledge in order to implement these systems. For them, what’s changing dramatically really is that thanks to much cheaper cost as thanks to AI coding, a lot of software projects that they couldn’t afford to do, that they couldn’t imagine doing by themselves, they are able to do it. They will invest in a lot more software capabilities than ever before. That will be a big game changer. And software, very tuned to their business model. There might be less buying of your traditional off-the-shelf SAF software and a lot more investment in a highly custom software by their own team, assisted with AI. I think that would be the part that is most transformed by all of this in a positive way.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Alternative Cap Tables, Alternative Compensation Models This will lead to a very fundamental shift, right back to the broken contract. What does the new contract look like? It looks like alternative cap tables depending on which bucket are you transitioning into. If you’re going into your AI-native bucket, and you’re a top-end talent, you’re like, “Dude, I’m worth 100 million over 4 years, so just compensate me accordingly with a mix of options in the company plus my salary.” If you’re top 1%, you can probably get away with salaries that you’d get anyway at mid-level from 300K, 400K and above, and you can get actually a lot of options already in the company. A lot of this is happening right now. There’s a premium for AI, we know that. There’s a premium for AI at the top end of AI researching, in particular on companies that are doing hardcore research on staff AI engineers, so companies that require actual AI engineering. There is a premium that is significant. It could be as high as 18% over non-AI peers, and it widens actually with seniority, shockingly enough. This is more of an average than anything else. Now, for me, and it’s for debate, but the perspective is this extreme comp will need to compress at some point. There will still be the haves and have-nots paid much better than the have-nots, so to speak, but there will be a compression. The variance can’t be the variance we’re seeing today for absolute top-end talent. That said, there will be variants. We know that big tech for over a decade, decade and a half, for example, in the Bay Area, has been paying a lot of money for director and above levels that used to be the VPs, so a million, a million and a half a year, all in compensations. It’s not unheard of that this will actually increase after this stage. That said, I do think that the compensation extreme that we’re in will get diluted down the middle. It will actually come down at some point. It’s part of where we are today. As we know, it is still a bubble.   Bertrand Schmitt Yeah, it’s an interesting point. I think it’s possible. At the same time, that compression coming 2, 3, 5 years. At the same time, we have examples where there is no such compression. Take the top sports players in the world, golfing, basketball, NBA players. There has not really been any compression at all. For me, it’s interesting. If you look at the big tech companies, each being one of this top NBA team, why would such compression happen? As long as they are competing against each other and generating plenty of cash, I think there will be some fair question. We will see. I don’t have a strong opinion, but for me, it’s not a total given.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro For me, the shocking thing is the faster AI becomes better, the more that compression will happen, because at some point, it’s like, why do you need the top talent as well? I don’t know. It feels like you’re trying to evolve a system that’s there to replace you. It’s like, “Okay, I’m getting paid 100 million over the next 4 years”, and then you develop something that’s so good that replaces you. Thank you. That’s cool.   Bertrand Schmitt That’s a total possibility, yes, because we are in that very unusual market where the game is to only replace yourself and people like yourself. At some point, it is a possibility, I guess this one. Right now, we’re talking about replacing your “average software talent”. In 2 years, could we absolutely replace the absolute best top experts in the world? Probably. I think it’s just that at some point we’ll be reaching the stage where we strictly have no control anymore on our AI systems because no human is able to challenge and understand what’s produced. It’s not just a question of scale anymore. We’re talking about a gap in IQ, basically.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Exactly. It will happen at some point in history. We don’t know exactly when. For the second bucket, the human-verified premium bucket, it’s difficult to see how an HVAC company or an HVAC roll-up of scale or a regional health care platform or high touch go-to-market, B2B, SaaS play, et cetera, for a vertical will compete. At the same end, they have to compete and they will compete. There will be more and more jobs, we believe, for engineering talent in these companies. They’ll have to be more and more AI-enabled themselves. The cash salaries will have to be competitive within the local markets, not necessarily with Silicon Valley. There will be potentially profit sharing and revenue sharing and actual dividends played at the table. The model there on the cap table needs to change a little bit, needs to be probably propped up more on salary and on some way of doing profit sharing or actually having dividends paid to employees and figuring out employee to equity in a more aggressive manner. This is the market that probably was already very attacked, so to speak, or let’s say, occupied by private equity firms. There are still obviously part of that model that would work well. There needs to be a fundamental shift, certainly on the quantum of salary compensation, dividend compensation, profit sharing, and all of that. Then last but not the least, obviously, we had the bucket around basically the reindustrialization of the middle, so everything else, which will take most of the belly that we were talking about. This is probably a poor analogy, the belly fat. It’s not belly fat, it’s people that were doing their jobs that now are getting disrupted. In some ways, that bucket will absorb a lot of that belly, will absorb a lot of talent. The small and medium businesses that Bertrand was saying will need to crucially become more AI, software-enabled by themselves, even with some core stuff and underpinnings that actually might not even require AI in terms of infrastructure platforms. There, you need to get properly paid. Again, how many people do you need in your engineering team if you’re a small business? Probably not a lot. It’s maybe you need one or two people and that’s it. They’ll need to be very nicely paid because they’re running the stuff in the rails. This is probably a market that over time, as AI gets more and more competent, will also be disrupted, but let’s not talk about the disruption to the disruption because otherwise, we’ll stay here the whole day, but certainly a market that has a lot of potential to shift and to absorb a lot of the moments that we’re seeing in terms of layoffs happening in the US in particular.   Bertrand Schmitt This category was a category that historically could not compete with Silicon Valley salaries, could not attract the most talented engineers. It’s not a category that didn’t want to bring these people on board. It’s a category that just couldn’t afford to bring this talent on board, typically. I think it would be a dramatic shift for them when suddenly there are opportunities to hire these people. There is an opportunity to hire them at maybe more reasonable prices from this company’s perspective. You talk about small companies, the great thing is that there are millions of small companies at some point. I think things could be truly transformational. Of course, some of these engineers, software engineers, might decide to become entrepreneurs on their own. Solo entrepreneurs, small businesses, build their own, easier to build their own product to market so to serve other companies. I think there will be quite dramatic changes because not all companies will be disrupted by AI as much, but not every company will benefit from improving processes, improving software through AI. At least early on, you will need this human touch to make it work inside a business. Interestingly enough, I was hearing that some companies like IBM were hiring more younger people to do the work of going to the client, understand their needs, propose implementation plans. That forward deployed engineer, those positions, I think there will be more and more available.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Investor Landscape Fragmentation What happens to investor into the landscape? We already had an episode, the previous one, Episode 76, where we talked quite a lot about the big capital reset on the private equity and private reset, including venture capital. Just maybe to summarize, how does it align with the buckets that we’ve just been discussing? I think the AI-native bucket clearly is going to be the key bucket. There, we’re going to see two movements. One movement, which is the mega funds, as we discussed in the last episode, are no longer just VC funds. They’re really mostly multi-asset private equity funds, maybe even private equity hedge funds in some cases. Those funds will be all over the high-growth AI-native companies and will be pouring money into companies that are scaling really, really quickly. The early stage, so to speak, VCs, the actual VCs that will stay in the market will be the guys probably identifying the next big wave of AI-native companies. We’ve discussed that as well in the last episode, some research that we did at Chamaeleon that I shared in episode 76. We’ll see that as emerging. What happens to the second bucket, the bucket around human premium, human in the loop? Likely we’ll have more and more private equity capital going into it and the large-scale VC guys, the Thrives of the world, they’ve just announced Thrive Holdings, and others going after those markets as well. It’s trying to converge into the private equity market, which aligns with the point we made in the previous episode that the VC mega funds are no longer VC, that they are private equity, multi-asset class. They’re going after a bunch of things. There’s a conversion happening from VC into private equity. It was going to happen anyway because the private equity guys were coming into VC as well and the hedge funds were coming to VC as well. There’s a convergence in the middle of very, very large funds and large assets under management happening to go after some of these opportunities, certainly in Bucket B. Then this Bucket C, so to speak, the bucket of reindustrialization, as Bertrand was saying, very well, likely will be self-funded for a significant period of time. Will self-fund with their own cash flow. Doesn’t need to have a ton of capital intensity. Maybe you need one or two engineers to do stuff, but that’s it. You don’t need tons of capital. You didn’t need in the past, you won’t need it today. Not sure there’s going to be a fundamental shift to that market.   Bertrand Schmitt Yes, I certainly, overall, agree with you. That last pocket, probably little change to the capital and capital structure. Again, I see that as the biggest opportunity for a lot of people who might be less needed by big tech and also top tech companies. What is sure for the first category, the high native startups? I would say more overall in the VC ecosystem, there is no space left for SaaS anymore. I think SaaS, as we used to know it, is dead in some ways in the sense that new pure SaaS software startup are definitely out. Existing ones that are critical to run your infrastructure, the Salesforce of the world, I think they’re in a decent spot. Actually, interestingly, they changed their pricing model to now sell to AI agents, not just per seat. There is a change in pricing there. But this day and age of funding a pure SaaS software startup through VC money, no way. VC money going to AI-native startups, AI-focused startups, to biotech, to deep tech, to defense tech, yes. SaaS as a fundable category early on, I think it’s over.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro I’m a bit more nuanced as we shared in The SaaS Apocalypse episode. We can call it whatever we call. It’s applied AI is the new SaaS thing. Horizontal applied AI is the new horizontal SaaS or vertical applied AI is the new vertical SaaS. I agree in common with your point that very specific point solutions around SaaS will be disrupted by nature with all the easy stuff you can do today with AI. It will take a while. This is not something that’s going to happen this year. It’s going to happen over the next years. Maybe interesting to also talk about the exit markets. I think the IPO market, as we’ve also discussed in the past, there is, in my view, going to be a reopening of the IPO market, I think this year, probably later in the year, third or fourth quarter. The median time to IPO actually is going to be really weird because there’s going to be potentially some companies in the current landscape, bubble or no bubble, that are going to IPO, the OpenAIs of the world, Anthropics of the world, et cetera. There will be more and more aggression, I think, on M&A. Big tech has already shown it, that they want to buy into markets. Large non-tech companies have also started doing acquisitions in space. To prop up their IT teams, their engineering teams with this world that we’ve also discussed in previous episodes that I’m going to own my own engineering stack for now. As we see, that normally doesn’t withstand the test of time. At some point it will get unbundled and served by someone else. Then finally, the secondary market is very hot right now. Obviously, there’s heavy discounting on some areas, high premiums on others. The exit market, strangely enough, is going to be propped up, in my opinion, over the next year to 2 years, dramatically. Then we’ll see if there’s a big reckoning around the bubble that we are clearly in or not, if it’s a soft landing or hard landing. Definitely, there’s going to be a lot of exit paths over the next year to 2 years.   Bertrand Schmitt Concerning the “bubble”, I have two perspectives on this. One is it’s a bubble in the sense that money is going to a lot of players and some players are going to blow it up. There will be a concentration of players at the end, like it usually happens. If you look at, for instance, long time ago, the railway revolution, there was that intense influx of capital. At the end of the day, there was a dramatic change in transportation in the US and a complete railway system put in place. Yes, some investors lost money, some companies went bankrupt, but the transformation was fully real. There were a lot of top leaders at the end of this revolution. The change after that only happened, we guess, post-World War II, with the construction of the highway system and the rise of airlines and plane transportation overall. Here I feel it’s similar in the sense that, yes, there is a lot of money going in. Some players are going to blow it. They will misuse the money in different ways, but that’s part of dynamic allocation of capital. Of course, you make mistakes. That’s what happens. At the same time, I feel it’s a similar level in the sense of this is a dramatic change in the US infrastructure. This buildup of AI data centers filled with GPUs, integrated at scale with some of the best software in the world and running it, supported by a dramatic shift in energy infrastructure. This is for me similar to the Railroad Revolution. Some players might not own the data center they build because they didn’t manage well their debt, they didn’t manage to run proper software. You know what? They will get acquired by somebody else. I think we are at this level of fundamental transformation. The fact that in a matter of maybe 2 years, the move from 0% of code written by AI to 100 % written by AI is an insane dramatic shift. Just to be clear, when you move from manually coded to AI coded, we’re talking about a 100X difference in terms of speed at similar, if not better level of quality. The shift is dramatic, and on top of it, you don’t pay salaries anymore to achieve that. You pay CapEx, and with GPUs and OpEx with electricity. It’s a very big shift, positive shift in business model. New unions, no management over it, AI working 24/7. Personally, I think for me, bubble has a bad connotation in the sense of it was all for a waste. I don’t think it’s all for a waste. I think we are witnessing a dramatic revolution of our lifetimes, quite frankly, bigger than SaaS, bigger than mobile. From my perspective, it’s exciting times.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Operator Playbook and Predictions Let’s move to if you are this person, what would you do in the future? Let’s start with two extremes and go from there. One is you’re non-tech, so you’re not an engineer, et cetera. You’re trying to figure out, how do I scale my activity? Maybe physical labor is where I want to go. It’s not, “Go west” anymore. Definitely not necessarily go west. You should go to, I guess, the states that have no sales tax with very cheap energy because that’s where the data centers are being built if you want to be in that market. Obviously, there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done: HVAC, electricity work, et cetera. Don’t go west. Go low sales taxes, low cost of energy. That’s likely where the data centers are being built. You probably can just follow. There’s, I’m sure, some way for you to follow where the data centers are being built, but that’s next, I think on that extreme of the table. The other extreme of the table, let’s say you are super ambitious, maybe you’re no longer an engineer, but you’re a product manager in your prompt engineering. You could do prompt engineering all day long. You’re 28, 29-year-old superstar. What do you go and do? Likely either you start your own thing, start your own company because you’re so good at prompt engineering, you probably can do a lot of the code yourself, particularly if you have an engineering background, or you go and join very early an AI-native startup that you think has the chance of going through the roof, and you take a pretty good salary early on, a ton of upside on the company because guess what? Companies like that need product managers. They need people to figure out UX, UI. It’s not going to be, at least for now, yet AI figuring that out for you. Those are two extremes, just to give two of the extremes, like engineering, product management persona, and physical labor at the other extreme, non-tech, et cetera.   Bertrand Schmitt In some ways, every software engineering job is going to become the equivalent of a software engineering manager or a product manager, because suddenly you don’t have to do the coding anymore. You’re managing AI that is coding for you. Either you start to have some manager hat, but we saw the humans, so it’s a very different type of manager, obviously, or you are going to be really an empowered product manager. You’re skipping the middleman. You’re skipping the traditional engineering organization because your engineering organization is AI running and doing the work for you. I still believe that it requires some serious skills. I don’t believe in the vibe coder type of value proposition. I don’t believe in the prompt engineer becoming suddenly super incredible, able to manage that. I still think it requires some serious chops to do the best from all of this and to do it in a safe and sane way. It’s very easy to have poor taste, make mistakes. I don’t know you, but keep reading these stories on the heads of companies who lost everything because of the AI agents. That deleted stuff in production, and they had no backups or the backups weren’t deleted as well. Crazy situation. You cannot run companies like this if you let your agents running wild. You could argue it’s the early days. I would argue it that that issues would be there for a while. You need to have some engineering discipline at core in the company running the business to make sure things don’t go sideways because it would be easy for things to go sideways.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro I totally agree. If you’re thinking, Oh, should my kid go into science and engineering and computer science, et cetera? Absolutely, still, because of everything that Bertrand just said. You need to understand actually what code does and what technology does and what all of that does. That’s still a skill of the future. It’s not a skill of the past. In some ways, it’s still a skill of the future very much. Maybe let’s try two more extremes. Around the same level, the person that decided to do an AI native company bootstrapped initially, having difficulty raising a mega round, but could probably get away with raising a 2-3 million seed round, et cetera. Is that still viable? The answer is yes. There’s tremendous capital efficiency right now happening in the market still, 10 plus higher than if you were doing a SaaS company, and you were a founder in 2019 or something like that. That capital efficiency is going to reverberate. You can run a tighter team, smaller team. Actually, you don’t need that many salaries. If you’re a decent engineer as a founder or if you understand enough as a product manager to just generate that code, you can do a lot of stuff yourself, can bring in maybe one or two technical elements to the team early on as you would have done if you were bootstrapped anyway. There’s obviously a path for that. The other extreme is you’re in big tech, you’re level five, individual contributor, making a ton of money, or you were a manager, and you’re now out of a job, where do you go? You can go to a big company that is non-tech, S&P 500 company that’s non-tech, something like that. You join the company, you’ll probably get paid pretty well, maybe not as high as you were paid in big tech. There’s some stock at the table, but guess what? You’ll have probably more work-life balance than you ever did. That’s the trade-off. You’ll have a better job. On the upside, you can transform the company. You can help and be part of transforming a company from non-AI to AI-first or AI-enabled in the future, whatever BS that will look like in terms of the argumentation to the board. You can actually create tremendous productivity enhancements in a big non-tech company if you come with that background. Again, you’ll have certainly a better work-life balance, so not a bad deal, to be honest.   Bertrand Schmitt Also, to be clear, I talk a lot about AI coding because it’s truly transformational. You could argue that it’s going to be self-improving. We are in the situation of a self-improving AI that keeps improving itself thanks to automated coding. It’s a dramatic, virtuous loop. Obviously, AI is also going to improve everything else. It’s going to improve your marketing, it’s going to improve your search process, it’s going to improve your DNA. Improvements will be everywhere. It’s just that right now we are at a point in the quote-unquote revolution where there is one clear piece of the puzzle that is moving faster than the rest.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Bertrand, the senior executives at non-tech don’t know anything about that. It could be just a great prompt engineer. That’s the only job you do. “I’m the chief marketing officer. I have someone below me that’s doing the whole work.” Nobody knows. Nobody’s the wiser, I guess. I’m being facetious, but not fully.   Bertrand Schmitt Yeah. There would be a transition period where what you described happen. I want to say, going back to AI coding, I think that the part of AI that as of today has reached a stage of limited AGI. We have reached, from my perspective, a limited type of AGI for coding. If you take coding as a discipline today, I think we reach AGI. If you go beyond coding, that’s true. If we are talking about coding, leveraging the latest LLMs: OPUS 4.7, ChatGPT 5.5, combined with Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode for harness, I think we’ve reached AGI in the context of coding. I’m not sure everyone fully realize that and the consequence of that. I think the rest is going to come as well. We are going to see that category by category, usually categories that are more scientific in nature, where you can replicate, where you can test easily, where you can create clear success. Metrics will be the “easiest” to follow in that direction of self-improvement. I just want to highlight that this part is truly transformational, the root cause of everything we’re talking about today. At the same time, it’s coming beyond coding.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro I think it is true. There are a couple of markets where that might not hold true, which is maybe the final path. If you’re thinking of starting your own business in plumbing and in HVAC maintenance and installation, this is a pretty good time for the reasons we already said before. There’s a lot of buildup of data centers and all that stuff, but also for other reasons, because it’s an activity that won’t be disrupted by AI yet. You need them embodied AI. You need physicality to AI to do stuff like actually fixing pipes.   Bertrand Schmitt Until Optimus replace you.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Yeah, but if we’re 3, 4 years out in terms of a lot of these optimizations that we’re talking about at the software layer, we’re 10 years plus out on embodied AI, right?   Bertrand Schmitt Oh, yeah, it’s 10 years.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro We’ll probably be optimistic as we speak. That’s a nice business. I’m thinking of starting to go into that market. If you guys are interested in listening to this, just reach out to me. What’s the angle? I think there’s a lot of stuff you can do in the buildup of some of these businesses, plumbing, HVAC, all sorts of maintenance. There are markets that are just totally messed up. Handyman market in the US is totally messed up. There’s a bunch of companies out there that try to go after it with marketplaces and stuff. I honestly just start something from scratch, a small business, and go from there.   Bertrand Schmitt Yes. They’re an interesting middle. Think about accounting firms, consulting firms. I think they are not as easy to replace, but at the same time, there is no way on what they do is not going to be dramatically changed with AI. I don’t know if it’s 50, 80, 90% of the job, but this is changing quite dramatically, would be my expectation in the coming few years. Conclusion Thanks for listening episode 77 of Tech Deciphered about that great talent redistribution. As you heard it from us, we believe there is a dramatic change in play, enabled by AI coding, and that ultimately a lot of the big tech companies are changing their employee distribution, way more focused on the top talents and bringing more GPUs. As a result, we will see a change in their staffing. Some of this change will benefit AI-focused startups, but probably more likely will benefit the bigger SMBs, the S&P 500 companies of the world that will finally be able to bring inside and afford some of the talent that were in some ways trapped by the top 5, 10, 20 software companies of the world. Thank you, Nuno.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Thank you, Bertrand

Yes & Amen: An Advent Series | Seed of Abraham | Genesis 15 | Erik Ripley by Providence Community Church

What happens when an entrepreneur turns their biggest fear—asking for money—into their secret weapon for success? In this episode of The Angel Next Door Podcast, host Marcia Dawood sits down with Maria Springer, founder of Capital Department, to discuss how founders can overcome fundraising anxiety and unlock new paths to capital.Maria's journey began in the social enterprise world of East Africa, where she quickly learned that mastering fundraising was vital to making an impact. Her hard-won expertise now powers Capital Department, a firm that has helped startups secure over $200 million, with a special emphasis on fueling growth through innovative community rounds and crowdfunding.This episode is essential listening for startup founders and investors alike. Maria and Marcia dive into how narrative and organization are key to successful fundraising, the evolving landscape of crowdfunding, and why engaging your community is more powerful than ever. If you want practical fundraising advice and insider stories—like how Pirouette outperformed Substack with a record-setting raise—this conversation is packed with takeaways you won't want to miss. To get the latest from Maria Springer, you can follow her below!https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariaspringer/https://www.capitaldept.com/ Sign up for Marcia's newsletter to receive tips and the latest on Angel Investing!Website: www.marciadawood.comLearn more about the documentary Show Her the Money: www.showherthemoneymovie.comAnd don't forget to follow us wherever you are!Apple Podcasts: https://pod.link/1586445642.appleSpotify: https://pod.link/1586445642.spotifyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/angel-next-door-podcast/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theangelnextdoorpodcast/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marciadawood

This episode originally aired in February 2024 and quickly became one of the most popular episodes of The Journey. Whether you're tuning in for the first time or revisiting this conversation, this episode will help you make informed decisions in your business!   Ever thought about raising venture capital for your business? In this episode, Morgan DeBaun breaks down everything a founder should know before diving into the venture fundraising process, sharing her invaluable insights from the perspective of both a fundraiser and an investor.   In this episode: 00:00 Introduction to Venture Funding 00:10 Should You Raise Money? 00:48 Understanding Angel Investors 02:55 The Importance of Traction 05:23 Navigating the Seed Round 06:44 Legal Considerations and Mistakes 08:29 Painting a Big Vision 10:57 Executing Your Plan 11:48 Hitting Milestones and Fundraising Timelines 12:31 The Importance of Momentum 13:31 Series Seed and Extensions 15:16 Navigating Series A 17:29 Series B and Beyond 19:19 Balancing Operations and Fundraising 20:56 Final Tips and Resources   First up, Morgan dives into a crucial question: Should you even raise venture capital for your business? Spoiler alert: More often than not, the answer is no. But for those who do opt for the fundraising path, Morgan warns that the venture capital journey won't be easy.   Through the episode, Morgan breaks down the phases of venture funding, from the Friends and Family and Angel Round to the critical Seed Round, all the way to the Series A, B, and C Rounds and beyond. She shares the benefits and challenges of each round and highlights what founders should pay attention to as they navigate the process. Morgan shares what she looks for in the entrepreneurs she chooses to support as an angel investor: resilience and grit. It's these qualities that often make the difference between success and failure in the cutthroat world of startups. Not sure if venture funding is the right choice for your business? After you listen to the episode, check out Morgan's workshop [link below] which will help you decide if fundraising is the appropriate next step for your startup. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a rating and review!   Pre-order Rewrite Your Rules: https://worksmartprogram.com/book/   Make sure you are following Morgan on TikTok to follow along with her beauty and wellness journey! https://www.tiktok.com/@morgandebaun?_ Join the Newsletter for More Exclusive Content: https://worksmartprogram.ac-page.com/thejourneypodcast Visit Mormatcha.com to make a purchase. Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thejourneybymdb Produced by MicMoguls.

In this episode of the B2B SaaS podcast, host Upendra Varma sits down with Dana Dunford, the CEO of Hemlane, a property management platform. Dana sheds light on Hemlane's unique approach to property management and the strategies that have propelled its growth, particularly focusing on the development of a robust affiliate program.Here are the key takeaways:Company Overview:Hemlane offers a hybrid property management platform catering to rental property owners seeking an alternative to traditional property management services.With a portfolio of 23,000 rental properties across all 50 states, Hemlane stands out in the market for targeting small mom-and-pop property owners.Customer Acquisition:Dana emphasizes the challenge of creating a new category within an industry and discusses Hemlane's early reliance on referrals for customer acquisition.The company leveraged its network and personal connections to initiate warm introductions and gather valuable feedback from potential customers.Dana shares insights into Hemlane's affiliate program, which contributes to over 50% of customer acquisitions through strategic partnerships and referrals from satisfied customers.Sales and Pricing:The average customer pays just over $79 per month, with an average portfolio size of eight rental properties.Hemlane's sales approach is low-touch, with demos provided as needed, reflecting the self-service nature of its target market.The company maintains a churn rate of less than 1%, focusing on maximizing revenue retention and ancillary services to drive additional revenue streams.Funding and Growth:Hemlane has raised over $12 million in funding through Series Seed and Series A rounds, positioning the company for continued expansion.The company's strong performance has surpassed key milestones, with current projections well exceeding the $5-10 million ARR benchmark sought by investors for the Series B round.Vision and Future Plans:Dana envisions Hemlane as a catalyst for eliminating the stigma associated with rental property ownership and empowering individuals to build passive income streams through real estate investments.The company aims to further scale its operations, enabling property owners to manage and expand their portfolios seamlessly from anywhere.

Series: Seed, Soil, & Son-Light Title: This Little Light of "Mine?" Scripture: Luke 8:16-18 Date: 3.17.24

Series: Seed, Soil, & Son-Light Title: Growing Roots Scripture: Luke 8:4-15 Date: 3.10.24

Series: Seed, Soil, & Son-Light Title: Growing Roots Scripture: Luke 8:4-15 Date: 3.10.24

2023 Angel Funders Report - https://www.angelcapitalassociation.org/angel-funders-report-2023/2023 OASB Annual Report - https://www.sec.gov/files/2023-oasb-annual-report.pdf Sign up for Marcia's newsletter to receive tips and the latest on Angel Investing!Website: www.marciadawood.com And don't forget to follow us wherever you are!Apple Podcasts: https://pod.link/1586445642.appleSpotify: https://pod.link/1586445642.spotifyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/angel-next-door-podcast/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theangelnextdoorpodcast/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marciadawood

This is CC Pod - the Climate Capital Podcast. You are receiving this because you have subscribed to our Substack. If you'd like to manage your Climate Capital Substack subscription, click here. Subscribe to CC Pod wherever you listen to your podcasts:In this special episode of CC Pod, Michael explores Climate Angels with Vijay Rajendran, an experienced Climate Capital Syndicate Investor and Advisor. Vijay is not a typical interviewee for this show. From being an entrepreneur in commerce and fintech to advising both startups and big companies on product and strategy, his experiences have crafted his perspective on climate investing. He isn't a portfolio founder, but rather a colleague at Climate Capital who is helping to launch Climate Angels - an educational program for potential angel investors interested in the climate tech space.Climate Angels is designed to answer questions about angel investing, particularly in the climate field, which differs significantly from other tech verticals. It will guide participants through the process of developing a robust investment thesis, sourcing potential startups, evaluating them, syndicating, and eventually providing advice or guidance to portfolio companies.From our CC Insights article announcing the launch of Climate Angels:Angel investing, by the numbers.Angels play an important role in the larger venture ecosystem, providing capital to bridge early startups from company formation to their first “real” fundraise. * On average, angel groups invested a total of $5.3 million per group in 2022, an increase of 15% from 2020. The total amount invested in 2021 represents the highest total since the Angel Capital Association began tracking this data.1* Angels continued to focus on investing in pre-seed & seed-stage deals in 2021, reducing investments in later rounds. Angels invested more than 50% of their dollars in Series Seed, which accounted for nearly 60% of deals, up from 50% in the prior two years.* Startups that have angel backing are at least 14 percent more likely to survive for 18 months or more after funding than firms that do not. 2Vijay shares valuable insights into the differences between early and later stage investment, explaining how the journey from idea to seed stage presents unique opportunities and challenges. He emphasized the importance of understanding and evaluating the market potential and the quality of the startup team, crucial factors that every angel investor must consider.The conversation also delved into the shift in perception of climate investing. Traditionally viewed as impact-first and return-second, the narrative is changing. Vijay laid out a compelling case for climate as an investable category, suggesting that the focus should be on the myriad opportunities in the sector, from energy transition to food systems.The Climate Angels program is open to individuals who have dabbled in angel investing and are intrigued by the opportunities in the climate world. It also welcomes those who haven't invested before but are passionate about climate change and want to contribute to the sector in a meaningful way.The Climate Angels program is a unique opportunity to explore climate investing, learn from experts in the field, and contribute to the fight for societal decarbonization. For those interested in learning more about the program, visit the website.Disclaimer: Under no circumstances should any information or content on this page be considered an offer to sell or solicitation of interest to purchase any securities, including any securities advised by Climate Capital or any of its affiliates or representatives. Further, no content or information herein is or is intended, nor should it be construed as, an offer to provide any investment advisory service, financial advice, legal, tax, accounting, investment, or other advice from Climate Capital or any of its affiliates (collectively "Climate Capital”). Under no circumstances should anything herein be construed as fund marketing materials by prospective investors considering investing in any Climate Capital investment fund. Content contained herein does not constitute an offer to sell — or a solicitation of an offer to buy — any securities and may not be used or relied upon in evaluating the merits of any investment. Information regarding companies highlighted herein has been provided by third parties, and Climate Capital makes no representations or warranties as to its accuracy, as to the viability of any company listed herein, or the results of any investment in a listed company. Get full access to Climate Capital at climatecap.substack.com/subscribe

Reflect Ventures invests in core infrastructure areas where there are significant barriers to entry and where digitization can enable huge economic gains. Some of their focus sectors include logistics, supply chain, distribution, commerce, and fintech. They primarily co-invest with reputable institutional lead VCs in Series Seed and A/B rounds of B2B and B2B2C startups. In this episode, we talk about: - Investment thesis at Reflect Ventures - Investing in emerging markets - How they generate Venture scale returns with the typical VC risk? - "Hair blown back" moment for syndicates and more.. Links mentioned in the episode: Reflect Ventures website- http://www.reflectventures.com/ Pitch here - invest@reflectventures.com Michel's LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfriedman88/ Jor's LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorlaw88/ Hosted by Parshant Choubey - https://twitter.com/ChoubeySahab Full episode blog at https://vc10x.com/vc-scale-returns

In this episode, we talk with Jake Marmulstein.From the Atlanta area, Jake is an entrepreneur and business executive with a variety of experience, including ERP to SaaS, digital marketing to education technology, and hospitality to real estate. He has advised executives of early stage companies, lead operations and finance, product, sales, and customer success efforts.In his current operating role, Jake is the Founder, President & CEO of the Real Estate Investment Tech SaaS company Groundbreaker Technologies. He made the initial angel investment, completed key hires, established selling, financial and operational systems, lead a Series Seed round of financing, and continues to grow the company.Jake received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University, where he emphasized in hospitality and real estate. He studied abroad in Rio de Janeiro and at Cornell was involved in grant writing for grassroots community service organizations while also forming a non-profit peer to peer mentorship organization.Join us for our new episode as we explore ways to help you live the life you deserve! Subscribe to my Youtube channel so you never miss an episode! Visit www.freedominvesting.com to see how we can help you! 

Host Gary J. Ross talks with Jose Ancer, partner (and CTO) at Optimal Counsel and the author of Silicon Hills Lawyer, an internationally-recognized legal blog on emerging companies and VC fundamentals. Gary and Jose discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different securities instruments for emerging companies, including convertible notes and pre-money and post-money SAFEs; friends & family vs. angel rounds; the Series Seed and NVCA documents; valuation caps; and the significance of relationship building in the VC world.

Michelle Pacynski, VP, Digital Innovation at Ulta Beauty and  Fund Advisor, Prisma Ventures and Agustina Sartori, Sr Director Innovation at Ulta Beauty and Managing Director Prisma Ventures joins us to discuss the role Prisma Ventures will play in driving innovation for ULTA Beaty. How it Works Prisma Ventures partners with early-stage startups that are primarily Series Seed and Series A technology companies within the following innovation pillars: Personalized & Data Driven Technology AR, VR & the Metaverse Technology-Powered Custom Beauty Products & In-Store Services Social Commerce These pillars mirror Ulta Beauty's digital innovation priorities and growth mindset, accounting for the majority of Prisma Ventures investments. The remaining investments are reserved for opportunistic technologies beyond the company's core digital strategy to disrupt other facets of retail, beauty, or commerce more broadly. The Ulta Beauty Prisma Ventures team will evaluate applicants based on five key metrics: Alignment with a Focus Area: Companies that align with Ulta Beauty's four primary innovation pillars Leadership & Cultural Compatibility: The startups' management experience, ability to execute, and cultural fit to enable successful collaboration Diligence & Risk Assessment: Successful completion of diligence across functions such as legal, technical, and business Business Plan & Scalability: Strength of value proposition, vision, plans to reach financial goals and scale IP & Differentiation: Novel capabilities, patents, and technologies To learn more about Prisma Ventures, please visit www.ulta.com/prisma-ventures. Give it a listen and let us know what you think?   Podcast Guest Michelle Pacynski VP, Digital Innovation, Ulta Beauty Fund Advisor, Prisma Ventures https://www.ulta.com/innovation/ Agustina Sartori, Sr Director Innovation at Ulta Beauty  Managing Director Prisma Ventures https://www.ulta.com/innovation/    Podcast Hosts Jeff Roster Twitter https://twitter.com/JeffPR LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-bb51b8/ Website https://thisweekininnovation.com Brian Sathianathan Twitter  https://twitter.com/BrianVision Website https://www.iterate.ai Podcast Website https://www.podbean.com/pu/pbblog-f8asf-af2782 https://thisweekininnovation.com Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-innovation/id1562068014 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2QDqTUnt6jebdRHbRzSTJN LaunchPadOne https://www.launchpaddm.com/pd/This-Week-in-Innovation?showAllEpisodes=true Listen Notes https://lnns.co/2QPSfnizE5K         #UltaBeauty, #thisweekininnovation, #TRI22, #5ForcesOfInnovation, #podcast, #retailpodcast, #VentureCapital, #VC, #innovation, #innovationstrategy, #retailinnovation, #Startup, #Startups, #Retailers, #retail, #retailindustry, #retailtechnology, #emergingtechnologies, #Founders, #Entrepreneurs, #VR, #virtualreality, #AR, #ArtificialReality, #metaverse, #ArtificialIntelligence , #AI, #InternetOfThings,  #IoT, #blockchain, #socialcommerce, #unifiedcommerce, #ecommerce, #mobilecommerce,  #lowcode, #computervision, #livestreaming,  

Summary: Welcome to another great episode of Startup Junkies! On this episode, hosts Caleb Talley, Jeff Amerine, and Davis McEntire sit down with Greg Shepard, founder and CEO of BOSS Capital Partners, a boutique investment firm focused on Series Seed through Series B technology businesses. Greg also founded BOSS Startup Science, a school for entrepreneurs. Greg is a twenty-year startup veteran and serial entrepreneur, a Forbes author, a TEDX speaker, and the host of Meet The BOSS Forbes Radio show. Throughout the episode, Caleb, Jeff, Davis, and Greg discuss the curriculum of BOSS Startup Science and the methodology behind startup accelerators.   Show Notes: (1:06) Introduction to Greg (1:45) Greg's Background in the Venture Capital Arena (3:39) About BOSS Capital Partners (8:32) Insights from Greg's Five-Year Study (17:28) Thoughts on Raising Money vs. Selling a Product or Service (20:55) Success of the BOSS Startup Science Methodology (24:52) Concept Centric vs. Entrepreneur Centric (34:42) Curriculum of BOSS Startup Science (44:04) Advice To Younger Self (50:32) Closing Thoughts   Links: Caleb Talley Jeff Amerine Davis McEntire Greg Shepard BOSS Capital Partners   Quotes: “I did this study and was trying to figure out why they were failing, but what I really needed to learn was when they were failing because the why was coordinated with the when. They always collided at the same time.” - Greg Shepard, (4:55) “I thought that the first thing I should focus on was helping them not fail, but the first thing I needed to focus on was helping them get into an accelerator in the first place.” - Greg Shepard, (6:18) “It enables the people that are running the venture studio to put together funds and start making money on the loads. I don't feel that is helping the entrepreneur. I think a lot of these things developed are helping the middle man but not really helping the entrepreneurs.” - Greg Shepard, (25:40)

Jake is the Founder, President & CEO of the Real Estate Investment Tech SaaS company, Groundbreaker Technologies. He made the initial angel investment, completed key hires, established selling, financial, and operational systems, led a Series Seed-round of financing, and continues to grow the company. He is an entrepreneur and business executive with a variety of experience, including ERP to SaaS, digital marketing to education technology, and hospitality to real estate. He shares his insights on how to achieve success, including tips on how to learn new skills and techniques. He invites listeners to visit groundbreaker.co to learn more about what Groundbreaker can do for you![00:01 - 10:54] Opening SegmentLet's get to know Jake Marmulstein!How he started Groundbreaker[10:55 - 16:10] Team Building and Motivating People To Achieve A Common VisionJake discusses how real estate investing is becoming more accessible and simpleHis background in tech startups helped him understand the importance of team building and motivating people to achieve a common visionGroundbreaker provides resources for syndicators and real estate investors, helping them learn about the industry and navigate through early stages[16:11 - 21:51] THE FINAL FOURWhat's the worst job that you ever had?When he worked in Johnny RocketsWhat's a book you've read that has given you a paradigm shift? “The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen”What is a skill or talent that you would like to learn? Language acquisition in order to connect better with peopleWhat does success mean to you?Jake says that, “Success is spending time doing what you want with whom you want, however much you want.”Connect with JakeWebsite: groundbreaker.coLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakemarmulstein/ LEAVE A 5-STAR REVIEW by clicking this link.WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE?Be sure to follow me on the below platforms:Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, or Stitcher.LinkedInYoutubeExclusive Facebook Groupwww.yonahweiss.comNone of this could be possible without the awesome team at Buzzsprout. They make it easy to get your show listed on every major podcast platform.Tweetable Quotes:“I get energized with helping emerging syndicators are up and coming operators be able to navigate through some of those early learnings that are usually very cost prohibitive, or just really time consuming.” – Jake Marmulstein“If you're on the platform and you've been working with us for some time, the relationship is already established. ” – Jake MarmulsteinSupport the show

  From the Atlanta area, Jake Marmulstein is an entrepreneur and business executive with a variety of experience, including ERP to SaaS, digital marketing to education technology, and hospitality to real estate. He has advised executives of early-stage companies, lead operations and finance, product, sales, and customer success efforts.   In his current operating role, Jake is the Founder, President & CEO of the Real Estate Investment Tech SaaS company Groundbreaker Technologies. He made the initial angel investment, completed key hires, established selling, financial and operational systems, lead a Series Seed-round of financing, and continues to grow the company.   Jake received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University, where he emphasized hospitality and minored in real estate. He studied abroad in Rio de Janeiro and at Cornell was involved in grant writing for grassroots community service organizations while also forming a non-profit peer-to-peer mentorship organization. Jake has worked abroad in London, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Puerto Rico and has a working proficiency with Spanish and Portuguese. Stay tuned and listen to how Jake Marmulstein shares his knowledge on the future of Real Estate Syndication through their Groundbreaker Technologies.   [00:00 - 04:29] Groundbreaker Technologies: How to Scale Your Real Estate Investment Business Jake started his CRE investment career in 2011 at Watermark Capital Partners, a hotel REIT in Chicago He co-founded Groundbreaker, a software platform for real estate syndication, and began to build it out The platform is now used by real estate operators to raise money and manage their deals Jake has experience in software development and engineering, which helped him build the platform   [04:30 - 12:19] Groundbreaker Partners with JV Equity Partners to Bring on Larger Deals Jake shares that they were able to get press coverage for their solution after building a basic version on the web. This helped them to attract interested prospects, which led to them being able to pay their office expenses with revenue from their solution. They are looking to build a comprehensive ecosystem of services that will help their customers grow and be successful.   [12:19 - 17:20] Groundbreaker Software Introduces Education Program to Help New Class of Real Estate Syndicators Succeed Knowing that operators don't do deals alone, Jake and his company study carefully what that experience has to be and build a feature that allows people to do deals with each other without the problem where they share the data from their own investor list with the other group. They Don't want to be a CRM system or an email marketing system, but instead an investor management software. Jake notes that they have overcome alignment within the organization, but it's really hard to be able to work with people who aren't yet successful at doing a deal.   [17:20 - 18:45] Closing Segment Jake Marmulstein, CEO of Roundbreaker, offers listeners a three-month free trial of their annual subscription if they type "Bricken" into their website's request form. Jake also recommends LinkedIn and Roundbreaker's website for contacting him.   Reach out to Jake See links below  Final words Tweetable Quotes   "At the end of the day, were we going to be a financing system, were we going to be software? We can be both and really fielding those all structuring my questions and doing customer discovery."  - Jake Marmulstein     “It's real estate syndication. There's some complexity in doing that. Even marketing yourself to investors and building your investor base requires you to have an investment thesis and understand who the investor is that you're going after.” - Jake Marmulstein   ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Jake Marmulstein on LinkedIn. Visit their website   Connect with me: Facebook   LinkedIn   Like, subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you listen on.  Thank you for tuning in!   Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:   [00:00:00] Jake Marmulstein: if you're an operator and you're looking at who can be the best partner for you. You want to surround yourself with companies that are gonna really care about where you are now and help you to scale as you continue growing to set objectives that are mutually beneficial for both of you so that they have a vested interest in your success.  [00:00:21] Sam Wilson: Jake began his CRE investment career in 2011 at watermark capital partners, a hotel REIT in Chicago, and after struggling to raise capital for his own deals, he found a groundbreaker a software platform for real estate syndication, Jake, welcome to the show. [00:00:47]Jake Marmulstein:  Hey man, pleasure's mine.  [00:00:49] Sam Wilson:  There's three questions. I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90 seconds or less. Can you tell me, where did you start? Where are you now? How did you get there?  [00:00:58] Jake Marmulstein: So when I studied at Cornell university an undergrad, I did a real estate minor. I graduated, worked in the city government of Rio de Janeiro doing foreign investment promotion. And that's where things all started for me. Now I'm in. Chicago, Illinois as a CEO and founder of groundbreaker technologies, a real estate investment management software company. And I got here by getting the experience, the basic experience that I needed. Throughout my early corporate career to identify there is a pain in the space for a lot of real estate operators experiencing it first myself, and then going to the market and looking at the way different firms were dealing with the problem. And I just, started with 10 grand in my bank account and the dream.  [00:01:48] Sam Wilson: That's awesome. I love that. Do you have a background in software development, engineering, anything on that front?  [00:01:56] Jake Marmulstein: I have friends.  [00:01:58] Sam Wilson: All right. I liked that. I liked that. So tell us, how did you from concept to getting the idea hatched and built? Give us that quick story, because I think this is compelling for a lot of people that are sitting on ideas and don't necessarily know where to start.  [00:02:12] Jake Marmulstein: So the, when, when groundbreaker was conceived as a idea, it was the first step frustration. And then there was changes in legislation, such as the jobs act, which pushed real estate platforms that were technology driven to do crowdfunding and market themselves pretty widely. So you think of like fundraise and Realty, mogul and Realty shares, and groundbreaker. Started basically as a result of some of that, we came into the market and said, well, there's a lot of people that are raising capital and underwriting deals, but the software in this technology to infrastructure is still needed.Is there going to be a world in which everybody has a technology and they're raising money from their own investors or crowdfunding, or, how's this all going to play? And we saw that the technology is needed in the space. And it's just a matter of time before all real estate operators will be tech enabled to have a system that they can use with their investors. So that raising money happens over in electronic means data and information is no longer stored in Excel. And that's the vision that I had when all of that was happening. it's a combination of laws that were changing and just the times, and, consumer behavior where people are moving towards using more digital solutions to interact with financial technology, looking at banking, brokerage, all of it is going towards having a login and a portal. So you can check your information from your phone. Why not real estate?  [00:03:52] Sam Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's, you're absolutely correct. So what were some of the first steps you guys took in building this out? Having friends, but then going all right now, we're gonna develop a software. Now we're going to bring on team members. Now we got people to pay salaries, payroll, like how did all that work? And then when did you say man, this thing's actually gonna make money.    [00:04:12] Jake Marmulstein: So that part was a little bit more nebulous when we began. We had a vision and that vision was strong enough to get people to come on board and spend their time working with us without having to necessarily take a salary. So we had equity in the early days, they were giving to the talent that came and built the product for us. And then we use that vision to convince. Reporters to talk about our solution. After we had a very basic version up on the web. And so we got press, which gave us free advertising, which brought in a lot of interested prospects to our website. And I would feel the calls and talk to them about their problems without actually knowing what the solution was going to be at the end of the day. Where we going to be a financing system where we're going to be a software where we can be both and really fielding those calls, structuring my questions and doing customer discovery. There's a course that Steve blank does called customer discovery. If you're ever going to start a company, you should absolutely take that course because the process to understand the customer segmentation and their pain points. Helps you to be able to chart the course on which problems you want to solve and which problems you don't want to solve and for whom. And so we identified that the problem was while people wanted access to capital, there was also a segment of the market that wanted better systems to be able to manage the capital that they did have. And so looking at the way that the market was moving. And the risks associated with being the capital provider and underwriting all those deals. We wanted to move in that direction of being a technology provider. And so we use that vision to sell those early prospects were really interested in what we're doing to pay us, $500 a month for the software and pay us an implementation fee to get it started. And so really we use that vision, that dream to sell people on the product before. We really had much of a product built by making them early customers and helping them build the product with us. And then it took me about Six months of not taking any salary and the business, really not making any money, just, paying its office expenses in order for us to crack through some revenue that resulted in a distribution to the partners. [00:06:34] Sam Wilson: I liked that. That's a lot of the way that people who are starting out in, especially building teams early on as the active. Sponsor or investor. A lot of us start out that way where it's like, Hey, we're all going to get together. And we're going to, we're going to put our heads together and work really hard. And then it might be six, nine months or a year before we crack the nut and actually begin started making the money. So I like, that's not an unfamiliar chart or an unfamiliar territory for many of us. Tell me, you said there that you guys were trying to decide early on whether or not you want to do. Finance company, or you want to be a technology, you guys went into technology, but yeah, one of the things you and I talked about off air was that you guys are looking to build a comprehensive what you call it, a comprehensive ecosystem of services. Can you break some of that down for us?  [00:07:17] Jake Marmulstein: Yes. So the real estate operator who uses groundbreaker and we focus on is a small to mid-size. Syndicator that may have a couple of deals that they've done using Excel. And they're mostly communicating with their investors through email. Maybe they use Dropbox or a CRM system, and they want to formalize their business and be more professional and more efficient by using a solution like groundbreaking  But also these folks don't have a well-established network or relationship with capital partners and services. So there's other solutions that we can provide as a business to be able to make that experience of going from. One to two deals to 10 deals or 20 deals or $2 million sized deals, $10 million sized deals, easier and more scalable for the company that's working with us. So when I say the services ecosystem, if you're an operator and you're looking at who can be the best partner for you. You want to surround yourself with companies that are gonna really care about where you are now and help you to scale as you continue growing to set objectives that are mutually beneficial for both of you so that they have a vested interest in your success. And groundbreakers is doing that for the sponsors that we're working with by having a long-term vision where we rolled out. Different services that are embedded into our core product and our system so that you can get everything you need from us, whether that comes from legal or underwriting or capital or insurance, or even help operationally on the deal. Because we are a technology company that's providing that infrastructure, that layer to organize your business. But once you're using us, you're also. We're also, in a way, partnering with you because the more that you grow and the more deals you do on groundbreaker, the more successful you are as a customer, the more we're we are successful, the more you're likely to bring on other deals or other customers to us. So we want all of our customers to grow up and supporting them through those services as a way of helping them. And it's also a way of us creating additional revenue opportunities for the business.  [00:09:40] Sam Wilson:What's  it been like, cause each of those sound like their own siloed kind of business, if you're bringing on, JV equity partners and getting to know those people out there that are looking to joint venture, but don't want to necessarily be the active sponsor. And now you're building out a technology platform and then you're connecting all of those. What's that actual process like and how do you silo those and perfect each of those without distracting from your corporate.    [00:10:04] Jake Marmulstein: That's a great question. And we've thought about that a lot as we worked on piloting some of those services and getting initial traction from them, our core business is to bring on. Early in up and coming real estate syndicators that want to build and scale their business. On top of groundbreaker looking at us as a partner, that's going to help them to grow and the way that we impact growth through the. Other services is mainly by partnering with best-in-class providers and allowing those partners to have access to customers so that they can render their services and the customer can get value when they need it. So an example of that would be. One of my clients is doing a $12 million deal. It's one of their first larger deals. Initially when they began with us, they were doing smaller deals, like $3 million, $4 million deals in C class with C class assets, C class locations. And they really proved themselves out over the last two years and build their business. And they were successful in turning a lot of those assets. But now they want to swing for larger size deals. And their investor base is also confident to be able to invest more capital in them at this point. But they're going to need some additional capital to be able to fund some of these larger acquisitions. And by having that relationship with groundbreaker, we're able to know where they are in their cycle, what they need. So we've told them about our programs. Okay. They're entering into those services by giving us the information on their deal, and then being able to have calls with our equity partners, to be able to source capital from them and see if there's a fit amongst the investors that we can bring to the table. [00:11:59] Sam Wilson: That's really a really unique. Are there any other elements of the kind of tech platform that you guys are thinking about or building out or see things coming down the pike that you say, Hey, this is this something we're considering? And here's ways that we plan on implementing it? [00:12:14] Jake Marmulstein: Well, we're doing a co-sponsorship is the really big one. We know that. Operators don't do deals alone. A lot of them work with others. So we're studying really carefully what that experience has to be and building a feature that. Allows people to do deals with each other without the the problem where they share the data from their own investor lists with the other group, because a lot of sponsors, care so much about that investor list that they've worked so hard to build. And even though you're partnering with someone and you trust them, you still want that data to belong to you and only yet. So that's one of the big ones. And then we don't want to be a CRM sister. We're an email marketing system. We're an investment management software and we're going to continue being best in class in that. Whereas the CRM is going to be integrated into groundbreaker so you can continue to use your active campaign or your HubSpot or whatever CRM use, but it'll sync the data with our system so that those triggers. Anything else that you're running in those campaigns can be run in tandem with what happens on groundbreaker    [00:13:30] Sam Wilson: right. that's really cool. And that's one of the things that. Finding those integrations, I'm going to use that word. I'm not a tech guy, so you'll have to forgive me is that I can barely send an email, but I know that the integrations, when they work smoothly makes life so much easier. And I think that's what we're seeing is across the web and everything else is just all these different programs that we have to use because each one specializes in its own thing. But if they don't integrate and talk, it's like. This is really frustrating. So that's really cool that you guys are solving that problem. What are some challenges that you guys are facing right now that are not maybe have you stumped, but certainly have you scratching your head? Go, gosh, how are we going to overcome this?   [00:14:10] Jake Marmulstein: No, that's a great question. Until recently it's been. Focus on focusing on the core customer segment that we're dealing with and understanding what you know, what to build in for whom. But we've really overcome that alignment lately within the organization. It's really hard to be able to work with people who aren't yet successful at doing that. And we want to be able to serve those operators and help them. But a lot of them just don't have there. There's just a lot more that they need to be able to be successful. And we can't address those needs in the market. So we want to be able to be a big and successful company that serves a lot of operators, but we just have to stay focused on the operators Actually can, can value our help and use it to be able to build and scale their business. So I think a lot of the people that may be listening to this call would be appropriate. But there's many people that are entering the space as beginners who, haven't done a deal yet. And that's a real challenge is figuring out a way it is, I would love to figure out a way to work with them, but unfortunately I don't think we can.    [00:15:25] Sam Wilson: Yeah. You can't be all things to all people. That's a, that's certainly true. And I think that's an interesting point you make.Cause you want to be able to find a way for people to adopt your software early on. You want to build to bring them on and say, Hey man, come in, come into the fold, get to know us as you grow. Won't this be great. But it also sounds like you also don't want to be the baby. Saying. Okay.] All right. Let me teach you all about what you're doing and how to raise capital and how to use this. And it just, it sounds like there needs to be some level of not just rudimentary, but some sophistication involved before somebody can really adopt what you guys do.    [00:16:00] Jake Marmulstein: Yeah. It's, real estate syndication. There's some complexity of doing that. Even marketing yourself to investors and building your investor base requires you to have an investment thesis and understand who the investor is that you're going after. And it's, it is a beautiful thing what's happening right now in the world. I think that the market that we're in right now is growing significant. More people who are working nine to five jobs in the corporate world, or working from home and exploring ways to invest in real estate. People who are commercial real estate brokers are figuring out, Hey, why don't I invest, and do my own deals. There's a lot of people that are entering the market and will be entering the market and in the future. And I think we're in a good position to be able to help all those people, but there needs to be a base level. Education program. And, we work with groups like Jake and Gino and Joe Fairless and other types that are helping to educate that a new class of real estate syndicators. So I'm hopeful that those guys will continue to be the babysitters for the market if you will.  [00:17:10] Sam Wilson: Yeah. That's absolutely right. I absolutely love it, Jake. Thanks for taking the time to really break down what groundbreaker does, the problems you can. Are seeing and solving in the marketplace. I think that's really cool. You're building something that I think even across is as can fairly familiar with, everybody has competitors and I'm fairly familiar with even some of your active competition. And I think you guys are doing some things very differently that are solving problems, maybe that other people aren't in the marketplace.So that's absolutely cool. I love it. Jake, , Hey, so one of the things that you offered to our listeners to this show certainly appreciate it. I found it here was that if you're listening to the show and you type in the word BRICKEN, when submitting a request or your website, you can get three free months of groundbreaker when you sign up for an annual subscription. So, Jake, thanks for offering that up to our listeners. Certainly appreciate that. And last question for you here. If our listeners want to get in touch with you and learn more about you, what is the best way to.  [00:18:02] Jake Marmulstein: Please add me on LinkedIn, Jake Marmulstein, and also go to our website groundbreaker.co. And if you fill out a demo request form, then we'll be in touch with you and you can go over our software and learn about your business. [00:18:16] Sam Wilson: Awesome. Jake, thanks for your time today. I do  [00:18:18] Jake Marmulstein: appreciate it. Thanks Sam. I appreciate it as well. 

Welcome to Episode Fourteen! Jesse was almost late to record because of a parade, Kyle has Supernova updates and exciting apps to highlight, there are gardening metaphors, then Kyle goes deep into the NNS weeds to discuss the new seven-day NNS staking proposal. For recommendations Jesse gets wrecked and Kyle gets revolutionary. It's a good episode.    Galungan Bali Holiday Barong Bangkal Dance Mask  Galungan Parade Video Scooter Through Ubud Narrows  Scooter Through Rice Fields at Night Supernova Numbers Carbon Crowd's IC Footprint Dstar Notes Cycles to power notes  We really need 1 month short term staking We are preparing a motion proposal to suggest this  [Proposal] Reducing minimum staking time for expanding governance participation Kyle's comments on 7 day staking proposal One of the reasons why I am looking forward to short-term staking is Centralized Exchanges getting rekt by not being able to short #ICP Ask Neurotic:  Any B2B or B2C platforms/companies coming out of supernova or prior that have successfully raised Series Seed funding from VCs? Can the #IC accommodate a sudden surge of devs coming into the ecosystem, or is there a chance for the protocol to time out like Solana? Is it safe to connect the Plug wallet to a Dapp on the IC? How comparable is it to connecting a Metamask wallet to a Dapp on ETH? Recommendations:  Jesse: Get SCUBA Certified / Diving the Liberty Wreck in Amed, Bali Kyle: Hamilton Aftershow:  Jesse's Hand Tap Tattooing Video -- Got feedback, Ask Neurotic questions or just want to chat?  Follow us on twitter @neuroticpod

Today I chatted with Jake Marmulstein the Founder, President & CEO Groundbreaker Technologies.In his current operating role, as the Founder, President & CEO of the Real Estate Investment Tech SaaS company, Jake has made the initial angel investment, completed key hires, established selling, financial and operational systems, lead a Series Seed-round of financing, and continues to grow the company. Jake received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University, where he emphasized hospitality and minored in real estate.Episode Spotlights- What gave birth to Groundbreaker Technologies- How could you streamline and save time with the product- Timeframe to have your data organized in the software- Features and Benefits of the software Book Recommendations- The Millionaire Next DoorConnect with Jake:Email: jake@groundbreaker.co Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakemarmulstein/ Website: https://www.groundbreaker.co/Grab your freebie - Tips for Multifamily Investing at www.ushacapital.comFound this episode insightful? Show us some love by spreading the word on social media or  rating and reviewing the show here - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/multifamily-ap360/id1522097213Follow Rama on socials!LinkedIn | Meta | Twitter | InstagramConnect to Rama KrishnaE-mail: info@ushacapital.comWebsite: www.ushacapital.com

Every syndicator and capital raiser uses an online platform, and we have  the CEO of one of the best capital portals (Groundbreaker) in the business!Jake tells an engaging story from college and his foray's into hospitality, RE, fundraising, and growing a tech startup. He share's the good, the bad, and the average, and more importantly what he saw for the need to launch Groundbreaker.Jake is based in Chicago but was in Minneapolis where I am currently located. Good to see the Midwest not getting left behind in the tech startup space. Contact Info:Jake's Profilelinkedin.com/in/jakemarmulsteinWebsitegroundbreaker.co  (Company Website)Emailjake@groundbreaker.coJake's Linked Profile:From the Atlanta area, Jake is an entrepreneur and business executive with a variety of experience, including ERP to SaaS, digital marketing to education technology, and hospitality to real estate. He has advised executives of early stage companies, lead operations and finance, product, sales, and customer success efforts.In his current operating role, Jake is the Founder, President & CEO of the Real Estate Investment Tech SaaS company Groundbreaker Technologies. He made the initial angel investment, completed key hires, established selling, financial and operational systems, lead a Series Seed-round of financing, and continues to grow the company.Jake received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University, where he emphasized in hospitality and minored in real estate. He studied abroad in Rio de Janeiro and at Cornell was involved in grant writing for grassroots community service organizations while also forming a non-profit peer to peer mentorship organization. Jake has worked abroad in London, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Puerto Rico and has a working proficiency with Spanish and Portuguese.

Meet Greg Shepard, he's been featured on TedX talks and university lectures worldwide. Founder of BOSS Capital Partners, a boutique investment firm focused on Series Seed through Series B technology businesses. We uncover his mindset which is unique because he is neurodivergent. Not being able to land a job led him to become an entrepreneur, finding out he could make money from an early age, he chose entrepreneurship. He's also former CTO at Pepperjam. Greg's been able to achieve some wild feats like being the heaviest person to base jump, meeting Obama, deadlifting 500lbs on his 50th birthday, running a marathon with asthma and we learn what made all this possible. Every year he does an annual challenge which are pretty gnarly. Greg is a 20 year startup veteran and serial entrepreneur with 14 liquidity events under his belt in BioTech, TransitTech, AdTech and MarTech industries, two of which were sold as part of a $925M transaction that won 4 private equity awards for transactions between $250M-$1B Greg recommends starting with the end in mind so you'll be able to back into your goals. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Good Habits Series | Seed The Clouds

Staffing software company Mindscope has been acquired by the Univerus group of businesses. After several months as a Mindscope customer, Univerus identified copious synergies between the two organizations, making it clear that a valuable relationship could be established through acquisition. https://hrtechfeed.com/staffing-software-mindscope-acquired-by-univerus/  Alongside, an HR tech startup that helps create a more human connection between employers and job seekers, raised $8 Million CAD in growth financing. Part of the funding was used to strategically acquire one of Canada's leading job boards, CareerBeacon. Now, the Alongside team is using the funding to modernize, differentiate, and innovate its product to guide and support job seekers through every step of their career journey. This includes finding their first job, levelling up their career, and creating a career path they are excited about. https://hrtechfeed.com/canadian-job-board-careerbeacon-owner-alongside-gets-infusion-of-funding/  Qualifi, an on-demand screening platform allowing recruiting teams to phone interview hundreds of candidates in minutes, today announced that it raised $2.5 million in Series Seed financing. Rally Ventures led the round with participation from repeat investors Techstars, Sixty8 Capital, Elevate Ventures, Debut Capital, and Flywheel Fund, as well as newcomers Northwestern Mutual Black Founder Accelerator powered by gener8tor, Converge, Service Provider Capital, and multiple strategic angels. https://hrtechfeed.com/phone-screening-platform-qualifi-raises-2-5m/ A new company called Check, a payroll infrastructure company that lets platforms embed payroll into their products, today announced it has raised a $75 million Series C led by Stripe, with participation from existing investors Bedrock, Thrive and Index. The company will use the funding to continue to make Check the easiest and most robust platform to build, launch, and scale new payroll businesses. https://hrtechfeed.com/payroll-infrastructure-startup-check-announces-75-million/

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Sophie Liao, Founding Partner at Oyster Ventures.Oyster Ventures is a seed-stage-focused venture fund based in San Francisco, New York, and Hong Kong. They target companies that bring liquidity and efficiency to antiquated industries and with massive potential to scale. Since 2016, they have launched three funds and deployed capital into 80+ startups. Their checks start at $25k to $200k, from Pre-Seed to Series Seed. They typically continue to invest in their portfolio companies from Series A to C and beyond, and they can write checks up to $5M+. Oyster Ventures generally doesn't lead rounds, but when they do, they will invest $500k to $2M. When they lead, they join the board as a director or observer. They happily invest in companies anywhere in the world but have a preference for standard jurisdictions and structures (e.g., Delaware C Corps, Hong Kong or Singapore Limited companies, SAFEs, etc.) They don't invest in markets they don't understand well or markets that require deep specialization to evaluate. While they do invest in cryptocurrency and blockchain companies, they very rarely invest in crypto-tokens without an equity component. They don't invest via SPVs, by mandate, they don't invest in mainland China, and they don't invest in uncapped notes and SAFEs. Sophie is a three-time fund manager with a top-performing record by IRR. She was MD at Rothenberg and VP at Draper Dragon before setting off on her own to found Oyster Ventures as a solo GP in 2017. Prior, she co-founded and sold a VFX startup to a large media company in 2015. Before that, she ran M&A strategy and started her career by launching joint ventures for U.S-Asia cross-border businesses in the TMT sector. Sophie discusses her investment thesis, advises entrepreneurs and investors and describes some of the challenges they face. You can visit Oyster Ventures at , via LinkedIn at , and via Twitter at .   Sophie can be contacted via email at , and via LinkedIn at .  _________________________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at:    Check out our other podcasts here:   For Investors check out:   For Startups check out:   For eGuides check out:   For upcoming Events, check out    For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group    Please , share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of .

Your strategies and tactics change depending on the size of your company. The same can be said for revenue operations. In this episode, Scott Stouffer, CEO and Co-Founder of scaleMatters, walks through the ways RevOps solves challenges specific to seed, Series A, and Series B companies: He covers: - The risk profile of a business related to the stage of funding (1:41) - The value of RevOps for seed stage companies (4:05) - The value of RevOps for Series A stage companies (6:05) - The value of RevOps for companies at Series B and beyond (12:53)

Welcome to the Cutting Edge: Founders' Series, where culture, and entrepreneurship, meets crypto. Today on the pod, we have Jess Sloss, the co-creator of Seed Club an incubator for tokenized communities. Started as a DAO, Seed Club is a growing family of creators, mentors and operators building the future of community. Since its inception less than a year ago, Seed Club has successfully completed three cohorts - helping 36 projects on their path to decentralization. Follow Jess, @thattallguy on Twitter, and Seed Club @seedclubhq and https://seedclub.xyz/ Follow the gmoney community on all socials: @gmoneynft Show Notes: 0:46 - Jess and Seed Club's mission and background 3:51 - gmoney's take on social tokens 5:50 - Jess breaks down the best use of social tokens 9:50 - Example of how tokens work in a community and ownership graphs 12:58 - The risk of linking an ERC-20 to an individual 20:57 - How to build fair distribution in an NFT drop 26:05 - How to build an authentic community through “on-chain breadcrumbs” 30:45 - Web3's effect on the value of the middleman 33:03 - Securities law with social tokens 35:18 - Non-fungible governance tokens vs fungible governance tokens 42:30 - Fave NFT 43:48 - NFT predictions for 2022

Join Sal's Investment Syndicate: Click to Join Salvatore Viscomi, MD founded his own startup and is now with GoodCell which isolates and stores cells of healthy patients who may need them for future cell therapies. The startup is founded by David Scadden, MD of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. A truly informative interview. Sponsored by Purdue University entrepreneurship and Peter Fasse, patent attorney. Highlights: Sal Daher, CFA Introduces Salvatore Viscomi, MD, Physician, Founder & Investor “...to isolate and store cells that you may utilize for future therapy.” “The ability to not only isolate and store the cells but to be able to say, "These cells are of good quality for future therapy...” “One of the unique capabilities we have is looking at what are the genetic changes that happen in our lives that cause risk.” “...two years from now, and we can always reference your biobank material to see what your baseline levels were.” GoodCell Co-Founders: David Scadden, MD, Trevor Perry, CEO, Brad Hamilton, CSO Salvatore Viscomi Was Vetting GoodCell for a Friend but Ended Up Investing and Coming Aboard as Chief Medical Officer Raised $30 million Series Seed, Looking for Strategic Collaborations GoodCell Has Expanded on the Intellectual Property Licensed from the Broad Institute “The second filing was around the ability to determine the quality of cells that go through a manufacturing process.” Owned Patents Also Cover Matters Related to Autoimmune Disease How GoodCell Tests for CHIP (proliferation of unhealthy cells) Works Possibility that a Therapy for CHIP Will Be Developed A Plug for Purdue University Entrepreneurship & Peter Fasse, Patent Attorney “Purdue is in the middle of the country in West Lafayette, Indiana and so they're really making a big effort to reach out to angel investors in both coasts.” Salvatore Viscomi's Father was a Stone Mason from Italy Who Moved to US via Argentina How Salvatore Viscomi, MD Got the Entrepreneurial Urge The Resistance of Certain Academic Institutions to Entrepreneurial Ventures “...taking that idea and making a business out of it, which is probably what was really the most fun for me...” How Being an Immigrant Makes People More Prone to Entrepreneurship “No matter how smart you are, no matter how smart your idea is, it's very difficult to do it alone.” Topics: biotech, co-founders, discovering entrepreneurship, IP / patents

This week on How to Raise a Round we sat down with Matteo Franceschetti, CEO and Co-Founder of Eight Sleep— a sleep fitness startup that sells smart mattresses that tracks users' sleep cycles, adjusts the mattress temperature, and even uses bluetooth to connect to a smartphone.As a hardware company in a software-dominated space, Eight Sleep's fundraising journey was full of obstacles. Matteo also used a crowdfunding campaign to prove to investors that customers wanted to buy their product. Eight Sleep's crowdfund was a massive success, which doesn't sound like a bad thing—but it created a set of new manufacturing problems.After being accepted into the Y Combinator on their third attempt, Eight Sleep was always changing. As the team scaled and rapidly hit more and more of their goals, Matteo continued adjusting the cap based on demand, so that when his company hit a major milestone it was reflected in the valuation.Although the team already had a couple of checks in the bank, demo day at YC still brought its fair share of anxiety—and with nearly $5 million more to raise, Matteo knew he had to give the perfect pitch. By de-risking Eight Sleep, frequently adjusting his valuation cap, and staying in the fundraising mindset at all times, Matteo and his co-founders have turned an ambitious pajama party crowdfunding event into a massively successful mattress company.Over the next six years Matteo would prove again and again that there isn't just one way to raise funds—and it's safe to say that today, with Eight Sleep's valuation nearing $500 million, that the hard work paid off. In the end, Matteo and his team raised $6 million during Eight Sleep's Seed round.Learn more about Eight Sleep ›

I had the pleasure of spending some time with great friends from Colorado, Katherine Wells and her husband Rob. Together they are the founders of a company called Serenity Engage! This amazing platform enhances and improves communication between senior care providers and the families of those they serve. Recently they raised a $1.25 million Series Seed round to grow and expand their services. I'm beyond proud and extremely excited to see what the future has in store for them. They are truly changing lives by improving communication between senior care providers and families! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/krischana/message

Valor Ventures Fund 2 has announced a $1.75 million Series Seed funding of Allelica, Inc. Valor General Partner Gary Peat joins the Allelica board of directors. The round, led by Valor Ventures also had Pi Campus, an AI-focused venture fund and Medical Genetics Center (MGZ), a prestigious genetics research institution, as strategic investors.SailPoint Technologies has announced that it is going to acquire ERP Maestro, a SaaS Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Solution. SailPoint is looking to use ERP Maestro's flexible agile approach to automate and ensure robust monitoring for an organisations' most complex business critical systems. With ERP Maestro, the company will unite identity security with ERP Maestro's Separation-of-Duty controls monitoring for an organization's most critical applications, like SAP.Privacera has recently announced a successful funding round. They raised $50 million in a Series B funding round where Insight Partners led the funding round. In May of last year, the solution provider had already raised Series A funding round for $13.5 million. The latest investment was led by Insight Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Battery Ventures, and earlier investors.According to Gartner's forecasts, SaaS revenues are set to grow from $121 billion in 2021 to $141 billion in 2022. The SaaS economy has been steadily growing with more companies offering their products or services under the software-as-a-service model. The one issue that SaaS companies face is getting better qualified Leads in an uphill battle to ensure they can onboard as many clients as possible in the shortest time, thus keeping costs to a minimum. The latest trend shows organizations turning to AI to automate these processes that would usually take us a longer period to attend so that time to customer acquisition is reduced significantly. AI helps them not only speed up their process, but also helps filter and qualify leads so that the sales team works at a higher efficiency.

On today’s Tank Talk! We welcome Chris Harvey, principal lawyer at Harvey Esquire APC to talk “Emerging Managers Legals 101.”Chris Background: Chris Harvey has been practicing law for 12 years as a venture capital lawyer with a focus on emerging fund managers, accelerators, venture studios, GPs and other venture investors.Chris regularly represents venture capital fund managers and investors in structuring fund formations and transaction documents such as LPAs, LLC/operating agreements, Series Seed, Series A, mergers & acquisitions, and all matters related to the venture capital lifecycle.Chris is based out of Los Angeles and shares amazing content on his blog LawofVC.substack.com.In this episode we discuss:01:47 Considerations when choosing a lawyer for your fund04:12 The questions you should ask a potential lawyer05:27 Pitfalls of choosing the wrong lawyer06:52 Fund structures11:10 Formation and fund expenses15:10 GP commitments17:40 Clawbacks versus commitments22:13 What are hurdles25:43 Reporting requirements28:28 Initial closure and rolling closures34:12 Offering GP economics to close strategic investors36:10 Budgeting for legal expenses37:29 Using Angelist to support your initial legal work38:50 Giving away carry as incentive to outside advisors as incentive or compensation41:00 Is venture legal ripe for disruption?44:18 Can VCs hedge against SPACs?46:58 Chris’s best advice for emerging managersBooks Chris Recommends:The Business of Venture Capital, Third EditionFollow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!Podcast production support provided by Agent Bee Agency This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com

What's it like to see revenues drop 95%? Meet Rebecca Kelly, CEO of VenueScanner—a marketplace that connects event organisers with their ideal venue. In this episode, Rebecca shares her insights on marketplace business models, tells the story of how Covid dramatically impacted her business, and how she reinvented an events marketplace to stay relevant—even when there are no events happening. She also explains how to think about the Chief of Staff role—a must-listen for every CEO interested in recruiting one. Key links: VenueScanner website: https://www.venuescanner.com/ Rebecca Kelly profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-kelly-5928054b/ Key timestamps: [03:51] What were some assumptions about the events space that turned out to be false? [07:18] How can you tell whether to push commissions or subscriptions? [12:07] Why did you decide to hire a Chief of Staff? [20:54] How did Covid affect your business? [27:02] What does it take to build good relationships with investors? [28:37] How have you reinvented your business model in light of the pandemic? Thanks to Guy and Angus for their great input. Got feedback? Email us on podcast@foundercoach.co. And don't forget to hit follow/subscribe so you don't miss out on new episodes.

Join me and my co-host, Vince, as we talk with Jake Marmulstein about multifamily investor portals and real estate software. Jake is the founder and CEO of Groundbreaker, a company offering software application that helps real estate investment firms automate workflows in fundraising, investor reporting, and investment management. He's going to walk us through the process of growing a business from the ground up. Stay tuned! A Problem that Turned to an Opportunity  In 2011, Jake was handling all the different things in his investment firm. From file storage, emailing back investor information, managing the data, keeping all the data accurate, doing back of the envelope calculations, and preparing presentation materials for investors. Everything was done manually! He found that it was a very repetitive and laborious process to maintain the work that they had at their company. He was looking for a more efficient way but couldn't find any available solution offered in the market. It was then that Groundbreaker became a seed in his mind. He started his journey to building a company that helps real estate investment firms streamline capital fundraising and investment administration. Improving Investor Relations  Building trust with your investors is integral if you want to scale your business. Jake points out the importance of being consistent when it comes to providing updates to your investors. Especially for people who are putting money into your business for the first time, these people would appreciate the level of honesty and consistency from you, as a business owner. Whether it's about the wins or the challenges your company is facing, you'll be surprised at how understanding investors can be if you just come to them with a degree of transparency in managing things.  About Jake Marmulstein:  Jake is an entrepreneur and business executive with a variety of experience, including ERP to SaaS, digital marketing to education technology, and hospitality to real estate. He has advised executives of early-stage companies, lead operations and finance, product, sales, and customer success efforts. In his current operating role, Jake is the Founder, President & CEO of the Real Estate Investment Tech SaaS company Groundbreaker Technologies. He made the initial angel investment, completed key hires, established selling, financial and operational systems, lead a Series Seed-round of financing, and continues to grow the company. Outline of the Episode: ●    [01:27] From doing all the grunt work for his investment firm to offering software that helps people operate their business more efficiently. ●    [05:01] How Groundbreaker started, and the challenges experienced along the way ●    [08:55] Finding your core team and building out functional departments are essential to scale in your business. ●    [13:04] What are the most common and trending real estate deal structures in the market? ●    [14:23] Doing what you say you're going to do and keeping trust as you go along will improve investor relations. It all boils down to consistency! ●    [16:58] Getting outside help from a mentor, advisor, or coach is immensely valuable. ●    [20:15] How to vet and compare software for your real estate business? What are the things you should look out for? ●    [23:20] Why hiring the right people, at the right time, is so important? ●    [29:07] Being a good listener is a trait that is super helpful when you are running your own business! 

Today's podcast is talking about my favorite subject: diversity! After all, it makes the world go round. We'll be highlighting key updates about seed mix design including the latest research findings, plant and pollinator relationships, wildlife benefits, and more. Mike and I may even duke it out to see who has the best diversity knowledge. Science is fun! For resources and more details related to today's episode, find us on the web at mndnr.gov/prairiepod

s2ep10 Fresh Chalk Origin Story and Vision snack/preview Liz Pearce, CEO and Cofounder of Fresh Chalk - Origin Story and Vision FULL SHOW LINKS ARE BELOW apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/windshield-time/id1468319501#episodeGuid=132f7c31-645f-40bd-846d-4edd9cdb9c38 iHeart https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-windshield-time-studio-47443086/episode/liz-pearce-ceo-and-cofounder-of-fresh-chalk-56306682?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/2fAolqbyDCtnp7IIZ6elQW?si=CHa-Dv8DTRGkD2F1Jo-IoA anchor https://anchor.fm/windshieldtime21/episodes/Liz-Pearce--CEO-and-Cofounder-of-Fresh-Chalk-ead0h7 Find Liz @lizprc https://twitter.com/lizprc Find Michel @mplungjan https://twitter.com/mplungjan Do SatoshiMath #satoshiMath - an automated page to calculate the number of sats in any amount of #dirtyFiat https://www.windshieldtime.studio/satoshimath.html Windshield Time SUBSCRIPTIONS are GREATLY appreciated here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbsnhul3AeUV7ByvFMMyWQQ In this show we (Arry @arryinseattle and Dae @LuggageDonkey) talk to Liz Pearce about: * The Humanity of the team * The sense of trust with the founders * Korean span treatments * Expect to be rejected by investors * KarmaFest program * Puget Sound Business Journal 40 Under 40 * Arry barfing * What is Fresh Chalk? * Seattle Drivers * The success of the Series A from Liquid Planner * The success of the Series Seed for Fresh Chalk Find our sponsor, find Coinme in several ways: web www.coinme.com twitter @coinme facebook www.facebook.com/CoinmeATM/ * * * * * * * ‪have you seen the @SatsApp ‬? * * * * * * * #satoshiMath www.windshieldtime.studio/satoshimath Our new calendar! www.windshieldtime.studio/calendar We have AMAZING sponsorships! Coinme USD cash to bitcoin onramp at over 2600 locations around the USA. www.coinme.com Find our sponsor the WTIA several ways: WTIA Washington Technology Industry Association www.washingtontechnology.org The Blockchain Council https://www.washingtontechnology.org/blockchain/ WTIA Cascadia Blockchain Council newsletter https://go.pardot.com/l/408222/2019-11-18/5fkfz6 Thank you for listening y'all! Please share Windshield Time with your friends and family who are curious about bitcoin and money. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/windshieldtime21/message

s2ep07 2020-01-24 Liz Pearce, CEO and Cofounder of Fresh Chalk FULL INTERVIEW STARTS AT 5min 10sec. Find Liz @lizprc https://twitter.com/lizprc Find Michel @mplungjan https://twitter.com/mplungjan Do SatoshiMath #satoshiMath - an automated page to calculate the number of sats in any amount of #dirtyFiat https://www.windshieldtime.studio/satoshimath.html Windshield Time SUBSCRIPTIONS are GREATLY appreciated here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbsnhul3AeUV7ByvFMMyWQQ In this show we (Arry @arryinseattle and Dae @LuggageDonkey) talk to Liz Pearce about: * The Humanity of the team * The sense of trust with the founders * Korean span treatments * Expect to be rejected by investors * KarmaFest program * Puget Sound Business Journal 40 Under 40 * Arry barfing * What is Fresh Chalk? * Seattle Drivers * The success of the Series A from Liquid Planner * The success of the Series Seed for Fresh Chalk FUTURE INTERVIEWS COMING UP ON WINDSHIELD TIME: * Alex Mashinsky, Celsius Network * Chris Spanton, T-Mobile - s2ep03 RELEASED JANUARY 10th 2020 * Jasper Weed, our Windshield Time student intern 2019 * Liz Pierce, Cofounder/CEO of Fresh Chalk - s2ep07 RELEASED JANUARY 24th 2020 * Pathwise Leadership's Todd Hollow-Bist and Chad Hattrup - FEBRUARY 14th 2020 * The WTIA Year End Happy Hour - s2ep02 RELEASED JANUARY 7th 2020 * Defy Ventures Prison Visit for Dae and Arry * and last but not least, Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano, where Arry got to ask all her dying questions finally For the sake of everything that is holy and righteous in the world, please SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel. We only need to get to 101 subscribers. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbsnhul3AeUV7ByvFMMyWQQ Find our sponsor, find Coinme in several ways: web www.coinme.com twitter @coinme facebook www.facebook.com/CoinmeATM/ * * * * * * * ‪have you seen the @SatsApp ‬? * * * * * * * #satoshiMath www.windshieldtime.studio/satoshimath Our new calendar! www.windshieldtime.studio/calendar We have AMAZING sponsorships! Coinme USD cash to bitcoin onramp at over 2600 locations around the USA. www.coinme.com Find our sponsor the WTIA several ways: WTIA Washington Technology Industry Association www.washingtontechnology.org The Blockchain Council https://www.washingtontechnology.org/blockchain/ WTIA Cascadia Blockchain Council newsletter https://go.pardot.com/l/408222/2019-11-18/5fkfz6 Thank you for listening y'all! Please share Windshield Time with your friends and family who are curious about bitcoin and money. find+follow on twitter: Dae is @LuggageDonkey and @halvingMullet Arry is @arryinseattle Matt is @matthewryancase Windshield Time is @windshield21 find+follow on Tik Tok: @windshieldtime Would love your shiniest 5-star ratings and reviews #togetherWeRise #funFormational Be nice y'all :) #stackSats #satoshiMath originally taped on 2019-12-04 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/windshieldtime21/message

Founder of Sentenai, a developer of cloud infrastructure that applies machine learning techniques to automate data engineering. It recently closed a $1.8 million Series Seed investment and is expanding its technology for use and benefit of multiple industries. If you follow discussions about the Internet of Things or IoT, you've probably heard this stunning prediction at least once: The world will have 50 billion connected devices by 2020. Today, that figure has arguably done more than any other statistic to set sky-high expectations for potential IoT growth and profits.  What is IIoT why is the extra "i" for? What are the benefits of IIoT and how do they transform organizations on how they do business?  What is Sentenai and its Sensor Data Cloud? Value proposition? Industry challenges?  Use of the 1.8MM. A lot is being discussed about AI. Is this something businesses should consider to invest in order to compete in today's business climate? If so what steps do they need to take? New Interviews, and Inspirational videos will be posted every week on my Youtube Channel! Just go here: https://goo.gl/EA9x6D Connect with Bert Martinez on Facebook. Connect with Bert Martinez on Twitter.