Daniel Berrios

Ever since we launched SHAKTI, every quarter we write a letter to our LPs = Each letter includes an update on the portfolios, the GP's (our) view on the zeitgeist, an interview with a portfolio CEO and an interview with a TITAN = So far, we have 16 such letters = it's been on our "to do" list to share these publicly (i am lazy) = then Google comes along to save lazy people like me (thank you NotebookLLM) = here's a 10 min podcast summarizing our journey since Dec/2020 with the 16 LP letters as source = if you wanted to know what we are about, this is a pretty good place to start = https://lnkd.in/db7K2TrT cc SHAKTI

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At TechCrunch Disrupt last week, I was shocked by the consumer apps I spoke with. Their long-term monetization plans were… nonexistent. When asked, “Cool that you have 10k users, but how are you going to monetize?” most consumer founders just shrugged and said, “We’ll turn on subscriptions down the line.” For a venture-backed company, that’s a crazy take. Here’s why: Churn risk: When users are forced to pay in the future, churn will be high, especially if they joined for free. Scale challenge: Consumer subscriptions alone are unlikely to achieve a venture-scale return. Sustainable growth needs multiple revenue streams. To me, it’s obvious that AI-native apps serving consumer needs—from search to entertainment—must monetize through brand partnerships, affiliate links, or advertising to survive long-term, unless targeting a high-end market. These companies need to catch up fast, or they’ll be outpaced by free alternatives already monetizing with ads and affiliate links (through KOAH Labs, of course).

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Here are the Top 10 SaaS funding rounds of the past week (Seed to A) Starting at number 1... 🥇 Emergence, $97.2mm Seed 🤯 Emergence is developing an AI "agent-based" system that automates tasks typically performed by knowledge workers. Founded by Satya Nitta. 💸 Investors: Learn 🔗 https://bit.ly/3XSitTA 🟠🟠🟠 🥈 Formic, $27.4mm Series A Formic enables manufacturers to scale faster by making it easy to deploy robotic automations, like packing and palletizing. Founded by Misa Ilkhechi and Saman Farid. 💸 Investors: Blackhorn Ventures, FJ Labs, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/3XGzEYr 🟠🟠🟠 🥉 normai, $27mm Series A Norm Ai is automating compliance processes, making them more efficient, cost-effective, and accurate via (you guessed it) AI. Founded by John Nay. 💸 Investors: Coatue, Bain Capital Ventures, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/4ckpNft 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 4. ORA, $20mm Series A Ora is a blockchain project incorporating AI into dapps. Founded by Kartin Wong. 💸 Investors: Polychain Labs, HF0, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/3zpW7Ph 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 5. Payabli, $20mm Series A Payabli builds the infrastructure that allows companies, specifically software companies, to embed and facilitate payments through APIs. Founded by Joseph Elias Phillips and William Corbera. 💸 Investors: QED Investors, Bling Capital, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/4bwkGHE 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 6. Sift, $17.5mm Series A Sift develops tools to accelerate the development and ensure the reliability of complex machines (think Spacecrafts). Founded by Austin Spiegel and Karthik Gollapudi. 💸 Investors: GV (Google Ventures) 🔗 https://bit.ly/3L7zlyk 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 7. Ario, $16mm Seed Ario is an AI-powered assistant for parents that helps with daily tasks, from meal planning to scheduling playdates. Founded by Sumit Agarwal. 💸 Investors: Wing Venture Capital, Floodgate, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/4eEjeG9 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 8. MagicSchool AI, $15mm Series A MagicSchool provides lesson-planning solutions for teachers to fight burnout. Founded by Adeel Khan. 💸 Investors: Bain Capital Ventures, Adobe Ventures and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/3RQt5Pn 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 9. AuthZed, $12mm Series A Authzed makes it easier for developers to build permissions in their applications. Founded by Jacob Moshenko and Jimmy Zelinskie. 💸 Investors: General Catalyst, Work-Bench, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/4bqkh9B 🟠🟠🟠 🎖️ 10. SLUSHY.com, $10.2mm Seed SLUSHY is a creator monetization platform. Founded by David Gross and Fred Sprivock. 💸 Investors: Mantis Venture Capital, Jon Oringer, and more 🔗 https://bit.ly/4eN9Boi ⚫⚫⚫ I'm Gyan, Head of Community at Venture House. I create tools, guides, and other free resources for Junior VCs and founders. If you found this helpful, check out the Venture House website for more 👇 https://venturehouse.xyz/ #startups #venturecapital #funding #saas

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Super helpful article and accompanying doc with a #Startup #Equity Calculator to determine the equity for early hires, thanks to Pear VC head of talent Matt Birnbaum! Thanks for sharing Pejman Nozad! 🙏🏼 You can read more here How to structure startup equity for early hires: https://lnkd.in/ggmpT5-Y Google Doc: https://lnkd.in/gjsvths6

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I love YC Demo Day season. It’s an insane concentration of driven founders building something they deeply believe in at the frontier of tech. I know it's more trendy for VCs to complain about YC. But I believe Garry Tan when he says 5-10% of companies become worth a billion dollars. Maven’s hit rate from YC is even higher: 16% have had $B+ exits, and we’re trending toward a 40% graduation rate from Seed to Unicorn with investments we’ve made alongside YC. Since Maven’s founding in 2013, we’ve funded 12 YC startups out of the 66 companies we’ve invested in. Here are a few: Cruise: acquired by GM for $1B+ Embark: $4B SPAC, acquired by Applied Intuition Chariot: acquired by Ford before Series A May Mobility: raised $300M+ in follow on funding, including from Toyota Carrot Fertility: raised $100M+ in follow on funding, including from CRV and USVP Daybreak Health: Series A from Lightspeed, Series B from USV Moment Robotics: acquired by Cruise founder Kyle Vogt’s new company, The Bot Co (Maven is an investor) Our strategy differs from other YC investors. Many funds build a YC “index fund”, investing in many startups per batch. It’s not a bad move. But we focus on concentration, meeting all the companies in our thesis area and investing in one or two. Gratefully, I think every company from the list above can point to Maven as one of their most trusted partners that made a difference: intros to customers, closing follow-on funding from top VCs, connecting key hires, and offering genuine care and advice in both the best and toughest of moments. What are we looking for in a YC investment? 1) Team - a technical product team with startup DNA and hustle that can achieve a bold vision. Brilliant, determined founders no one would bet against who are ambitious enough to build an iconic company. 2) Vision worth fighting for - what are you bringing into the world that is worth all the time, effort and money required for success? Why aren’t existing solutions good enough? Are we proud to help bring this idea to the world? 3) Massive market - because of the valuation premium YC demands, even a $B outcome may not return today’s average Seed fund. Honestly, that math sucks. In order to pay the premium, we have to believe that if we’re right, we’ll be wildly successful. 4) Consumer trend - Maven invests in tech companies addressing emerging consumer trends. Even if some investments are B2B or B2B2C, they are always grounded in a consumer insight: autonomous vehicles in 2014, fertility care in 2017, mental health in 2020. Today, we’re looking at consumer applications of AI and frontier consumer health. Many successful companies we fund are outside of YC as well – like Zoom, Hello Heart, Epic!, Class, Wildtype. So we match YC’s Unicorn % across the rest of our portfolio, too 💪 YC founders in consumer tech and digital health: if you want to build an iconic company that delivers a positive impact for millions of consumers - I can’t wait to talk to you!

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Interesting concept to rename rounds by milestones. But "Series Client Expansion Extension" just doesn't have the same ring to it 😋 . Maybe we can start incorporating it into a descriptor to add context, "Series Seed Extension: client expansion." #startups #venturecapital

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Let's finally get rid off the "VC alphabet song" and redo the system to become more founder friendly. "The benchmarks set by funding stages are often arbitrary and not necessarily aligned with the actual development needs of individual startups." #vc #venturecapital #founder #fundraising #startups #fundingstages #funding #fundingrounds #pitchbook

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ONE MORE TIME FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK  Ed Zimmerman, Co-Founder of First Close Partners, and direct & indirect investor in 1,000+ startups shares his feedback in what to optimize for — as a founder — getting from launch to liquidity.  If you need a TLDR: optimize for someone who understands you and or your sector where they’re going to be reasonable and predictable to deal with… as opposed to optimizing for brand equity.” AKA Don’t shop purely for resume; shop for relationship!

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Last week was huge for our Shared Future Fund partners given Y Combinator Demo Day and NYC Climate Week! We saw a marked uptick in YC companies working on climate with this recent YC S24 batch. Collaborative Fund is excited to support companies working at the intersection of AI and decarbonization / climate adaptation. Here's a snapshot of a few companies we're investing in: 🏢 RetroFix AI (YC S24): building software to help buildings become more energy efficient by maximizing rebates for builders and contractors 🎈 Sorcerer (YC S24): building the best weather balloons that collect 1000x more data 🔋 Ionworks: helping battery companies digitize their R&D by building and running battery simulations at scale 🏗️ Offstream: simplifies and streamlines compliance for carbon projects 🪫 Rewbi: uses AI to optimize grid-connected battery storage

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Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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Founder <> founder convos are the biggest unlock for company building. I spent the last 2+ weeks in SF. Besides meeting with customers, I spent a ton of time with founders / early stage builders that I deeply respect (shoutout to Abhinav Asthana, Christina Cacioppo, Kevin Van Gundy, Akshay Kothari, Yuhki Yamashita, Tara Viswanathan, Celine Halioua, & Michelle Valentine). I’m extremely grateful to have the chance to spend time with these folks. Some reflections from these brilliant people. 1/ People > everything. A company is a collection of people. Company success comes down to hiring the best people. 2/ Startup problems aren’t *that* unique. Startups are HARD and even if you think your challenges are specific to your company, they’re likely not. Someone else has faced the same thing, and you likely don’t need to reinvent the wheel. 3/ Let some fires burn. Focus > trying to do everything. As a startup, you can’t fix everything at once with limited resources (even if you want to). You need to focus on the stuff that will move the needle the most. Pick the top 1 or 2 problems, fix them, then move onto the next. It’s okay if some fires need to burn for a little in the meantime. 4/ Company operating cadences are key. We’re redoing our cadences now, so it was super interesting to learn how others run their board meetings, leadership meetings, all hands, etc. A consistent theme for board & leadership meetings is to have everyone complete a prompt in written doc, share with each other, then use the time to have meatier discussions. 5/ Be competitor aware, customer obsessed. Competitors cause unnecessary noise. Build products and make decisions based on customer / market need and founder intuition, never based on competition. Are these learnings helpful? If so, can share more founder learning posts in the future!

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DeepCast shipped a number of really cool new features recently in advance of a broad outreach push to podcast listeners. One new feature is our new Daily DeepDigest tool that sends you a concise daily email including any new episodes from the trailing 24 hours from any podcasts you Subscribe to (on DeepCast). Think daily podcast cliff notes or podcast news ticker tape, with a hint of Morning Brew various brews or PitchBook News—it's increasing information throughput when you're pressed for time. And this feature is rapidly evolving to distill other key extractions from shows you're already interested in, but also exposing you to other shows you might be unfamiliar with that also have nuggets to share—and thus increasing your aperture yet still conscious of your time. Want to go deeper on any given episode? Click the episode detail and you're off to an episode on DeepCast, where you can subsequently read a longer form distillation of that episode or go straight to the source and listen to the episode. (And podcaster friends, these pages are definitely increasing indexing and thus Google entry points to your shows!) I'm loving this feature as a user, personally. Can't wait to see what others think! #BuildingInPublic #Podcasts #AllTheWorldsInformation #HowYouWantIt

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A new era of deep tech has emerged. First time funds will raise “unheard of” amounts of capital to fuel next gen deep tech startups - producing outsized, superior returns for LP’s compared to the rest. Prudent investors will act on this data and shift investment strategy as LP’s or risk being left behind savvy wealth managers and CIO’s / FO’s who saw this trend begin 4 years ago.

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💡 Almost daily, I hear a leading investor say that their firm is betting on Carta Fund Admin as the future. It is thanks to Vrushali Paunikar's team who are the masters helping revolutionize the present. The game-changing potential this announcement holds for our clients and the industry is one of the many reasons why folks back Carta to reshape how private markets should have operated over the last dozen decades. Our robust infrastructure powers crucial transactions with unparalleled efficiency and transparency & I'm excited to share how Carta is redefining the status quo once again ... 💼 🌐 Automated Money Movement for Fund Admin 🌐 💼 In this new era we partner with clients to optimize supporting the treasury function while managing their funds and spvs. The future is bright with Carta leading the charge welcoming the following: > Automated Setup for Client Approval: Client requests related to management fees and expense reimbursements are auto set up for the VC/PE firm approval, reducing processing time and providing real-time fund performance tracking. Did someone say, DAILY NAV? > Consistent Processing and No Transaction Fees: Error-free money movement, without the worry of unexpected fees on late or expired wires. > Consolidated Infrastructure for Enhanced Transparency: Systems that communicate reduce headaches of multiple log-ins to separate bank portals and provide clients payment status visibility directly within Carta's Platform. Clients believe that with the correct #People, #Systems, & #Controls in place we as an industry are ready to say farewell to manual processes, black-box operations, and cumbersome transactions. #FintechInnovation #FutureOfPrivateMarkets #Treasury #MoneyMovement #VC #PE #FundAdmin

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If I was to do a monthly podcast epiosde segment called This Month in VC 1) Who should I invite as a guest for this segment? 2) Any VC's who would be down to come on and share their stories + insights on this? Basically recapping what happened in that month in VC - It would be an under 30 minute discussion - Recorded remotely using Zoom, Riverside DM me or reply to this if interested Inspired by Harry Stebbings This Week in SaaS to try out a different format

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Interesting new surrvey about the VC industry by PitchBook: 13% of VC firms are not planning to raise a new fund and 27% of VC firms have been pushed further thier plans to raise a new fund. That means a 40% decline. No wonder that startups are haveing tough time to raise funds. See article below. https://lnkd.in/exYYyCPu

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How am I supposed to gain VC experience when every role requires past VC experience?! It’s infuriating. One of the hardest parts about breaking into VC is that many firms look for individuals WITH prior VC experience. 68% of aspiring VCs state that having no prior VC work is the biggest blocker to landing a role according to VC Unleashed. But there ARE ways to add VC experience to your resume without ever having a full-time position. In fact, there are 3 distinct opportunities that vary by: - Commitment time - Structure - Experience level - Financial requirements + more You can choose what works best for you. Learn the 3 VC resume builders here ✍️ https://lnkd.in/gr5Q9Hm7 #venturecapital #recruiting #hiring #startup #founder

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Go Gaurav Sharma and Capitalize! If you have a 401k from a previously employer, check out Capitalize.

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