Sherveen Mashayekhi

After the first deep dive discussion w/ founders I often hear a comment "I wish I had heard about this alternative [to all-in must-become-a-unicorn] way to build a startup earlier as I have wasted years in pursuing the wrong thing". Our mission is that no founder would ever need to say that again as it is such a waste. Us preaching the gospel 1:1 just doesn't scale, hence we use mass media to multiply our efforts - that's how Gorillacast came to be. The 1st episode is out, featuring yours truly. "How can you know what food you like unless you taste everything" said a chef. How can founders make informed choices about the best strategy for them to follow unless they know of all alternatives? This might not be of interest to you but pls spread the word so that the founders who should hear it can find it. I have a dream!

42

3 Comments

As a VC, there are times when you have to choose between prioritizing returns and supporting the founders you work with. It’s not easy because we have a fiduciary duty to our LPs, which, in our case, are primarily non-profits, to maximize returns. At Eniac, we play the long game: if we do what’s best for our founders, it will ultimately benefit our brand, reputation, and relationships, which will be best for our LPs in the long run.

53

2 Comments

Super fun way to start the morning at the Everywhere Ventures #NYTechWeek pre-seed founder breakfast bringing together some of the best early stage builders in the ecosystem. Always a joy to team up with Tai Hutchinson, Richard Kerby and Scott Hartley - who are long time supporters of NYC tech. A few themes we heard from the founders: ✔ Fundraising benchmarks are a moving target and that makes runway and planning tough. ✔ Stacking Safes and cap table mess keeps on getting messier with VCs less inclined to actually price rounds. ✔ Hiring is getting slightly easier as early employees have reset expectations on comp and equity. ✔ NYC is still super expensive and the city / institutions can be doing more! #LongNYCTech

362

22 Comments

Notion Capital portfolio co TestGorilla release their annual skills based hiring report today. It's well worth a read for anyone trying to understand how best to attract & retain talent. Perhaps the most interesting data point is that 81% of companies are now using skills based hiring, up from 56% just 2 years ago. When you think about it this makes so much sense because skills based hiring: - Opens up new talent pools - Reduces bias & levels the playing field - Is a much better predictor of job success - And ultimately saves a ton of time & money It's no wonder that according to the research 93% of companies see skills based hiring as the No.1 trend in recruitment. Check out the report below - it's a really eye-opening read.

12

2 Comments

These VC firms have fresh capital and are eager to deploy. 🔴 Olivia Wilde launched her new VC firm, Proximity Ventures, with Neil Sirni, Jason Mack, and Santi White. The firm expects to hold a close next month and will invest in consumer and enterprise sectors. 🔴 Greenwich based Tamarack Global closed its $72M Opportunities II fund to focus on energy transition, defense-tech, the space economy, robotics & automation, AI, and more. 🔴 New York based BBG Ventures raised a $60M fund to support diverse founders. 🔴 Los Angeles based MaC Venture Capital raised its third $150M fund to back diverse founders and industries such as aerospace, enterprise software, fintech, health tech, and defense, among others. 🔴 Lisbon based Faber closed its €31 million Faber Tech III fund to support early stage innovation in Southern Europe. 🔴 Chicago based Listen Ventures is planning to raise $75M for its fourth fund to back consumer-obsessed founders building brands at the tipping point of behavior shifts. 🔴 Mumbai based Inflexor Ventures closed its first ₹350 crore Opportunities Fund to support its existing portfolio companies. 🔴 France based Axeleo Capital closed its new €125M greentech fund. 🔴 Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) partnered with venture capital firm Walden International to establish a new VC fund, Nanyang Frontier Fund. The fund is looking to raise $37.9M to back deep tech spin-offs from the university.

145

8 Comments

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

31

1 Comment

Want a front-row seat to the frontier of tech? We’ve got the role (or two) for you! We’re expanding our frontier-tech team at Blackbird by hiring a Frontier Tech Investments Associate and Foundry Fellows! Got questions? We've got answers... 1️⃣ What are the roles? 🧪 Associate = a full-time VC investment gig in our Blackbird Investments team, working directly with me. We’re looking for someone with a science and/or engineering background and more curiosity than they can handle. You’ll grow your own investment brand and practice, support our portfolio founders, and will help build Foundry, our early-stage frontier-tech accelerator. ✨ Foundry Fellow = a casual/contract gig in our Blackbird Investments team, ~15h per week for 3 months. The Fellowship is ideal for PhD students and ECRs who want to learn more about startups and VC. You’ll go deep on emerging areas relevant to your expertise (or curiosity!), get a front-row seat to groundbreaking companies in those areas, build out your non-academic network, and develop a solid writing practice. 2️⃣ Why are you hiring? We love frontier tech, and we’re ready to grow our team. 3️⃣ Wow, it’s so great that you’re starting to look at deep tech! Look, we get it: we don’t make a lot of noise about our frontier tech investing. Buuuut we’ve been deep-tech investors since we backed Tim Kentley-Klay to found Zoox back in 2014—we’ve been on incredible journeys with PsiQuantum (building the world's first utility-scale quantum computer right here in Australia!), Inventia Life Science (transforming drug discovery with high-fidelity cell models), Remedy Robotics (surgical robots for remote endovascular procedures), Opto Biosystems (minimally-invasive neural implants to treat cancer), and more. We believe that frontier technologies, and great frontier-tech investing, will be part of the solutions to the greatest problems humanity faces today. 4️⃣ When do applications close? May 31st at 11:59pm AEST. 5️⃣ I have more questions! I’m sure you do! Clare Birch and I are hosting an AMA to answer any and all questions about these roles. Want to know what a week in the life of our team looks like? What’s keeping us up at night? What our ideal candidate looks like? Come along and find out - registration link in the comments 👇 Apply for these roles: Associate - https://lnkd.in/gCfj4EUJ Foundry Fellowships - https://lnkd.in/gj6ATZVZ If you know anyone that we should meet, send me their details! Cameron Elise Ben Andrew Robin Joseph Adelaide James Olivia Lucinda Raghav Jesse Christie Mohamed Tom Amee Pablo Haya Loong Hon Joshua Benjamin Megan Harry Denzil Matthew Diana Daniel Tom Deanna Justin Amar Lilly Stone Thomas

114

4 Comments

The state of venture capital is wild right now. We are witnessing a surge of innovation across the spectrum: - Funds merging - VC doing PE - PE doing VC - Secondary funds - Buyout funds - Spin-out funds - Debt funds - Continuation funds - Infrastructure funds - GP turnover - Hard Tech surging - Family Office uptick

60

8 Comments

Rolling into another day of the Primary Summit. Hit me up if we should connect onsite. Kudos to the Primary Ventures team so far, as yesterday’s Pre-Seed Summit was on point. Mar Hershenson, Benjamin Sun, Chris Douvos, Zach Weinberg, and Graham Pingree all dropping helpful nuggets for fund managers. Some paraphrased highlights: - Chris Douvos (AHOY Capital) - Most fund decks are terrible. Start with your people (not your strategy) and know you have about 6 slides of his attention. - Zach Weinberg (Curie.Bio ) - beleives SF’s AI talent is a significant advantage over NY, wouldn’t build AI in NY. Also questions if VC exits can keep up with VC expansion (generally hilarious and smart Twitter follow) - Mar Hershenson (Pear VC) - VC is so much more competitive now. It’s not enough to be an ex-founder with a great network and domain expertise. Have a better “why you are different” or do something else! - Benjamin Sun (Primary Venture Partners)- still sees arbitrage in going long NY venture (vs. SF). Do the work to keep various influential networking nodes aware of what you’re doing and how you think.

50

5 Comments

A must-read for #VC and aspiring VC Platform pros >> Global Compensation Report is live. 🎩 Kudos to VC Platform and Sequoia team, esp. Anna Ott, Brianna Rizzo, and Erica Amatori for bringing a transparent view into #venturecapital platform compensation. 👏 Explore the results. The link is in the comments below.

61

1 Comment

🚀 Maximize Your Networking at NY Tech Week with Essential Conversation Tips! 🚀 Hello NY Tech Week attendees! As founders, we're often just one great conversation away from our next big breakthrough. To help you make every discussion count, I've got a fantastic resource to share—an image filled with "50 Ways to Fuel a Conversation" from the book "The Fine Art of Small Talk" by Debra Fine. Here’s how you can use these tips to supercharge your networking: 📍 Be the First to Engage: Don't hesitate, be the first to say hello. It sets a proactive, positive tone. 📍 Remember Names: Make it a point to remember and use people's names during conversations. It's a sign of respect and helps build rapport. 📍 Share and Seek Insights: Talk about what you're working on but also ask others about their projects. It’s a two-way street! 📍 Keep It Open: Don’t just stick to business—explore a variety of topics to find common ground and deepen connections. 📍 End on a High Note: Always conclude with a clear next step, whether it's exchanging contact info or a follow-up meeting. Let’s use these tips to turn every interaction into a potential gateway for collaboration and growth. See you out there, and let's make it a week to remember! #NYTechWeek #NetworkingTips #StartupLife #FounderAdvice #TechInnovation

14

Inspired by what we’re building at Build Momentum. We realized tech recruiting is broken—non-technical recruiters struggle to find and attract the best talent. That’s why we’ve flipped the script and developed a community-based recruiting approach: a trusted network of elite engineers, embedded within Latam’s top tech communities. The best engineers know the best engineers, and we tap into these deep, authentic connections to deliver top talent faster and with better fit. Want to see how we’re doing it differently? Check out our post

16

I believe two of the big winners over the next 10 years in the SMB category will be PE who are rolling up the businesses and GenAI powered software that makes running these businesses significantly more turnkey and/or profitable. Thanks for having me on Jay Kapoor. If you want spicy takes fast forward to 25 min mark. If you want to get deep in market analysis buckle in for the whole thing. https://lnkd.in/d8M7Jyrx

131

12 Comments

New podcast with Betr CEO Joey Levy: we share all our insider secrets of how we’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital. This is a no-bs, real talk episode from guys in the trenches today. For fundraising, should you try to “buddy-buddy” investors and then guilt-trip them to invest? I will tell you first hand that guilt-tripping works, but it’s virtually always a bad investment. You can probably pull that style of fundraising off, but it won’t work on experienced investors. Go to https://lnkd.in/e5m6DNYR for the full show.

12

Interested in investing? This is one of my must reads:

4

1 Comment

Today marks a groundbreaking moment for BLCK VC and our fellow collaborators—Diversity VC, All Raise, 2Gether-International, SomosVC, StartOut, and VetsinTech—as we proudly announce the launch of the Diversity Data Alliance. This important alliance underscores our unwavering commitment to nurturing a venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem abundant in equity and inclusiveness. By standardizing and linking our data, we empower ourselves with the essential tools to track deeper trends that have, until now, eluded us to identify and fill funding gaps for historically excluded investors, founders, and operators. We can’t change what we do not measure, and now with the Diversity Data Alliance, we're now equipped to do both. Join us in this mission. Learn more and get involved: https://lnkd.in/eEZKdrac #DiversityDataAlliance #BLCKVC #VentureCapital #MeasureToChange

112

1 Comment

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

13