Derek Andersen

Hey folks, I think you might be aware that what we're building at DeepCast includes a podcast discovery and exploration platform for listeners at www.deepcast.fm. We also recently unveiled www.deepcast.pro -- a promotions, marketing, and monetization platform for podcasters (and folks like networks and agencies who support them). "You make the shows, let us help you with what comes after." Shows claimed and processed via DeepCast Pro are also published for listener consumption on DeepCast. High value all around! If you're a podcaster, claim your show at www.deepcast.pro to get started. Free speaker-labeled transcripts for all your episodes as well as generated insights for each (key takeaways, quotes, topic & keyword sets, summaries, and more) plus many more features—and growing daily! We're shipping fast over here! (Thanks to Rachel Perez Hosna Qasmei Kim Burgaard Benjamin Moon Rachel Magana Hari Ramachandran!)

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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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118 VCs (one hundred eighteen!) are gathering in San Diego next week - to meet with 30 SD startups. But it's so MUCH bigger than just those 30 co's. It brings VCs back - when they see quality companies. It helps those who are next-in-line and adjacent. It enables us to send deal flow all year 'round. It attracts talent and other companies. It inspires entrepreneurship. Connect is working for SD. Together, we're building the best damn innovation ecosystem on the planet. Year over year. Five.Ten.Thirty.

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

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If you’re looking for a distraction from political content this week… look no further… allow me to introduce: VC podcast content :) I was so excited to finally be on Minnie Ingersoll and TenOneTen Ventures’ LA Venture Podcast. She grew this platform massively while I was on the operating side and it was such an honor to have this be my first interview since returning to VC. Minnie and I chatted poolside in her backyard in Pasadena and covered a lot of ground: - 🚀Why I think distribution and GTM is potentially a greater early moat than product in an AI-native world - 1️⃣ Is first mover advantage still a thing?! -🕵🏽‍♂️ How I think about channel vs integrated product partnership dynamics and why most of them dont work! -💰 What is (and isn’t) exciting to me and Fika Ventures in marketplaces, supply chain, commerce enablement, and more - 🧐 Why we love investing in subject matter and domain experts at Fika more than technology experts learning new domains - 🤝 What makes our partnership and team special at Fika Ventures and how we think about working with founders - 🪢 and finally, why Pejman Nozad and I have more in common than I do with most VCs! Shout outs to friends and colleagues like Tianxiang (TX) Zhuo, John Chen, Gabriella Brignardello, Route, Michael Tam, Troy Henikoff, and more in this one. And most importantly, thanks for having me, Minnie Ingersoll!

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VC Market Update: Riding Out the Post-Boom Bumps. 2021's high-flying valuations and growth have given way to a more complex reality. With longer private timelines, tough exit markets, and capital tightness, startups face unique challenges—but also fresh opportunities. For those navigating today’s VC landscape, strategic planning is key. Whether it's balancing growth with capital efficiency or exploring secondaries smartly, there’s a path forward. And with boosts from AI and future rate cuts, brighter days could be ahead!

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It was great to be back on #NYSEFloorTalk with Judy Khan Shaw to discuss Impel’s vision for the automotive industry, and how our recent acquisition of Outsell brings us closer than ever to making that a reality. As Impel’s universal AI platform expands to every channel and touchpoint of the customer lifecycle, the opportunities to drive greater value for consumers, auto retailers, and OEMs alike are immense. We’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible.

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How we evaluate product/market fit for Noble To: Micah Rosenbloom, Scott Barker, Paul Irving, Max Altschuler, Matthew Weinberg, and Ryan Darnell From: Rahul Jain, Joshua Budman Looking forward to our board meeting tomorrow. Just wanted to provide an update on how we’re doing with product/market fit now that we’re one year in at Noble. Here are the questions we’ve been trying to answer: 1. Do vendors want to add Noble to their website? We ended early access with 50 customers live and over 500+ on our waitlist. From conversations with B2B marketers, they understand that prospects buy the products their friends use/recommend and need a way to influence these conversations in order to convince prospects to book a demo. We do need to automate onboarding so there are fewer steps and launching the customer opt-in will help with enterprise customers. Finally, I think being more prescriptive about adding Noble to the homepage customer logo wall was a big win as marketers wanted to know the best way to use Noble. 2. Do prospects want to use Noble to see which users they know? 2% of all prospects (website visitors) click on Noble to see which users/customers they know. For context, this engagement rate is over 50x higher than typical website chatbots. We surveyed prospects who used Noble and interestingly, prospects wanted to see users they knew earlier in the buying journey than we expected - most wanted to talk to their peers when they were starting their evaluation. 3. Can we enable growth loops that turn Noble users (prospects) into customers (vendors)? 3% of all prospects that used Noble on a vendor’s site later went to Noble’s site to sign up their company for Noble’s waitlist (k-factor = 2.3). While it helped that we were focusing largely on sales/marketing tech companies who sell to our ICP (sales and marketing leaders), it was validating that there is a growth loop that can power organic growth. 4. Are vendors willing to pay for Noble? We got some awesome results from two of our early-access customers: - Pavilion mentioned that prospects who used Noble were 20x more likely to convert and convert 2x faster than prospects who didn’t use Noble  - Cognism mentioned that Noble influenced $5mm worth of pipeline since launching this summer (e.g. prospects used Noble and then either booked a demo or purchased their product) Ultimately, willingness to pay is a function of value, and I think these are great results for a product that starts at $100/month. Now that vendors can sign up for Noble directly on our website, we’ll report our conversion rate from early access to paying customers. One thing we did learn is that we need to tighten our ICP as mid-market and enterprise vendors see the best results (i.e., seed-stage startups with only a few customers or low traffic to their website see minimal usage). Looking forward to discussing further tomorrow! 😇

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Dan Primack had some pointed criticism for #VC yesterday in his Axios Pro Rata newsletter (a daily must read IMO 😤). In short, the model doesn't work if it can't produce exits for LPs. Don't blame public markets (which are at all-time highs) for the lack of liquidity either. 📈 💸 Instead, this is a "liquidity drought of your making" where "...swinging for the fences on every pitch, rather than taking the single or double that's available" is the only way out when you invest at "sky high valuations." 😰 "A whopping 37% of "unicorns" are being held for at least nine years by VC funds, including 13% that are past the 12-year mark." 😳 ⌛ Is he right? Is VC at a dire inflection point? Or is Primack prematurely hitting the panic button? 🚨 https://lnkd.in/dts92pXr

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No one wants spoiled fish, melted ice cream sandwiches, or insulin gone bad. Cold chain innovator Artyc is busy making sure goods that need to be cold, stay cold during shipping. Without spending too much energy to do it. (Right now we spend ~5% of our global energy generation on temperature controlled logistics.)  The Artyc team has created a reliable, eco-friendly shipping solution that ensures your goods remain at the perfect temperature while also providing real time data and tracking to help verify the quality of the shipment. It's an industry ripe for innovation of the best kind: new technology like Artyc’s will not only improve profitability for all parties involved by reducing spoilage losses, but also help decarbonize the journey it takes for some of our most vital goods to reach us. Solving how we move stuff from point A to point B in a fast, reliable, and sustainable manner has one of the largest potentials to improve human life. And there is a exciting opportunity to build a massive, profitable business.  These are the kinds of companies that we love at Lowercarbon and it's been a privilege to work with the Artyc team as they build the future of cold shipping.

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john waller Jeff Bocan - this might be a new podcast y'all might really enjoy! Summary coverage from the most recent 3 shows: In recent episodes of the BG2Pod podcast, hosts Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner explore the evolving landscape of tech investments and innovation. They discuss the changing dynamics of the pre-IPO market, with larger funds and increased capital affecting company behavior and IPO timelines. The hosts analyze the impact of AI advancements, including OpenAI's ChatGPT-4 and Google's Astra, on various industries and debate the potential for AI to disrupt or enhance existing software companies. They also examine the challenges faced by private unicorn companies in achieving liquidity events and the factors contributing to the current dearth of IPOs. Additionally, the podcast touches on broader themes such as the role of capitalism and immigration in driving innovation, the debate around AI regulation, and the implications of recent tech earnings and market conditions. CC Kim Burgaard #podcasts #ai #investing #vc

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

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The Wall Street Journal broke news this morning that should not come as a surprise that Apple and their #VisionPro has failed to demonstrate any significant market traction. While this is not going to be a major impact on Apple and Facebook it does send warning signals for people in the #AR sector about the challenges for market demand outside of #gaming highlighted even further by Microsoft and their #HoloLens that was focused on the #enterprise and #government / #military sectors too. What do you think? #management #venturecapital #privateequity #capitalmarkets

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Scan through this for an AI overview Benedict is a good follow https://lnkd.in/gh2hUMvf

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At Costanoa Ventures, we pride ourselves on identifying and supporting exceptional founders poised to create impactful, lasting change. Hona is a shining example, driven by a trio of extremely talented founders: Manny Griffiths, Joshua Christensen, and Matt McClellan. They each bring unique, differentiated expertise to the table, and Amy Cheetham and I are extremely excited to partner with them. There are approximately 450,000 law firms in the United States, with half of those firms being B2C - think personal injury, mass tort, or immigration law as opposed to BigLaw. One of the reasons we love how Hona is tackling this market is their focus on B2C law firms and product excellence - B2B firms are historically difficult to sell brand new software products into, but B2C firms are completely different buyers. Oftentimes there's just a handful of lawyers and paralegals in a partnership, and any piece of technology they can use to give them an edge would be valuable. 44% of negative Google reviews on law firms directly reference poor communication as the reason for a negative experience, and the number 1 reason for Attorney Bar complaints in the U.S. is "lack of communication". On the lawyer's side, attorneys, paralegals and legal assistants spend an average of 7.4 hours per week on unnecessary updates, redundant communication, and activities that aren't directly contributing towards getting a client's case solved. Manny and the team at Hona are working to change all of that. Hona delivers a tightly-integrated communications platform to help facilitate better communication between law firms and their clients. During legal proceedings, client communications tend to be a large resource-stressor for law firms. Clients will frequently call firms for case updates, legal explanations, or general administrative questions that tend to eat away at firm resources without providing any additional progress toward case resolution. Hona exists to ease that burden - it’s a platform that allows law firms to efficiently communicate with their clients over text, easily build customizable web pages and embed videos, and share information on case status and basic legal process education. This crucial communication processes allow attorneys to focus on their job – moving cases forward, while keeping their clients informed and educated. If you're a lawyer dealing with these problems - don't hesitate to reach out to us or the Hona team! It's a privilege to work with Hona on this journey. The company has been growing at a rapid pace, and they're delivering meaningful technology to help people get through legal proceedings in a much more fluid, transparent, and easy process. Manny, Joshua, and Matt are exceptional founders whose combined skills and dedication to continuous learning position them perfectly to lead Hona to success. They're just getting started, and we can't wait to see what they'll achieve.

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Super fun product leaders forum hosted by Workato, a Norwest Venture Partners portfolio company. Alex Hood, CPO of Asana was our special guest speaker. Since joining Asana six years ago, the company has grown from 225 to 1800 employees.  Some insights from Alex include: 1) If everyone is jointly accountable for something no one is accountable. 2) A task has a name, face, and due date. This makes you accountable unlike email where a ball can be dropped.   3) Compute costs will eventually be greater than payroll costs as everything and everyone will have a bot. 4) ChatGPT proves that #AI can produce more content, more tasks, and more to-dos. But more is not better. The magic of AI is actually when it takes away work. Scott Beechuk, Gautham Viswanathan, Bhaskar Roy, Harish Shetty, Vijay Tella, Rishi Mallik, Nam Le, Rajeev Bansal, Markus Zirn, Thomas Ream, Carter Busse, Cody Guymon, Jayesh Shah, Amlan Debnath, Natalie Fini, Monica Peotter

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