fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
From “TwentyMinuteVC” to a “20MinuteLP”
By: Cindy Sideris
Tags: Venture Capital, VC, Startup, Investing, Entrepreneurship

What a time to be alive… and by alive, I mean interested in the venture capital landscape, and a follower of VC Twitter.

In all seriousness, this is an incredibly exciting time for the venture capital space. There is innovation. There is democratization. You *could* start a fund while on vacation(?) #werk!

Introducing… the Rolling Venture Fund from AngelList. While this appears to have been an option since late February, I first got wind of it from (the generous, resource-compiling & sharing) Paige Finn Doherty’s thread:

While all interesting and obviously valid options, as an emerging fund manager looking to disrupt both the venture and entertainment spaces, the only one that sounded possibly open to someone without many years of tech and investing experience was the rolling venture fund. But… how would someone launch one? What was the process really like? How would someone actually market/solicit to LPs? Was this legal? WAS ANYBODY DOING THIS?!

Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long for answers. (Reader, it was 5 days.)

What is so interesting about Sahil’s fund, and rolling funds in general, is the allowance of public solicitation through Rule 506(c). Emerging fund lawyer Chris Harvey explains it more here:

This leads us to tweets and (personally, I think really effing cool) webinars like the following:

As of August 6, the webinar recording had over 3,700 views on YouTube. Do you know how long it would take to conduct 3,700 meetings? I love math, but I’m an introvert… so I can never think about that number.

This is a huge step in the disruption of the venture capital industry. General Partners can spend less time on fundraising and administration, investors and potential LPs can freely see if someone is raising a fund (and if they can be a part of it) from a mere tweet, and traditional barriers to supporting more founders and startups are lessened.

Essentially the venture capital landscape has, in three weeks, gone from a Twenty Minute VC (+ fund) to a literal 20 Minute LP.

Congrats, fellow Cindy!

Given the dire outlook many have had for funding and fundraising during COVID times, especially for emerging managers, I am excited and optimistic for the future of venture funding. No shade to those already in the game… but I hope this new game looks nothing like it has; that will benefit us all.
Analyzing, manipulating and plotting a web scraped dataset
Tags: Data Science, Python, Venture Capital, VC, Data

Example on how to simplify and what to do after web scraping (Based on a 800 Venture Capital dataset)

Web scraping is great, but it also tends to blow up rather easily. you need to install proxies, get around captchas and a lot more. Often you need databases, …

It gets complex rather fast, and then you don’t even have your results yet. Here I have a minimalistic example on how to analyze and plot a web scraped dataset.

We scraped a dataset that looks like:

When analyzing the dataset for quality and bias, we want to know how many VCs are in the dataset grouped by Investmentsize .

To load the data, we use a json endpoint as the data will be scraped and monitored every day. let’s use https://api.scraper.ai/api/website/02209169-a5fb-4a90-b540-9b86a751de95?api_key=10c5a982abeefecc50a68f134ff470ec&json as an example, this dataset contains the data shown above in the table.

# getting the scraped data url = 'https://api.scraper.ai/api/website/02209169-a5fb-4a90-b540-9b86a751de95?api_key=10c5a982abeefecc50a68f134ff470ec&json' r = requests.get(url).json()

Now we have a dictionary with data, to convert this to a dataset we use pandas where we take the count of each investment size.

Notice the map is being used to only take out the Investmentsize and get a list of investment sizes

# preparing the data frame df = pd.DataFrame({ "investment_size": map(lambda val: val["Investmentsize"], r["data"]) }) df = df.value_counts().rename_axis('investment_size').reset_index(name='count')

the data frame now looks like

After which we can plot a barplot for example. In this example seaborn is used.

# plotting

sns.set(style="ticks", palette="pastel") sns_plot = sns.barplot(x="investment_size", y="count", data=df) sns.despine(offset=10, trim=True) sns_plot.get_figure().savefig("output.png")

and you’ll see an image like

Everything put together:
Git basics for beginners
Tags: Nodejs, Vcs, Coding, Github, Git

What we need.

A Computer Git CLI Some Basic Terminal commands

How to Install Git CLI

First go to http://git-scm.com/ and download latest git cli.

Now double click it and install it default.

Now we have installed git cli on our pc. Now let’s create a repository.

What is Git?

Git is a version control system, Which can keep track of every modification to the code in some special kind of database. If developer made a mistake, they can reverse the changes to the previous commit.

How to use git.

First you need a project that will you work on.

In my case, I will create a project. Now open terminal or cmd in that project folder and type git init .

So now we just initialized a repository in that project folder. Now we have the version control system of that project. But first we need to create a commit.

What is a git commit?

You can say it as a restore point for your code. Which you can go to, if you have messed up your code or something else.

How to create a git commit?

You need to stage the files for commit. We want to commit all the files so I will type git add . , Here . represents all files. You can give file names instead of . . You can see status of the files by typing git status . You can also remove files by typing git rm <FILE NAME> . (THIS WILL DELETE THE FILE) Now, we have all the files staged and ready to commit. Type git commit -m "YOUR MESSAGE" , -m represents the message, You can type any message you want. To see all the commits, You can type git log .

How to ignore a file or folder from git add . ?

To ignore a file or folder, you need to create a special file called .gitignore . Whatever you will type in this file, Git will ignore them.

FOR EXAMPLE

I want to ignore node_modules folder. So I created a file named .gitignore in my project level directory and typed node_modules in .gitignore file. Now if you stage all the files with git add . and see the status with git status . You will see that my node_modules directory isn’t staged, It is now ignored by git.

How to revert back to a commit?

First you need the commit id, You can get it by typing git log . You can see all the commits you have in your project.

Now type git reset <ID> if you want to keep the changes you made but restore the commit. If you want to purge the changes you need to give git reset --hard <ID> , It will purge all the changes you did. NOTE: Your commit ID will be in place of <ID> .

You can download this REPO from my Github.

Visit this Project on Github
Simplifying India’s Payments with Nitya Sharma, CEO & Co-Founder of Simpl
By: Ryan Zauk
Tags: Banking, Payments, Fintech, VC, India

In our latest episode of the Wharton Fintech podcast, Anchit Gupta (WG ’21) sits down with Nitya Sharma, CEO and Co-Founder of Simpl. Simpl is a technology company that offers Pay-later solutions in India. Simpl has revolutionized online checkout in India by creating a market-leading Pay-Later platform, empowering e-commerce merchants to offer their consumers 1-click checkout, a line of credit at POS, and full buyer protection.

Before starting Simpl, Nitya worked on Wall Street for more than 10 years, where he structured, traded, and risk-managed structured credit portfolios at Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. Before that, he was a co-founding portfolio manager at JNF Financial, a distressed credit hedge fund from 2010–2014.



Nitya initially moved back to India with the objective of starting an emerging-markets focused hedge-fund. However, he experienced the shortcomings of the Indian payments and credit stack first-hand when his credit card application was declined. This experience prompted him to dig deeper into the Indian payments landscape and subsequently led to the founding of Simpl.

In this interview, Nitya shares:

His educational background and journey as an entrepreneur

His motivations for launching Simpl

Simpl’s business model and the challenges of underwriting risk in a cash-first economy like India

Differences between banking infrastructure in India and theUS

Simpl’s plans to compete with financial incumbents as well as big tech firms such as Amazon and Google

The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Simpl

Nitya’s future plans for the organization

Nitya has his B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College and his Masters in Financial Engineering from the University of Michigan.
Why We Invested in Bond Pet Foods
By: Anna Ottosson
Tags: Impact Investing, Climate Change, Foodtech, VC, Animal Welfare

A few months ago we, Anna & Erik, published our own personal stories about why we decided to start Trellis Road. The common denominator, and the entire fundament of Trellis Road, is a strong personal motivation to contribute to a better food system in ways that positively affects climate change, environmental issues, human health and animal welfare.

Our recent investment in Bond Pet Foods is a testament to this ambition, showcasing that there are great investment opportunities in startups tackling not only one but multiple of these different challenges.

When we started deep diving into different potential investment areas this spring we highlighted the pet food industry as highly relevant from an impact perspective. Not only is it a significant component of the meat industry, incorporating the problems of animal suffering and killing as well as contributing largely to global greenhouse emissions, but it’s also one where it’s surprisingly difficult to find better alternatives.

As humans we can with relatively low effort decide to, partially or fully, swap out animal food sources from our diets and find plant-based alternatives that meet our health needs. Dogs and cats? A different story.

In the US alone there are well over 100 million cats and dogs consuming animal products as a significant part of their diet. In the words of Bond Pet Foods’ founder and CEO Rich Kelleman:

“If America’s dogs and cats were their own country, their meat consumption alone would rank 5th in the world”.

Rich Kelleman and co-founder & CTO Pernilla Turner Audibert are attacking the problem with biotechnology; using microbial fermentation to produce animal-free chicken protein. As pets are less picky than humans when it comes to the texture and form of their food, Bond can focus on developing the actual protein without the additional challenges and complexity facing startups aiming to produce cultured meat for humans. Along with less rigid regulatory processes this opens up for a potentially shorter time to market.

In addition to Bond’s significant potential impact on climate change and animal welfare the company provides a great case also from a traditional investment perspective.

Firstly, they have a stellar founding team in Rich and Pernilla who have managed to get seasoned team members, advisors and investors with highly relevant experience and expertise to join them on their mission.

Secondly, they’re going after a giant market; the pet food market in the US alone is $33 billion.

And thirdly, timing couldn’t be better with a rapidly growing group of conscious consumers looking for planet and animal friendly options for their furry friends.

We’re incredibly excited to back Bond Pet Foods and support the team on their important mission!

If you’re curious to learn more about Bond, check out these recent articles:

Bond Pet Foods Creates Cultured Chicken Protein Prototype for Pet Nutrition

Bond Completes Prototype to Revolutionise Pet Food

This Biotech Food Startup is Growing Chicken Protein to Make Dog Treats
Our 🗝 Lesson from Seeding Attentive
By: Eniac Ventures
Tags: Marketing, Seed Investment, Venture Capital, VC, Startup

by Hadley Harris

I’d love to tell you a story about the deep thesis my partners and I had that drove us to lead Attentive’s seed round. The story would talk about how in 2016 we were spending a lot of time in the marketing tech stack and saw an unmet need in the market for businesses to utilize messaging to communicate with their customers. I’d tell you how almost every business in China used WeChat for Business to interact with their customers at scale over messaging. And how we felt a company that optimized that use case for the western world’s messaging ecosystem could be a massive company. I could tell you all this but it would be 100% bullshit.

When Brian and Andrew first told us about what they were thinking of building it was not a problem or solution we were thinking about. If anything we didn’t think it was a particularly good idea. My partner Nihal had built and sold a business in the early 2000’s that let companies text their customers, so this didn’t feel particularly novel or exciting. Obviously we were very much wrong about that.

What we did know was that Brian and Andrew absolutely knew how to crush being some of the very very best founders we had ever worked with. We had been lead investors and a board member in their first company that sold for $100M after the series A. So despite the fact we weren’t even spending time in marketing tech, investing in Attentive was one of the easiest decisions we’ve ever made.

People say all the time “it's all about the team.” We at Eniac have been saying it our whole investing careers. But it’s only when you get to see founders execute like we’ve seen over the last 4 years with Attentive that you really understand how true that is. As an early-stage investor it's easy to get caught up by looking at the world through the lens of your theses. But when you have the chance to back a team you know is exceptionally good, don’t overthink it, just say yes and enjoy the ride! 🚀
Our Investment in Cottage
By: Susa Ventures
Tags: Real Estate, Accessory Dwelling Units, VC, Startup, Investment

By Chad Byers, Co-founder & General Partner at Susa Ventures

Susa Ventures is excited to announce our investment in Cottage, a Bay Area-based startup enabling homeowners to build custom ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units).

This investment is particularly special, as it’s the first company to launch from our EIR program. Our model is to co-lead these rounds, and we’re thrilled to be partnering with Base10 Partners on Cottage.

Alex Czarnecki, the founder and CEO of Cottage, might sound familiar because he joined Susa as Entrepreneur in Residence in March 2019. He goes back even further with Chad, as high-school classmates. Alex has been a part of the Susa Family for a long time, and we are thrilled to welcome the rest of the Cottage team to the family as well.

At Susa Ventures, we spend time thinking about how technology can solve some of humanity’s biggest problems. One such problem, that hits close to home in San Francisco, is housing affordability in our nation’s cities. To be clear, it’s not just a San Francisco issue.

In top metro areas, it takes 25+ years to save for a downpayment on a median-priced home earning the local median income, with cities like Los Angeles, Honolulu, New York City, and Miami all rising to 35+ years of median income needed to save for a downpayment on a median-priced home.

It’s hard to solve the housing crisis without a meaningful increase in supply. In practice, it’s not that easy. Politics aside, there are many reasons why this hasn’t happened at a pace necessary given population growth and urbanization.

As we looked at this problem, we kept coming back to ADUs as one of the best solutions. It creates new inventory within the footprint of existing homes. It’s often 3–5x cheaper than new apartment construction, easier to get permits, and provides an income-generating asset for homeowners. Furthermore, new legislation is coming along, which will accelerate the pace of adoption.
Before the A - Nathan Stevenson from ForwardLane
By: John Siracusa
Tags: Seed Investment, Founders, Fintech, Podcast, VC

Before the A, is a show dedicated to telling the stories of fintech founders who’s startups are seeking their “A round” of financing.

ForwardLane, is highly focused on supercharging the relationship manager in wealth and asset management by providing them with personalized insights for their clients.

Full audio interview:

Interview Teaser:

John Siracusa: (1:01) - So what are you trying to do and why are you doing it now?

Nathan Stevenson: (1:04) - At ForwardLane, we’re highly focused on supercharging the relationship manager in wealth and asset management by providing them with personalized insights for their clients. This is a huge problem because there are $17 trillion in assets under management and asset management industry, but intense competition, 165 asset managers, 10,000 funds, they are all competing for the shelf space of these wealth managers. And these wealth managers, 300,000 of them have 200–300 clients each. What do they all once they all one personalized advice, personalized service, and they just is not enough time in the day to be able to do this. So we’ve built an AI platform and an end to end platform that aggregates data, processes this, and delivers it into the workflow.

John Siracusa: (1:55) - So how does it do that?

Nathan Stevenson: (1:56) - We do three things uniquely. We process a very rich and diverse set of data, both unstructured data including news and research from the likes of Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones.

John Siracusa: (2:06) - Do you have integrations into them?

Nathan Stevenson: (2:08) - We do have integrations that are set up and ready to go. And then on the internal unstructured data side, it’s things like CRM notes, emails and other types of content.

John Siracusa: (2:16) - Because you have Salesforce integration?

Nathan Stevenson: (2:17) - We do have Salesforce integration. Exactly. So that’s the first thing we do differently. The second thing is we have proprietary natural language processing for finance developed over three years. It’s pre-trained on Thomson Reuters news and Morning Star Data. It extracts about four times more information than open source competitors. And that’s also because we use a standard called FIBO financial industry business ontology used by 40 different banks. So this is our second, unique proposition.

Listen to the full interview below:

About me:

I’m the host of the twice-weekly “Bank On It” podcast. A financial services industry enthusiast and connector. I’m at the center of the fintech ecosystem, keeping current with the ever-innovating industry.

Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter or on Medium
Announcing the 2019 Techstars Detroit Class
By: Avanta Ventures
Tags: VC, Mentorship, Detroit, Startup, Partnerships

Announcing the 2019 Techstars Detroit Class

What is Techstars Detroit?

Since 2015, Techstars Detroit (formerly Techstars Mobility) has helped founders around the world succeed in building transformational businesses across mobility, automotive, transportation, logistics, city infrastructure, manufacturing, Internet of Things, and travel industries. Their extensive mentor network gives founders an unique advantage offering access to global industries leaders across the Detroit ecosystem. More than 143 automotive and transportation organizations have supported the program. Their 44 alumni have raised more than $80M and include Cargo, Wise, Donut Media, SEEVA, and SPLT (acquired by Bosch).

More than 143 automotive and transportation organizations have supported the Techstars Detroit program

At Avanta Ventures, we’re proud to be supporting this year’s program that includes a diverse set of corporate partners such as Lear, Ford X, AAA, USAA, Nationwide, Honda, and PlanetM.

40% of the 2019 Techstars Detroit teams have female founders and 60% are international companies.

Meet the 2019 class

This year’s class represents the broad demographic change occurring across industries, blending diverse teams and pioneering technologies. In fact, 40% of the teams have female founders and 60% are international companies. Business models are a mix of consumer, enterprise, and governmental spanning industries that intersect with automotive and Detroit. Here’s the complete list:

As we eagerly await Demo Day on October 10, we’re looking forward to being a part of these founders’ impact on the changing landscape of Detroit business.
Novena Global Lifecare Received 10+M Strategic Investment, Focus 《Beauty Care +Internet》
By: Singularity Maker奇點創創
Tags: Beauty Salon, Mergers And Acquisitions, VC, Startup, Singapore

China Xingkeduo announced its official merger with Novena Global Lifecare in Singapore, and which the company name will remain as” Novena Global Lifecare. InsightX Capital is the financial adviser in this merger. In the meantime, Novena Global Lifecare received US$20 million strategic investment made by Sinopharm Capital and Cedarlake Capital. The funding will used to the beauty care business territory in China and Southeast Asia.

Xingkeduo and Novena have high similarity in their business structure. After this merger, the company will cover medical beauty and medical care, beauty and skin care product development production, software system development and other business. It will further accelerate the brand globalization, increase the beauty market in China, especially in medical and aesthetic internet investment.

Image Credit: Xingkeduo

Founded in 2015, Xingkeduo is the first company in China that combines hairdressing with online to offline commerce using Internet technology for online order with its based AI Beauty OS platform. Besides, it has received over 100+ million investment from Sinovation Ventures, Future Capital, Cyzone Capital, and Shunwei Capital. In Xingkeduo early development, it simply provides the hair cutting service, and later on also release self-own products.

Image Credit: Novena Global Lifecare

Novena Global Lifecare is one of the successful portfolio companies in DORR Group, founded in 2010. It is an integrated medical healthcare and aesthetic company, which is one of the world’s largest integrated medical healthcare and aesthetic companies with over 100 clinics in 20 cities mainly in the Asia Pacific region.

Source: https://bit.ly/2LazELX

維星醫療科技佈局醫美互聯網產業，並獲數千萬美元戰略投資

中國星客多和新加坡Novena Global Lifecare宣佈正式完成合併，業務整併後，新公司命名為「維星醫療科技」Novena Global Lifecare，未然資本為獨家財務顧問。此外，維星醫療科技也獲得了國藥資本和沄泊資本的數千萬戰略投資，預計進一步拓展中國和東南亞醫療美容業務。

星客多與Novena在業務結構上有高度的相似性，通過精煉的高頻SKU、門店簡約化設計降低經營成本。合併後，新公司旗下將覆蓋美業、醫美與醫療、美妝護膚產品研發生產、光電設備研發生產、軟體系統開發等多項業務，並加速品牌全球化佈局，加大在中國市場醫美互聯網、醫療市場的投入力度。

星客多成立於2015年，是中國第一家將美髮與線上線下商務結合起來的公司，利用互聯網技術進行線上訂購和雲端排隊預訂等服務。曾先後獲得了創新工廠、明勢資本、弘道資本、順為資本等機構的數億人民幣投資。早期星客多提供純粹的剪髮服務，之後也推出自有品牌。

DORR集團的子公司Novena Global Lifecare成立於2010 年，Novena是一家綜合醫療保健平臺，公司已在全球20個國家和地區佈局超過250間醫美診所、門店及產品銷售點，是東南亞地區規模最大的醫療美容公司之一。

資料來源:https://bit.ly/2LazELX
Creandum Series A Deck Template
Tags: Resources, VC, Template, Series A, Fundraising

This deck was designed as a guide to help you build your Series A deck. Every company is different, so I encourage everyone to deviate from this template and elaborate your own personalised Series A deck that represents your company even better. Feel free to make a copy to use as a template and share.

You can, of course, use this as a rough guide for other stages (e.g. Series B), in particular the core structure of the deck, which should remain similar. In a seed round, you’d have fewer details and metrics to show and in a Series B, you’d typically add extra info and metrics in an appendix.

Link to the deck

Structure of the deck

A Series A deck normally consists of around 20 slides plus sometimes an appendix (~5 slides). The range is typically 15–30 slides in total. I would avoid going beyond 30 pages to prevent it becoming too lengthy. We recommend the following structure to cover the important boxes VCs want to check when reading through the deck:

🌰 Cover + exec sum

Cover + exec sum 🤦🏻‍♂️ Problem

Problem 💡️ Solution

Solution 📱 Product

Product 🌎 Market

Market 🚀 Company today (metrics & financials)

Company today (metrics & financials) 👨‍👩‍👧‍ Team

🔮 What’s next

What’s next 🧐 Appendix

This is an order I recommend, however the flow can vary depending on your business. If there is one dimension that stands out and is remarkably more exciting, you should consider putting it earlier in your deck. One example of this is the market section: If your market is massive and growing very fast (and there is already VC excitement around your market) it might make sense to put one slide about the market directly after the problem section or to even start with it after the exec sum.

Some components such as user testimonials or deep dives on parts of the business model have no fixed spot but, in general, the earlier the reader understands the core of the business, the more likely it is that your traction and achievements will create excitement.

Building the deck

Put the right effort into building your deck, get multiple rounds of feedback on it from your existing investors and other entrepreneurs.

Make it look nice. Have a designer in your team help with that or consider spending a few $ on a freelancer to polish it. If your deck has very poor design, what will an investor think your product looks like?

If you want to make it really nice, consider Figma for polishing or building your deck. Some of the best decks I see are the result of the power of Figma. Pitch is also a good option that more and more founders are using instead of PowerPoint or Google Slides.

Cover + exec summary 🌰
3 Takeaways After Evaluating 200 Startups
By: Farhan Merchant
Tags: Venture Capital, VC, Learning, Startup, Finance

Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash

Being a fund manager is the endgame for everyone working in venture capital. I work very closely with two fund managers who amongst themselves have been early-stage investors in six unicorns and are at the absolute top of their investing game. In my four months with them, we have evaluated north of 200 deals.

These are the top three lessons I learned that have helped me become a better VC investor, and will help you too:

1. Leave Your Emotions at the Door

Investing is not a game you should be playing with your emotions on your sleeve. You have to be as composed and undeterred as possible while evaluating each opportunity. Capital is limited, and the opportunity cost is high. It is essential not to get emotionally tied to a deal, especially when it reaches the final stage.

One of the greatest thinkers and investors of our time Charlie Munger says,

“Part of the reason I’ve been a little more successful than most people is I’m good at destroying my best-loved ideas…I’m pleased when I can destroy an idea that I’ve worked very hard on over a long period of time. And most people aren’t. I know how much power and wealth are in it, so I like it. Plus, that’s enlightenment. Power, wealth, and enlightenment.”

Don’t get too attached till you’ve signed on the dotted line.

2. Beat the Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to cling to information that reinforces what they already believe and ignore anything that contradicts it. The best way to beat this is to be both — the prosecutor and the defense.

Famous American Novelist and the author of The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald said in 1936,

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

Pass the test of first-rate intelligence, and there is no doubt that you will emerge a better investor.

3. Work is the Reward

“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.” — Norman Schwarzkopf

There is no time better to live by this quote than the current landscape we find ourselves in. The work itself — is all there is. It’s never been about results; they come and go. Success is inevitable if you just put in the hard work. When you are in love with the process, you seek feedback, mentoring, and coaching — even when you’re at the top of your game.
Chainflow Capital x PolyWhirl AMA-style Interview
Tags: Ethereum, Polywhirl, VC, Polygon, Privacy

The following is an AMA style interview conducted by our strategic investor — Chainflow Capital. The main objective of this was to clarify on our vision and goals for PolyWhirl; the team’s experience and how we differentiate ourselves from our competitors.

About the hosts

PolyWhirl is a completely decentralised platform for making private transactions on Polygon. PolyWhirl will allow you to de-link a funds transfer between wallets and thus allow users to regain compromised anonymity without risking the use of a centralised platform that may seize funds or impose sudden KYC requirements. Its competitive advantage lies in an innovative feature set (including cross chain private transfers), and unique token utility — with all protocol revenue either used for token buyback and burns or redistributed to stakers of the $WHIRL token.

Website: https://polywhirl.cash/

Chainflow Capital is an activist venture capital fund leveraging massive investment networks and deep market knowledge to back category winners. With a track record as a repeat outperformer, we have garnered insights on critical elements that are the hallmark of successful projects. We help our projects succeed by leveraging our large marketing and investment network, via the provision of strategic consulting services and with substantial financial backing.

Website: https://www.chainflowcapital.com/

Q&A

— Conducted by Joseph Colbert, Head of Business Relations at Chainflow Capital

Joseph: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us Whirl and Gust, we are very excited about what you are building. To start off, could you provide a brief introduction to PolyWhirl and its use case?

Whirl: Sure — PolyWhirl is a way for anyone on chain to regain anonymity if they somehow manage to link their identity and address on chain. Many defi participants do not fully realise the consequences of doxxing and linking their wallets to their identities, which can lead to unwanted scrutiny from peers, scammers and regulatory bodies. PolyWhirl will effectively provide a way to reverse a loss of anonymity by allowing users to transfer funds to a completely new address. This is also particularly useful for institutions or professional traders who trade in large volumes; without anonymity, they may not be able to obtain best trade execution due to issues such as frontrunning. Another interesting use case is the ability to make anonymous payments; for example, if you hire someone for a service, you can generate something akin to an anonymous voucher. By depositing money on PolyWhirl, you can provide them with a secret note and they can use it to withdraw money out of the protocol and thus provide payment without revealing the source of the funds.
Call for Startups: Stonks Demo Day #3 🚀 🦍💪
By: Ali Moiz
Tags: Startup, VC, Angel Investors, Fundraising

We started Stonks because fundraising is one of the most painful, time-consuming, and yet necessary parts of building a startup. I’ve been doing startups since 2005, raised $40m+, and have been through situations where rounds have taken 6 months. Also seen investors who had no idea what the business really did, after being on the board for years.

At Stonks, we want to:

Make Fundraising 10X faster: raise in 1–3 days, not in months. Highest Value-add-per-dollar Investors: We promise to be the highest value-add per dollar on your cap-table by getting you exactly the type of investors you want — Creator rounds, Founders with IPOs/exits, SuperAngels, Distribution/Sales, Technical hires, alumni from Google/Lyft/Airbnb/FB etc. Backed by objective reviews from other founders.

Andrew from Tribute.co pitched at our last event, raised funds successfully, and had this to say:

How: Livestreamed Demo Days 🖥

We accomplish this through the magic of livestreaming to build trust at scale between large groups of investors and founders. The format is Demo Day — think YC Demo Day, but incredibly efficient, exciting and accessible to investors everywhere. And you don’t have to give up any equity or sit through a 3-mo program to get on it.

From our last Demo Day in July, 6 startups raised $4 million in seed rounds, with another $7 million in pipeline.

Stonks is 10/10, I would pitch at Demo Day a hundred times — Nishchay, Founder of Jar

Call for Startups: Aug Demo Day 🚀

We’re looking for startups with $250K+ in annual revenue (run-rate is OK) that are currently raising a pre-seed/seed/early A/tomato🍅 round. Any sector, geography is ok, high-growth required. If you qualify, please apply to our next demo day here.

❗️ Deadline: August 10th, sooner the better since its first-come.

📆 Event: August 19th, 10am PT

Investor panel for this event will include Mike Vernal from Sequoia Capital, Andrew Chen from A16Z, Sahil Lavingia and others. Expecting 300+ super-angels, angels and VCs in attendance.

Have questions before you apply? Hit us up @ali_moiz, @stonks_dot_com, or shoot us a note. 🦍 💪

One more thing…🔥

There’s a cash referral bonus of $1000 if you refer us a startup that gets selected to pitch on demo day. Send us a DM on twitter, or email us with an intro.
What You Need to Know About Blockchain
By: Harvard Undergraduate Capital Partners
Tags: Venture Capital, VC, Blockchain

By Leila Khan

In October 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released a nine page white paper describing a “new electronic cash system” that is now projected by many to disrupt and transform the global fintech market. Over a decade later, blockchain technology still captivates worldwide audiences — a feat accomplished by few in the incredibly saturated tech industry.

Essentially, blockchain is a public, decentralized database of transactions; this database structure is often referred to as a distributed ledger. Each “block” of digital information is verified and subsequently encrypted with a unique cryptographic code (known as a hash), which is then added to the “chain” of transaction records. Once linked to the chain, these data entries become immutable, permanently and securely storing pieces of information.

Blockchain is most commonly recognized as the operative system for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Unlike conventional transactions, blockchain eliminates the need for a third-party verification system by mechanizing the process, leading to more cost-efficient transactions. Besides the cryptocurrency industry, blockchain’s ability to seamlessly facilitate the transfer of assets generates a wide range of practical applications: supply chain logistics, voting transparency, healthcare data security, and even developmental aid initiatives. In other words, blockchain technology has immense potential to revolutionize the frontiers of cybersecurity, finance, and economic development. As a result, the World Bank predicts that the value added for blockchains will grow to more than $176 billion by 2025, and exceed $3.1 trillion by 2030.

However, future policy directives and institutional investment largely dictate the growth potential of the blockchain industry. According to a survey conducted by PwC, 48% of United States business executives reported that regularity uncertainty and user distrust serve as the greatest challenges to widespread blockchain adoption. This problem partially stems from its conflation with the volatile cryptocurrency market and illicit activity. These impediments, coupled with high production costs, highlight the urgency to develop a clear policy framework that analyzes the efficacy and vulnerabilities of blockchain.

Recent developments may induce such change. In late September, following the European Union’s investment in human capital and policy development, two regulatory blockchain bills passed in the United States House of Representatives. Specifically, the Blockchain Innovation Act and Digital Taxonomy act urge the Federal Trade Commission to submit a report to Congress about blockchain’s potential in commerce, ways to curb fraud, and recommended steps to propel blockchain innovation.

Overall, blockchain is still an emerging technology. Considering these present challenges, it may take a few more years before blockchain could become mainstream. However, with proper policy frameworks and educational initiatives, that seemingly distant stage could potentially turn into a reality.
The HCVC team is hiring our next Analyst Intern!
By: Kassandra Mccleery
Tags: VC, Tech, Internships, Hiring

We’re looking for our next intern to join us in January and help with sourcing investments for the HCVC fund and running the Hardware Club community.

About us:

HCVC is the first European investment fund dedicated to hardtech and full-stack startups (combining hardware, software, and AI). We support our portfolio startups with Hardware Club, the most-selective community of hardware startups in the world. By mutualizing experience, knowledge, and network, our members learn from each other and move faster. We have a small, but effective international team, spanning San Francisco and Paris. We’re looking for an analyst intern to join us for 6 months to help us keep this machine running. Our interns are involved in all aspects of deal sourcing, investment evaluation, and closing, creating content, and community support. We are looking for ambitious individuals, passionate about technology, and willing to support the next wave of hardtech founders. The internship is based in Paris but some travel might be involved.

What you will do:

Identify and analyze potential investments in our selected focus areas

Help with performing due diligence

Conduct market and competitive landscape research

Support the Community Lead in organizing events and in helping with special community-related projects

Represent HCVC at industry events and expand its local network

About you:

You are currently enrolled in a program at a top-tier business or engineering school

You have strong analytical skills and you are able to communicate, verbally and in writing, with a variety of stakeholders in a comprehensive and succinct manner

You have demonstrated interest in technology and the startup ecosystem

You are a self-starter, able to organize your own work and carry it out unsupervised

You are a team player and enjoy working in a small-team setting

You are fluent in English; other languages are a plus

What we offer:

Opportunity to be part of the entire lifecycle of a VC investment

Opportunity to meet our 500 community startups and source new community members

Opportunity to learn about Venture Capital and build your network

A chance to travel (depending on global conditions)

To apply:

Fill in this form. And spread the word about the program!
Running a business is hard. (Chamath Notes: 001)
By: Sajid Salih
Tags: VC, Investing, Chamath Palihapitiya, Twitter Chat

Running a company in 2020 is hard. It’s no longer just about employees and shareholders. It’s now also about stakeholders of which there are many:

Regulators, employees, partners, existing users

But the most important, imo, are mass market potential new users (MMPNU).

2. MMPNUs are critical because they are the only way of achieving a massive outcome. You can build a very good/big company without MMPNUs, but not necessarily world-changing.

If you want to maximize MMPNU demand, you need to understand their psychology.

3. MMPNUs are not picking features and functionality — that’s what early adopters do.

MMPNUs are initially triggered by virality but their choices are cemented by a sensation that the product is aligned with who they are.

When it is, they adopt. When it’s not, they churn.

4. My suspicions is that value-maximizing CEOs of the future will focus on stakeholder issues because, unemotionally, it’s the best way to maximize MMPNUs even when doing so privately drives them crazy.

You didn’t have to do this in the past, but building from today is different.

You can be successful if you don’t take this stakeholder focused path, but I don’t think it is the value-maximizing path which then probably causes more of the best employees to churn.

The fight for MMNPUs will make stakeholder focus a necessary strategic element going fwd.
Why did we start Zerofirst Ventures?
By: Illai Gescheit
Tags: Venture Capital, Investors, VC, Startup, Entrepreneurship

We are at times that we need more leaders to take responsibility. We see today corporate that spent years scaling and building without paying attention to their environmental impact. Corporates are now on a journey to fix what they have broken and they come up with transformation programs to become net-zero.

Google

“By 2030 Google is aiming to run our business on carbon-free energy everywhere, at all times.”

https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/our-third-decade-climate-action-realizing-carbon-free-future/

Amazon

“In 2019, Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge — a commitment to be net zero carbon across our business by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement.”

https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/?energyType=true&workerCount=true&engagementProgram=true&productCategory=true

We see companies like Google , Amazon and even BP that sets their targets to become net zero in 10, 20 and 30 years from now. However, the climate crisis is here now and we don’t have time to wait so long. In addition, businesses still build with the same methodologies and the ones that scale quickly and become corporates, we will find them in 10–20 years from now figuring out they need another 20 years to eliminate carbon emissions from their processes.

If we’ve learned one thing from the last health crisis our world is in with COVID-19 is that we need a sense of urgency to fix climate change and we cannot be indifferent to it.

This is why we are building Zerofirst Ventures. We need a new way to build companies, businesses and products — sustainable and responsible way. We need to put it on the top of our priority lists of founders and entrepreneurs building high pace startups. In addition, we need to have a conversation about sustainability in the VC world. Investors need to care about the way founders approach their sustainability strategy and how their portfolio become net-zero.

Our team is here to inspire and empower our innovation communities, founders, investors and corporate partners to build better. We are building a network of leaders who will share best practices and help each other build product and ventures more responsibly, we are building frameworks and design methodologies to help startup get it done, and we will partner with startups that follow and align on our vision.

We are Zerofirst.
Ways to demonstrate your product potential and market traction to investors
By: Skein Team
Tags: Funding, SaaS, Investors, VC, Startup

Your current and future investors expect to see indications of your product’s potential for growing into (at least) a $100 M business. To evaluate that, they are looking for quantitative evidence of user engagement and unit-economics that can be reliably extrapolated into a scalable business model.

But for an early stage business it is often challenging to show that evidence. Your solution still needs multiple functional and design improvements, your test marketing budgets are small and user acquisition campaigns are lacking optimisation; so both the data volume and its quality fails to demonstrate an impressive business case.

Tools to distill indications of product traction

What can help is the use of the Data Science methods that could assist in defining the unique for your business engagement metrics, benchmark them against those of the key market players and comparable businesses, and tell your investors a convincing story of how your product is getting traction and grows, based on the real product data. Here are just a few examples:

Demonstrate actual sales, but also look for indications of how many potential sales you can get once you improve your conversion funnel — for example, fix that glitch on the ‘Buy now’ page. Correlation models that connect purchasing behaviour with navigational patterns can predict sales completion and Life-TimeValue (LTV) of each engaged user.

If your product is free, find the most telling KPIs for your product — for example, sign-up rate, page-view rate, time on page, and then see what other metrics reinforce your story. Automated pattern recognition models significantly simplify this process.

Instead of an arbitrary split of user in socio-demographic target groups, try to find unique user clusters for whom your product work perfectly. Show the market traction for these groups and keep optimising the user experience based on the unique needs of those customers. Your will demonstrate the indications of growth and get a laser-sharp focus on improving your product for the unique groups of customers.

Defining target market and estimating market penetration

Demonstrating the market size and penetration is often a very challenging task, especially because your actual market is limited only to those clients for whom your product is a critical purchasing priority. Splitting your niche audiences by behavioural, socio-demographic and lifestyle metrics will help you to show the addressable market volume using business and consumer data from open sources and social media channels, and integrate that with your user stats to illustrate what percentage of the niche market you have already occupied.

About Skein. We transform advanced data technologies into tools that help your business succeed. Niffler.ai is a customer modelling engine for digital products.
A VC outlook on Meat-Free products
By: Djalil Reghis
Tags: Protein, Agriculture, VC, Meat Free, Agtech

Is there a future for meat-free products in Europe?

Studies showed that customers’ expectations regarding meat products involve food safety, pleasure (taste and texture), animal well-being, sustainability, and health. The ability of the industry to meet some or all of these attributes will be crucial to create new meat-free product categories.

Meat-Free products: what are the main challenges of the European market?

The high number of ingredients in meat-free products might raise consumers’ concern about health impact (even if these ingredients are natural). Moreover, the tech nature of these products might lead consumers to relate them to processed food, which suffers from a negative perception in Europe.

How do VCs look at the European market?

Meat-free production is a constant tech and innovation challenge. The U.S. is currently leading the R&D in this space. VCs tend to invest where innovation and founding teams are located. We believe that meat is not a commodity product anymore and that meat-free production has become a tech/innovation/patent competition, which is a source of massive opportunities.

What will be the primary driver of consumers’ demand in the coming years?

Meeting the attributes and hitting the price point!

Who will be the winners & losers in this business?

We believe that developing a mass-market retail strategy will necessarily involve strategic partnerships with established international players at each level of the value chain. Ventures that will be able to develop such partnerships will have a strong competitive edge to position themselves as leaders in the industry.

What are the main differences between the U.S. and European markets?

U.S. incumbents (meat producers) have been exposed to disruption and innovation threats for a longer period of time. This has given them additional time to adapt to the meat-free revolution. Subsidy policies for meat production might also slow down adoption by setting up artificially low meat prices.

For startups, scaling new technologies requires large addressable markets. Innovation providers might consider Europe as fragmented and heterogeneous in terms of retailer’s typology, consumer expectations, and regulations.

*Panel participants: