A naukri.com initiative
Venture Capital News
Medium
1M
127
Image Credit: Medium
Distribution or Die
- The focus on distribution innovation and compelling content is seen as the key to success in the current landscape of gaming.
- Web3 is still in search of a defining platform moment, but there are initial indications of progress, particularly with the emergence of messaging-first models.
- The shift towards more direct and integrated distribution channels like Twitter, Telegram, and Farcaster is changing the game for developers by reducing barriers and enhancing social engagement.
- AGV is supporting the development of infrastructure like Thousands, which aims to revolutionize player engagement in Web3 by creating interactive on-chain economies within a streaming platform, emphasizing the importance of distribution in the current gaming landscape.
Read Full Article
7 Likes
Saastr
1M
374
8 Out of 10 SaaS Founders Are Burning Cash Faster Than Ever — And Why YC is On Fire (SVB’s 2025 Data Breakdown)
- SVB's 1H’25 report reveals unexpected insights about the startup and venture capital landscape.
- Incubators and accelerators contribute to 24% of U.S. VC deals, reshaping the path to venture funding.
- Only 25% of U.S. tech unicorns meet basic IPO readiness criteria, highlighting a need for alternative exit strategies.
- Most VC funds take 16-20 years to return capital, impacting investment strategies and LP allocations.
- Defense tech has emerged as a major VC category, with substantial investment growth in recent years.
- Venture fundraising inequality is significant, with the top 10% of firms capturing a majority of LP dollars.
- Bankruptcy filings in Silicon Valley are increasing, signaling potential challenges for startups.
- Revenue multiples are not solely influenced by interest rates, emphasizing the importance of company fundamentals.
- Global talent trends are reshaping SaaS economics, impacting developer salaries and outsourcing strategies.
- Secondary markets are experiencing high volumes despite price discounts, indicating a need for liquidity solutions.
Read Full Article
22 Likes
Medium
1M
45
Infinity & A New Era of Company Building
- Infinity Constellation, led by Invisible Technologies, is pioneering the AI Native HoldCo model to scale AI-native services businesses.
- Through AI advancements, services businesses can now scale like software, enabling outcome-based delivery and productizing people-technology combinations.
- The shift to selling solutions over just software tools presents opportunities in the services sector.
- Infinity Constellation houses 8 companies targeting various legacy services markets with a focus on AI-driven solutions.
- VCs are showing renewed interest in services businesses due to AI's capacity to enhance scalability and revenue reliability.
- The emergence of outcomes-driven, AI-native platforms like Palantir and Invisible signifies a shift in business models.
- AI-native services companies can achieve higher margins, stronger retention, and competitive advantages over traditional SaaS companies.
- Infinity's ecosystem model facilitates shared learnings, capital efficiencies, and go-to-market strategies across different domains.
- The novel approach of Infinity Constellation, led by Francis Pedraza and Brennan Pothetes, aims to reshape the services economy intelligently.
- The emphasis on team strength and community building sets Infinity apart, creating a conducive environment for entrepreneurial success.
Read Full Article
2 Likes
Siliconangle
1M
191
Image Credit: Siliconangle
Heatseeker AI raises $1.5M in funding for its market research platform
- Heatseeker AI has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to enhance its market research platform.
- The funding was led by Capital F with participation from Euphemia, Even Capital, and East End Ventures.
- Heatseeker's platform relies on online ads to gather user feedback for market research, offering a more reliable source than traditional surveys.
- The company plans to use the funding to launch a tool called Synthetic Experiments, leveraging AI to accelerate market research programs and reduce costs.
Read Full Article
11 Likes
Medium
1M
357
Image Credit: Medium
Self-Driving Cars Will Radically Reshape The Real Estate Market
- Several companies, including Tesla, Waymo, and Baidu, are working on developing self-driving cars.
- Despite current lack of demand, self-driving cars are anticipated to bring significant changes to various sectors, including real estate.
- The impact of self-driving cars on the real estate market is expected to be profound and transformative.
- While many people may not currently desire self-driving cars, their introduction is likely to reshape society in various ways.
Read Full Article
21 Likes
Medium
1M
100
Image Credit: Medium
The Most Common Start-up Advice That Actually Doesn’t Work
- "Fail fast" is a popular start-up mantra encouraging rapid experimentation, but it may not always lead to success.
- Rushing to build without validating market needs can result in predictable failures.
- Building a great product alone is not enough; start-ups need to focus on distribution and marketing for success.
- Fundraising requires strategic pitching to the right investors rather than blindly pitching to any VC.
Read Full Article
6 Likes
Saastr
1M
410
In The Age of AI, Onboarding and Time-to-Value Should Be The #1 Goal for Customer Success
- Customer Success has shifted from being customer champions to a sales arm, causing concerns.
- In the age of AI, focusing on onboarding and time-to-value should be the top priority for CS teams.
- Effective onboarding leads to faster value delivery, reduces early churn, creates customer champions, and is a scalable process.
- Without a strong onboarding process, businesses risk higher churn rates and struggle to build sustainable growth.
Read Full Article
24 Likes
Medium
1M
63
Image Credit: Medium
How to Nail the Traction Slide in Your Seed Pitch Deck
- Traction in a seed pitch deck validates team's execution ability, market demand, product viability, and problem statement.
- Balance between 'team and a dream' versus having real metrics is crucial at early stages of a company.
- Significant vision and founder story can compensate for limited traction in pitches but data becomes essential as the company progresses.
- Startups often rely on small investments to validate their idea before attracting early-stage investors.
- KPI's play a crucial role in demonstrating traction for seed investors, even if revenue is not substantial.
- Usage, customer discovery insights, and product development milestones are key traction indicators for startups.
- Traction slide should show progress over time to demonstrate momentum and execution capability.
- Metrics should align with business model and industry, avoiding vanity metrics and mischaracterized data.
- Avoid pitfalls such as vanity metrics, mischaracterized numbers, static figures, and overemphasis on LOIs in the traction slide.
- At the seed stage, fast progress and real signals are more important than big numbers for startups.
Read Full Article
3 Likes
Insider
1M
346
Image Credit: Insider
This startup wants to improve child gut health with personalized nutrition plans. See the pitch deck it used to raise $2.5 million.
- Alba Health, a startup focused on gut health and personalized nutrition for children, raised $2.5 million in seed funding with backing from the founder of Oura Ring.
- Founded by Eleonora Cavani and Professor Willem Meindert de Vos, Alba Health offers gut microbiome tests, personalized nutrition plans, and coaching for families with children.
- CEO Eleonora Cavani launched the startup after improving her eczema through diet changes and aims to help families address childhood gut health proactively.
- The seed round was led by Unconventional Ventures, with plans to grow Alba's digital platform, invest in clinical research, and reach more families across Europe and the UK.
Read Full Article
20 Likes
Saastr
1M
356
Dear SaaStr: How Long Should I Wait to Follow Up After A Big Customer Pitch?
- It is recommended to follow up immediately after a big customer pitch, ideally within the same day or no later than 24 hours to maintain momentum and interest.
- Quick follow-up shows proactiveness, seriousness towards the business, and helps in building trust and credibility with the client.
- Follow-up should include thanking the client, recapping key points from the meeting, addressing any concerns, and proposing clear next steps to keep the relationship warm.
- Personalizing the follow-up by referencing specific points from the meeting and adding value can further enhance the communication and showcase understanding of the client's needs.
Read Full Article
21 Likes
Medium
1M
296
Image Credit: Medium
The AI Startup Hitting Multi-Billion Valuation With Fewer Than 100 Employees
- Safe Superintelligence (SSI) is an AI startup that recently raised $2 billion, reaching a valuation of $32 billion, with fewer than 100 employees and no public product yet.
- This success reflects the shift in venture capital towards betting on small, elite teams with innovative ideas, contrasting the traditional requirements of showing progress in customer attraction or revenue generation.
- The trend in today's startups indicates a departure from the past, reminiscent of the dot-com boom but on a larger scale and with major institutional support.
- Co-founded by Ilya Sutskever, Safe Superintelligence Inc. is defying traditional startup growth steps by attracting significant funding without a public product or service and having fewer than 50 employees.
Read Full Article
17 Likes
Medium
1M
77
Image Credit: Medium
The Business of VC, What Every Founder Should Know Before Raising Money
- Venture capital is a business with its own pressures and targets, aiming for massive returns for their Limited Partners.
- VCs look for businesses with the potential to grow fast, exit big, and return their fund several times over, prioritizing explosive value over solid, profitable businesses.
- VCs operate on a 10-year cycle, impacting their funding decisions based on their position in the cycle.
- Raising money involves choosing the right partners aligned with your startup's goals, understanding the business of venture capital to build strategic relationships and avoid common fundraising mistakes.
Read Full Article
4 Likes
Medium
1M
228
Image Credit: Medium
Fireside chat with Alex Rampell, GP at a16z & co-founder of Affirm
- Alex Rampell, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and co-founder of Affirm, shared insights on building successful fintech companies and entrepreneurial mindset during a fireside chat.
- Alex Rampell, with a background in entrepreneurship and investments, emphasized the importance of technical expertise in identifying and solving market problems in fintech.
- Perseverance, mindset, and early partnerships were highlighted as crucial elements in entrepreneurial success, separating successful entrepreneurs from those who give up too early.
- Key advice included leveraging partnerships for growth, identifying unaddressed market problems, and understanding decision-making psychology, as recommended in the book 'Predictably Irrational.'
Read Full Article
13 Likes
Medium
1M
137
DeepSeek demystified and lessons learned
- Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a self-supervised learning technique that learns through an action versus reward mindset, similar to how a toddler learns to walk.
- RL can be used to teach a machine through exploring game moves and outcomes, and the technique involves distillation in DeepSeek R1 utilizing RL with two players concept.
- Strategies to tackle training and interpretability challenges in DNN and transformer models include self-supervised or hybrid supervised methods along with integrating traditional statistical machine learning techniques.
- Experts disagree with the notion of China surpassing the U.S. in AI capabilities, citing the trend of open-source AI surpassing proprietary models, which democratizes access and reduces risks of an AI arms race.
Read Full Article
8 Likes
Medium
1M
351
What drives our passion for Robotics?
- The passion for robotics is primarily driven by the potential for increased efficiency, precision, and cost savings in various industries such as electronics, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture.
- Robots automate repetitive tasks, reduce operational costs, and improve product quality, leading to economic growth and job creation in high-skilled fields like tech and engineering.
- The growing robotics market, valued at $76 billion in 2023, is expected to reach $218 billion by 2030, with significant contributions to sectors like healthcare and logistics.
- Advances in sensors, actuators, and control systems have propelled progress in robotics, enabling the development of sophisticated robots like the Atlas humanoid robot by Boston Dynamics.
- Perception, the ability of robots to interpret their environment, remains a crucial aspect of robot autonomy, with challenges in achieving human-like intelligence in areas such as multimodal recognition and contextual awareness.
- Progress in AI, particularly in deep learning, has led to improvements in perception systems, bridging the gap between physical and mental abilities of robots, but further advancements are needed.
- Challenges in robotics lie in developing accurate and efficient perception systems that can seamlessly integrate robots into diverse environments like homes and workplaces.
- Global readiness in sensor technology, computational infrastructure, and ongoing advancements in AI research provide optimism for rapid breakthroughs in general robotics that can revolutionize various industries.
- Investors like Nanostar VC seek startups with strong technical capabilities in tackling challenging perception problems to drive innovation in the robotics sector.
- The future of robotics holds promise with ongoing advancements in learning systems and breakthrough technologies, paving the way for transformative developments in general robotics.
- As expressed by Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang, a pivotal moment in general robotics, akin to the chatGPT revolution, is on the horizon, supported by evolving technologies and research progress.
Read Full Article
21 Likes
For uninterrupted reading, download the app