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In this episode Adrian Locher explains how Merantix Capital’s hybrid studio‑community‑consulting model builds AI‑first companies by demanding customer validation before any code is written, a discipline he says is crucial in the AI age. He contrasts deep‑tech AI with mere "wrapper" solutions, outlines why many venture studios fail, and argues that Europe’s regulatory focus on applications gives it an edge in sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, and finance. Looking ahead, Locher predicts venture studios will dominate AI venture creation by 2030 and hints at emerging bets in neuro‑tech.
Great data from VenCap analyzing 1,900+ VC funds (2000-2019): ☹️22% lose money (return <1x) 👇64% never hit 2x 🚀Only 6% return 5x+ 🔥Just 2% hit 10x Translation: A randomly selected VC fund is 3.7x more likely to LOSE money than return 5x. But here's what changes...
New!! Cursor Hit $1B ARR in 24 Months: The Fastest Scaling SaaS Ever? https://t.co/kV5BNeeW4m
It seems $META dodged the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit… and I couldn’t be more pleased. Meta is certainly a major player in the world of social media, with both Facebook and Instagram hosting hundreds of millions of somewhat satisfied customers. But...
Anne Mahlum recounts her journey from a North Dakota upbringing marked by her father's gambling addiction to founding the nonprofit Back on My Feet and later bootstrapping the boutique fitness brand solidcore into a $100 M exit. She emphasizes the power...
High agency is often mistaken for speed. People assume it belongs to the ones who decide quickly and move without hesitation. That version looks impressive, but it is not what actually drives results. The real marker of high agency is quieter....
I was an early @function customer in 2022 and still am. Stoked to be a small part of their cap table with @vedikaja_in. https://t.co/1gnKQa149t
Entry price counts when TAM is unclear. Winning is the only thing that counts when TAM is huge.
London: We're doing a Fin x Attio x Granola meet up next week! I'll be joined on stage by Nicolas Sharp (CEO, Attio) and Vas Zhovner (CTO, Granola) and we'll be discussing Product Strategy in the AI Era. Details Wednesday,...
Why Subject AI pivoted from being the “Netflix of Education.” On today’s TWiST, Mike Vilardo from Subject AI joins the show to talk about his educational tech startup, Subject AI, and explains their shift in strategy. The company first launched...
The post argues that the supposed "scaling wall" in AI pre‑training has been disproven by recent developments: Gemini 3 achieved dramatic performance gains without increasing parameters, showing that algorithmic and compute improvements still drive scaling laws, and Nvidia's record earnings and...
Every great founder brand lives at the intersection of three forces: 1. Storytelling creates understanding. 2. Founder branding creates trust. 3. New media creates distribution. When those three align, everything compounds. Every launch, every post, every interview reinforces the same...
ICYMI: @PitchBook’s latest secondary market report is out, showing record deal flow: $95B across direct secondaries & continuation funds. While a viable liquidity path for some, impt to note it’s still < IPO ($104.7B) & M&A ($107.1B) exits this year. Standout stats: ...
ICYMI: PitchBook ’s latest secondary market report is out, and it shows record deal flow: $95B in estimated annual value across direct secondaries and continuation funds. While a viable liquidity path for some, it’s worth noting it still accounts for...
When we bring on a new client, we often find they've been receiving calls/emails from private equity firms for some time. As part of those calls, PE firms tend to ask a lot of questions and founders aren't always sure...
Congrats to @EmberCopilotAI on their $4.3M seed! Ember wants to solve America’s healthcare denial crisis. They prevent denials before they happen—documenting visits, reviewing charts, and ensuring claims comply with payer requirements. Health systems using Ember are already seeing results: 57% fewer denials,...
Orion, a Denver‑based provider of AI‑driven risk intelligence, secured $3.5 million in a funding round led by Dynamo Ventures, with participation from Bravo Victor Venture Capital, Techstars, Service Provider Capital and a Puerto Rico government grant. The capital will be used...
Trava (@travaHQ) helps importers stop overpaying on duties. Tariffs shift constantly, and costly errors slip through the cracks. Trava finds them before they erode margin. Congrats on the launch, @pushkarlanka! https://t.co/YRu5F6wA2l https://t.co/D9eS7dKEHK
Calling all Trojan & USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy entrepreneurs. Get your applications in for the USC + Techstars programs. Gabriel Schlumberger leads the programs. See deets 👇
YC Demo Day median dilution for small seed is 11% (top 25% is 7%), not 18% for non-YC YC Demo Day median dilution for big seed is 13%, not 21% to 23% for non-YC You do it all faster: YC funds you...
Our general AI Agent (“Digital Jason”) handled 77 conversations and 203 messages yesterday. Most were pretty good, I am sure. But the real point is I couldn’t have done it. Nor could our tiny team. This is some of the...
Aplos, a leading functional non‑alcoholic spirits brand, announced the closing of a $5 million financing round on November 19, 2025. The capital infusion is intended to accelerate growth in the rapidly expanding alcohol‑alternative market after the company posted triple‑digit growth across...
Profluent, a frontier AI platform for protein design based in Emeryville, California, announced a $106 million financing round co-led by Altimeter Capital and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from existing backers Spark Capital, Insight Partners and Air Street Capital. The new capital...
Twice a year, I produce a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. New in November 2025, ‘AI eats the world’. https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations
What happened in 2025 IPOs if you bought near the peak: Figma (FIG): -74% 📉 Circle (CRCL): -73% 📉 CoreWeave (CRWV): -58% 📉 Klarna (KLNA): -38% 📉 Omada (OMDA): -31% 📉 Chime (CHYM): -30% 📉 Hinge Health (HNGE): -27% 📉 eToro (ETOR): -21% 📉 Average decline from peak: -44% The...
1/🚨Palo Alto Networks (PANW) today revealed acquisition of Lux family co @chronosphereio for $3.35 billion in cash Chronosphere’s data observability platform is built to scale for the AI era the founders worked in our Lux NYC office + we funded Chronosphere’s Series...
Looking like a lot of these big round robin deals are… optional! Explains why so many dropped so quickly… they’re non-guaranteed, so no harm in signing them
New tech, new moats. For the past 2 decades, the best moats were built on external forces: network effects & economies of scale. Cognition is different. It doesn't depend on one massive external system; it's about millions of microsystems—one per user. https://t.co/Qlr7qxQxbX
At Seed, pessimistic VCs are actuaries calculating your startup's probability of death. At IPO, they are mystics claiming they always saw the vision.
VC praise is opium. Customer revenue is oxygen. Asking a VC if your idea is working is like asking a spectator if the punch hurts. Get in the ring pal.
If you make the VCs pay a crazy high price, but you crush the numbers the next 90 days, no one remembers If you make the VCs pay a crazy high price, and you miss the next few months, no one...
So excited to share that @KindredVentures is leading the @kaaj_ai seed round! Small business is the coral reef of the US economy. They are the employer of choice, the craftsman, the niche producer. Lending to SMBs has never been an...
META beats the FTC, SUNO and Kraken raise monster deals. https://t.co/M2JY0mIwRf
Excited to finally share more about one of our portfolio companies: @polydotapp (https://t.co/vEmFKklF6u) — an intelligent cloud file browser redefining how we navigate computing in the generative age.
Big milestone for tiny satellites. @albaorbital is about to launch the 100th PocketQube satellite into orbit on SpaceX. These satellites allow regular low-cost iterations, giving startups, universities, and government a regular path to space. https://t.co/4eTRL84mmt https://t.co/2GGUfHtjKv
Forget being disruptive and reinventing the wheel. Find a painful problem that slows businesses down. Then solve it better than anyone else.
Day 1 IPO “pops” in 2025: TL;DR: it’s a crapshoot https://t.co/rz9g4aNIjw
Congrats to @FerootSecurity on their $14M Series A! Feroot's AI agents scan sites in seconds to catch privacy violations before audits do. Their research has exposed data leaks across healthcare, banking, e-commerce, and government sites, and even influenced federal legislation. https://t.co/IFScs4Zvib
Arbiter, a healthcare technology startup, announced its emergence from stealth with a $52 million Series A round led by TriEdge Investments and MFO Ventures, alongside WindRose Health Investors and other operators. The funding values the company at $400 million and will be used...
"AI is not going to kill your job in accounting just like calculator didn't. You will do higher level work!" Agree or disagree with @henrysward CEO of @cartainc?? Do you use Carta. Building an AI first company? Don't miss this episode of...
Last 24 hours became friends with $10BN+ founder through sending a DM. 24 hours later: He is co-investing in 20VC with 2 companies. Asked to write a $5M LP check. The power of Twitter.
A life changing exit doesn’t start at the finish line. It starts long before you’re ready to sell. Seun Oshinaike (@SeunOshinaike) knew that. He sold Street Tag on @acquiredotcom to a strategic buyer, taking the company even farther. Full interview: https://t.co/TLnv3EpAHp https://t.co/jAzRoJCjoJ
Spatial AI (https://t.co/qQyv8FngL6) is building large real-world datasets to teach robots how to navigate the world and complete tasks. Their first open source dataset, SEA (Spatial Everyday Activities), is the largest curated egocentric dataset of people carrying out real tasks, with...
THE GATES HAVE BEEN OPENED https://lnkd.in/gQVHdHtu
Are the largest AI model-makers a threat to smaller startups? On TWiST, I note that the competition for AI startups doesn’t just come from rivals in their space, but the companies that designed the LLMs upon which they’re building their...
Even if we believe AI job displacement is real… what can we actually DO? Alex Wilhelm and I discuss the very real possibility — as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei suggests — that AI-related advances in productivity are leading us straight...
Atomico’s 2025 State of European Tech report shows rising venture investment and marks a shift toward organized lobbying by European startups and investors. The report, authored by partner Tom Wehmeier, puts forward four policy recommendations—Fix the friction, Fund the future,...
Congrats to @Jiga3d on their $12M Series A! They're building the custom parts manufacturing platform for AI-era speed. Engineers upload drawings and get routed to vetted suppliers with direct communication, while Jiga automates the administrative grunt work and keeps humans in...
Startup founders building in rapidly expanding markets who optimize their burn rate, while competitors are raising $100M, remind me of people who count calories at an all you can eat buffet.
Startup founders who treat SAFEs and convertible notes like credit cards until the Series A closes... and then realize they have been playing Monopoly with real equity.
