This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Where Stealth is Good – There’s a lot of discussions on the web about whether startups should be stealthy before they launch or not. My general rule is that it’s good to be stealth in the early days while you’re building your product and testing your market. Most people totally advise against stealth.
and team Grain on coming out of stealth with $50M in funding ($33M series A and previously undisclosed seed) to help any business hedge against FX volatility! Great stuff Ron Arbel and team Aryon Security on coming out of stealth with $9M in seed funding to proactively prevent cloud risks, before they emerge!
Not because they’re all operating in stealth or pre-product – in fact some already are earning $1m+ in revenue per annum. And my sense is the trend carries outside of our portfolio these days. Most of the startups we’ve backed at Homebrew don’t rush to announce their funding.
As I’ve worked to build out HOF Capital ’s portfolio acceleration platform , the #1 question I think about is: how do we scalably support our companies? Many VCs offer (or strive to offer) a bundle of levers and support structures to help their portfolio companies. We have lower AUM, therefore lower management fees.
Disclaimer: we have three portfolio companies in the consumer mobile space, still in stealth). First it was Fortnite and Epic, now it’s Facebook and soon other players will team up to reduce the revenue share with app stores. This may also trickle down to Google and Amazon. The Information and VentureBeat have more on this.
Create and highlight your intellectual property portfolio. Startups in stealth mode can’t get feedback from real customers and can’t be perceived as experts in their industry. A business needs technical, marketing, financial and many other skills. Simplicity is preferred at this stage.
A large portion of your competitive advantage and your potential value to investors is the size of your intellectual property portfolio. Startups that operate in stealth mode until their solution is perfect usually acquire customers and investors very slowly. Register some intellectual property to provide a barrier to entry.
This year was a banner year as boldstart portfolio cos raised over $150mm of follow on capital from some of the top Series A and B investors (highlights below). First check leads in 5 founding teams, all in stealth. Smallstep , Clay , Dark , and Windmill emerged out of stealth. First check to Series A?—?congrats
This year was a banner year as boldstart portfolio cos raised over $150mm of follow on capital from some of the top Series A and B investors (highlights below). First check leads in 5 founding teams, all in stealth. Smallstep , Clay , Dark , and Windmill emerged out of stealth. Rebel exit to Salesforce.
We’re filling it with our own team , plus a couple of startups in our portfolio ( Parsely , Phone.com , some in stealth mode). Our portfolio company BetterWorks cites a report by The World Economic Forum: “Employees are eight times more likely to be engaged when wellness is a priority in the workplace.”
We know a lot of founders in this space choose to remain in stealth and expect the actual number of Israeli startups working on generative AI to be much larger and grow quickly. We made two new investments in this space which are still in stealth. In just a couple of months the current version includes 68 startups.
We were first check leads in 8 founding teams including Wallaroo Labs , MState (fka hyperfab ), blockdaemon , and 5 in stealth. We built out our CXO advisory board and further cemented our Fortune 500 relationships to help our portfolio cos scale from founder-market fit to product market fit in an accelerated timeframe ( meet our advisors ).
We’ve been having a running joke within Foundry Group for several years about “stealth mode.” My partner Seth alludes to it in his blog post a few years back titled To stealth or not to stealth. Niel wrote a brilliant post on this titled The Stealth Mode: Trada’s Position on Staying Stealth. You should also.
In addition to building transformative companies that we’re lucky to have in the portfolio, Data.World and OJO Labs respectively, they’ve helped with introductions, investment diligence, and broader portfolio support. We also have several stealth startups that sit at the intersection of AI and healthcare.
We were first check leads in 8 founding teams including Wallaroo Labs , MState (fka hyperfab ), blockdaemon , and 5 in stealth. 6 portfolio companies raised Series A financings including Manifold , Hypr , and 4 unannounced, 1 raised a Series B (unannounced), and Security Scorecard raised a $28mm Series C.
Kapor Capital’s expansive portfolio includes Bit.ly The firm’s portfolio includes the likes of Gist , Lijit , Brightleaf, Memeo, SimpleGeo , StockTwits and Zynga. Gary Vaynerchuk: Personal branding master and creator of Wine Library TV, Gary Vaynerchuk is also an angel investor with an expanding portfolio of companies.
Recently Dan Frommer over at the Silicon Alley Insider wrote about the reemergence of “stealth mode ”. With one of our portfolio companies, Trada , recently emerging from 18 months of quiet operations, we’re taking the subject up once again (very timely if Frommer’s post is any indication). Tags: stealth.
We continue to invest in blockchain companies and funds such as Coinbase and Metastable Capital , which join our existing crypto portfolio ( Blockstack , Citizen Hex and Polychain Capital ). We welcomed Gencove , a B2B sequencing company, to our portfolio. Select activities from around the portfolio.
Mari is now building a new venture in human-machine interaction within the Samsung accelerator, currently in stealth mode. Her work included heading Nokia’s location-based services business and app portfolio for emerging markets, which she built from a back-of-a-napkin idea to a 100-person organization with over 10 million users.
Portfolio Thinking = Portfolio Grooming. A head start is rarely large enough to matter, and time spent in stealth mode-away from customers-is unlikely to provide a head start. Value Capture = Monetization Strategy. Small Batch = Incremental/Continuous Development and Deployment. Large Batch = Big Bang/Waterfall. ” Amen.
These are 20 th century relics of the lack of data available from each team and the lack of comparative data across a cohort and portfolio. Last September Andy Sack , Jerry Engel and I taught our first stealth class for incubator/accelerator managers who wanted to learn how to play Moneyball. Those days are over. Lessons Learned.
just months after it came out of stealth. And he and his co-founders Ziv and Ilan made it happen: Melio’s now processing multi-billion dollar payment volumes less than two years after launch. On the back of this momentum, Melio today announced a $110m funding round, rocketing the company to a valuation of $1.3b
With the elite initial team they’ve assembled, they’ve managed to build their first product in record time and secure large six-figure deals while still in stealth mode.
And seed VCs, especially as new firms were being established, were eager to encourage their portfolio startups to plant that flag in the ground publicly. There are legitimate reasons for a startup to be in stealth mode. It seemed like every other TechCrunch post was announcing a startups’s new seed financing round.
Make sure to call the companies in that VCs portfolio that didn’t succeed. I list all of the companies (except one in stealth) on my blog and this includes both VC investments and angel ones. When you finally get back up on your feet again, Everybody wants to be your old long-lost friend. I’m the same. I play open book.
EnPowered closed their initial seed round in February 2020 and have been developing their platform in stealth mode over the past year. EnPowered joins our growing portfolio of energy and climate startups. To learn more, visit www.getenpowered.com or @GetEnPowered.
The Generative AI gaming landscape Nov 2022 ( source ) In my small data sample (of Israeli gaming startups) a lot of startups in the generative AI gaming space are either missing in this map, or are choosing to remain in stealth until they have a solid demo out. steampunk airships flying in the sky. Generated in [link].
Last week, one of our most recent portfolio companies, Ten Little , came out of stealth and announced its public launch. . Ten Little was started by Fatma Collins and Julie Rogers , a platform that aims to make finding the perfect fit for your child easy, starting with shoes.
“ US Navy Sea Shadow stealth craft ” by US Navy employee – [link]. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Stealth is overrated. Today, I have seen it enough times from companies in my portfolio and others that are not in my portfolio that have utilized the “We’re in stealth mode” line.
We’re very excited to announce our investment in Inflection.io , as the company comes out of stealth with a $5M seed round. We’re also excited to report that Inflection is the first company to come out of Pienza (also a Version One portfolio company). In years past, the B2B customer experience and buying process were owned by sales.
Today one of our portfolio companies, LinkSmart , has come out of stealth mode and unveiled its product, Total Link Management and $4.7M in financing led by Foundry Group. My partner Seth Levine sits on the board and wrote about his view of LinkSmart.
On Tuesday, one of our most recent portfolio companies, Otis, came out of stealth and announced its public launch. Otis is founded by Michael Karnjanaprakorn, and is focused on creating a marketplace that enables fractional ownership of culturally relevant assets.
This could include areas like mental health (as in our portfolio company 10% Happier ), dental health (such as Smile Direct ), nutrition and exercise, pain management, and other areas that impact the everyday life of tens of millions of people. 3) Health Data Applications.
We had seen Lightspeed portfolio company Nicira disrupt networking layers 2-3 with an architecture that consisted of highly distributed scale out software elements coupled with centralized control, culminating in an acquisition by VMWare for $1.25B in the summer of 2012.
Creators are also increasingly becoming angel investors in B2C startups, similar to celebrity investments which are also on the rise, leveraging their profile to help their portfolio stand out. We’ve made several investments in the space (some are still in stealth). Finally, a small plug to Remagine Ventures.
You might have detailed these ideas lovingly in a blog post or elsewhere on your site but almost all the time, your portfolio page helps teams decide if they should reach out to your or not. . When you make an investment, you can put a placeholder slot on your portfolio page which generally describes the company.
However, a diversified investment portfolio is recommended especially for new investors who want to test the waters. It’s a globally accepted currency and unlike some cryptocurrencies, this does not operate on stealth mode. Diversifying your investment portfolio with at least 2% to 10% of gold is a good number.
5/ Copycat Culture And Stealth Mode Back En Vogue: I’ve alluded to this above and below, but now when a category gets hot, founders and capital flood it. And, many of these firms would love nothing better than to cherry pick from the portfolios of the best venture brands out there.
With COVID raging at the beginning and end of the year, it is all the more amazing what our portfolio companies have accomplished the last twelve months. And our portfolio continued to grow: ? Day one lead/co-lead in 14 founding teams: (most still in stealth) representing ??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ?? 2021 Recap Sending ?
With COVID raging at the beginning and end of the year, it is all the more amazing what our portfolio companies have accomplished the last twelve months. 2021 Recap. Sending and from the boldstart team at the end of a challenging 2021. 1/ We started @boldstartvc in 2010 w/ $1m. Ernest Addison , Associate and formerly at Audax group.
Disclosure: a Remagine Ventures portfolio company. While a lot of startups choose to remain in stealth, I’m excited about the new crop of generative AI startups in Israel that are either creating B2C products, or helping other B2C startups scale with the power of AI.
While this sounds simple, there is a ton of work that goes into helping our portfolio companies get to a successful Series A. Finally, we try to prewire the Series A investment by getting our portfolio companies to meet with the right partners at the right firms early on before they even need money.
This company will remain in stealth mode for at least a little while and it isn’t my place to divulge their plans, but we’re very excited about the founding team, market opportunity, and syndicate we will be part of. But we will undoubtedly continue to add more hardware related businesses to our portfolio.
This company will remain in stealth mode for at least a little while and it isn’t my place to divulge their plans, but we’re very excited about the founding team, market opportunity, and syndicate we will be part of. But we will undoubtedly continue to add more hardware related businesses to our portfolio.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 5,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content