Devika Thapar

A SAFE and convertible note had a baby and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati was the midwife- out popped the D-SAFE! 👶🏽🎉 A new #climatetech funding instrument was announced by Elemental Excelerator last week. One of the company’s main goals is to support smaller, up and coming companies during the awkward “Scale Gap” phase between #VC funding and natural growth. It’s called the #DSAFE (Development Simple Agreement for Future Equity) and it aims to aid the process by giving companies a small amount of cash to overcome initial risks and expenses during the developmental stages of a product launch or company. How does it work? D-SAFE has a redemption clause meaning companies can choose to have their payments offered as a loan or convert to equity at the investor’s discretion. Funders and companies will have clear communication and expectations about where the money is going and how it will be applied to either the company or the projects at hand. Financiers and companies will work together with more #transparency, and that’s a great boon for #startups and VC alike. As of this month, Elemental has already invested using D-SAFE in eight different companies, including Dimensional Energy and Origen — both companies investing in innovative and out-of-the-box solutions to environmental issues! Seems like a win-win on the surface. What do you all think about the D-SAFE? Alfredo Coppola Momoka Ueda Tim Wagner Stephen D. Torres Olya Irzak Natsuho Toyama Noriya Tarutani Shin Ogawa

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A timely round up on US Femtech (and female health) funding by Leah Hodgson published yesterday, following the $200m Series C/growth equity round raised by Flo Health Inc. There is a helpful link into further analysis on deal value v. deal count, and PitchBook also tracks the founding teams; female v. co-female/male. #femtech #femalecategory #femalehealth

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Accelerating technology translation to help researchers commercialise their work is key to creating the innovative start-ups that will address some of the key challenges facing society. More financing to support research through the proof-of-concept stage is needed to create a sustainable pipeline of investible opportunities. Karin Immergluck at Stanford also sees this as the number one challenge in the US. It's not just about funding but also about building an ecosystem that identifies and develops the talent and opportunities within universities. Industry needs to be more involved. Collaboration to pull through research into industry should be encouraged and funded. Initiatives like #MatcelerateZero bring together world-leading materials research universities, global corporations, and international investors together in a unique partnership to help address these gaps and support the transition to #NetZero. The question is not whether the opportunity exists. Public data shows there were 3600 invention disclosures to universities across the UK in 2022-2023 alone. The challenge is how the UK, and its world leading universities, can combine their offering to leverage the UK’s position as the centre of international capital to deliver a commercially innovative economy driven by scientific research. You can learn more about what #MatCelerateZero is doing to accelerate climate solutions in advanced materials here: https://lnkd.in/ezygvxn2 #DeepTech #Innovation #Investment #TranslationalFunding #VentureCapital #TechTransfer #Startups #Spinouts

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If you are in the VC space, you should know one of the early drivers of "Moneyball for VC". That's Gopinath Sundaramurthy, Ph.D Gopi partnered with the Kauffman Fellows Fund on implementing these concepts in their investment process. The results were staggering. 50% of the investments the fund made became unicorns. In Gopi's words 👇🏻 "We knew something was working, so we thought: Let's build this a little bigger." What did that look like in practice? 1️⃣ Gopi's firm uses a single ‘source of truth’ platform to centralize information, improving decision-making and consistency. 2️⃣ They maintain an even 50/50 split between data engineers and investors to ensure they leverage data to gain insights into teams, markets, and products. Want to learn more about what Gopi and the team at Ensemble VC has implemented at their firm? Check out the case study that our sponsor Harmonic published about the firm -->

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Paul Graham's latest invented phrase "Founder Mode" has recently created quite a lot of buzz. PG is generally great at writing about topics which everybody thinks of but has not quite articulated. Founder Mode being one of them. While a lot of people are resonating with "Founder Mode", many also feel that its quite vague. How exactly should one implement it in their organisations? PG warns against being "gaslit" into hiring execs from large companies and let them run like managers. I believe 80% of your culture is defined by your hiring. It's of no use hiring people who prefer "Manager mode" and expect them to work in "Founder Mode". What might feel like "micromanagement" to some folks might be an enabler to do great work for others. They key is to hire people with founder mentality if making your company run in "Founder Mode" is the goal. But how do you figure out who has "founder mentality" and who doesn't? One way is to hire ex-founders themselves. I had recently compiled a list of 30 such people for Weekday's newsletter (fyi, Weekday is a hiring platform that has almost 80% of India's tech talent on it). Sharing a list of ex-founders from engineering and product; who are actively looking out right now. Happy to share that with you as well. Comment on this post and I will share the list with you (along with their contact details and resumes). A sneak peak here: ⚙️ Anon Eng 1: (8 YoE) 👊 Ex- founder of an API SaaS startup which ranked #1 on product hunt 🧠 Previous experience of working at two unicorn startups 💰 Expected salary: $65k // ₹54 LPA ⚙️ Anon Eng 2: (8 YoE) 👊 Previously co-founder of a Healthtech startup (Online pharmacy and doctor appointments) 🧠 Currently as a Lead Software Engineer at a fintech unicorn | IIT Guwahati Grad 💰 Current Salary : $60k // ₹50 LPA ⚙️ Anon Eng 3: (8 YoE) 👊 Ex - co founder of a Virtual publishing house that raised $36k in seed funding & got 20k app downloads 🧠 Currently as a platform Engineer at a YC backed startup 💰 Current salary (base): $59k // ₹49 LPA | Expected salary: $83k // ₹69 LPA 💻 Anon Product 1: (12 YoE) 👊 Previously co-founder of an ed-tech startup that generated $1M revenue within 3 yrs. 🧠 Currently at a HR tech company as a Product Manager 💰 Current salary (base): $38k // ₹32 LPA 💻 Anon Product 2: (10 YoE) 👊 Previously co-founder of an event hosting startup in India 🧠 Currently as a Principal product manager at a leading IT firm | Killer trait: Leader & Team    Player (Recommended by 2 of her ex-colleagues) 💰 Current salary (base): $74k // ₹62 LPA 💻 Anon Product 3: (5 YoE) 👊 Ex- co founder of an ed tech startup that scaled to 30k DAU and 120 clients across 3 countries 🧠 Currently at a Dubai based fintech startup as a Global Product Manager 💰 Current salary (base): $38k // ₹32 LPA Comment here with a "👋" or DM me and I will share the full list with you.

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🎧 The Power of Storytelling in Venture Capital with Gayle Jennings O'Byrne, CEO of Wocstar | B Corp Certified Gayle and I uncover: • Gayle’s story and why she started Wocstar Capital to support women entrepreneurs. • Women’s role in making consumer decisions, and therefore the market in general. • Raising capital by using storytelling to break down barriers. • The importance of mentorship and leadership development for women in the tech industry. https://lnkd.in/gpR6HXYw ⬇ Are you seeing the importance of storytelling in VC? ⬇ #boarddiversity #executivewomen #howwomenlead #howwomeninspire #howwomeninvest

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