Brendan Ciecko

Next week is NY Tech Week, and on Wednesday, I'll be co-hosting TechWalk at 2 PM in Central Park. More details here: https://lnkd.in/eFey-aBd I look forward to connecting and chatting about the dynamic world of early-stage startup investing, go-to-market strategies, and the venture capital ecosystem. As a Venture Fellow at Fordham Angel Fund (FAF), I bring hands-on experience evaluating startups, conducting market analysis, and developing go-to-market strategies. Let's discuss founder due diligence, growth hacking techniques, and the nuances of crafting effective term sheets. I'm also passionate about discussing programs like Vencapital and Venture Cooperative that support minorities and women breaking into VC. Additionally, I'd love to share insights on content creation and storytelling from my experience hosting a YouTube podcast. If you're interested in personal branding, networking, or leveraging LinkedIn for career growth, let's connect! Join me for a walk and chat about the global business landscape, embracing diversity, and adapting to new environments. See you there! #NYTechWeek #TechWalk #Startups #VentureCapital #ContentCreation #PersonalBranding #Networking #GlobalBusiness #DiversityInVC

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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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3D printing is having a breakout moment, turning its long held promise into a reality that is arriving at pace and at scale. Over the next 5 years: - Consumers will expect customized products at scale - Computers will surpass human creativity and skill in product design - New infrastructure is needed to protect IP if anything can be printed anywhere  - Global supply chains will be meaningfully dismantled as products get printed at their point of sale I sat down with Philip DeSimone, Co-founder of Carbon, the most advanced 3D printing company already operating at scale serving customers in 17 countries ranging from Adidas to Ford. With over 300 patents filed, Carbon has raised $680M from the likes of Sequoia, Temasek, and Google. Check out 5YF Episode #14: 3D printing breakthroughs, AI designed products, mass customization, spare body parts, dismantling global trade, IP piracy, and the future of production w/ Carbon Co-founder Philip DeSimone https://pod.fo/e/234185 #3Dprinting

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The next founders to put the spotlight on in the 2024 cohort of the Norrsken Accelerator are Lewis Pierson and Denis Frischmann who are the founders of Leeana.💡Their company helps companies reduce their biodiversity footprint using geospatial data. It allows organizations to manage locations worldwide, set nature-positive goals and report on impending biodiversity regulation.🌍 The loss of biodiversity is one the planets big problems and since plants and species are deeply interconnected even small disruptions to ecosystems can have severe ripple effects. Tackling this problem is key for our future and that’s exactly what Lewis and Denis are doing with Leeana. They are off to a great start and I strongly suggest that if you’re working at a company and biodiversity is your responsibility you reach out to them so they can show what they can do for you. If they win, we all win!🤩

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🎨 📺 Sharon Roth is a Product & Design leader who’s built her career in the lab, across different modalities, to bring more creative product experiences to life 📺 🎨 It's W3 / Q3 / 2024 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Sharon who serves as the Senior Director of Product Management at Quantified.ai, the AI-driven flight simulator for sellers. The app feels as real as your next video call, scales across teams, programs, and companies, and ramps reps 42% faster. Sharon is leading Quantified AI’s Product & Design team after previous roles in Product leadership at Tamr & Honor Education. She’s excited to be back working in an Enterprise focused company, leading Design alongside Product, focused on strategic & execution based discipline. ❓Questions Are Your Roadmap ❓ It’s popular to encourage new hires to ask a lot of questions. But it’s always a good time to ask questions! When a member of your team comes to you and says “we really need to build X feature”, they’re coming to you for good reason. Dig into the why to understand how often the issue comes up, when it happens in a customer conversation, and why they’re asking for it in the first place. Is there an even better way to build a solution? Also, people are always excited about getting to a solution. By delaying the solution discussion to first get everyone to agree on the problem, you can coordinate a better response. Sharon has been in rooms where stakeholders can’t agree on the problem they’re trying to solve, which can sometimes be even more painful! By asking better questions and articulating the underlying issues thoroughly, they can work together as an organization to chart a better path forward. 3 Career Insights / Learnings 🙋‍♀️ Seek New Challenges - “Trying new things is how you learn and grow. At a startup, there are so many opportunities to try new things. As startups evolve, you need to embrace all that’s going to happen and make it a positive thing. Otherwise don’t go to a startup!” 🤝 Act with Integrity - “Do your best, show your work. But also treat others with respect and kindness while doing it. How you treat people and how you show up every day will impact your work environment. You’re responsible for the energy you bring to the room, so be authentic and try to inject some positivity. It will help you build the type of network you want to have too” 🗣 Invest in Communication Skills - “It helps you ask questions well, advocate for yourself, have your ideas be heard. It also helps others understand your impact. It takes continuous practice to do well.” If you’d like to learn more about Sharon’s career, the full post is linked in the comments. Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter to see the operator learnings we bring you in the weeks ahead too, will ya? #bostontech #operators

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Someone broke down the estimated costs of a $15 Sweetgreen salad. We need these cost graphics for digital health to help future founders. Especially for tech enabled cos, the greatest cost is labor. Much of the "value created" is in curation and matching, which means the gross margins are reliant on labor arbitrage. Pay someone $X, but get paid $X Y% per visit. The challenge with healthcare is that you often have to pick one of two business models: 1. specialized, low volume, high cost, low gross margin % 2. generalized, high volume, low cost, high gross margin % I'd argue founders should focus on gross dollars over the lifetime of the customer (like Jeff Bezos said) instead of gross margin %'s, but we'll leave that for another time. The challenge is that many tech enabled digital health cos have high cost of goods sold (labor) and moderately high product, design, and engineering budgets. We must build differentiated solutions for patients, clinicians, and clients to be out incumbents, however, we're realizing that companies are ultimately valued on the discounted value of future cash flows. And the high SG&A costs at most organizations might be inbalanced to the unit economics of the business. I'm not sure the math pencils out for everyone unfortunately. But I'm just a guy on the internet, would love to hear the thoughts from those smarter than I (you!). Comment below. --- p.s. I have no idea the accuracy of the graphic and not an investor in Sweetgreen. Cheers. Credit: David Crowther

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The #VentureStudio community is thriving and when two leaders from different studios get together it is always going to be a great conversation. This podcast is huge as two brilliant Venture Studio leaders Barry O'Reilly from Nobody Studios and Ben Yoskovitz from Highline Beta join to unpack the innovative world of venture studios and uncover the strategies that make startups thrive. In this episode, you will learn: 📈 The fundamentals of creating and scaling a venture studio 🛠️ Strategies for innovating with accelerators, incubators, and venture capital 💡 How to apply Lean Startup principles to build products people actually want 🤝 The importance of collaboration between founders, corporate partners, and investors 🔄 Insights into the specialization and future trends of venture studios Take a listen and learn from two masters.

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To all #climatetech #founders and #funders in NYC and beyond, please join us on June 5th for an evening of #breakthrough #decarbonization #innovation at the ReGen Accelerator #DemoDay! 🎉 Get ready to be inspired by our cohort of #earlystage startups: ​ ▶ aich2 is engineering a novel #hydrogen ecosystem, built around Solid Hydrogen carriers. ​​ ▶ carbogenics produces sustainable #carbon adsorbents from difficult-to-recycle organic waste, including coffee cups and wastewater screenings ​​ ▶ TeamStack.ai is driving better performance by harnessing #AI, data, & the collective intelligence of teams. ​ ▶ Tesleon LLC uses compelling characters and #storytelling to instill compassion for communities and our planet in the next generation. ​ ▶ Tolam Earth is a trusted #marketplace for high-quality, high-impact carbon offsets. Don't miss out! Secure your spot below. Big thank you to Brown Rudnick LLP for hosting this event, our partners at ClimateHaven for their hard work and dedication during the entire program, and to our incredible network of #mentors and #facilitators, each of whom have dedicated time to working with these incredible founders this spring, including Jason Ambrose, Marina Rakhlin, Lauren Zujkowski, Stuart DeCew, Matt Puccini Andy Rooks, Nina Raab, and Bill Stephney. And of course Shai Tamary, Lars Korby and Sarah Cleveland, without whom we would not be able run such a #program. #innovation #sustainability #climateaction #accelerator

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