Torsor Kotee

As we approach year-end, here's a helpful guide for General Partners and Limited Partners explaining: - What gets taxed? - What isn't taxed? - Scheduling K-1s - How venture fund earnings are taxed - VC fund write-offs - How Carta can help Check it out below (it's a quick read)!

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Calling Founders: My friends Khari Austin-Rawls and Sydney Robertson over at Harvard Business School just opened applications for the Black New Venture Competition (BNVC)! BNVC is dedicated to connecting promising early-stage Black founders with the resources needed to transform their ventures into thriving businesses. Winners will receive over $200K in non-dilutive funding, along with access to an incredible network of mentors and investors.   Applications close on Monday, November 11th, 2024, at 11:59 PM ET.   Who Should Apply? They encourage applications from Black founders or startups with Black co-founders whose ventures:   - Have a proven minimum viable product (MVP) - Are in the early stages (Pre-seed – Seed) - Have been operating for less than 5 years - Have raised less than $500K in funding - Have not previously received funding from competition sponsors   What Winners Receive:   1. Community & Engagement: Access to a strong network of BNVC alumni, along with tactical resources to drive startup success. 2. Access to Investors: Private networking events with angel investors and VC sponsors. 3. VC Mentorship & HBS Resources: New this year! Semifinalists will receive mentorship from venture capitalists and educational programming from HBS faculty.   Learn more and start your application at  https://lnkd.in/eQ5RWwDN  

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What’s my “Why VC”? At Harlem Capital it’s always been to break down barriers and increase access to VC funding for women and people of color. And every day I try to live that mission to the fullest - through our investing, our ecosystem work, and our intern program. We’ve invested in 60 companies and 75 founders across our two funds. Our team dug into the data to measure our impact across our portfolio and the ecosystem. Portfolio Impact - 384 jobs created by HCP’s portfolio companies, 36% identify as people of color (POC) and 35% as women - 114 total management positions created, 44% held by POC and 36% held by women Capital Impact (2022-2023): - 6% of all Black & Latino (B&L) seed capital raised was HCP HCP-led syndicates - 15% of all Black seed deal volume ($) was HCP-led syndicates We’re only 5 years in to a long journey and it’s incredible to celebrate these milestones. I’m so proud of this team, but we know it’s only just the beginning and there’s so much more to come in the future Blog post linked in the comments and huge thanks to Nicole DeTommaso and Sophia Escagedo to create this report!

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In April, OpenAI Controller Sowmya Ranganathan walked me through how her accounting team leverages ChatGPT to revolutionize the close process. I instantly knew we needed to share her story with the broader finance community. Accuracy and process are core to accounting workflow, so it can be intimidating to stray from traditional approaches. In our webinar last week, Sowmya walked through some brilliant demos, illuminating how you can automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks with ease. I’d *highly* recommend watching a replay of our webinar if you weren’t able to join live – it’s linked in the comments. We’ve also distilled her advice into a how-to guide: https://lnkd.in/gbheYKf2 Here are some of the pro tips she shared: ⚫ Seek out ways to automate. When you’re repeating a task that takes more than a few minutes in Excel - or something you hate about the close process, rewire your brain to find a way to automate it. Those minutes quickly add up to streamline your day-to-day workflow. This works with the close process, but also many other projects in finance and beyond. ⚫ Be curious about code. While she’s not a trained programmer, Sowmya uses ChatGPT to create Python scripts to build pivot tables and parse through massive CSVs. Her team can categorize a full month of OpenAI’s Azure usage data 👀 in 10 seconds 👀, whereas before they’d have to manually process the data every few days to avoid hitting Excel’s row limits. ⚫ Train ChatGPT on your company’s specific guidelines. After Sowmya ran a prompt to recognize revenue from a transaction file, she asked ChatGPT to cross-check it against their audit firm’s ASC 606 guidelines, which she uploaded as a PDF. The result was nearly the same, but it added an extra step to protect against hallucinations. And, she always triple-checks the results. ⚫ Don’t fear the error message. Pre-ChatGPT, if she was working on an automation project and received a technical error message, she might have given up. Today, Sowmya dumps the message back into ChatGPT, where it can diagnose and resolve any issues. You can see this problem-solving in action during her demo! A big thank you to Sowmya for sharing this hands-on demo and giving finance leaders the confidence to test it out themselves. Now that you have inspiration, how will you use ChatGPT and AI to revolutionize operations at your company?

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🚀 Demystifying Venture: Pathways to More Money and Power 🚀 Last week, I had the honor to be invited to the Lesbians Who Tech & Allies Summit, gathering 4000 tech, business and media leaders from all over the country. One of the highlights of the conference was a fireside chat about the VC industry featuring Candice Morgan, Partner at GV (Google Ventures) and Jana Rich Founder at Rich Talent Group. They shared some invaluable insights on how to break into venture capital and investing. Here are the highlights: 💡 Diversity in Venture: There are multiple ways to participate—angel investing, working at a VC firm, or making smarter decisions about your equity. The key? Access to information is power. 💸 True Wealth = Equity: The biggest driver of wealth in venture is through equity. Understand the risks, follow the founder’s journey, and get excited about areas you care about. 🔑 Investment Pathways: Platforms like Republic and Portfolia are making crowdfunding accessible to more diverse investors. These are great tools for those new to venture. 🎓 Educational Resources: organizations like All Raise and BLCK VC are excellent resources for anyone wanting to dive deeper into venture and investing. Thanks Gemma Allen and Anni Lundy for the invitation! #entrepreneurship #VC

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Most startups fail because they can't secure funding. As the Managing Partner at VentureCop, I've facilitated introductions and accelerated fundraising for startups and investors. I've consulted at Equivator®, focusing on private equity investments in tech ventures, and contributed to deploying $415mm into 80 tech companies as a Strategic Advisor at Ligo Partners Family Office. I'm getting a lot of DMs from founders seeking guidance on raising funds and building strategic partnerships. So, I've opened up 5 exclusive 1:1 mentorship slots on @Intro. What can we cover together? ✔️ How to raise funds ✔️ Guidance on strategic partnerships ✔️ Tips on mergers and acquisitions ✔️ Best practices for investor relations ✔️ Advice on tech venture investments Honored to be on Intro alongside world-class experts like Linh Peters (former CMO at Walgreens & Calvin Klein), Sardor Umrdinov (founder of Home Alliance, bootstrapped to $100M), and Laura Nguyen (Executive Career Break Coach. Clients: Fortune 500 companies). Comment “interested” and secure your spot now: intro.co/waqaskhann #mentorship #fundraising #investments #venturecapitalists #Familyoffices #hedgefunds #M&A #investorelations #startups #founders #VCs #GPs #seedround #seriesA #earlystage #angelinvesting #meeting

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Making new friends from all over the world, and learning a lot in the process. I offered the outsider’s perspective; From my vantage point as an emerging venture capital fund manager. ====== Thanks to Debra Dandeneau (not pictured) for moderating the conversation, and to Heidi Hunter (L) and Sally Ng (3rd from L) for being such great co-panelists. Thanks to Elissar Farah Antonios, QRD® (in green) for nudging us to take this photo. NAGARAJA KUMAR DEEVI (R) is also an adjunct faculty at NYU. The Age of Strategy Disruption: How Boards Can Navigate Turbulent Times Hosted by Baker & McKenzie 452 5th Avenue, New York 10018 Tuesday, October 15, 2024 We kicked off the 2024 WomenExecs on Boards Annual Symposium with a Risk Summit in collaboration with The DCRO Institute. In today’s world, where fractured geopolitics causes repeated shocks to supply and demand, and the pace of technological innovation and changing customer demands seem to require companies to constantly reinvent themselves, pressures on the board are greater than ever. In particular, the familiar paradigm of the annual strategy cycle is in urgent need of redesign. Join our one-day summit to hear from experts in positive risk governance for corporate boards and learn strategies for success in this new, more demanding environment. #RiskGovernance #VentureCapital #HarnessingUncertainty #CorporateGovernance #WomenExecutivesOnBoards #Risk #Uncertainty #CorporateStrategy #Strategy #TheDCRORiskGovernanceInstitute Cc: David R. Koenig, QRD®

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NFX is amazing. I love this pre-seed and seed funding team because they are the rare VC firm that provides innovative thought leadership in addition to financing. "NfX" stands for network effects, and they are particularly interested in partnering with startups and visionary teams that understand and center network effects in their products and services. The latest thought leadership article by NfX is titled "Why Great Bioplatforms Will Always Win." The key insight is that "a platform built on stellar IP and backed by a sharp business strategy is always “cool” because great platforms should make great assets. Full stop. It’s about balancing platform and asset development strategically. One should fuel the other and vice versa." You can find a link to the article in the comments. * the image below is from the NfX site

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Hey Siri “Why do companies take on venture debt” “Hmm good question. As a complement to equity financing, venture debt provides growth capital to extend the cash runway of a startup company to achieve the next milestone while minimizing equity dilution for both employees and investors.” Surprisingly this answer is spot on. With the equity markets tightening, I have seen a lot of venture debt activity occurring. Venture debt can be your best friend or worst enemy depending on how it’s utilized. In my opinion, if the venture debt provides enough additional runway to hit key milestones that would allow for a much higher valuation / more attractive investment, it can be a great tool. While the interest rate can be in the upper teens, the equity return on a high growth company should exceed this hurdle rate. On the flip side, if venture debt is utilized solely because equity isn’t available, one can risk losing their entire business upon a default. Curious everyone’s thoughts here and what providers are active in the space now. #venturedebt #cpg #nondilutive David Kirshenbaum Stephen Gaither Jon Blair Elliot Begoun Jordan Buckner Ryan RouseMichael Movitz

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🇺🇸 In the midst of the 2024 US election cycle, both major candidates are proposing fiscal policies that could significantly impact the nation’s economic landscape. With promises to either increase spending or implement tax cuts, it’s clear that the fiscal budget is set to expand regardless of the election outcome. This raises important questions about the long-term sustainability of such policies and their effects on financial markets. 📉 The CBO projects that the US deficit could reach $1.9 trillion in 2024, up from $1.4 trillion in 2023. And if current policies hold, deficits could exceed $2.5 trillion annually by 2030, driving debt levels to 120% of GDP—the highest since WWII. Both candidates are focusing on stimulating the economy, yet neither has addressed the growing national debt in a substantial way. As we look ahead, it’s crucial for leaders to balance short-term economic gains with long-term fiscal responsibility. The financial markets will undoubtedly react to these fiscal strategies, and it’s essential for investors to stay informed and prepared for potential shifts. 📊 #US2024 #BudgetDeficit #FiscalPolicy #Elections #Investing #FinancialMarkets #Economy

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Have a story to tell... Use Narratize AI Co-Authoring platform to tell your stories in an impactful manner. Katie Trauth Taylor, PhD and the entire team is committed to helping you in becoming amazing storytellers. Check out their impressive work at https://lnkd.in/gnNYHSSX Start telling your stories with Narratize AI as your co-author. #generativeai #storytelling #innovation #aicoauthoring #innovators #researchers #impactstories #startups #problemsolvers #AI #AIStartup

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