Forge’s Post

Is your organization one of the next "Data Movers" or "Data Drivers"? Real-Time Data Streaming, or Data in Motion is and will be a critical architecture to drive business value at the speed of your business. At Confluent, our founder not only co-invented Kafka, we continue to drive innovation and partner with large enterprises and the start-ups that will be the next large enterprises. Reach out to see how we Confluent can help drive business value in your organization. #datainmotion #confluent #datastreamingorganization #datastreamingplatform #confluentexcutiveadvisors

The first half of 2024 is in the books, check out our latest edition of ESO's Monthly Start-Up for our review! #employeestockoptions #startups #venturecapital

Investor Reverse Pitch | Sasha Pilch from Fin Capital at Google for Startups & Google Cloud NYC #NYCtechWeek Powerful VC presenting their investment thesis to Founders pre-selected by Google to start the Tech Week 🚀 #Startups #VentureCapital #Google

Sometimes acquihires is the best way to recruit top talent in a short time. Google alone has bought over 35 AI startups since 2009, Snowflake acquihired Polidea (acquired by Snowflake Inc.) in Poland in 2021; there are plenty of other examples. That's probably the best way to create teams in a bigger company in a particular vertical, with a particular experience/track record in a short time and time is the most valuable asset, so probably, in most of the cases, it's also the most efficient way. Andreessen Horowitz released comprehensive article about key things in acquihire 2 years ago, so it's pretty fresh: https://lnkd.in/d5H6q6ii #acquihire #mergersandacquisitions #startups #hiring

"Venture-backed companies are in the midst of a significant valuation reset that began in 2022 and deepened in 2023. The entire ecosystem — from seed to late-stage venture —has been impacted, leading to flat rounds, down rounds, delayed rounds, layoffs and closures." Gené Teare, Senior Data Editor at Crunchbase, looks back at some of 2023's high-profile companies that raised at significant markups, as well as those that saw their valuations slashed, in "These Startups Saw Their Valuations Hiked — And Spiked — In 2023": ➡️ https://lnkd.in/enkFNdyz #Fundraising #Startups #VC

As the current state of the economy leads early-stage investors to look for startups that can turn a profit at an earlier stage, deep tech startups face a challenge. Raising funding for long-term, high-risk, and high-reward bets from potentially world-changing technology has become even more difficult than it was. And yet deep tech can be critical to pushing humanity forward at a time when we really need it, creating some hugely valuable companies along the way. Just look at the interest in Arm’s IPO for proof of that. There are some who seize this opportunity, though. New early-stage deep tech funds have emerged from a number of VC firms recently. Cambridge Future Tech is another interesting development in the space. We spoke to two of the company's three co-founders, Owen Thompson and Xavier Parkhouse-Parker to find out more about CFT's plans as it begins to scale up and build more deep tech startups across the UK and beyond.

👀 Who's going to be at Startup Grind Global next week 👋 I'm attending Startup Grind Global Conference 2024 in Silicon Valley, with Startup Grind Chapter Leaders, investors, and over 100 startups pitching and demonstrating! I will be in town from April 22 to 25 and would love to meet up if you are a startup founder with questions about building on AWS, using Generative AI, or setting up GTM strategy 🚀 And if you have questions about community building, I might have a few copies of Community-in-a-Box to share 📕 Send me a message here and let's find a time to chat. See you then! #startups #StartGrind #GenerativeAI #cloudcomputing #AWS

The Google Mafia Map 👉 1,231 companies have been founded by ex-Google employees since 2018 - These companies have raised a combined $22B in total disclosed equity funding - More than 800 of them have received venture capital backing, recording an average total funding of $26M and a median total funding of $5M. 👉21 Google mafia-founded startups have reached unicorn status in the last 5 years Startups that have joined the $1B valuation club including Adept and Inflection AI. 👉 58 startups founded by former Google employees have exited since 2018 👉Andreessen Horowitz is the Google mafia’s most active VC investor The VC has invested in 46 Google alum-founded companies since 2018, including Character.AI and Mem Alumni Ventures and Soma Capital follow close behind, as they have invested in 36 and 35 Google mafia-founded companies, respectively.  CB Insights #googlemafia #openinnovation

[ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE STARTUP INVESTMENTS] Foundry.ai, a startup that plans to rent servers to companies to run artificial intelligence software, is in talks to raise money at a valuation of $350 million—after being valued at around $50 million in its seed round late last year. The sevenfold increase in Foundry’s valuation in roughly nine months signals how a risky pandemic-era fundraising trend has returned: Hot companies are raising money at rapidly escalating valuations in capital-raising rounds spaced just months apart - with Crystian M.: https://lnkd.in/dFjzWXX3