Sandeep Bhatia

David Yi (Ethos VC) a.k.a "The VC who hates most VCs" on his Personal Journey and Perspective on Growth:  "As an eight-time founder with two exits, I've seen the landscape from multiple angles. It's not about being a hero but about building a team, learning, and evolving. Whether it's in education or tech, the journey is about adapting and finding your path, not just in Korea but globally." https://lnkd.in/gVduV3MQ #startupswithseoul Chang (CK) Kim

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We are thrilled to share that Australian Gulf Capital has invested in Groq, an AI inference chip company that is poised to transform the AI landscape. Alongside co-investors BlackRock and strategics like Cisco and Samsung Next we are proud to support Groq’s mission to revolutionize AI hardware. Groq has raised an impressive $640 million to address the growing demand for fast AI inference. As the need for real-time, efficient AI solutions continues to soar, Groq's powerful LPU chip and innovative inference engine stood out for us as game-changers. What truly excited us about investing in Groq was the incredible leadership of Jonathan Ross, Sunny Madra and Adam Tachner, and the immense demand they have managed from developers in such a short period of time. Particularly happy with the recent appointments of Stuart Pann, former head of Intel’s foundry business and ex-CIO at HP, as Chief Operating Officer, and Yann LeCun, Meta's Chief AI Scientist, as a technical advisor. Their expertise will undoubtedly strengthen the team further. We look forward to supporting Groq as they continue to innovate and lead the way in AI inference technology. Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting journey! Bhaskar Dasgupta Kal Desai Marc Aouad Warwick Grigor Adam Malouf FAICD, F.GCCBDI #VentureCapital #Investment #AI #TechInnovation #Groq #AGC #AIRevolution

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Congratulations to Surojit Chatterjee, Souvik Sen and Ema Unlimited team on a successful fundraising! SCB 10X is thrilled to announce our investment in Ema as part of the $36M Series A extension funding round, which brings their total raise since inception to $61M. This round, led by Accel and S32, included participation from other notable investors such as Prosus Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Sozo Ventures, Wipro Ventures, COLLE CAPITAL and Frontier Ventures B.V. Ema's innovative approach to enterprise workflow automation through Generative AI strongly aligns with our investment thesis in the Deep Tech space. Their platform, which combines a proprietary Generative Workflow Engine™, Knowledge Graph, and EmaFusion™ Model, addresses critical challenges in enterprise AI adoption while ensuring the highest levels of security and compliance. Founded in 2023, EMA has shown impressive rapid tractions within their first year. Their ability to create customizable "AI employees" or "Personas" for specific business functions promises to revolutionize enterprise productivity across multiple industries. The founding team's exceptional track record in scaling products and technologies at companies like Google, Flipkart, Coinbase and Okta, gives us confidence in Ema's ability to capitalize on the fast-growing autonomous AI and agents market, projected to reach $41 billion by 2029. As SCBX Group aims to increase our AI-enabled revenue to 75% by 2028, we believe this partnership will provide valuable insights into deploying efficient, reliable, and compliant AI solutions. We're excited to support Ema's vision of transforming the future of work with Universal AI Employees and look forward to the innovations that lie ahead. Press release of Ema’s fundraising: https://lnkd.in/gpe-FV26 #artificialintelligence #generativeai #ai #startups #venturecapital

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BSV Ventures is the newest addition to the NIF Fund of Funds portfolio! 🎉 Coming back from their LP day in Vilnius, we’re ready to find unicorns together 🦄 The true alpha of a fund is often felt before it is seen. Intangible at first — it is a capability that often precedes visible results. Having gone through several months of DD with BSV, I can confidently say BSV embodies their alpha through their unique insights, and complementary dynamics of the GPs. This is combined with an unwavering commitment and track record in transforming the Baltics into a leading hub for deep tech and dual-use innovation, critical to European sovereignty.

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Worth reading: Situationsl Awareness by Leopold Aschenbrenner PDF : https://lnkd.in/gkxQ3yMD Web site: https://lnkd.in/gyJUCBhb Interesting perspective, time of course will tell.

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SoftBank Sells Off Vision Fund Assets as Son Pivots to AI, Chips Masayoshi Son turns away from aggressive style of venture capital investing, leaving the fund’s reduced staff to focus on exits SoftBank Group Corp.’s flagship Vision Fund has quietly sold off or written down billions of dollars’ worth of its publicly-listed holdings in recent years, a sign of founder Masayoshi Son’s shift away from the venture capital deals that were once an obsession and toward strategic investments in semiconductors and artificial intelligence. Since the end of 2021, the world’s biggest startup fund has seen its US-listed portfolio shrink by almost $29 billion, as it sold down stakes in companies such as Coupang Inc., DoorDash Inc. and Grab Holdings Ltd. and share prices fell, regulatory filings show. That figure doesn’t include the sale of the Vision Fund’s stake in chip designer Arm Holdings Plc back to SoftBank last year. https://lnkd.in/dJX_aA4X By Min-Jeong Lee

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As the Shasta Ventures approval deadline approaches, we're presented with a unique opportunity to observe the complexities and inherent conflicts in GP-led secondary transactions. This scenario sheds light on the considerable leverage GPs hold within the private equity infrastructure. According to the article, proposed continuation fund requires LPs to approve the transaction if they wish to roll their interests into the new structure—a stipulation that could be seen as putting undue pressure on LPs. This raises critical questions about the balance of power in private equity deals and the alignment of interests between GPs and LPs. What are your thoughts? Is it appropriate for GPs to demand such conditions for LPs to participate in a continuation fund? How do you see this impacting the broader private equity landscape and the perception of GP-led secondary transactions? Looking forward to hearing your insights and perspectives on this pivotal issue. #PrivateEquity #VentureCapital #InvestmentTrends #ShastaVentures #GPledSecondaries

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Last Call! Financing the Venture Series – over Zoom, with class-room option for last module - Starting this Thursday, October 3rd at 1pm PST Getting founders and their startups ready to attract capital and deal with all the complications of various finance forms, due diligence and ensuring enough capital is available for their venture.   All modules will be online (Zoom), option to attend Module 6 in-person class format in Victoria and Vancouver, all classes are from 1-3pm.   ✔ Oct. 3 - Intro to Financing ✔ Oct. 17 - Engaging Investors from Intro to DD  ✔ Nov. 7 - Term Sheets and Deal Structure  ✔ Dec. 12 - Valuation ✔Jan. 17 - Journey to Success ✔ Feb. 6 Victoria, Feb. 7 Vancouver - Deep Dive Cap Table, executive summary and pitch deck Info and registration here: https://lnkd.in/gvhFFCg5 New ventures and startups require capital to grow and scale up. Founders not only struggle to find the capital they require; they might lack the background to successfully engage and negotiate with investors.   The program helps you to be ready for pitching and engaging with the right investors, engaging in due diligence and using data rooms, discussing sources and funding and term sheets, understanding and negotiating valuation and managing post-investment relationships. Pieter Dorsman VIATEC New Ventures BC

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From Crypto Ice Age to AI Inferno- Gartner Curves or Extreme Weather Conditions Precipitated by VC? A few thoughts I've been reflecting on recently on learnings from being through many crypto cycles I can apply to this moment in AI investing... https://lnkd.in/d6KSM3EN

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Long term greedy wins over short term greedy: China uses long term greedy by funding multiple startups in a given sector with lots of debt financing cash until winners emerge and then gives unlimited debt financing to winners at no cost; Rest of World/West uses short term greedy by funding multiple startups in a given sectors with equity financing cash to force to positive cash flow asap and then exit (by IPO or sale) with winners getting access to some debt financing but at higher cost than China. China has superior strategy as judged by metrics of capitalism. Hard to see how to beat this.

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DePIN & RWAs dominance isn't as far off as most people think. Across every innovative cycle, three fundamental pillars emerge: foundational technology development, proliferation of infrastructure, and a surge in application development. As we venture into the third cycle, DePIN and RWA protocols are poised to become market leaders paralleling the dominance witnessed by infrastructure projects from 2015 to 2024.

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Launched as part of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Project Guardian, new pilot demonstrates how financial institutions can leverage existing Swift infrastructure to facilitate off-chain cash settlements for tokenized funds. Swift UBS Chainlink https://lnkd.in/g3N3znZV #ProjectGuardian #Tokenization #Blockchain #digitalassets

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In our latest episode of Humans in AI, we're joined by three incredible individuals who bring unique perspectives to the world of AI Teammates: Arjun Pillai: Co-founder and CEO of DocketAI MR Rangaswami: Founder of Indiaspora Rehan Jalil: Founder and CEO of Securiti.ai We explore what AI Teammates are, how they benefit humans, and advice for founders building them. Don't miss this insightful discussion! #HumansInAI #AI #AITeammates #FounderAdvice #Innovation

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We at NGP Capital are delighted to partner with Sapphire Ventures on the $120M Series C investment in TRACTIAN! Tractian is bringing the power of AI to improve uptime and productivity in factories worldwide!

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Congratulations to our True Global Ventures portfolio company Animoca Brands and team (Kenneth Shek Yat Siu Evan Auyang Jared Shaw Minh Do Alan Lau) with their US$23.9 million committed at 12x oversubscription on the MOCA Token Launch! 🌟 The total pre-deposited funds of US$29.3m was conducted on MocaList, a new co-branded token launchpad jointly launched by Mocaverse and CoinList. Access to the offering was gated by Moca ID, the MOCA Token Launch was the top-funded sale on CoinList so far in 2024, with participation by nearly 17,000 unique KYC-ed users from 123 different countries and record participation from the Mocaverse community. The MOCA Foundation serves as the platform to build the largest interoperable cultural economy in the Web3 space powered by the MOCA Token, and support the growth of Moca DAO, where members will take the lead in co-creating Migration Infrastructure Providers (MIPs) and engaging in cross-DAO empowerment through unique delegation models. I see KYC-Identity interoperability across Web3 applications accelerating ease of mass market adoption such that when you onboard onto one MOCA Ecosystem Web3 application you easily onboard onto all at the same time! https://lnkd.in/d6XTA-5D

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Insightful breakdown from my great Partner Omri Amirav-Drory on the simple factors that really separate the top 1% of investors from the rest, and how more operators should become investors! https://lnkd.in/gEiZdT2h

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The Council's first SPV of 2024 is down in the books and oversubscribed. Running SPVs where we have pro rata or extra allocation in fund deals is a muscle we are building pretty late in the game as a firm. As a solo GP with a tiny team, it's crippling to think of the extra work required and risk of not meeting platform minimums to run an SPV. But 7 of our port co's have recently raised follow on funding where we had pro rata. These are awesome deals for our LPs, angel members, and syndicate community. We simply can't afford to let them slip through the cracks. These allocations are only becoming more valuable as our firm grows, so we must start NOW! Proud to say this one went off without a hitch and our syndicate community is small but THRIVING. Wish us luck as we keep building. Note our SPVs are now on Sydecar. The best way to get access is to know someone on The Council Fund team and be on our SPV email list. **What's an SPV?** An SPV is a Special Purpose Vehicle. It allows multiple angel investors to pool together into one larger investment into a company. This helps the founder keep paperwork and investor relations to a minimum (less names on the cap table = simplicity!). When people say they're investing with a "syndicate" or they are "syndicating a deal," SPV is the entity and process by which they do that. A "syndicate" is like a community of people that invest via SPVs together.

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What should investors expect from the VC industry over the next 3-5 years when it comes to exits and performance? Rick Zullo, on X, has argued that there will be a greater divergence between VC funds, with the most successful ones producing even stronger performance, while the median fund return will reduce. I would agree with this as we are likely to see fewer, but typically larger, exits. It will become more important than ever to have meaningful exposure to the small number of winners that drive VC performance. We saw this divergence in VC fund performance very clearly after the 2008/09 financial crisis. As you can see from the chart below, it was the top-tier, established managers who make up our Core Manager cohort that massively outperformed as the market recovered. We have identified three key factors that we believe materially contributed to this outperformance: 1. Quality of portfolio companies. We know that VC is a power law asset class, but the distribution of returns is even more concentrated after a correction. The number of successful exits falls significantly and the small number of VCs able to back these companies will materially outperform. We usually see the best companies actually improve their competitive positioning during a correction. They become more capital efficient, increase market share and benefit from many of their competitors being unable to survive. 2. Availability of capital. In a downturn, even the very best companies will usually need to raise additional capital. As a VC, if you don't have the capital to support these companies and protect your ownership, then you are in trouble. The best VCs can still raise new funds even in the worst of markets and will have the capital to ensure their best companies survive. 3. Willingness to continue to invest during the most challenging periods. The best managers have the experience of managing through prior downturns as well as the confidence (and the capital) to take advantage of the opportunities that a correction creates. This means that they can double down on their best companies, often at attractive valuations, and also access market leaders they may have missed in prior rounds. We have seen a major flight to quality from LPs to date in 2024, with a small number of VCs responsible for the vast majority of capital raised. Unfortunately, this is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Venture capital is a cyclical asset class - corrections are a feature, not a bug. This means that LPs need to construct a portfolio that not only captures the upside as the market rises, but is also resilient during a downturn.

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