Angus Davis

Today we officially kick off our $2M pre seed round for Salubrum (Backed by Forum Ventures), supported by Forum Ventures, Coeus Collective Ventures, and Draper House Americas. Healthcare companies spend over $30B a year trying to acquire patients. The problem is not media. The problem is timing. Every time a patient approaches a healthcare decision a moment opens. Which doctor to see. Which procedure to pursue. Which treatment to start. For the companies involved in that decision, knowing that moment exists is incredibly valuable. Salubrum (Backed by Forum Ventures) is building the intelligence layer that maps those decision moments across the U.S. patient population. Our system aggregates large healthcare datasets covering 300M+ patient identities and uses them to predict when individuals are approaching important healthcare decisions. That signal can then be used by providers, pharma companies, payers, and other healthcare organizations trying to reach patients at the right time. Our first wedge is patient acquisition for healthcare providers and brands, but the underlying intelligence layer has much broader applications wherever patient behavior influences economic decisions. Over the past months we have quietly built the foundation. • Early pilots validating our patient intent scoring system • Distribution partnerships forming across healthcare platforms • Backed by Forum Ventures, Coeus Collective Ventures, Draper House Americas, NEXT Canada and Metta World Peace Starting tomorrow we will be meeting investors as part of the Forum Ventures showcase. If you are an investor interested in building with us get in touch. Calendly: https://lnkd.in/e5j-VvGC Investor Memo: https://lnkd.in/e5HyemAp

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“A great co-founder relationship is like steering a ship together—you both have your hands on the wheel, and if you’re not aligned, you’ll drift off course. Authenticity, transparency, and trust aren’t optional—they’re everything.” –Tanis Jorge A huge thank you to Tanis Jorge for joining our recent Founders Network global keynote! As a serial entrepreneur and expert on co-founder dynamics, Tanis shared heartfelt insights on what makes—or breaks—the most important relationship in a startup. She reminded us that beyond metrics and milestones, true success often comes down to the human connection between founders. When nurtured with honesty and empathy, that partnership can become one of the most meaningful relationships you’ll ever have—regardless of the company’s outcome. Tanis, thank you for your wisdom, optimism, and for reminding our community that great partnerships build not just strong companies, but lifelong bonds. #FoundersNetwork #CoFounders #StartupJourney #FounderWisdom #Leadership #Entrepreneurship #StartupLessons #TanisJorge #BuildingTogether #GlobalKeynote

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This week Tulip Interfaces became Acequia Capital's 23rd unicorn company. When we made the first investment into Tulip in 2015, it was clear to Hank and I that we were early. It was going to take some time, but that massive legacy industries had no idea the amount of innovation and value was out there, waiting to be won by companies that could master software and machine intelligence. These observations and others led us to develop two investment theses we’ve been executing on since; what we termed “New Industrials.” Fast forward 10 years and the idea that a broader industrial reinvention is underway is now almost a given across the capital markets and leading companies. A movement has sprung up around us. It’s much more in vogue to back physical technology startups now, but most investors misunderstand what great ones look like, and how numerous the barriers to adoption are. We’re fortunate to benefit from a decade of lessons and insights from watching up close as incredible founding teams have built immensely valuable organizations, these include Stoke Space, Radiant, Formlabs, Atomic Industries, Applied Atomics, Harbinger, Dirac, Inc., Rainmaker Technology Corporation, AnySignal, EthonAI, Flow Engineering, Milvus Advanced, Rivelin Robotics, Adaptyv, KMB Telematics Inc., Tactian, Nimble Precision, sensmore, Hyperdrives, Ethos Space Resources, Antaris, TransAstra, Rightbot Technologies, Provectus Algae, Arctoris, Flexe, Coronal Technologies, Exapto, Visolis, Vorticity Inc., XENOPS AI, and many others. My takeaway from 10 years of investing in industrial reinvention is that we are still at the beginning. We have a long way to go and the next 10 years will move a lot faster than the last. Thanks to our founders for the continued trust and partnership.

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Charles Hudson from Precursor Ventures spent 10 minutes on their podcast debating whether LatAm's $300K ARR bar is helping or hurting founders. His concern: forcing founders to bootstrap to $300K creates "second-tier markets" that produce uninvestable companies optimized for survival instead of hypergrowth. My take in the original post: $300K ARR is the new reality for 90% of LatAm founders who want institutional pre-seed capital. Here's what we're both missing: we're describing symptoms of the same problem. The real issue isn't whether founders should bootstrap or raise early. It's that LatAm has a capital distribution problem disguised as a founder readiness problem. The difference? Geography matters more than most people realize. In the US, abundant pre-seed capital means founders can raise on team + early progress, then use that capital to hit seed metrics. The ecosystem supports pre-traction fundraising. In LatAm, the number of institutional pre-seed funds dropped dramatically post-2022. The ones that remain can set any bar they want because founders have no alternatives. Capital scarcity creates higher bars, not founder inability. So founders face a false choice: → Wait for capital that won't come (burn 12-18 months pitching) → Build proof that unlocks capital (hit $300K ARR bootstrapped) Charles is right that bootstrapping to arbitrary milestones can kill ambition. But he's solving for a market with abundant capital. I'm describing a market where capital scarcity forces founders to prove execution before anyone writes a check. That's not a founder problem. That's a geography problem. The vicious cycle isn't founders becoming uninvestable by bootstrapping. It's founders burning their networks and momentum fundraising pre-traction in a market that won't fund them. More early-stage capital deployed in LatAm. Not funds that bring US thesis and expect US-style traction. Funds that understand regional dynamics while maintaining venture-scale ambition. Until that changes, my advice to the 90% stands: stop fundraising pre-traction. Build to $300K ARR. Prove you can execute. Then investors will compete for you. Because the fastest way to raise capital in a capital-scarce market is to not need it. Shoutout to Charles Hudson and Mia Farnham at Precursor Ventures for the thoughtful analysis. The US-LatAm VC conversation needs more of this. If you're a LatAm founder navigating this reality, I'd love to hear your experience. Drop a comment. And if you're a US investor curious about LatAm dynamics, let's talk. The opportunity is massive, but the playbook is different.

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2026 federal funding update for ecosystem builders A week ago I wrote about where federal innovation funding stands for 2026. Here's what's changed in 7 days: What's now signed into law: The Commerce, Justice, and Science bill passed the Senate 82-15 on January 15 and is headed to the president's desk. This locks in: NSF → $8.75 billion (with protection against disproportionate cuts to any directorate) → Regional Innovation Engines: Up to $200 million EDA → Tech Hubs: $41 million → Build to Scale: $50 million → MEP: $175 million What passed the House, awaiting Senate action: The Financial Services bill passed 341-79 on January 14, confirming: SBA → Entrepreneurial development: $330 million (Congress rejected the proposed cut to $150M) → Regional Innovation Clusters: $9M → Federal and State Technology Partnership (FAST): $9M → Growth Accelerator Fund Competition: $9M What's still in flux: Leaders just released a final bipartisan package for Defense, Homeland Security, Labor-HHS-Education, and Transportation-HUD. The House may vote this week, with the January 30, 2026 deadline approaching. SBIR/STTR authorization remains expired. No new solicitations until reauthorization—though there's been some movement here. There's also a bunch of new AI policy I need to dig into still. The bottom line hasn't changed: You cannot build a 10-year innovation ecosystem on annual appropriations battles. The regions that succeed are strengthening their partnership infrastructure now, and leveraging federal funding as a bonus to accelerate outcomes. See the full analysis: https://lnkd.in/euDxDVkZ

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Colleagues at funds, accelerators, and venture studios… We are announcing a new startup benefits program that provides $2,500+ in development credits and $10,000+ in infrastructure credits to qualified participants with less than $1M in funding raised. There’s a pattern that’s emerged after speaking with dozens of VCs, Accelerators and Venture Studios over the past month. JumpStart Inc. Embarc Collective Las Olas Venture Capital The conversation goes something like this: "Our founders are shipping MVPs faster than ever with Cursor and v0, but when it's time to scale to production, the technical debt is overwhelming." Here's what I'm hearing: - MVPs built with AI coding tools look great in validation stage but have serious architectural gaps - Seasoned CTOs (as always) are hard to find and often out of budget - Our teams have strong engineers, but haven’t been in the hot seat running the show This is exactly why we launched K2 Venture Partners Partner Program, to help bridge this gap. K2 is not just another dev shop. As exit-proven founders, we provide the technical co-founder expertise your startups actually need. We've been in their shoes. Here’s where we focus: ✅ End-to-End Product Delivery - From MVP transformation to full production systems, we handle the technical execution while coaching your team ✅ Technical Leadership & Execution - We embed as your technical leadership team, sharing ownership of product delivery while building sustainable engineering practices ✅ AI-Development Best Practices - Leverage our proven development processes and AI orchestration to ship production-ready features at startup speed If this resonates with your portfolio's challenges, let's connect. Link to learn more about the program in comments👇

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Today, Gloo launched Gloo AI Studio, a production-grade development platform designed specifically for developers serving churches, ministries, nonprofits and mission-driven enterprises. Gloo AI Studio enables teams to move fast without cutting corners, because values-alignment cannot be bolted on after deployment. It must be embedded at the model and infrastructure layer. AI infrastructure decisions made today will shape how intelligence is distributed and trusted for decades. https://lnkd.in/gSNDHKDf

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🎤 On this week's Sound Investments, we welcome the fabulous Pablo Casilimas of OneSixOne Ventures Pablo is leaning into a community-first approach to building a new VC fund, focusing on the untapped potential of regions like Seattle and Miami. Whether you're a seasoned investor or an aspiring founder, this is a fun one. 🔊 Catch a short highlight reel below and listen to the full pod on all platforms. https://pod.fo/e/2ea491 #VentureCapital #VC #Startups #Podcast

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The great Emilio Franco wrote about how we used Preact to build the Layers SDK and support every major downstream framework. https://lnkd.in/eWgVTw7Z

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Tether just planted a huge flag outside crypto, and it matters. I’m Ian Balina, and I see a quiet power play here. Tether now owns 70% of Adecoagro, a $1B farming beast in Latin America. Sugar mills, rice fields, dairy herds, and bio-energy plants now sit under a stablecoin empire. Last fall Tether paid $100M for under 10% and kept buying until they called the shots. Five board members stepped off, and Tether allies stepped in. Control means they can steer production, data, and cash flow on their own terms. Why should a stablecoin issuer scoop up cows and cane? Real-world assets are the next frontier for tokenization. Tether’s new Hadron platform lets anyone mint tokens backed by almost anything. Owning the source lets them skip middlemen and digitize crops at the farm gate. Imagine USDT redeemed not only for dollars but also for tokenized sugar or ethanol. That gives Tether fresh collateral beyond U.S. Treasuries and helps dodge political choke points. It also plants crypto rails deep into regions hungry for cheaper, faster finance. Adecoagro already sells food and fuel across Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Tokenizing that flow could unlock 24/7 markets and instant settlement for every harvest. The move also hints at a broader playbook: buy undervalued, essential infrastructure, then digitize it. Mining, AI, secure comms, and now agriculture all feed the same loop. Tether is quietly building a vertically integrated, blockchain-native economy. Most people still see a stablecoin. I see a shadow central bank with hard assets and global reach. Stay tuned, big moves are coming soon. Follow me for clear, hype-free insight on the next chess moves in crypto.

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Most investors don't know how to underwrite the first 20% of risk in a physical infrastructure project. Not because it's unknowable, but because the frameworks were built for SaaS multiples and software margins. When the asset is a network of intelligent nodes deployed across a metropolitan region, the spreadsheet looks different. Tomorrow I'm joining Surge, a Public Benefit Corporation CEO Miguel Jaramillo for their Town Hall to work through exactly this. We'll get into what it actually takes to evaluate intelligent infrastructure as an investable asset class, including deployment economics, capital structure, and how to think about returns when the value compounds in the physical world. If you've been watching the AI infrastructure buildout from the sidelines, this is the session to come get oriented. 📅 Wednesday, March 4 · 4PM CST 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gwCzVbp6 #Surge #AIInfrastructure #AlternativeAssets #EdgeComputing

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There’s a growing narrative that AI creates mostly downside for vertical software companies. We think that view is too simplistic. At Las Casas, we believe that if you buy the right kind of software business, AI can be more of an accelerant than a disruptor. We're not looking at software companies where customers can easily rip out the product, build an in-house substitute, or switch to a cheaper AI-native competitor overnight. We're focused on businesses with a few specific characteristics that, in our view, materially reduce downside: - 90%+ gross retention over a long period of time. Customers have stayed for years, often even when the product wasn’t best-in-class. That usually tells you the software is deeply embedded in the workflow. - Low customer concentration. We want to avoid situations where a handful of customers can meaningfully impair the business if they churn. - Low ACVs. If the software is relatively inexpensive, it is far less likely that customers will invest the time and resources to rebuild it internally. It also makes it harder for a new entrant to undercut on price. - Mission-critical workflows. If the product sits at the center of day-to-day operations, switching risk is much higher. Failed implementations or downtime can create real disruption for the customer. This matters because the market is increasingly pricing many software businesses as though AI only creates risk: risk to retention, risk to pricing, risk to relevance. But in the right assets, AI can create the opposite. If you own a trusted, deeply embedded product with long-standing customer relationships, you have a real opportunity to build and ship high-ROI AI functionality faster and more cheaply than ever before, and sell it into an installed base that already knows you. That can do two important things: - Increase ACVs and improve growth - Make the product even more sticky over time This is also where we think our strategy differs from more traditional software investing playbooks. We are not buying software companies with a heavy dose of leverage, cutting R&D, and trying to optimize short-term EBITDA. In this new AI era, that is a dangerous approach. If you underinvest in product, you risk getting run over by innovative competitors. Instead, we believe the better path is to use limited leverage, keep investing in innovation, and use AI to improve the product enough that revenue growth inflects meaningfully. In our view, many of the future winners in software will be the companies that already sit in the workflow and use AI to become even more valuable for their customers.

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Red Glass Ventures spoke with founders and CEOs in the Denver area, hosted by Amol Deshpande (founder/CEO of Frontera, ex founder Farmers Business Network, ex partner at Kleiner Perkins). Bar to raise investment dollars keeps getting higher BECAUSE founders keep building incredible companies. But this is also such an incredible time to be building a company to solve important problems in the world.

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We’re thrilled to share that Usul (YC S24) has raised $3.3M in Seed funding led by Scout Ventures with participation from BVVC, Teamworthy Ventures, True Ventures, Y Combinator and more. Usul is the modern platform for defense contract capture and federal growth. Our customers have won hundreds of millions in defense contracts for capabilities across Air, Land, Maritime, AI/ML and more. When Oliver Gomez, Joonghyun Lee and I joined forces during Stanford’s Hacking 4 Defense class, we interviewed 300+ defense companies to intimately understand how difficult it is for national security solutions to get deployed quickly at scale. In normal capital markets this is called dead weight loss. In warfighting, this costs lives. We're building an elite team of hackers and defense enthusiasts in San Francisco. If you’re interested in powering the next 1000 defense primes, email us at founders@usul.com or dm me. Read more about our journey in Erin O'Brien's Tectonic article below in the comments. Lastly, thank you to our amazing cap table for joining the ship. Bradley C. Harrison, Cody H., Nate George, Zach Beecher, Michael Keane, Joe Musselman, Gene Ebersole, Nick Nowlin, Thomas Lehrman, Stephen Schmalhofer, Michael Montano, Gustaf Alströmer 🇺🇦, Jared Friedman, Steve Blank, Jacqueline Tame, Jack Shanahan, Peter Newell, Steve Weinstein, Jeff Decker, Ivan Kirigin, Jeff Heitzman, Keith W. Gibson, CFCM, SCPM, John Tincoff, Michael Malis, Austen Allred, Tom Hsieh, Donald Donckers

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At Vibe Capital, we believe the venture landscape is bifurcating. The reason is simple: reality is full of drunk cats. "Drunk Cats" are the emergent, second-order effects that arise from simple rules. They can tank a product, entire system, or an entire country. The ability to see -and master - these drunk cats reveals the true split in startups today. It is no longer between software and hardware, but between "impressionistic" founders who map the world as it is, and "mechanistic" founders who can reverse-engineer reality from first principles. My latest Dave's Quick Hits newsletter provides the playbook for identifying and funding these mechanistic architects. It is about a fundamental shift from describing effects to mastering cause. I break down the three core stages of the Mechanistic Playbook: 1. See the System: Identifying the hidden rules and emergent flaws in any complex system, from software to biology. 2. Debug the System: Using technology to patch the legacy "bugs" of a previous industrial paradigm. 3. Architect a New System: Building with true primitives, like DNA, to program matter itself. The next trillion-dollar companies won't be built by operators chasing surface-level trends. They'll be built by system-thinkers who can see, debug, and architect reality’s source code. You can read the full analysis and the investment theses here: https://lnkd.in/dkhkBUwh #VentureCapital #DeepTech #FrontierTech #Investing #Strategy #Biotechnology #Nanotechnology #vibecap #vibecapital #drunkcats

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Check out the latest funding news from across the Techstars portfolio. → Zipline (Techstars 2011), a drone delivery and logistics startup, raises more than $600M in new funding, boosting its valuation to $7.6B, as it expands commercial deployments. → Language learning startup Preply (Techstars 2015) raises $150M and becomes the 23rd known unicorn from Techstars accelerators. → Hydrosat (Techstars 2019) raises $60M in Series B funding → Tive (Techstars 2017) receives a $20M investment, valuing the shipment-tracking systems developer at slightly more than $500M. → Parambil (Techstars 2023) raises an additional $6M in seed funding ($8M to date). → Seasats (Techstars 2021) receives $24M in Department of War APFIT funding to accelerate the fielding of its autonomous surface vessels. → Hawaiian Airlines’ newly announced $600M Kahuʻewai Hawai‘i Investment Plan features a strategic investment in Ampaire (Techstars 2018) to support hybrid-electric aviation in the islands. → Fintalo (Techstars 2025) secures $500K+ in oversubscribed Pre-Seed funding. → PraxisPro (Techstars 2024) closes an oversubscribed $6M seed round. → Samara Aerospace (Techstars 2024) closes $10M seed round to help bring more stability to sats in orbit. → MyARC (Techstars 2022), a platform that enables fitness creators to train their communities at scale, secures £1.5M investment. Massive congratulations to these incredible portfolio companies!   🔗  Read more at https://lnkd.in/dxtCTvrg 

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Many business founders overestimate their early-stage value—and it's costing them technical partners. In his latest piece, Verdi Kapuku highlights a harsh truth: an idea alone isn't enough. Execution matters most, and non-technical founders must prove their worth by building customer traction and networks early. Generating a waitlist, securing LOIs, and fostering a warm network are the real differentiators. If you want to be seen as an asset (and not just another dreamer), this is your playbook. What’s your approach to proving traction before building? https://lnkd.in/gaxjEb2e #Startups #FounderAdvice #ExecutionMatters

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Super excited to support Cameron Witkowski and Aman B. as Bread Technologies, Inc. emerges from stealth with the announcement of their $5m seed round led by Menlo Ventures. Today We Rise!🍞 Cameron and Aman both studied Machine Learning at University of Toronto and co-authored their research paper (https://lnkd.in/gBS8PTZJ) on the concept of 'prompt baking' that formed the foundation to launch Bread. Prompt baking allows a user greater control over their AI by allowing people to 'baking' a prompt into an LLM's weights thereby embedding the prompt's behaviour permanently into the model. You can check out their latest blog post here that goes deeper (https://lnkd.in/g7vpX-hz) Northside Ventures

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"I'm glad to walk away with a list of clear assumptions. Now I know what to validate and what to falsify." A founder said this at the end of our workshop last Saturday. I spent the day with the 10 startups of SCION Accelerator Cohort #2. Nature tech founders working on everything from robotic reforestation to AI-powered irrigation to mycelium insulation! 85% of them have built a startup before. They have experienced assumptions and solution first strategies before. What they needed (what most founders need early) is a system to surface assumptions before they become expensive mistakes. That's what customer discovery actually is. A derisking tool. Thank you SCION team for inviting me to open the journey with Cohort #2. Rooting for every one of these founders!

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