FirstMark

Congratulations to Vercel, ClickHouse, and Legora for making the ET30 — a list of the most promising private companies in enterprise technology, from Wing Venture Capital and Eric Newcomer / Newcomer. We're proud to have these incredible companies in the FirstMark family and couldn't be more excited about what's coming next!

Congratulations to ClickHouse, Legora, and Vercel on being named to the 2026 Enterprise Tech 30! These teams are building category-defining businesses across data, dev infra, and AI-native workflows, and executing at an exceptional level - well deserved!! Grateful to be on the journey with all of you. Excited for what’s ahead.

Everything you do onchain is being watched. Your salary. Your net worth. Who you pay. What you buy. All visible to anyone, forever. So how do you publicly verify a transaction on a blockchain WITHOUT revealing all the data that comes along with it? That's exactly the challenge that Payy has solved and one of the reasons we were so excited to lead their seed round at FirstMark. Payy is a new kind of payments rail, with an EVM-compatible L2, purpose-built for private stablecoin transactions at its core. Privacy is enforced at the protocol level, not approximated at the application layer. Developers can build on familiar infrastructure, but with a fundamentally different set of guarantees around how financial data is handled. Already, over 100K users are doing $130M in annualized volume on the Payy Wallet. Thousands of private transactions across 100+ countries. We couldn't be more excited to welcome the Payy team to the FirstMark family!

2025 was prototypes. 2026 is software that actually works. Congratulations to Softr for launching the first AI-native platform for building real business software! Describe what you need, and Softr’s new AI Co-Builder instantly creates the database, app, and business logic — connected, secure, and ready for real users, in under 5 minutes. → Secure and fully-functional. Logins, user management, permissions, hosting — built-in and working from the moment you hit publish. → Switch between AI prompting and visual editing at any time. No credits burned just to add text or change a color. → Any non-technical team member can own it and iterate on it. Visual interface, database and workflows you can see and edit — no black box. No developer. Ever. Start building with Softr for free → https://www.softr.io/

Artificial intelligence is no longer a future theme—it’s actively reshaping how private capital is deployed, how companies operate, and where value is created. As part of the April 16 Wharton PE & VC Alumni Forum, we’re excited to spotlight a timely and highly relevant panel: AI Disruption in Private Markets. This investor-driven discussion will explore where AI is unlocking meaningful opportunity across sectors, where it is introducing new risks and operational challenges, and how leading investors are underwriting and supporting AI-driven businesses in real time. Phil Schmoyer — Principal and Co-leader, Digital Strategy and Transformation practice, Baker Tilly US will moderator this panel. Hear perspectives from: • Vikram Mahidhar — Operating Partner & Co-Head of Technology Solutions & Services Group, Gryphon Investors • Dylan Pearce — Partner, Greycroft • David Waltcher — Partner, FirstMark We’re grateful for Baker Tilly’s sponsorship! Gassen Mosbahi, Jivka Batchvarova, Joe Feichtl, Matthew Boxx, Malorie (Goldblatt) Yannessa and Rachel Lewis 📅 EVENT DETAILS Thursday, April 16, 2026 1:00 PM – 8:30 PM New York Athletic Club View the agenda and register for this must attend event. Open to investment professionals who are Wharton/UPenn alumni. https://lnkd.in/eZQ6HYPc

One of the World's most successful founders once told me: "Awards are like perfume. Nice to smell, dangerous to swallow." So when Fast Company named Journey one of its Most Innovative Companies for 2026, we celebrated...for about five minutes. Then we got back to work. But if nothing else, this award has given me the opportunity to brag publicly about our team, our Alliance Partners, and the amazing advisors who have helped us build towards something special in only nine months since launch. In the last three months, more than 30,000 new members have joined Journey. But not just any traveler. Luxury travelers who have long desired to be rewarded for their good taste, their investment in pursuing the best, the most unique, the most impactful, the most inspiring. Interestingly, when hotels first heard about Journey, the skeptics said luxury travelers didn't care about loyalty. Today, we're seeing over 50% of guests at some of the top hotels in the world joining before they even arrive. A number that leads the industry. Not because of some clever growth hack. Because we're building something that luxury travelers and the hospitality leaders who serve them have been waiting for. A platform where guests aren't just tracked. They're recognized. They're valued. They're truly known. Luxury travel is surging and expected to double over the next four years. The demand for personalized, relationship-driven experiences is only accelerating. And the operators who deliver on that promise are the ones who will win. We're just here to help them do it. I am extremely grateful to the hoteliers, residence operators, and hospitality leaders who have joined the Journey Alliance and shown their belief in our vision and their commitment to leveraging the technology and insights we deliver to elevate their guests' experiences day in and day out. They are the operators who we believe will win, both today and in the future. We also wouldn't be here without the commitment of capital and time shown by this small group of investors & advisors who believed in us including Headline, FirstMark, Lerer Hippeau, Slow Ventures, Brian Kelly, Mike DeVico, Sheila Tran, Burch Creative Capital, Bulletpitch+, Bashar Wali and the numerous others who saw the vision early and continue to push us forward into new arenas. But mostly, I want to celebrate our team. The people who've poured everything into building something that didn't exist in the World before. The late nights, the hard conversations (if you ever worked for me, you know 😉), the relentless iteration. This recognition belongs to them. The reward is the journey. #mostinnovativecompanies2026 #fastcompany #traveltech #venture